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

Been watching more and more episodes and I'm becoming convinced - and forgive me if I've already said this in one way or another - but there's a real difference between basically two kinds of episodes...ones where the movies is kind of crappy and lame and goofy and dated, which they make fun of, and movies that were really made with total contempt for their audience, which they hate. Thinking here of Catalina Caper's jokes that are funny to no one, plot that's involving to no one, rock and roll that doesn't rock, etc. Or how the bots clearly loathe Monster-A-Go-Go more than Manos, though the latter is certainly bleaker and more unsettling (though maybe just as empty in terms of nothing happening).

Like, a b-movie or a shoddy dub like Gamera can be good camp material, but you really get the sense of glee when they get to serve justice to a movie that was made specifically and solely so that something could be on-screen at a drive-in and what difference does it make if it's done well. And The Giant Gila Monster's greatest sin is just how lazy and shitty the "giant"-ness is: there's not one damn shot that gets the gila monster in the same frame as the cast, and so as bad as Earth Versus The Spider may be, there's at least some measure of effort there that lets Joel and the bots get into the spirit of things and focus mainly on the absurd Fifties behavior and decision-making of the cast, not to mention that one old guy ("Who ARE you?").

Dunno if this really holds up or if it's just in my head, but it's been bouncing around in my head.

dune reference is a bonus

Manos: The Yarn of Fate

Been watching more and more episodes and I'm becoming convinced - and forgive me if I've already said this in one way or another - but there's a real difference between basically two kinds of episodes...ones where the movies is kind of crappy and lame and goofy and dated, which they make fun of, and movies that were really made with total contempt for their audience, which they hate. Thinking here of Catalina Caper's jokes that are funny to no one, plot that's involving to no one, rock and roll that doesn't rock, etc. Or how the bots clearly loathe Monster-A-Go-Go more than Manos, though the latter is certainly bleaker and more unsettling (though maybe just as empty in terms of nothing happening).

Like, a b-movie or a shoddy dub like Gamera can be good camp material, but you really get the sense of glee when they get to serve justice to a movie that was made specifically and solely so that something could be on-screen at a drive-in and what difference does it make if it's done well. And The Giant Gila Monster's greatest sin is just how lazy and shitty the "giant"-ness is: there's not one damn shot that gets the gila monster in the same frame as the cast, and so as bad as Earth Versus The Spider may be, there's at least some measure of effort there that lets Joel and the bots get into the spirit of things and focus mainly on the absurd Fifties behavior and decision-making of the cast, not to mention that one old guy ("Who ARE you?").

Dunno if this really holds up or if it's just in my head, but it's been bouncing around in my head.

I think that is pretty solid. This may be my own hazy thinking, but I feel as though the Mike and the 'bots were 'meaner' as the show entered the Sci-Fi years; more vicious toward the film and those involved, like the attacks on the director in Hobgoblins, or lines like 'Sure I'm an unappealing actor in a bad movie! Sure!' in Time Chasers. I had no problem with it, but I know a pal of mine disliked it because she felt, even when Joel disliked a film, there was amiable-ness/gentleness in his mockery rather than outright 'ugh, this sucks'.

Hulu has 25 of these now, fwiw:

http://www.hulu.com/mystery-science-theater-3000

Hulu also has a bunch of Cinematic Titanic and Rifftrax

Amazon Prime has a ton of them too

Anyone notice the cameo in the new season of Arrested Development?

http://www.mst3kinfo.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/arrested.jpg

It happened so fast, I was like, "Was that . . . ? Did they . . .?" The only line I made out was Crow saying, "This is the gayest Starbucks ever."

Flag on the moon... how did it get there

https://fbcdn-sphotos-b-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/1011653_10151616045967153_744313408_n.jpg

"Mah mah mah mah Mitchell..."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRaXI8O1IKM

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

Seen Hobgoblins? The Human Duplicators? I dunno if either of those qualify as "usual suspects" (which I think of as being Manos, Pod People and the like), but they stand out for me even after not having seen them for years.

is "Girl in Gold Boots" considered to be a usual suspects episode, because I really love it to bits; ditto "Overdrawn at the Memory Bank"

I haven't seen Hobgoblins or Human Duplicators! Thanks crypto!

Girl in Gold Boots is A+, such a weirdass movie. And yeah, Overdrawn is rad.

Also, I'm pretty sure The Brain that Wouldn't Die *is* a usual suspect, but it gave me one of my most oft-quoted (non-Simpsons) TV-derived lines ever: "WAYS!"

ooh I've never seen that either!

Dooo it!

xp just reading "WAYS" is enough to make me laugh. Nobody else ever gets that when I use it IRL.

Anyone else going to the RiffTrax Live "Starship Troopers" tomorrow?

Episode I definitely do not recommend: The Last Chase.

I've spoken elsewhere on the board about 15-year-old me's crush on Chris Makepeace and had I known about/been able to get a hold of, a MST'd version of a Makepeace flick at that age, I probably would've been in my own personal version of heaven, but the episode itself (on YouTube, not worth the link) is unwatchable. KTMA-era, so a lot of that unwatchability is literal, but the comedy is non-existent as well. I abandoned it after about 30 mins.

Haha I love "WAYS" as well. That whole film, cripes.

I just watched Catalina Caper last night and the riffs were really sharp and funny. I don't think it gets talked about as much as others. Of course Sidehackers is one of my all-time favorites but I think that's on most people's top lists as well.

Also, Overdrawn at the Memory Bank.

Time of the Apes

haha yeah! WHY DOESN'T JOHNNY CARE?

Catalina Caper! Didn't know if it was classic or not; my MST3K intake in high school was limited to the short run syndicated version that came with Mike Nelson intro'ing each episode as Jack Perkins (anyone remember this?) and then a small handful of tapes that I got through a friend. I think CC was on one of the tapes; Pod People and Amazing Colossal Man are the only ones I can remember offhand airing during the syndicated run.

I love that MST3K/Catalina Caper was the only reason for at least a decade that I had any idea who Jacques Tati was.

catalina caper is awesome, cemented my Joel love

my MST3K intake in high school was limited to the short run syndicated version that came with Mike Nelson

Yeah was that the one that was like an hour long and they cut the episodes into two? I remember watching something like that but it was Jim Mallon hosting. Aside from a few tapes that was all I had until I got cable... now we're all spoiled with youtube and torrents.

Sorta scary to think that if I had YouTube back when I was in high school, I would have left the house even less.

and am I the only person who thought Josh Weinstein's Tom Servo voice was the best? I mean, Kevin Murphy seemed to have better delivery & was in an era of better writing, but Josh's Servo is kind of my favorite.

xp I know! It was bad enough with just midis, IRC and Doom... no wonder everyone says the kids of today are lazy.

midis + slow dial-up (+ the shittiness of 90s television) = I may as well go outside and play.

hah. Slow internet is probably to blame for many children smoking weed & committing vandalism. Or maybe that was just me.

Most of my very favorite episodes are probably underrated, tho with a cult as slavish as MST3K's who knows?

Racket GIrls
Village of the Giants
San Francisco International
The Creeping Terror

I've been getting a few broken links recently, but this is still a godsend for bored late-night MSTing:

http://mst3k.me/

yeah San Francisco International is great! I like most of the TV movies they do... Master Ninja I & II are also classic.

Racket Girls <3

and am I the only person who thought Josh Weinstein's Tom Servo voice was the best? I mean, Kevin Murphy seemed to have better delivery & was in an era of better writing, but Josh's Servo is kind of my favorite.

ha! back then the servo change pissed me off more than the switch to mike later would.

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.