DVD Review: MST XV is a KTMA treat, has-been horror

Sure, I’d love to see more Sci-Fi Channel shows, especially from the beloved Season Eight. But at this point, why quibble over which Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes make their DVD debuts in Shout! Factory’s fine four-disc sets, the latest of which, volume XV, is due Tuesday?

The fact is, many fans love all MST; available episodes are finite (even more so when rights are tangled); and with dozens of shows already on DVD, getting four more is (1) gravy (2) icing on the cake or (3) a gravy-covered cake. (Yech!)

No, the real treats and variables of each new MST DVD aren’t the choice of episodes so much as the addition of special features. And this latest one has extras on each disc.

The best involve rare looks at the show’s original incarnation on Minnesota UHF station KTMA — TV23 — in 1988 and ‘89. An at-first shaggy Joel Hodgson has at-first awkward sidekick ‘bots who evolve into our beloved Tom Servo, Gypsy and Crow (Cybernetic Remotely Operated Woman?), and it’s fun to see how quickly the show morphs and gains its footing.

I even dig the yellow jumpsuits and cluttered look of the initial Satellite of Love (whose bare-bones approach on the Comedy Channel was less than what viewers got on el cheapo TV). And it’s nice to see the oft-overlooked J. (Josh) Elvis Weinstein team with Trace Beaulieu in Deep 13, before TV’s Frank took over.

Such bits emerge in a 15-minute Glimpses of KTMA — MST3K Scrapbook on the Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy disc. An eight-minute Scraps II on the Girl in Lover’s Lane DVD jumps to the early network days, with enticing looks at Joel and company writing their riffs, in effect, as they spout off while sitting on couches at Best Brains studios in Eden Prairie, Minn., watching bad movies on a TV in the corner while a typist scarfs up their comments on a keyboard. (I once visited this room — the honor still stays with me.) We also get a backstage look at the guys shooting the show while director Jim Mallon (who’s never ID’d, I believe) looks on. Thanks, Shout! Factory — love this stuff!

The Racket Girls disc has the oddest extra: a five-minute sneak peek from Hamlet ADD, whatever that is. (Satellite News guys, can you help me?) Yes, it’s intriguing, but a bit more explanation would benefit the average consumer. Suffice it to say it’s as trippy as those new commercials where seas of trees and flowers have human arms and faces. It also has an audience within the presentation, and reacting to it. (Now, where have I seen that before . . . ?) It’s also oddly haunting, bizarre, jolting and filled with deliberately cheesy and, thus, lovable robots. (Robot Monster, how I miss thee!) Voice actors include Trace, Kevin Murphy and the widow of the Great Bird of the Galaxy herself, Majel Barrett Roddenberry.

There’s also a bad ad (orignal trailer) for the lousy and almost unwatchable Racket Girls, first titled Blonde Pickup, but easily worth the name Cheap, Drab Sleaze. This was from an era when seeing a woman in a slip was the ultimate in raciness — and anything beyond that — well, as the MST guys would marvel, “Sayyyyyy . . . “

Speaking of bad movies (aren’t they all, though it’s relative), that brings us to the last disc, for Zombie Nightmare, a film whose title is aptly descriptive. Indeed, this ’80s tripe with a cameo by good ol’ Adam West is like a bad dream for anyone who values fine– or even halfway competent — filmmaking.

Of course, that utter ineptitude means some will adore it, which is why it’s considered to have “stars,” two of whom appear here in recent interviews: Frank Dietz and John Mikl Thor.

These go pretty much like most such interviews with aging film folks whose big claim to fame was a movie worth savaging on a cowtown puppet show. They cringe momentarily, paying lip-service to shame, but mostly take delight that anyone would showcase their little movie at all, and how this, in a weird way, turns their nothing of a movie into something.

Each man also seems to have an inflated sense of worth, especially Mr. Thor, who rants and rambles (while hiding behind dark glasses) about his endless array of irons in the show biz fire, none of which are familiar to me, but hey, I haven’t circulated in the same crowd as a Thor since I stopped reading Journey Into Mystery and The Avengers.

Just once, I’d love it if one of these guys readily acknowledged how bad their film was and agreed that it deserved every MST3K-hurled zinger it got. Instead, they try to spin it into being a lost or underrated classic with which many people are obsessed — as long as they don’t charge too much for autographs at fan cons hosting has-beens.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I covered entertainment as a professional journalist for many years, I know a lot of actors, and I have a natural fondness for those intrepid souls who make a true go at it. It’s a tough business, and far more talented people that these two (Dan O’Bannon, anyone?) also fail to carve out lasting, successful careers, so there’s no shame in not being another John Carpenter, Tom Savini, Bruce Campbell or Sam Raimi.

