Mystery Science Theater 3000 back on Netflix

[Benny Profane]

http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2016/...-theater-3000/

[neckdeep]

I've completed the full marathon twice. Favorite episode...tie between Final Sacrifice and Jack Frost. Disappointed that neither Joel nor Mike is part of the cast. I had hoped if Joel was producing then Mike would be in the cast.

[Ripzalot]

i was a taper back in the day. manos hands of fate the best. loved the shorts too. the movie was great too.

[neckdeep]

Manos is awesome but...it doesn't have Zap ROWSDOWER! The most ridiculous excuse for a hero ever committed to video. Torgo is great and all, but ROWSDOWER! I got to admit, tho, that when it comes to an experiment's "pain factor", I generally prefer the films that are just goofy/corny to the films that are so technically incompetent that they are kind of hard to watch (and Manos is easily in the top 5 most technically incompetent films in the series with an off the scale pain factor).

Hulu has a lot of free Rifftrax and Cinematic Titanic.

[SB]

I luv me sum MS3TK

[neckdeep]

It's the ultimate "default" entertainment. If nothing new is good on TV, just keep working your way through the full marathon. About 80% of the shows are on youtube.

[SB]

I have several of the DVD collection and more from cheeseflix.

[summit]

I like MST3K

[neckdeep]

First new episode, Reptilicus, a truly incompetent kaiju film from Denmark of all places, has been released today. MST3000's spoofs of kaiju films were always among my favorites. It's a good ol' American International Pictures product, the low budget studio responsible for many of the experiments from the show's first run....feels like old times again. My one criticism is the voice acting for the bots lacks the distinct character that the earlier guys gave to them. This sounds like two dudes with puppets. The old voices, with Servo's know-it-all tone and Crow's inimitable snarky voice, had more personality and made the bots full characters, so to speak.

[balefulstare]

I dunno, I could never get into MST3K, I find the running commentary incredibly annoying, I just want to watch The Beast of Yucca Flats in peace.

[mcski]

More of an Elvira fan myself

[wyeaster]

vincent price

[neckdeep]

I dunno, I could never get into MST3K, I find the running commentary incredibly annoying, I just want to watch The Beast of Yucca Flats in peace.

Watch a Coleman Francis film without riffing? What do you do for an encore, stick needles in your eyes? I can understand watching the goofy films without riffing but the films distinguished by sheer technical incompetence, no way. Beast of Yucca Flats is easily in the top 10 most incompetent films that MST ever featured; all three of the Coleman Francis "experimental films" are in that category. Usually the term "experimental film" refers to avant-garde cinema. Coleman Francis films are experimental in the sense that Francis had almost no idea how to produce a film, set up a scene or even how to use the camera. He just experimented as he went along and since he had zero budget to buy and develop film stock, all his failed experiments would make the final cut.

[balefulstare]

The line between art and incompetence is a fine one indeed, I'd just rather be riffing with my homies than some other dingbat trying to be funny for the shows sake. If I want to watch running commentary on some borderline cinematic hack show for laffs i'll just hit up the Redlettermedia channel, they at least condense it to the best of and get into other shenanigans along the way.

[bobz]

What neckdeep said about Coleman Francis. Red Zone Cuba was about as close to a blank slate as MST3K has ever tried to tackle; watching that film without the riffing would be like watching paint dry (in black & white).

I have seen non-MST3K versions of a few of them (1. Robot Monster, pretty great either way; 2. Santa Claus Conquers The Martians, significantly improved by the riffing; 3. The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Etc Etc, really only tolerable with the MST3K treatment).

I just watched the first half of Star Crush, or whatever it is, in the new MST3K generation on Netflix. It's a cheesy incoherent Italian Star Wars ripoff, fun stuff. I stopped watching because I realized I need to impose it on my kid. The new crew is okay, I guess, though no one will ever measure up to Joel. The blander Tom Servo and some other stuff will take a little getting used to. But it's the same MST3K, more or less, and that's a good thing.

[bobz]

Sorry, that would be STARCRASH. Star Crush would be the spaceship pilot wearing a leather bikini I guess. Gotta love a film trailer that begins with "You are about to be HURLED..."

My 9-year-old kid can't wait to watch it with me this weekend (he liked the MST3K version of Lost Continent; couldn't make it all the way through Gamera).

[neckdeep]

I'd say the new season had about the same hit or miss rate as the Joel and Mike eras. They never had a season where every show was great. Good mix of genres but kinda redundant, ya know, three sword films, two kaiju films, not one but two Doug McClure "lost world" stinkers...I really would have liked to have had at least one exploitation film. That genre was a staple on the old show and they kind of dropped the ball there.

IMHO, Cry Wilderness was the best new one. That is one truly demented, incompetently made movie. That experiment legitimately enters the lists as a top 25 show. But with all its manic energy and goofyness, it is still recognizable as an 80's bigfoot film. Unlike Carnival Magic, a film which doesn't fit into any known genre....wtf....wow...um, perhaps some of the most wildly inconsistent tone ever and strange choices of subject matter appropriate for teen drama...but it has a talking monkey...is this a kids film? IDK. So many questions... Why does the talking monkey sound like he's belching? Why does a third of the film focus on the carnival owner's tomboy daughter and her sexual awakening? Who the fuck puts vivisection in a kids film? Was this a really, really misguided attempt at making a 1970's After School Special featuring a burp talkin' chimp? How did this ever get made? Was this movie even screened once? You pretty much have to see this one to believe it and I do not mean that in a good way. Baleful might love this one...

[plugboots]

Funny I was going to post an MST 3K old versus new thread because I just watched the new "Reptilicus".
I obviously loved the old version and I laughed my way through the new version, so it'll probably get better and better as these things go on. It's just a great idea for a show and I'm glad they didn't fuck it up too much with the new version

[ill-advised strategy]

I miss cheap seats....sort of the sports version of mst3k.

I loved that show.

[plugboots]

Sorry, that would be STARCRASH. Star Crush would be the spaceship pilot wearing a leather bikini I guess. Gotta love a film trailer that begins with "You are about to be HURLED..."

My 9-year-old kid can't wait to watch it with me this weekend (he liked the MST3K version of Lost Continent; couldn't make it all the way through Gamera).

That rocked! Did Harryhausen work on that? Lots of "Jason and the Argonauts" references.