Althouse: "Suffice to say, watching all of MST3k from start to finish is a gargantuan undertaking, and one that likely would take even the most die-hard fan years to accomplish."

March 16, 2017

"Suffice to say, watching all of MST3k from start to finish is a gargantuan undertaking, and one that likely would take even the most die-hard fan years to accomplish."

"Ranking the entire series? That can take even longer, but I’m happy to report that we’ve pulled it off.... That’s 176 feature-length episodes...."

All on one page, so you might have to wait a minute for it to load. It's worth it. I went right to Amazon and put the highest-ranked ones on my Prime Video wish list.

(That might not be your cheapest option (but as you know, I promote my Amazon portal as the chief monetization of this blog, so consider using it for something else, like Dansko hiking boots, which is what I just bought).)

74 comments:

rhhardin said...: I watched all of Get Smart (1960's) three times.; 3/16/17, 12:09 PM
Lance said...: I don't remember the last time I wished a website would break an article into smaller pages. But in this case the page is too big, and it's crashing Chrome.; 3/16/17, 12:24 PM
Brando said...: My personal favorites were the "Girl in the Gold Boots" (where the bikers were reading Tikkun was great) and the one with the giant spiders landing in rural Wisconsin with the Skipper from Gilligan's Island.; 3/16/17, 12:29 PM
Quaestor said...: I've got 'em all, and I keep a dozen or so favorites on my iPhone to pass the time as I sit and wait for the dentist, the physician, the attorney, the busy executive, etc. That I often burst out at some obscure Crow riff probably leads passer-by's to suspect my sanity causes me no regret.

I've never attempted to watch my whole collect from start to finish because I don't see the point. The best episodes are in Season Eight, which means by the tom one has worked through the previous seven humor fatigue will have set in with a vengence leading to a less-than-optimal Satellite of Love experience.

Some people prefer the Joel episodes. I do not. Joel Hodgson's sleepy, pseudo-ironic, meta-meta approach I find tiresome. In fact, if it was not for Trace Beaulieu MST3K would have failed miserably. Hodgson also had too much influence in booking the movies. He preferred incomprehensible kaiju flicks to genuine bad cinema.; 3/16/17, 12:32 PM
Quaestor said...: collect, shit. collection!

I am not a robot. My wit deficit proves it.; 3/16/17, 12:35 PM
Qwinn said...: Prince of Space was a classic.; 3/16/17, 12:41 PM
Static Ping said...: I have yet to see all the episodes. I own a lot of them that I have never watched. I prefer to watch them with someone else and that has gotten difficult to arrange.

The Castle of Fu Manchu is a terribly bad movie, but it had one of my most literal roll on the floor laughing moments during that episode. I consider it glorious just for that reason.

My personal favorite is probably Attack of the the Eye Creatures, the origin of the catch phrase "They just didn't care."; 3/16/17, 12:42 PM
Nonapod said...: I have fond memories of watching that show almost every Saturday morning in my dorm room. Joe Don Baker's Mitchell was my personal favorite. I hear a few episodes are going up on Netflix soon. I haven't really watched any of them since the 90s and I'm curious to see how well they hold up.; 3/16/17, 12:43 PM
exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...: I haven't seen them all. "The Brain That Wouldn't Die" is a good one.; 3/16/17, 12:44 PM
Anonymous said...: Brando: My personal favorites were the "Girl in the Gold Boots"...

What happened to my beautiful mind...

...(where the bikers were reading Tikkun was great) and the one with the giant spiders landing in rural Wisconsin with the Skipper from Gilligan's Island.

Hard to choose between them and the immortal "Space Mutiny", or (to meet the Canadian content quota) "The Final Sacrifice".; 3/16/17, 12:44 PM
Sean Gleeson said...: First of all, there is no way that a die-hard fan would need to take "years" to watch all 10 seasons of MST3K. Even if you paced yourself and only watched one episode every two days, you would see them all in less than one year. If you binge-watched, say two episodes a day, you could complete the task in three months.

Second, I have to agree with @Quaestor there is no point to watching the shows in sequence. The show itself has no narrative arc except for a very loose one in Season Eight (they're in Ape Earth, they're on Observer World, they're in Ancient Rome, etc.), and even that is unnecessary for appreciating the gags.

