Mystery Science Theater 3000: C/D, S/D.

but i came around to both

Yeah, I also got into the show through the Mystery Science Theater Hour - any episodes that weren't on that have always felt like overlooked classics, which is great because it's the majority of them. Human Duplicators is great, I love the continued riffing on the stock-footage establishing shots ("Guests of the Human Duplicators will stay at the fabulous..."). Also all the scenes with the low-wattage romance (?) between the lead and his partner/secretary with that Bronx cheer of a voice. "Look, could you not talk?"

And for some reason, I always get really tickled by the scene where the first duplicate is revealed by having its head easily shattered like porcelain by a slight blow. "That's right, Doctor - Androids." "Not very good androids, mind you..."

I'm not sure how much of this about the benighted movie is well-known:

http://www.villagevoice.com/2013-08-21/film/mystery-science-theater-3000-the-movie-what-happened/

I wish I had the means to scan my nondigital photos from the Minneapolis '94 convention (where we watched a live This Island Earth show in a movie theater).

Yeah I'd heard most of that one way or another. Total clusterfuck. The host sequences on The Incredible Melting Man were specifically the team's attempt to convey just how ridiculous it got. To quote Mary Jo from that link:

The host segments were an exercise in healing after our struggle to make the Mystery Science Theater movie. It was a difficult process, and not really fun at all -- working with the studio and all the attendant politics and creative roadblocks was really, really frustrating. We didn't have the freedom to be as irreverent and eclectic as we were in the TV show. We had to work with people who had silly names that they had made up for themselves. I remember at one point, while the studio shepherds in charge of MST3K: The Movie were in Minneapolis, it was during the height of the ubiquitous O.J. Simpson deal. The studio exec informed us over lunch that there was a big trial in Los Angeles with O.J. Simpson because he'd been accused of murdering his wife, and "had (we) heard anything about it out here?" It was like a hog-pile on our souls.

Should add I was lucky enough to similarly see the film opening night thanks to a random booking at the art/independent theater just across from UCI. (One of the few in the whole county, which is why it survives still.) And similarly I felt there were some great moments but... (I had had a chance to see the actual source film on its own a year or two before; the cuts for MST3K were glaringly obvious as a result.)

can anyone give me some new recommendations for underrated good episodes?
aside from the usual suspects

― set the controls for the heart of the sun (VegemiteGrrl), Wednesday, August 14, 2013 5:45 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark

time chasers! i dont know if thats a usual suspect.

I still have my Mst3k: The Movie t-shirt

Quest of the Delta Knights, too! Not sure if that's a usual suspect either but it's a great one.

Also that one where it's a mutiny on a big space shit that has a Santa Claus beardo as the captain? Maybe it's just called Space Mutiny... its great too.

lol *space ship

Yeah, Space Mutiny. Total keeper.

"Blast Hardcheese!"

I should put "Oh *please*, you ask this of me? What episodes *don't* I have on tape?" on the "Posts that haunt your thoughts" thread, 'cause I think of it every time I think of mst3k now

I really disagree with haters of The Movie! It's probably my favorite "episode" of mst3k.

xpost -- this is proper.

though I will admit that, okay, This Island Earth is not actually a stinky cinematic suppository.

Saw the movie on my 18th birthday, also it's release date, which meant crossing the border and driving an hour or so to Ann Arbor, such was my fandom at the time, Thought it was reasonably funny, but wondered why they didn't pick a way worse subject for ridicule.

I liked The Movie a lot... primarily the first half, but hey -- I knew going in that a movie made for mass consumption wasn't going to be as great as the tv episodes.

I know I saw it and I know I thought it was kinda lame, but I can't really remember anything else about the experience (was it crowded? were people laughing?) except that we went to an unfamiliar mall with a megamultiplex deal to see it. I really don't think it made any aspect of the show better or funnier, and the host segments lost all of their charm in the transition...just generally things felt hokey and canned.

I can see in retrospect how it doesn't really stand up as a great MST3k episode, but the movie was one of the first I ever saw (along with Pod People), and this will always be one of my favorite moments in the series:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9_L-2k2zxA

Yes!

Space mutiny had me laughing so much. I prefer the episodes in which the movie is silly-bad over sad/boring-bad.

I made some friends see MST3K: The Movie with me on campus in a small lecture hall, definitely before it was on VHS though probably not "opening week" nationally. This was actually my second attempt to see MST3k at Penn State while in high school. They'd done a screening of Zombie Nightmare when I was 15 as part of a college tour (at a far bigger, and packed, auditorium) but they had to stop the show 30 minutes in because some leaves had caught fire in nearby sewer pipe or something. Enjoyed The Movie but yeah it was kinda tame and I've never felt the need to own it.

