Like probably most people here, I saw it during an episode of "Mystery Science Theater 3000". What is it? An old advertising short for a band instrument manufacturer. Why is it creepy? Largely because it's obviously a woman unconvincingly playing a man.Yes, like many children I saw Mary Martin play Peter Pan on television. But Mary Martin was convincing as an overgrown boy. Here, "Mr. B Natural" is clearly a woman, with a woman's lipstick and makeup, and clothing that fits tight enough so that even a three-year old could see is an adult woman. And she talks in a high, unmistakably grown woman's voice. In her behavior in the advertisement, she dances around too much as well.The advertisement's intended message is that being a member of a school band is what children would enjoy becoming. One little problem-in my high school days, people who played in the band were known as "band fags"-obviously not meant to be complimentary. Whether fair or not, you could get more respect in school by joining the swim team. But that typically does not require anyone to buy expensive musical instruments.

This 20 minute short tries to show you the beauty of music and how you can express feelings with various instruments. That sounds like a nice premise, but the direction and characters disfigured the plot to the point of being unrecognizable. Mr. B Natural is as inane of a name as the character is. This person is a woman, but she's called a 'mister'. Is she a transvette then? Nobody will know what influenced the creation of this name. The story is about a nerdy college boy who wants to be accepted by his friends, and apparently takes a lot of drugs because when at home one day he hallucinates that he is talking to a woman dressed in a peter-pan esque outfit who is obsessed with all kinds of music. She/he is the most mentally disfunctional freak I've ever seen, prancing around like a moron in the most randomly generated dance routines. Her/his voice is also high pitched, to the point where Joel and the bots cringe when they see her in the screen. I think the director tried to make her seem like a perky, happy person who motivates the kid, but it is horribly overdone and turns her/him into a nightmare which can only exist as a bad hallucination. Imagine a woman whose eyes are wide open all the time, who always has a grin that stretches across her face and talks in a screechy voice about happy things, while dancing around maniacally. There you go.SPOILERS up ahead, tho you can predict the whole movie by just reading the summaryB natural 'motivates' Buzz, the kid, to take up a musical hobby and after a few days of mistake-free practice, he turns into an expert in the trumpet but the tunes he plays sound stupid anyway (as joel and the bots would agree). As you would expect there is terrible acting and so on. Mr. B Natural is very painful to watch and would be more effective as a device to use in threats and torture. However, watch this with MST3K and I guarantee it will turn this short from musical-gone-wrong into excellent comedy. To quote tom servo during one of the dancing scenes, "See Buzz? its really fun to be psychotic!"

This short was made the same year I was born, and when my music teacher in elementary school showed it to me, I didn't rush out and get an instrument. I went home, locked the window and checked under the bed for women who dress like Peter Pan and pass themselves off as guys. Actually, Betty Luster is sort of attractive in her own way, but she should have stuck to singing on variety shows. As Mr(s). B. Natural, she is so sickingly sweet, jovial and spirited that even Marcia Brady would have slapped her. The production staff must have been laughing under their breaths as she is forced to keep a painful, perpetual smile and jump around like Tinkerbell on acid. If this had been a movie, gawdforbid, I think she really would have ended her visit with sucking the lifeforce out of the boy and moving on to the next one.

This is without a doubt the single most frightening piece of film, short or otherwise, that I have ever seen! What about Blair Witch, you say? Or Scream? Or Texas Chainsaw Massacre? They have *nothing* on the all-engulfing terror that festers at the very heart of this thankfully brief atrocity of film.I gave it a two. (well, Mr. B was kinda cute, after all...)