Also agree that Mike was far superior to Joel. The best season was Season Eight. The best episode was number 822, Space Mutiny.; 3/16/17, 12:45 PM
Quaestor said...: Quaestor's favorite is Prince of Space, closely followed by Attack of the Neptune Men.

Though I've viewed it many times the scene of Space Chief departing for the Unknown Heavens in what appears to be a 1960 Nissan Skyline with a smoke bomb in the trunk always cracks me up. No riff needed.; 3/16/17, 12:46 PM
Sean Gleeson said...: Oops, Space Mutiny was episode 820, not 822. Sorry.; 3/16/17, 12:47 PM
The Godfather said...: @Althouse: Make sure you break in the new Dansko hiking boots before you and Meade hike the Grand Canyon. My buddy didn't do that and had to be "hauled out" by mule the second day.; 3/16/17, 12:47 PM
exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...: "the one with the giant spiders landing in rural Wisconsin with the Skipper from Gilligan's Island."

I really have to look that one up. Did the natives try to fight off the spiders by throwing cheese bricks and Leinenkugel enemies at them? It's not realistic if they didn't.; 3/16/17, 12:48 PM
exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...: "Leinenkugel enemies"

Damn, I meant empties.

Leinenkugel has no enemies.; 3/16/17, 12:49 PM
Quaestor said...: Shit, another typo! Time, damn it, not tom.

Servo has control of my brain.; 3/16/17, 12:49 PM
Farmer said...: Quaestor said... I've never attempted to watch my whole collect from start to finish because I don't see the point. The best episodes are in Season Eight, which means by the tom one has worked through the previous seven humor fatigue will have set in with a vengence leading to a less-than-optimal Satellite of Love experience.

Some people prefer the Joel episodes. I do not. Joel Hodgson's sleepy, pseudo-ironic, meta-meta approach I find tiresome. In fact, if it was not for Trace Beaulieu MST3K would have failed miserably. Hodgson also had too much influence in booking the movies. He preferred incomprehensible kaiju flicks to genuine bad cinema.

Exactly right, agree 100%. Joel sucked. As soon as he left, the dumb Beatles quotes immediately stopped.; 3/16/17, 12:50 PM
Quaestor said...: Space Mutiny

I like Reb Brown's Slim Jeans. Yaaaaahhh!; 3/16/17, 12:59 PM
Ficta said...: "Joel sucked" seems a bit strong to me, but I definitely prefer Mike. I haven't met many fans who don't prefer Joel though, I'm not sure what's up with that. Maybe they saw him first (I came in late).; 3/16/17, 1:00 PM
California Snow said...: Space Mutiny is easily my favorite.; 3/16/17, 1:02 PM
Sean Gleeson said...: Oh, a random note about episode 1009, Hamlet, which I notice is streaming on the page you linked. That is the unmistakable, thickly accented voice of Ricardo Montalbán dubbing the actor playing Claudius. (He was not named in the credits, and even the MST3K riffers didn't remark on it, which was odd.); 3/16/17, 1:02 PM
Quaestor said...: Leinenkugel has no enemies.

Phantom of Krankor begs to differ. HEH-heh-heh.; 3/16/17, 1:03 PM
Quaestor said...: I haven't met many fans who don't prefer Joel though, I'm not sure what's up with that.

They tend to be very leftish — which explains a lot, really.; 3/16/17, 1:05 PM
Quaestor said...: He was not named in the credits, and even the MST3K riffers didn't remark on it, which was odd.

Mustn't exploit the very downtrodden Latino-Scandanavians. Not PC, no siree, Bob.; 3/16/17, 1:09 PM
Static Ping said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 3/16/17, 1:13 PM
Brando said...: "What happened to my beautiful mind..."

I admit I Netflixed the original film after seeing that, particularly the part where the third guy teleports into the diner booth. I'm going to probably waste a lot of hours watching those episodes on Amazon.; 3/16/17, 1:14 PM
Static Ping said...: I will agree that Red Zone Cuba is very difficult to watch, even with the MST3K commentary. That was one episode that I was just waiting to end. It hurt. Manos: The Hands of Fate was probably a worse movie but it was easier to watch.

In the RiffTrax group, Wicker Man had the same effect on me. The riffs were excellent - I remember some of them very well - but that movie is such garbage that I desperately wanted the movie to end, then I wanted to insert myself into the movie to launch repeated napalm assaults on the island until everyone was deep fried.