But along with this soft spot in my heart is a hard-nosed attitude in my head toward keeping it real. I get enough lies — er, spin — from politicians and publicists, not to mention virtually any entertainment “news” show on TV. Just once, I’d love to hear a faded star of a tiny film admit that there wasn’t much “there” there, but hey, we’re still talking about it, so at least there’s that, and, hey, whatev, but yeah — it sucked.

If you disagree and would rather enable such delusions, then imagine if someone launched a cheap TV show on a little-seen UHF station and, after one episode, it folded its tents, yet many years later, they still rhapsodized about the great job they did and the fun time they had and what a lost classic it is.

Then think about your high regard for Joel, Mike Nelson and company, who really DID achieve something lasting. Then imagine yourself, in Bentsen-speak, saying, “Sir, I know fringe TV trailblazers like Mike Nelson, and you sir, are no Mike Nelson.”  That’s all I’m doing here–trying to keep it real in honor of those who truly deserve our ongoing respect if not our adulation. Forcing such regard on the undeserving only cheapens it, and we live in an era of too many cheap “celebrities” already.

Hey, if you made a movie — any movie — that got lambasted on MST3K, that’s worth something, and you’ve got it. But let’s not liken Zombie Nightmare or Soultaker to unsung exploitation classics that really do deserve salutes and flame fannings. (Dark Star or Tourist Trap, anyone?) Instead, let’s keep our heads on straight while laughing with our merry SOL crew, and let’s thank them, more than anyone, for bringing a little extra light into our day.

DVD review: MST3K crew returns with RiffTrax PD DVDs–OMG!

You’ve gotta give the old Mystery Science Theater 3000 crew this: an “A” for amazing creativity. Not only have they morphed the MST template into several forms since the show wound down in 1999, from the Film Crew to RiffTrax and things in between, but now they’ve spun it out again by giving the online RiffTrax format its own DVD sideline.

Of course, they couldn’t have done so by using beloved RiffTrax titles such as Star Wars or Jaws, for the same reason that, necessity being invention’s momma, they birthed RiffTrax in the first place: movie rights. They cost too much. RiffTrax works because you don’t need the expensive rights to Star Wars to synch the caustic comic comments of Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett to your own video version of the film, thus giving it a yummy MST flavor with the caramel nuggets of nyuk nyuk put-downs.

But if you’re gona unleash your manic merriment on screen along with the original movie, as RiffTrax does today with 10 debut DVD titles, you’ve gotta go the tried and true old MST way from the early days: use flicks which are PD, or public domain, and have no rights for sale.

That’s why this initial batch of RiffTrax DVDs from Legend Films includes such familiar chestnuts as the original House on Haunted Hill, Night of the Living Dead, Reefer Madness and Carnival of Souls. Heck, while flying solo, Mike already has done these in his Hart Sharp Video releases of a few years ago, but why bicker over a bevy of barbs? And besides, those movies were available for free to our merry band of quipsters who, being good ecologists, have recycled them again. (Sounds like a Yogi-ism.)

Indeed, those hoary horrors and others are now getting triple-barreled salvos from all three MST alums for $9.95 a pop on DVD, or about $5 more than you’d pay for a RiffTrax download when you have to supply the movie yourself. (And BTW, the new DVD titles are offered via NetFlix, too.)

Either way, it’s well worth it. I mean, if you love mocking movies as I do, and you revere the sharp talents of Mike and company, then how can you resist having an MST-style experience all over again, with the exceptions of not having silhouetted critics at the bottom of the screen, or brief “host segments” during intermissions?

So far I’ve screened several of the new RiffTrax spins (which were released already as downloads via its own website) and can attest that the boys are in fine form. Especially enjoyable are the two collections of quaint educational shorts, given the fact that these — unlike, say, Reefer Madness — are such fresh targets for teasing tirades. Also, Shorts Vol. 2 has the most bizarre “kids in ape costumes” featurette you’ll ever see. If The Wizard of Oz’s flying monkeys disturbed you as a kid,  then you haven’t seen anything yet!

So sit back, buckle up and prepare for a riotous ride guided by our old friends. They’ve clearly proven that you can go home again, especially when that home is as spacious and open to revels in ridicule as the original concept of our most beloved cowtown puppet show, little ol’ Mystery Science Theater 3000.