The dates of their "Fresh Cheese" college tours.

http://www.mst3ktemple.com/ouch15collegetour.htm

the audience was given free passes for the later showing but our parents were picking us up at 10. :(

I was extra bummed as I was suffering from MST3k withdrawal at the time. I'd just moved to town and they didn't have Comedy Central yet. When they finally got it, the show had moved to the new and unavailable Sci-Fi Network. Until like, 1998, I had to settle for taping turkey day marathons at my grandparents.

I got to see the movie in a theater in L.A. and there was a brief Q&A thing afterwards with Trace and maybe Jim Mallon? One of the stars of This Island Earth was there and some weird Hollywood fame parasite had come with him and managed to rush the stage and start talking about HIS movie. It was weird but I remember enjoying the movie and Q&A a lot.

For all its flaws, though, some of the riffs in the movie are all-time. Often questions in my house that get answered "No" are followed by "Are you building an interociter?"

And I never fail to crack up at: A) "I'll put you in the BITCH transformer!" B) "It's the Brak show, starring me! I'm Brak! I've got lots of great guests . . ." C) "Cal . . . *I* farted."

Watched Time Chasers last night. Em, I may need to re-watch it. The second half I had checked out and was watching it in a window. It was an incredibly dumb and bad movie! The guy has a time machine and he goes to an evil corporation for funding. And it turns out they are evil! And he spend the rest of the movie trying to stop himself from meeting up w the evil guys in the first place. He had a time machine! If he needed money why didn't he just go back in time and invest in something?

Watched Mitchell last night for the first time since high school. I like that the riffs go a bit deeper into exploring the film's shittiness beyond simply pointing out bad acting, outdated fashions, etc. The jokes during the car chase ("Hot! Merging! Action!"), especially, get at why it is that the film sucks so much; its not that its a lazy 70s cop drama with a wholly uninteresting hero, but rather that it is just about the most low-wattage cop thriller imaginable. I also like that they managed to ask "hey, wasn't John Saxon in this film?" around the exact same time that I was wondering where his character had gone. Probably one of the better entries in the series.

Cinematic Titanic just did their last show. ;_;

The John Saxon thing is a cheap shot at their own expense - IIRC the Brains cut out his final scenes for length! But it is totally a classic, maybe THE classic episode for all the reasons you give.

Been watching a lot of this again, a pretty mixed bag. Y'all were right on about Time Chasers - that it's great, but also as Adam points out that one kind of checks out in the second half. You can tell they knew they had something great on their hands with the incredibly lame "food court as The Future," the stock villain, the totally awful weenie hero, everything...but the movie kind of dulls out with that whole Revolutionary War thing and all the aimless plotting in between...there just isn't much to go on. Also, to be honest, I haven't watched many nu-Crow episodes and it was really distracting for me. I do love the continued sniping at the Castleton t-shirt, and the villain's dumb voice though.

Also, according to Wiki:

The production was shot in the Rutland, Vermont area in summer 1990, though it has a distinctive assortment of mid-1980s cultural artifacts, sets, and props. It was made on a $150,000 budget by 20-year old director David Giancola and his company Edgewood Studios. The film initially lost money, but licensing fees for its 1997 Mystery Science Theater 3000 appearance took its earnings out of the red. (...) For the showing on MST3K, the cast and crew had a reunion party to view the lampooning. MST3K star Mike Nelson claims that some at the party were not happy at the mocking, in particular Peter Harrington. Director Giancola said they all "laughed their asses off," but also admitted that some people at the time "took it a bit too seriously."

Other recent viewings - Mighty Jack is just staggering, maybe the most incoherent thing they've ever shown, no scene-to-scene logic or continuity at all. Makes for some hilarious viewing though it can almost be more trying as a result. We couldn't get into Overdrawn at the Memory Bank but it was getting pretty late; should we try again? Started Tormented but couldn't get rolling either... it's sad but I just can't keep up attention on the slower black-and-white ones, especially that kind of low-contrast, utterly style-free B&W with the plot of a weak soap opera, Bert I. Gordon or no.

Several years before coming out, I was watching the Time Chasers episode with my mother in the room, and she actually scolded me a bit for laughing at the "a lesbian...of the future!" line. Ha!

xxpost

I also like that they managed to ask "hey, wasn't John Saxon in this film?" around the exact same time that I was wondering where his character had gone.