The absolute worst thing any of the incarnations has ever riffed is the Star Wars Holiday Special but the riffs are so good that it is one of the greatest experiences ever. That or Birdemic which is also a great riffing experience and otherwise unwatchable.; 3/16/17, 1:19 PM
Matt Sablan said...: Puma Man is my favorite.; 3/16/17, 1:28 PM
Matt Sablan said...: Also the time travel one where Crow says, "No movie. I will not accept THIS GUY as our hero."; 3/16/17, 1:29 PM
AmPowerBlog said...: That's definitely a browser-crashing website in Chrome.; 3/16/17, 1:52 PM
Bill Peschel said...: Wow, that's the first time I ever said, "You know, you should break this page up." It threatened to crash Firefox and I had to shut it.

Not that I needed to see the list. Unlike the "Girls" thread, I've seen many MST3Ks. A few months back, I saved someone's top 10 list and went through them, downloading them from YouTube. I've seen some of these movies more than the movies I should be seeing.

I prefer Joel to Mike. I started with him, but I like his laid-back demeanor. Mike seemed to have a nastier edge, and I never got into his Mads as much as TV's Frank and Dr. Clayton Forrester.

I'd like to look forward to the new shows, but frankly I doubt they'll work. MST3K's writers based their riffs on darn near everything in culture. This generation doesn't have that knowledge.

No fault to them; they weren't raised on three TV channels that played everything from silent movies to two-year-old theatricals, and many of the great actors and comedians from the '30s-'50s were still doing appearances in the '60s and '70s.

Plus, I have an irrational hate-on for the host, who comes off as irritating in The Nerdist. Maybe he'll be better on the show.

Anyway, off the top of my head, here's my favorites:

"Teenagers from Outer Space." A great combination of weirdness: Low-budget filmmaking in a small town, cheezy special effects (the space monster is a silhouette of a lobster), Harry Connick Jr. playing the impossibly slim alien in a duct-tape lined jumpsuit, the alien badguy shouting "TOR-TURE" and raving about "the Gargon!" And oh so much more.

"Mitchell." Everyone's favorite, since it ended the Joel run (if you hated Joel) and it annoyed its star, Buford Pusser. The most unintentionally unappealing scruffy hero ever seen on the screen ("is that a beer?")

"Pod People." Imagine E.T. set in the Canadian wilderness. Particularly loved since the bots made a Norm Abram joke. The hero sings in the band, and the clip of him giving the O.K. followed by "It stinks!" says everything you need to know about the jerk. The scenes between "Trumpy" and the kid are priceless.

"Hercules and the Moon Men." Steve Reeves in an Italian tunic and tits movie.

"Santa Claus vs. the Martians." Worth seeing every year. Pia Zadora's first movie, and more Golden Globes worthy than "Butterfly." *spaceship engines fire* "Oops. Beans."; 3/16/17, 2:02 PM
Scott M said...: The best episode was number 822, Space Mutiny.

Big McLargehuge still makes me laugh.; 3/16/17, 2:27 PM
CJinPA said...: MST played a special role in the dating years of me and my wife. We discovered it separately before we met and then enjoyed hours of laughter watching it and getting to know each other. We now attend RiffTrax Live shows, an MST off-shoot. (We actually met because of MST, but's another story.)

The later episodes are my favorite, if only because they kept getting better at cramming in jokes per minute.

Trumpy! His name means so much more now.; 3/16/17, 2:29 PM
Quaestor said...: In the RiffTrax group, Wicker Man had the same effect on me. The riffs were excellent - I remember some of them very well - but that movie is such garbage that I desperately wanted the movie to end, then I wanted to insert myself into the movie to launch repeated napalm assaults on the island until everyone was deep fried.

The problem with RiffTrax is the fact that Bad Cinema is largely a relic of the past, like Gothic architecture. There are no more drive-ins or grindhouse movie palaces where an earnest incompetent like Ed Wood or William "One Shot" Beaudine has a chance for an audience. Theatrical releases in this day and age are insanely expensive, even the so-called indies, have dozens of money sources to be accountable to, and they tended to micro-manage projects into mind-numbing blandness. (I don't consider CGI SFX or frenetic chase sequences à la 007 to be anything other than insipid.) Youtube has potential, but the vast majority of original material there is commentary rather than cinema. Much of what is released to theatres today is bad... very bad, but not Bad, if you get my drift. Riffing something like Eragon is like herding cats if you ask me. I suppose they decided to aim their appeal at much younger demographic who for the most part haven't the appreciation or the attention span to watch a 3:2 B&W, hence the concentration on more recent material.

