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

The Beast of Hollow Mountain: genre mismatch of oater and monster movie, with a script worse than you'd suspect. The monster part takes a while to start up, but when it does, oh boy. They finally start building on riffs over time. (Are the episodes listed in the order they made them? It feels like it.)

So far I'd rate the episodes
1. Reptilicus
2. The Beast of Hollow Mountain
3. The Time Travelers
4. Cry Wilderness
5. Avalanche

reportercus shutupticus cracked me up so much

I watched Cry Wilderness last night and it was amazing. The pace and sharpness of the jokes had me in near-hysterics the entire time. (And the host segment with the Servo clones felt really Mike-era to me.)

Oh, and when the kid was hitchhiking up the mountain and the truck pulled up, I said to my wife, "Oh, please, let there be a 'Rowsdower' joke." I was only off by one scene!

Agreed that the initial eps are too frenetic and intense, with the riffs arriving before your brain can process what it's seen. They seem to start to relax and inhabit the moment better beginning with Star Crash or so. This makes some sense because I think they recorded every show in one massive push, which must have been gruelling. Haven't finished the season yet (on Land that Time Forgot) but I think they stuck the landing.

The characters need some more time to settle in – Servo's not quite there yet; I miss the dumber, kind-hearted Gypsy, I can see why they felt compelled to do something about her but right now she has no real personality, I assume that'll come. In the theater each of them sounds like the other so much I can't tell them apart, which wasn't true in the Joel/Mike shows where Joel and Mike have very distinct personalities from the bots.

Some skits are really weak and others are stunners (the monster rap), which is just like the original show. When you went back to the set you never really knew which you'd get. I have to say that the skits with the Mads are so far generally not that great, but we'll see how it goes. (Interesting that they relocated the 'conversations with people outside the ship' to the Mads rather than on the satellite.)

I wonder how people who weren't MST fans before are liking the show, I really hope they are, so they get some more time to see where they can go. Now we can see that rebooting the show with a new cast was the right call, I don't think people would really take to a reunion/nostalgia act.

Huge article on MST history, some great stuff in here: https://www.wired.com/2014/04/mst3k-oral-history/

plan on finally catching up w this this weekend.

lol @ "Rowsdower" i just watched that episode. "He looks like a clown without makeup"

Starcrash is great

I'm dying

Starcrash is one of my favorite movies. it is peak late 70s post-Star Wars cheap Italian rip-off. they were smart about it and got James Bond's John Barry to do the soundtrack. it is way more colorful than any other post glam rock sci fi even Flash Gordon. do they riff the international cut? there is an original cut of the film that features some extended performances that were cut because they were too hammy.

i caught some of the first episode last night. i like it! it feels very much like watching a new MST3K. i admit the voice for Tom Servo threw me off at first during the theater scenes but he ended up making me laugh anyways. this crew shows promise! i can't wait to watch Starcrash. i'll probably skip ahead...

i laughed so hard so many times

also i'm in love w nina cassini now

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

also i'm in love w nina cassini now

― Yoni Loves Chocha (VegemiteGrrl)

would you say you're... obsessed with her?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTqQgjR57qc

lol yes

what's gypsy's deal

how come she's only ever in each thing like once

and what's the basket thing she's always either picking up or dropping off

is it secret

oh nevermind according to the Wikipedia, she's too busy/smart to care. also she's a notary, that's cool

ending riff to Loves of Hercules had me in tears, omg

Cry Wilderness was very funny too. 2-for-2 so far! Are the skits shorter than they used to be? it seems like they come and go more quickly

yeah they are much more compact

Wizards of the Lost Kingdom is bananas

Starcrash is besting me. I have no idea what is happening in that movie. Watched the first half a second time, still no idea.

Its riff frequency is a lot better though. They even held back when David Hasselhoff was shouting "Stella!"

Wizards of the Lost Kingdom II - less pants, not *as* bananas, 100% more David Carradine

The Land That Time Forgot: based on a Burroughs story, it starts off well, then gets sidetracked by its makeup and hand puppets -- pretty good hand puppets, mind, but not good enough to come across as full-sized dinosaurs. Lots of riffs on bland, Shatner-looking leading man Doug McClure, star of long-running but forgotten TV oater "The Virginian". Many references to Simpsons character Troy McClure, and this season loves its Simpsons references. Also Game of Thrones, which gets three different riffs in this episode alone.

