One day, all your phones, computers, radios, beepers, tvs and microwaves will die... and you'll have to go outside.
--
Statical Planets
Statical Planets was a movie project
Mystery Science Theater 3000 creator
Joel Hodgson touted for a while as his next big thing. It was based on one of his quirky inventions called "
Static-A-Matic". It seems to borrow heavily from
William Castle's famous
Percepto electrified theater seats that were installed for his B-movie
The Tingler (1959). But that's okay as
Statical Planets itself was meant to be a huge parody/tribute to '50s B-movie horror/sci fi films. However unlike Castle's electrified theater seats, Static-A-Matic wouldn't actually
electrocute anyone. It would only give the illusion that everyone else in the theater was getting a big electrical shock. How this was to be accomplished is unknown. Hodgson, besides a
comedy writer and a
gadget freak, is also an accomplished
stage magician and I guess he figured out some clever illusion.
Statical Planets never did get made, although Hodgson did release a 15-minute downloadable teaser on his now defunct website
gizmonics.com (which now just goes to some sort of domain ghoul site… curious Hodgson let some net
sleezoid take over his domain especially after he and his lawyers in the mid'90s vigorously threatened the editor of
The Gizmocrat with a trademark violation lawsuit). The 15 minute teaser was created using "virtual sets" using a rear-projection system (which Hodgson referred to as his "Hodgson Backscreen '90" system).
Plot details are highly sketchy. However, it appears the movie is about an alternative reality, on an earth-like world, where animals have evolved at such an alarming rate they've formed political parties.
Clowns are bred on farms and sold like livestock at auctions. Some crazy invention called the
Topaz Brand Electron Scaffolding allows people to shroud their homes in a powerful
cloaking field that gives their domiciles amazing
curb appeal. People abuse the machine so much, using up so much energy with the device that the physics of
electricity itself gets overloaded and broken, causing a static electricity creature called Hodag to emerge from its 1,000 year sleep. The creature is so powerful that the world's defense force, the Frank 3000 Army, can't stop it. It then emerges from the movie screen and zaps audience members. The end.
The Statical Planets teaser featured
Frank Conniff (aka
TV's Frank).