RiffTrax could be better by revisiting the 1950's and 40's where dozens, perhaps hundreds of "Poverty Row" sci-fi's and faux noirs waiting for humorous exploitation. There are even some major motion pictures of that era in dire need of a pasting Servo-style. I'd kill to watch an MST3K treatment of The Conqueror.; 3/16/17, 2:30 PM
CJinPA said...: "Space Muntiny" ! I couldn't think of the name. Death Race 2000 and that fish one with the Italian actors.

And Giant Spider Invasion. Nothing wrong with Alan Hale making a few post-Gilligan bucks.; 3/16/17, 2:31 PM
CJinPA said...: RiffTrax could be better by revisiting the 1950's and 40's where dozens, perhaps hundreds of "Poverty Row" sci-fi's and faux noirs waiting for humorous exploitation.

There live simulcast shows have gotten away from the new releases. I agree, blockbusters are harder to do and intentionally bad like Sharknado aren't worth the effort. But there is plenty of material out there 1950s-1990s. Industrial films alone are a gold mine.; 3/16/17, 2:36 PM
Sean Gleeson said...: @Quaestor: The problem with RiffTrax is the fact that Bad Cinema is largely a relic of the past, like Gothic architecture.

Two words: Birdemic, Sharknado. Those were not "cinema" (one had a very small thatrical release and the other was made for cable), but come on. They were excellent RiffTrax. Maybe cable and other media have replaced the drive-in, but there is no shortage of cheap bad films by earnest incompetents.; 3/16/17, 2:48 PM
FullMoon said...: Quaestor said... [hush][hide comment]

The problem with RiffTrax is the fact that Bad Cinema is largely a relic of the past, like Gothic architecture. There are no more drive-ins or grindhouse movie palaces where an earnest incompetent like Ed Wood or William "One Shot" Beaudine has a chance for an audience.

No way, Jose. Netflix is full of turkeys. Not sure why they keep recommending them to me?

"Traded", a western with Kris Kristofferson, Tom Sizemore and Micheal Pare is so mesmerizingly bad that I watched the whole thing sober.; 3/16/17, 3:11 PM
Static Ping said...: Quaestor, I agree that the volume of bad movies for general theater release have gone down in volume in recent years, but really, really bad movies are still being made. Birdemic is as bad or worse than anything that came out in the 1950s. The production values would have embarrassed Roger Corman.

The Room is another glorious turkey of recent years. The production values are not bad and given it is a drama based in only a few locations there is not going to be the equivalent of a monster in a rubber suit or cardboard tombstones, but good grief is it ever terrible. The acting was better in Manos.

I do recommend you go to the RiffTrax web site. They keep finding really terrible stuff.

That said, you do not really need a bad movie to make a good riff. One of my favorite RiffTrax movies is The Dark Knight which is one of the best movies I have ever seen. It is also one of the best RiffTraxs I have ever enjoyed. They also did the first two Sharknado films in live shows and even though the movies were trying to be bad, the riffing was quite excellent. The Star Wars prequels are also highly recommended as are the Twilight movies. Oh, and Dragon Wars: D-Wars was a glorious high budget film that ended up like something Ed Wood would do.; 3/16/17, 3:11 PM
Quaestor said...: Maybe cable and other media have replaced the drive-in, but there is no shortage of cheap bad films by earnest incompetents.

Nevertheless, I maintain that there is a shortage of riffable material.

Granted some direct-to-cable flicks are Bad in the classic sense, but most are just garbage. The SciFi Channel (once the host of MST3K, BTW) started life as a home for seldom-seen classics like Earth vs the Flying Saucers, but that was before on-demand services like Netflix came along. Since then the SciFi Channel, now stupidly rebranded SyFy, has largely confined itself to original content made on the cheap not by earnest incompetents, but by cynical professionals who know how to bring it in on time and under budget. They rely on formulaic plots and scripts intended simply to contextualize the "money shot". What they do is very similar to porn. The difference is the nature of the money shot. Instead of an ejaculation into one female orifice or another, the SyFy money shot is the CGI — the Greys have the heroine on their examination table or the Stegosaurus thagomizers the Bad Guy — which is typically half the production budget. A low-rent auteur like Roger Corman would likely be fired during pre-production for going off-script. You'll never see anything as wonderfully kookie as the Ro-Man soliloquy on SyFy these days, just the same flavorless babble recycled again and again. One could do an excellent riff of a made-for-SyFy shit sandwich, but only once. Their assembly-line approach would make a second or third riffing fatally repetitious.; 3/16/17, 4:02 PM
MountainJohn said...: Joel and Mike were both very funny, but the Canada Song may be the funniest thing I've ever seen on screen.

https://youtu.be/4RHVoFpncgA; 3/16/17, 4:09 PM
HoodlumDoodlum said...: MST3k, now we're talking! That's my childhood, right there.