DVD Review: “Mystery Science Theater 3000: Volume XIV” takes soul

How do I love thee, Mystery Science Theater 3000? Let me count the ways. But perhaps chief among them — besides the sheer fact that it makes me laugh — is that I relate.

Yes, I relate to being a captive audience watching movies I’d rather not see. And that’s because for roughly three decades I was a professional film critic for daily newspapers in Texas and Oklahoma, most recently at the Houston Chronicle. And when you see virtually all movies, you see plenty of bad movies — or at least insufferably mundane ones. So yes, I relate to those immortal words in MST3K’s theme song: “They make him watch movies — the worst they can find.” Or, as my wife likes to say, I watch movies so she — or you — won’t have to. Or, as I like to say, I’ve seen more bad movies than you’ve had hot meals.

Of course, the only way to digest such fetid fare is either to rail against it in a darkly amusing review — as I was wont to do — or to snarkily attack it with quips, as MST3K’s crew always liked to do. And now they’re still doing it via DVD, thanks to today’s launch of Mystery Science Theater 3000: Volume XIV from Shout! Factory. With this release, that label is nobly maintaining the box set numbering from when the show was first DVD-driven by Rhino, making last year’s 20th anniversary box set, the first from Shout!, in effect Volume XIII (as long as we’re using a Super Bowl — er, Roman numeral — counting system).

This 14th volume (so there!) sports four all-new-to-DVD discs with some of the better episodes from MST’s 10-season run: Soultaker, Final Justice, Manhunt in Space and Mad Monster. It’s also got some fun if not overly long extras.

Two are recent interviews with those responsible for two of the films. There’s “star” Joe Estevez in a five-minute reflection on his soggy Soultaker, and writer-director Greydon Clark in a four-minute take on his lumbering, Malta-Meets-Stereotypical-Texan Final Justice, starring his old pal, Joe Don Baker. We also see an amusing three-minute portion of MST’s cameo on ESPN’s Cheap Seats, which I happened to catch at the time in 2005. Significantly, this appearance marked a fleeting semi-revival of the show, since it aired six years after MST was canceled.

Estevez’s segment is the most weirdly entertaining, as the 58-year-old actor reflects on the low-rent horror shoot in Mobile, AL for 1990 release Soultaker. Back then, he claims, “we were all young kids.” Well, he was 40 or pushing it at the time, but he certainly looked younger than he does now.

Like Clark, Estevez  answers how he feels about being mocked on MST, and unlike Clark, who seems to grudgingly tolerate it for the exposure it lends, Estevez considers it “an honor.” As they say, any publicity is better than no publicity, and when your brother (Martin Sheen) and nephews (Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez) are far more famous, you take what you can get.

You’re right, Joe. Good attitude. But after seeing so many bad movies in my career — including Soultaker — I must disagree with you that Soultaker is “scary” or “magical” or of any value apart from evoking a nostalgic ’80s residue like hairspray stains on the hero’s flashy shirt. Then again, this lack of magic is precisely why we watch movies via MST, while Joel or Mike and their ‘bots comfort us with their comic carping.

In fact, is there any better way to see a film, unless it’s truly artful and great? I think not. Besides, with MST no one is “making” us watch bad movies. No, in its own special, weird and warped context, we want to watch — not despite but because they star folks like Joe Estevez.

And so, even apart from RiffTrax, the Film Crew, live shows and the like, MST’s merry movie mocking bunch still lives on via good old digital discs. So thanks again, Shout! Factory, for keeping that flame burning. And as Pearl Forrester would say when receiving her ill-earned medals for heroism from Brain Guy, “Keep ‘em coming.”

Review: ‘MST3K: 20th Anniversary Edition’ DVD achieves orbit

Hard to believe as it is, little cowtown puppet show Mystery Science Theater 3000 is celebrating its 20th anniversary. And just as it found two new network TV homes during its decade-long run, it’s found a new DVD home at Shout! Factory, which launches MST’s movie-mocking merriment on its own label with MST3K: 20th Anniversary Edition.

Like most previous box sets from Rhino, this one collects four MST episodes, meaning four movies: Werewolf, Laserblast, Future War and First Spaceship on Venus. None has been on VHS or DVD before; all are choice cheese worthy of riffing and ridiculing, especially Werewolf, a horror cheapie shot in Arizona with some European actors who don’t fool anyone, not to mention a “star”  more never-was than has-been in Joe Estevez, brother of Martin Sheen and uncle to Charlie.

Werewolf was the most recent film ever shown on MST — just two years old when it aired in 1998. For more background, consult the keepers of the fan flames at Satellite News.