The Loves of Hercules: my favorite so far. One of those bad movies I love that combines pleasurably incompetent parts with painfully boring parts. It's great how they forgot how to shoot a movie during the Hydra fight. The simple plot means I don't need to expend brain energy to follow both the movie and the riffs. And the riffs definitely help getting through those boring parts. I laughed a lot.

'The Land That Time Forgot' felt like an odd inclusion to me - it's a classic! I must have seen that once a year since I was a kid. It's like putting 'Journey to the Centre of the Earth', or 'Jason and the Argonauts' on there.

Lmk when y'all finish this off

Honestly I haven't had time to go back beyond that preview showing of the first one. (Vacation and work and etc. will do that to you.) But the fact I'm in no rush miiiight say something about how I'm regarding the rest of this.

It's also like 20 hours worth of TV

First one didn't grab me... Was too overwhelming with the eager preloaded riffs jammed in there.

However I was in Antigua this past weekend howling on the beach while watching Aliens From L.A. on my ipad! That was nice.

Have got up to Land That Time Forgot, show feels like it has hit its stride now. Reboot has turned out much better than I was expecting tbh, nothing amazing but watchable, like average episodes from late seasons MST3K. And my god Starcrash is an amazingly bad movie.

I've been enjoying it immensely, but making my way through it slowly rather than bingeing. I'm up to Land That Time Forgot as well, but I fell asleep watching it last night.

Yeah, "like average episodes from late seasons MST3K" sums up my response so far, but we're only partway through Time Travelers because finding time for these is tough. Still, that's a considerably higher level of quality than I feared at the outset. The biggest problems have already been nailed down here - a kind of rapid 'bunching' of riffs that feels a bit like teenage riffers afraid of silence and just blurting out anything that the words spoken onscreen vaguely reminds me of. I believe those who suggest that this gets smoothed out a bit as things go on. Some of the riffs are really good, so at least it's not just a cavalcade of groaners and awkward references.

Still wish the voices of the characters were a little more distinct (both sonically and personality-wise) and especially that the puppeteering was a little less subtle. Sometimes you can't even see a mouth move, which makes it that much harder to link up Voice X with Servo vs. Jonah. It's like the inverse of stage actors learning they have to dial it down for the movies. This too I imagine they could get better at as we go.

Gotta say though that just getting things like "Cry Wilderness" screened in front of me is kinda worth it. What in the everloving hell, such an odd execution of what would appear to be a kids' movie, until it's not, plus you get that Return to Oz vibe where the adults insisting that the kid is mentally ill and making it all up seem to be the most believable sources, so that at the end when they change their tune you assume that behind the next dissolve you'll see the kid in a rubber room imagining that too. Obviously with the Internet at large, awareness of Bad Movies is considerably broader, but something MST did, and can still do, is unearth real oddities and sort of grant them canonical status as bad movies that people know. Manos and the Coleman Francis trilogy are probably the best-known cases of this but basically every ep they did either elevated something from totally unknown, or cemented the status of things that had already been appearing in "the hundred worst movies ever!" books. Feels like the new season(s) can totally carry on that role whatever their other qualities.

I kind of wish there were a few more obscurities like Cry Wilderness in there. Back in February, I came across a list of the movies that were going to be used for this season, and at the time Cry Wilderness was the only film with less than 100 votes on IMDB (44 votes with a rating of 5.4. It has now 528 with a rating of 2.2), whereas quite a few of the other film had closer to a thousand. And some films like Repitilicus and especially Starcrash were already quite well known among bad movie buffs.

We watched "Avalanche" the other night and I admit I laughed until I cried over "This is the third time I've found you under a log this week, it's getting weird."

Yeah, I've seen at least half of Starcrash before, and had certainly heard of Reptilicus and Avalanche. But, y'know, it's not like the original show 'discovered' every one of its flicks, as I was suggesting with reference to the "worst movies ever books." Certainly it's going to be harder in 2017 to surprise anybody, whereas in 1992 even a "bad movie buff" would really have to be devoting a lot of hobby time to tracking stuff down (conventions, movie guides, pen pal contact with cult collectors maybe). So even the major studio releases that take up a huge part of the MST episode list and lent it so much of its 50s texture - all those Universal and Warner B-pictures, or even the Corman fare which saw wide drive-in release in its original run - wouldn't all be things a buff had seen, necessarily.

this was pretty good but i've only seen the first ep and Starcrash. as is, i still need to finish watching the Mike era of the original show so ill be putting the new eps on hold til then.