Others have mentioned some great eps, but for me it's Mitchell, Warrior of the Lost World, Laserblast, and Escape 2000 for all-time best episodes I can rewatch endlessly.
Some of the better ones, like Santa Claus vs. the Martians (insanity!) and Puma Man (Donald Pleasence, again!) are funny every once in a while. Manos is just tough to get through! Fugitive Alien is another good one. There are so many!

I feel actual anxiety about the reboot--it has potential to be so bad! I hope it's good. I like Patton O. and I like Felicia Day, although both are pretty solidly Left. Geez I hope it's good.

Joel vs. Mike is unanswerable--Mike did more great episodes than Joel but he did a lot more episodes total...plus their styles are different. Without Joel we'd have nothing, so even if you prefer Mike's episodes you still gotta give it up for Joel. I like 'em both. (The Mads got a little annoying for me in later seasons, but I didn't watch all of those later seasons straight through.)

The Birdemic and Room Rifftrax are up there with vintage MST3ks for me--Birdemic especially is great for repeated viewing.

The Red Letter Media gang did Santa Claus vs. Satan in this Best of the Worst (around 24 min) and almost hurt themselves laughing.; 3/16/17, 4:20 PM
Roughcoat said...: Where can I find all 176 episodes?; 3/16/17, 4:34 PM
Quaestor said...: There seems to be a disconnect which some here may have failed to appreciate. There is bad cinema and Bad cinema. They have much in common, but Bad has a quality all its own which extends downward, layer by layer as if the Badness is molecular in nature. This is Bad. This is obnoxious. MST3K riffed some bad movies, which are only tolerable because of the jokes, but the best of the worst, the truly Bad, have unintentional comedy which riffing only improves, like counterpoint on a musical theme. That's what I miss and contend is becoming increasingly rare.

If you want to learn about Bad cinema theory read this paper by Julia Vassilieva and Claire Perkins (assuming you can keep you sanity without the help of robot friends) and then bury it in the backyard along with some dog turds. Afterward, you'll have an idea of what does not constitute Bad cinema. Hey, granted that's an indirect approach, but it worked for Edison.; 3/16/17, 4:39 PM
HoodlumDoodlum said...: Oh man, I forgot Megaforce! Also lots of the shorts are excellent, too. I remember "What To Do On a Date," "Mr B Natural," "Cheating" and the musical ad for new telephones (Bell?).

Shout Factory has a bunch of the shorts up at this link

Related: Red Letter Media did a Best of the Worst with both Space Mutiny & Death Spa MST3k did Space Mutiny and the How Did this Get Made podcast did Death Spa. See...it all started on the Satellite of Love!; 3/16/17, 4:49 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: The MST3K quips I liked the best were about the women on the screen. Tom and Crow would sometimes perfectly portray that mix of horror and attraction, bawdiness, innocence, and false bravado of nerds in their early teens. Gone, now, I suppose, with easily available internet porn.; 3/16/17, 4:53 PM
HoodlumDoodlum said...: Oh man, and Alien from L.A.! Damn there are a lot of wonderful MST3k episodes. So much greatness.; 3/16/17, 4:55 PM
Roughcoat said...: Does anyone remember a TV show in the 80s where a stable of comedians dubbed in their own improvised dialogue to old movies? I remember this treatment given hilariously to 1940s serials like "Commander Cody," e.g. I think it was produced Jay Ward and Bill Scott of Rocky & Bullwinkle fame, but I'm not sure about that. It was a half-hour program that aired, in Denver, at c. 5:30 Saturday afternoon. It was very funny.