But beyond the bounty of four more precious MST shows preserved forever in the digital universe, Shout! Factory has added bonus features. Some come only in the new limited edition tin featuring a Crow T. Robot figurine and four “lobby cards.” (Well, sort of. Basically they’re repros of each film’s gently sensationalized slip-case art.)

But both the tin and a separate “standard” release due Nov. 18 share additional superb on-screen bonuses. And while the tin is handsome, these, in truth, are what really jazzed me about the latest DVD release of my favorite anthology TV show of the ’90s.

First and best of all, there’s a brand new History of MST3K. This runs 81 minutes total (feature length!) and is divided into three chapters among the first three discs. All three segments include a comprehensive slew of on-screen one-on-one interviews featuring the usual suspects, and then some. To name-drop, we have Joel Hodgson, Jim Mallon, Kevin Murphy, Trace Beaulieu and Mike Nelson, not to mention Bill Corbett, Mary Jo Pehl, Paul Chaplin, Bridget Jones (Nelson), Frank Coniff and J. Elvis (Josh) Weinstein.

With insights and enthusiasm, these creators provide a detailed, loving look into the life of the program. These are peppered with vintage making-of clips at the Best Brains studio in Eden Prairie, Minn. (a Minneapolis suburb) and even some shots from the formative first season shown only on local broadcast channel KTMA (where Joel truly does look like his character’s lost-in-space-with-robots inspiration, Bruce Dern of Silent Running).

The whole History is an enormous treat, independently of the four fun episodes in this set. There’s also footage from a recent reunion panel, as well as theatrical trailers for the four clunker films newly delivered to DVD.

And there’s even more good news beyond this: Shout! Factory already has acquired global home entertainment rights to many MST movies/episodes which never have been on home video. So support this title and look for still more DVDs from the Satellite of Love.

On a personal note, I’ve followed this show almost from its inception and have covered it thoroughly over the years, most often for the Houston Chronicle. I’ve interviewed Joel, Mike, Kevin, Bill and Jim a number of times and even had the privilege of visiting Best Brains while MST was in production (albeit on an off-day when only Frank, Bridget and a few others were preparing to screen a flick and write the riffs). Yes, I have stood on the bridge of the Satellite of Love. Is there any greater fan honor?

And now I’m honored to continue taking up the torch and extolling this delightful, crazily creative show. Chances are we won’t see its likes again, but on DVD, as in our hearts, Mystery Science Theater is forever.

‘Mystery Science’ movie finds ‘Island’ on DVD

Long out of print, Mystery Science Theater 3000 — The Movie is back, thanks to a DVD reissue by Universal. This is the film that the Best Brains gang made between the sixth and seventh seasons on Comedy Central, leaving a truncated seventh season in its wake. I’m not sure it was worth the trade off to get a 75-minute “movie” instead of another dozen or so two-hour TV episodes, but it is a kick seeing a bit higher production values for the Deep 13 and SOL segments, which don’t feature the departed TV’s Frank or Joel Hodgson but do feature Mike Nelson, Trace Beaulieu, Kevin Murphy and the usual suspects in fine form.

It is a bit odd seeing 1955’s This Island Earth mocked as an allegedly bad movie. In fact, it was fairly top-flight sci-fi for its day. But as Mike and company have shown in Rifftrax, a movie needn’t be bad for them to have fun making fun of it.

One quibble is that the disc has absolutely no extra features. For such a short production, a little bit would have helped, even if only Earth’s original trailer. But at least a cherished MST3K chestnut is back on the fire, where it certainly warms my heart.

 

MST’s old crew looks — well, old — but we love ‘em

Yes, we all get older, but we aren’t all on television or DVD, which are unforgiving media. So it was a shockerama when I saw Joel, Dr. F and TV’s Frank of Mystery Science Theater 3000’s early days pop up as much older men in a brief extra bit for Rhino’s new single-disc DVD for MST3K’s spin on The Giant Gila Monster, also used as a replacement disc for the revised MST3K Collection Volume 10.2.

They’re still funny guys, and Trace Beaulieu looked almost unchanged as Dr. Clayton Forrester. But Joel Hodgson as Joel Robinson and Frank Conniff as TV’s Frank looked the way they should look for men significantly older than the last time we saw them in MST garb: older. And I don’t fault them for that. It just takes some getting used to. (I, of course, still look as young and handsome as I did when MST’s first season aired almost 20 years ago.)

Aging aside, their little sketch about losing the rights to Godzilla vs. Megalon and replacing it with The Giant Gila Monster is a stitch, including the part about being on the “honor system” to take your Godzilla disc and dispose of it “properly.” Right — like on eBay, where copies of the Volume 10 set in its original form are selling for big bucks.