The final Christmas episode is pretty good.
The Christmas That Almost Wasn't is a super-weird movie

Oh and Yongary is great, well worth a watch

Here's an unexpected bit of news -- Shout Factory's releasing a compilation of Cinematic Titanic stuff. Which is great, since I only ever got around to a couple of these:

https://www.shoutfactory.com/film/film-comedy/cinematic-titanic-the-complete-collection

(As was noted over on mst3kinfo.com, normally by now we'd be hearing word of the next formal DVD set -- I suspect this is going to be something of a stopgap as they try and finish off securing the remaining batch of rights.)

Have fun, I guess:

--

MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000 LIVE TOUR
FIRST EVER LIVE TOUR KICKS OFF JULY 6TH IN BOSTON, MA
TICKETS ON SALE EVERYWHERE FRIDAY, MAY 19 AT NOON LOCAL TIME

[May 15, 2017, New York, NY] – For the first time ever, join Joel Hodgson, creator of the critically acclaimed “Mystery Science Theater 3000” TV show and its new host Jonah Heston (Jonah Ray) as they bring the first live touring production of “MST3K” to a city near you on the “Watch Out for Snakes!” Tour.

Appearing with Joel and Jonah live on stage will be robot companions Crow (Hampton Yount), Tom Servo and Gypsy, along with Synthia (Rebecca Hanson) and her Bonehead henchmen. Of course, it wouldn’t be “MST3K” without the ever-present surveillance of the Mads, Kinga Forrester (Felicia Day) and TV’s Son of TV’s Frank (Patton Oswalt), checking up on their unwilling test subjects via a video screen.

The tour consists of two separate, completely unique shows, each with its own admission. Fans wanting the complete tour experience should purchase two tickets, one for each show. Each event will include all the things expected from an “MST3K” experience: a cheesy B-movie, hilarious riffing, wisecracking robots, silly sketches, plus – for the first time – audience participation! Show # 1 is the MST3K favorite “Eegah,” featuring all-new riffs and sketches. Show # 2 is a “Secret Surprise Film!” It’s a fun, sci-fi thriller never before featured on “MST3K” and it will be performed only in select cities.

Following its record-breaking #BringBackMST3K Kickstarter campaign, the new season of the show launched on April 14, 2017, exclusively on Netflix. The two live shows are written by the cast and writers of the new Netflix Original Series, which has earned a critics’ rating of 100% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes.. The New York Times hails, “At last, a revival of something actually worth reviving… a different cast but the same outlook and style — and mercifully, the same reliable, giddy humor.” “MST3K is just as hilarious as ever in rebooted form, turning its bemused eye on old, schlocky fare for some good, old-fashioned riffing,” raves Vanity Fair. And Nerdist says “The references are updated, the sets are snazzier, but the heart and soul of MST3K certainly remains intact.”

Tickets for “MST3K” “Watch Out for Snakes!” North American tour dates will go on sale to the public Friday, May 19 at noon local time via AXS.com and the venue box office. Please note where there are multiple performances in a single market, each event is ticketed SEPARATELY.