A predecessor was a radio program broadcast in the 1970s by the KRNW in Boulder, Colorado. Same premise: a group of very funny and inevitably stoned girls and guys would do their thing late Friday nights (or was it Saturday night?), usually to the Fright Night movie (or whatever it was called). But they jumped to different channels, depending on what movie was showing. That was back in the day when there were only 4 channels, the Big 3 and the local ones, and on weekends at night they showed old movies, especially after midnight (after, on NBC, the Johnny Carson show was over) but also starting at 10:30 pm on Saturday. There was the Late Show and the Late Late Show, and then all stations went off the air after broadcasting the5-minute Sermonette followed by the National Anthem with military footage of jets flying in formation and shots of mountains and amber waves of grain, etc. "This concludes our broadcasting day." The radio show would start about fifteen minutes before the movie came on and they would tell you which channel to watch and to turn of your TV sound and turn up the radio. They would make helpful announcements such as, "You have only 10 minutes to roll your joints and get stoned." That sort of thing.

Hoo-boy, I remember laughing so hard at those movies, my stomach would hurt the next day. No doubt the weed we were smoking and LSD we were ingesting contributed mightily to the hilarity.; 3/16/17, 4:56 PM
Quaestor said...: Where can I find all 176 episodes?

My collection is fully 137 GB on disc, which a lot of anything, by gum. Back in the Golden Age of Media Piracy (Yo-ho-ho!) there were many torrent catalogues which offered MST3K. Alas its all very illegal, and those sites are mostly gone or inaccessable via U.S. providers. (Which is also ironic given that many MST3K episodes enjoin "Keep Circulating the Tapes" during the end credits.)

A few episodes are on Netflix, but not the best in my estimation. Perhaps if you join a Mistie discussion forum you might garner (!!) a friend who'll arrange to share the bounty with you on a one-to-one under the table under the street lights dressed in trenchcoats manner. Not here, by all means.; 3/16/17, 4:57 PM
John Nowak said...: My personal favorites keep changing, but I never stray far from Fugitive Alien and Prince of Space.

Ever notice how the latter never even tries to explain why a Japanese shoe shine boy owns a spaceship?; 3/16/17, 5:02 PM
D 2 said...: Tusk! That is all that needs said, i think.; 3/16/17, 5:04 PM
Quaestor said...: I remember this treatment given hilariously to 1940s serials like "Commander Cody," e.g. I think it was produced Jay Ward and Bill Scott of Rocky & Bullwinkle fame, but I'm not sure about that.

Fractured Flickers? That show ran in syndication for years, as did R&B after the networks dropped it, particularly on indie UHF stations. Ted Turner made some bucks off it. A local station I watched as a kid ran it at the end of the program day on Saturday nights, right after Dead Earnest and just before the National Anthem and the snow.; 3/16/17, 5:15 PM
HoodlumDoodlum said...: D said...Tusk! That is all that needs said, i think.

Werewolf, right? Lots of their end-credit sing-overs were so damn good. Escape 2000 when Servo goes right into Separate Ways is classic.

Oh man, I forgot the Final Sacrifice episode--Rowsdower!
It's hard to know where my personality ends and MST3k begins, sometimes. Well, "personality" anyway.; 3/16/17, 5:33 PM
Quaestor said...: Tom and Crow would sometimes perfectly portray that mix of horror and attraction, bawdiness, innocence, and false bravado of nerds in their early teens.

She's nude right now!

Nerds of any age, trust me on this one.; 3/16/17, 5:47 PM
HoodlumDoodlum said...: Holy hell, how could we forget--from Pod People it's TRUMPY!!!; 3/16/17, 5:56 PM
Bad Lieutenant said...: Q, sadly the "money shot" aka "wet shot" precludes the emission of semen into any orifice, as the whole point is to apply it externally for the camera. A dreadful filmic convention.; 3/16/17, 6:01 PM
HoodlumDoodlum said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 3/16/17, 6:03 PM
HoodlumDoodlum said...: Idiot Control Now - Pod People

It stinks!; 3/16/17, 6:05 PM
Michelle Dulak Thomson said...: No one has yet mentioned my favorite, The Cave Dwellers. Apart from the extended sacrifice-the-nubile-young-woman-to-the-snakes bit, my favorite part was when Our Hero rigs up a fully modern hang glider from branches and animal hide in about thirty seconds. Oh, that and Crow yelling "I think your cape looks FABULOUS!"; 3/16/17, 6:17 PM
Bad Lieutenant said...: Needless to say...Laslo to the white courtesy phone...; 3/16/17, 7:05 PM
Gideon7 said...: Space Mutiny was the best. Actress Cisse Cameron is actually younger than Big McLargeHuge (Reb Brown) even though she looks at least 10 years older than him in the film. They were actually married at the time -- and still are according to IMDB.; 3/16/17, 7:36 PM
Roughcoat said...: Quaestor @5:15

"Fractured Flickers," yesssss! You are correct, sir! Many thanks!; 3/16/17, 8:00 PM
gpm said...: My recollection is that Fractured Flickers involved silent movies. And somehow I think Hans Conreid was involved.