That line is a bit controversial because the original movie had a scene where he was killed in a freak dune buggy explosion. The MST3K copy was based on a TV edit where his death only gets mentioned on a radio.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZcDScKH4V8

Other recent viewings - Mighty Jack is just staggering, maybe the most incoherent thing they've ever shown, no scene-to-scene logic or continuity at all.

Yeah but that, along with a few other episodes from Japan, was reedited from a TV series -- and it was a hair more coherent (not much) when they did it for KTMA, partially because they used the basic for-America-TV-movie cut. For the later 'official' version they edited it down further themselves.

Mitchell's utter uselessness in generating any kind of tension is truly amazing. I love the bit where Mitchell blows up the car and how it's clearly set in some new housing development towards the Inland Empire (or alternately/more likely, towards Simi Valley/Oxnard).

Mitchell's utter uselessness in generating any kind of tension is truly amazing.

The villain even signals into a turn during a car chase!

Mitchell II: The Cloverleaf.

xxpost I knew that about Mighty Jack - but didn't realize that it was just the first and sixth episodes of a series. I think that authorizes any amount of jabs at Sandy Frank - I mean, come on!

Haha I actually like how Shout Factory both got that one American fan dude to break down the history of things like Gamera, Mighty Jack and Time of the Apes so they made a little more sense -- and did the interview with Sandy Frank himself! Guy's had one long lived career.

Have to say that I'm always a little let down by some of those documentaries, though; where straightforward recollections could have worked -- something that Rhino's more sporadic efforts in the same vein usually did very well -- the way that they're dressed up by whatever company it is that does those things for Shout Factory just feels a little forced/clunky/annoying.

I've been downloading a bunch of these to watch at work via youtube and Firefox's "Download Helper" app. I've really fallen back in love with it. Suppressing laughter in the office all day so I don't seem like a crazy person.

What should I download next? Here's the lot I've binged on so far:

Fugitive Alien
Mitchell
Manos
Time of the Apes
Operation Double 007
Outlaw of Gor
The Mole People
Puma Man
Space Mutiny
Track of the Moon Beast
Werewolf
The Castle of Fu-Manchu
Giant Spider Invasion

I like the newer movies as subjects for ridicule because the old black and white ones can be so dull even the mocking can't hold my attention. Yet there are probably plenty of those I haven't even tried and should.

You know, Evan, every year of my life, I grow more and more convinced that the wisest and best is to fix our attention on the good and the beautiful episodes.

Off the top of my head, a few great black-and-whites:

Earth vs. the Spider
Giant Gila Monster
The Rebel Set
Girl in Lover's Lane

Also B&W but hard to recommend for an easy night's entertainment: The Coleman Francis trilogy and Monster A-Go-Go... they're a different category of bad, though kind of essential viewing at some point in one's MST fandom.

Thanks! I'll look into these next.

For newer movies, check out Hobgoblins and The Final Sacrifice, those two are pretty classic.

YES to The Final Sacrifice

also The Girl With Gold Boots

I recommend any Gamera movies, particularly Gamera vs. Guiron.

Yeah, the Coleman Francis films and Monster-A-Go-Go are all leagues beyond Manos imo among the very worst flicks MST3K ever did.

Rewatch value on Red Zone Cuba is through the roof. Cue it up!

Skydivers is the entry-level Francis flick.

Manos, it has to be said, is really horribly made (and nasty and ugly to boot). Coleman Francis's movies are bleak, aimless, shitty, boring and also ugly, too, but there seems to have been ever so slightly more money and time spent on them. Not sure which is worse, a labor of love that's rotten to the core, or a labor of meanness that almost, occasionally, looks like a real movie. But I haven't watched the CF ones nearly as much so I might be giving them more credit than they deserve.

Monster A-Go-Go...I agree with Mackro Mackro upthread: "like discovering credit card fraud in your account."

There is something to MST3K fandom of gradually discovering that what you thought was the apex of terrible film is only the tip of the iceberg. Manos is so legendary that it sort of blinds one to the gray-washed, cranky, worn-out emptiness of the Francis oeuvre.

Fave moment in Skydivers: when the one actress (during a plane crash, I think), yells "panic!" Was she mistaking her script direction for spoken dialogue?

There is something to MST3K fandom of gradually discovering that what you thought was the apex of terrible film is only the tip of the iceberg.

So true. I think I even thought something to that effect when I finally caught up with The Castle of Fu Manchu.