I also love the animated menu for Gila Monster, one of Rhino’s best ever. And the movie is perfect MST fodder. Also, it’s so good to see the old (oops — former) SOL and Deep 13 gang back, doing their thing against screen-capture backdrops of the old (oops — former) sets. MST lives! And don’t you forget it.

New MST online!

Don’t miss MST3K.com, the Best Brains folks’ own new official website, which has new input from some of the original crew. (And yes, stalwart fan site Satellite News remains in action.) So far it’s largely an online store with limited archives from the show, but much more is promised, and there’s already the first in a series of new Crow, Servo and Gypsy cartoon shorts to get things started. A lake scene ostensibly on a newly found SOL holodeck, “Reel Livin’” is voiced by Paul Chaplin, James Moore and Jim Mallon. For Crow and Servo, Paul and James are an adjustment, but they’re good, and Mallon’s Gypsy is the same as always. It’s also heartening just to see the ‘bots in some form for new misadventures, with more expected weekly. Consider this the MST3K answer to Filmation’s ’70s show for another beloved series deep into reruns and adored by hungry-for-more fans: Star Trek: The Animated Series. It’s nowhere near as great as the original, but as ERB’s John Carter of Mars would say, “We still live!”

‘MSTing With the Stars’

As America slides more deeply into a rift between haves and have-nots – shameless greedheads and regular folks — at least some of our pop culture keeps the latter rich, if only in spirit. On ABC’s Dancing With the Stars, they’re show-biz has-beens or barely-weres whose fans love them because they’re still-standing borderliners. And for the faithful flame-keepers of Mystery Science Theater 3000, what could be better than fresh interviews with director Robert Fiveson and actor Don Sullivan?

Uh, whodat?

You’re right to ask. Those names may not ring bells even among barrel-bottom-loving MSTies. But they’ll get to know them better via Rhino’s Volume 12 of its Mystery Science Theater 3000 Collections, just out.

Though such sets always are artfully packaged — and I’m just grateful a show axed eight years ago still has life via DVD – they’ve never bulged with special features. But V.12 has ’em, notably sit-down gabfests for two of its films.

One is with Sullivan,  fifth-billed “star” (his credit didn’t make the trailer) of 1959 beatnik crime caper The Rebel Set, jeered and cheered in MST’s fourth season. A fleeting film and TV actor of the late ’50s to early ’60s — who by all rights should have crossed paths with Ed Wood – Sullivan also was in MST whipping-boy (whipping lizard?) The Giant Gila Monster (no MST disc yet). So OK — he’s exploitation-guy legit. But the cheesy charm of his fanboy credits aside, this Sullivan is no “really good show” Ed, just a dull as dust Don, droning drearily for 12 minutes of routine reminiscence.

No, the better choice for your plate of steaming-hot extras is to dish with Fiveson, director of 1979 sci-fi/horror cheapie Parts: The Clonus Horror, ripped by MST’s merry movie mockers in season eight. Fiveson spews juicy details on his legal battle with producers of big-budget 2005 flop The Island (even slave-to-commercialism Michael Bay found a way to blow $125 million that time), based on an alleged 103 similarities between the films about unsuspecting human clones in a cut-off colony being raised like crops for organ harvests. (The two sides “came to terms,” he says. Translation: DreamWorks and Warner must have caved, at least a bit. Shades of The Terminator’s precedents in Harlan Ellison’s two Outer Limits scripts.)

Less juicy but still tangy is Fiveson’s reaction to being bashed, berated and bushwacked by MST’s wacky crew.

I’ve always wondered how actors and filmmakers felt when targeted by Mike or Joel and their lot of  ’bots. Fiveson says his first reaction to the prospect was “like I’d been punched in the gut — the ultimate low in my career.” But minutes later, he had an epiphany: This would be cool. It would be cachet. And hey, any new national exposure would sure beat dusty video bargain bins.

“The film sucks. It had no budget. And who am I not to be laughed at?” he reasoned. Beyond that, he soon learned that stalwart MST fans, ever ready to dance with their “stars,” would champion his plagiarism case.

“I was very honored to be part of that show,” says Fiveson, who also admits ”there were some good zingers in there.” Besides, MST’s mirth is affectionate at heart, and at least “MSTing With the Has-Beens” provides some have-nots with a “have” and a haven.

That’s it for now. You’ll hear more from me on movies, TV and DVD, fields I’ve covered professionally for longer than MST’s run. Let’s have some fun — one of the best “haves” of all.