--gpm; 3/16/17, 8:05 PM
Jupiter said...: Ummmm, what are you all talking about? What is MST3K? Some kind of athletic event?; 3/16/17, 8:43 PM
Quaestor said...: What is MST3K? Some kind of athletic event?

You're joking, right?; 3/16/17, 9:05 PM
glam1931 said...: Almost all of the episodes are online at http://www.club-mst3k.com
I put one on to listen to at bedtime almost every night.
I did contribute to the Kickstarter for the revival, but I have my concerns that it won't work anymore. So many of the references are pop-culture stuff from 60s and 70s; Joel is 57, just a few years younger than me. TV and movies from later decades don't have the same resonance for the younger generation. Those of us who grew up with Joel, watching about five TV channels as kids, have a common frame of reference that doesn't exist for the current generation. I fear that by trying to pander to the youth audience they will leave us geezers behind. Still they did raise a huge amount of money for the reboot: $5,764,229!
My personal favorites are the above-mentioned PRINCE OF SPACE and INVASION OF THE NEPTUNE MEN, and the Peter Graves giant grasshoppers attack Chicago classic BEGINNING OF THE END, which is riotous even without the riffing. Movie I'd most like to see them do: 1957's THE GIANT CLAW, in which an hilarious Mexican-made giant buzzard marionette terrifies the world. That's another gem you can see (un-riffed) on Youtube, and it's pricelessly awful.; 3/16/17, 11:47 PM
Pianoman said...: MONSTER A GO GO is still a personal favorite, along with the short CIRCUS ON ICE.

Rewatching the whole series has been on my bucket list for a long time now. Maybe after I get caught up on Man In The High Castle ...; 3/17/17, 10:35 AM
Static Ping said...: Quaestor said... MST3K riffed some bad movies, which are only tolerable because of the jokes, but the best of the worst, the truly Bad, have unintentional comedy which riffing only improves, like counterpoint on a musical theme. That's what I miss and contend is becoming increasingly rare.

If you have not seen Birdemic or The Room or Dragon Wars I highly recommend you do. There is unintentional comedy aplenty. Dragon Wars is worth it just for the flashback within a flashback within a flashback.; 3/17/17, 11:48 AM
RJ said...: Were-wuff! Obbsolutely fossinating!; 3/17/17, 12:36 PM
damikesc said...: Joel's sleepy delivery just irked me. Mike had a more "Golly gee" earnestness that worked with such an incredibly "dumb" show.

And Future War owns all.

What was the movie with unexpected nudity that they did early on? I remember them saying that they did a way better job of screening films before choosing them after that.; 3/17/17, 3:05 PM
damikesc said...: While I liked Prince of Space (the episode), I don't get how anybody would've enjoyed movies like that. I can get for most of the movies why SOMEBODY would like it, but that one just seemed like it'd be tediously boring, just an action movie with no actual conflict. It'd be like an hour and a half of hammers hitting nails.

And if the re-launch does not ever hit "They Don't Cut the Grass Anymore", they will have done themselves a disservice.; 3/17/17, 3:08 PM
Jeff Gee said...: Girls Town is my favorite episode-- Mamie Van Doren, Paul Anka, and a middle-aged Mel Torme as a hot rod racing teenage white slaver. The riffing is excellent, but I suspect the movie would be a blast even without it.; 3/17/17, 7:26 PM
John Nowak said...: >What was the movie with unexpected nudity that they did early on?

That would be Sidehackers, I believe.

>While I liked Prince of Space (the episode), I don't get how anybody would've enjoyed movies like that.

Prince of Space has an interesting history: it was a 1958 kids' TV series, and later two films were made. These films were edited together for release in the United States, and that's what was MSTed.

The original films were probably a bit more coherent.; 3/17/17, 10:11 PM