Mystery Science Theater 3000 “Watch Out For Snakes!” Tour 2017

July 6 Boston, MA Shubert Theatre 7 PM Eegah
July 7 Philadelphia, PA Keswick Theatre 7 PM Eegah
Keswick Theatre 10 PM Secret Surprise Film!
July 8 New York, NY PlayStation Theater 6 PM Eegah
PlayStation Theater 9:30 PM Secret Surprise Film!
July 9 Washington, DC Lincoln Theatre 6 PM Eegah
Lincoln Theatre 9 PM Secret Surprise Film!
July 12 Columbus, OH Speaker Jo Ann Davidson Theatre 8 PM Eegah
July 13 St. Louis, MO Touhill Performing Arts Center 8 PM Eegah
July 14 Royal Oak, MI Royal Oak Music Theatre 7 PM Eegah
Royal Oak Music Theatre 10 PM Secret Surprise Film!
July 15 Milwaukee, WI Pabst Theater 7 PM Eegah
Pabst Theater 10 PM Secret Surprise Film!
July 16 Chicago, IL The Vic 5 PM Eegah
The Vic 8 PM Secret Surprise Film!
July 18 Denver, CO Paramount Theatre 8 PM Eegah
July 20 Phoenix, AZ Orpheum Theatre 8 PM Eegah
July 21 San Diego, CA Balboa Theatre 7 PM Eegah
July 22 San Diego, CA Balboa Theatre 7 PM Secret Surprise Film!
July 23 Los Angeles, CA The Theatre at Ace Hotel 5 PM Eegah
The Theatre at Ace Hotel 8 PM Secret Surprise Film!
July 26 San Francisco, CA The Warfield 8 PM Eegah
July 27 San Francisco, CA The Warfield 8 PM Secret Surprise Film!
July 28 Portland, OR Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall 8 PM Eegah
July 29 Seattle, WA Moore Theatre 7 PM Eegah
Moore Theatre 10 PM Secret Surprise Film!
July 30 Vancouver, BC The Orpheum 7 PM Eegah
August 1 Salt Lake City, UT Kingsbury Hall 8 PM Eegah
August 3 Kansas City, MO Arvest Bank Theatre at The Midland 8 PM Eegah
August 4 Minneapolis, MN State Theatre 7 PM Eegah
State Theatre 10 PM Secret Surprise Film!
August 6 Green Bay, WI Weidner Center for the Performing Arts 7 PM Eegah
August 8 Cleveland, OH Ohio Theatre 8 PM Eegah
August 9 Baltimore, MD The Modell Lyric 8 PM Eegah
August 10 Richmond, VA Dominion Arts Center 8 PM Secret Surprise Film!
August 11 Nashville, TN James K. Polk Theater 7 PM Eegah
James K. Polk Theater 10 PM Secret Surprise Film!
August 12 Atlanta, GA Atlanta Symphony Hall 7 PM Eegah
Atlanta Symphony Hall 10 PM Secret Surprise Film!

Joel is interviewed on today's WTF. It's cool, though there's not a ton of MST3K stuff as Maron doesn't seem to have ever watched the show.

That's...rather weird.

Hmm

That's different.

xpost Maron had a show on Comedy Central at the same time, so there was probably some jealousy.

I do like Joel's idea that Comedy Central had the misunderstanding that he and his robot puppets were just going to be introducing comedy clips, Short Attention Span Theater style.

watched Wizards of the Lost Kingdom I and II episodes yesterday and they were both exquisitely terrible movies, each with their own unique brand of unappealing adolescent lead character. It's making me laugh, doesn't feel like "zombie MST3K" for the most part, I wish them many more seasons of success.

I finished the season. The overload of these riffs comes back in the final episodes, or maybe I just noticed it more because I watched some of the old Gamera episodes at the same time. The focus is definitely on the riffs instead of the movies. Lots of the new show feels like a Rorschach test of images and the test subjects shouting out things that they bring to mind as 'riffs'. Dr. M OTM on it feeling like the later seasons but without the highlights.

I noticed that Jonah does some riffs as exclamations done in a snarky "I'm telling a joke" voice. Don't force it, dude.

What I recommend watching, if you don't watch the whole thing:
- Reptilicus
- Cry Wilderness, up to the first skit. The rest of the movie gets derailed and they hadn't figured out how to deal with that at this point.
- Beast of Hollow Mountain, good riffs and one Birdemic-like moment
- The Land That Time Forgot
- The Loves of Hercules
- Yongary

Starcrash is probably better without the nonstop riffs over it.
The Wizards movies are amazing as bad movies and endurance tests, but the riffs are some of the worst.

Loved the old seasons as a kid and still enjoy them now. Got through an episode and a half of this and really hated it. MST3K for the Nerdist era; no thanks. Really put into perspective all over again what talented voice actors the previous casts were as well.

last night i watched the second episode of the new series. very nice to see the Mike-era mads drop by! the riffs are pretty good too, helps that "Cry Wilderness" is a hilariously bad movie. that bigfoot suit is so silly.

i've been watching rifftrax on amazon. it's good.

that bigfoot suit is so silly

Like in that Simpsons episode, I kept expecting to see the guy's watch