FanFare

"A Magical Journey to Save Christmas." This supposed kids movie opens with a kid's parents getting killed by a dragon. Merry Christmas! But wait, this is a fantasy world, with magic and dragons, do they have their own version of Jesus? In theme it can't decide if it wants to be Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings, but whatever it is it went straight to DVD. Joel, Jonah and Emily hatch a daring plan to escape from Kinga's captivity, but they'll need a little help from an unlikely source. We're at the end of Season 13, and with it we're once again at the end of our trip through all of MST3K. Please see inside. [more inside]
posted by JHarris on Aug 3, 2023 - 0 comments

"A visual science fiction experience that will boggle your mind." "SPACE VISION a step beyond 3-D" This is one of those movies that makes nonsensical and arbitrary things happen, but tries to excuse it by passing them off as mysterious. Well duh, anything's a mystery if there's no possible explanation for it! A plane with three people (one of the a pregnant woman) is downed by a storm, but ends up inside a huge hollow chamber with invisible walls, in which live zombie-like people who go through the motions of their lives. Like The Mask, this was made for 3D, so there's a bunch of in-your-face effects. Unlike that film though, only the 2D version is riffed on here. Joel riffs this one! The subplot has Jonah, Emily and Joel planning their escape, through the gimmick that the Mads, for some reason, can't hear anything spoken in rhyme. I like the episode, but the movie basically just toys with its characters throughout, until the unexpectedly happy ending. Premiered November 11, 2022, in the Gizmoplex. [more inside]
posted by JHarris on Jul 27, 2023 - 0 comments

"THIS IS THE MASK!" (picture of 3D glasses with an angular look) "YOU WILL BE GIVEN ONE ON ENTERING THE THEATRE. YOU WILL BE TOLD WHEN TO LOOK THROUGH IT. When you do, it will make you part of the desire-fuming brain of a monstrous genius of insanity. You will live with the living dead. You will share what no living person has known before." "The greatest thrill since you first saw a picture move! LOOK THROUGH YOUR MASK... IF YOU CAN'T TAKE IT... TAKE IT OFF! The management is not responsible for nervous breakdowns!" Well, huh. That text is from the poster. Evidently, the 'unknown knowledge' and 'greatest thrill' are cheap optical effects... presented in THREE-DEE!! The movie itself has to do with a guy, who is NOT Jim Carrey, driven to suicide by the things his mask shows him, and his psychiatrist, who decides to see what all this insanity is about for himself. This one is NOT a rewatch! Well it is, but I neglected to make posts for the last three episodes in Season 13, so we're going with first-time posts now! It premiered October 22, 2022, in the Gizmoplex. [more inside]
posted by JHarris on Jul 20, 2023 - 1 comment

Rewatch! In space, things happen. There's a plague and Jack Palance is evil, and at one point his holographic head is gigantic and rotating over the landscape of an alien planet, and there's a really annoying robot that can teleport wherever it wants it seems. H.G. Wells fans, well, won't actually have much to enjoy here, the movie's kind of dull and doesn't really have much to do with his writing. The movie's a mess. Previously.
posted by JHarris on Jul 13, 2023 - 4 comments

Rewatch! The only person who can save us from Su-Muru's dastardly army of (gasp) WOMEN is Frankie Avalon. From the creator of Fu-Manchu and the producer of many of the Fu movies, so caffeine is a must for this one. Previously.
posted by JHarris on Jul 6, 2023 - 1 comment

Rewatch! Not The Wild Wild World Of, this is just The Batwoman. In fact, The Mexican The Batwoman. She follows the natural career upgrade path south of the border, from luchador to superhero. Her mission is to stop a mad scientist from creating a race of fish people. Bats and fish: natural enemies. Previously.
posted by JHarris on Jun 29, 2023 - 1 comment

Rewatch! We return to the life and times of our favorite flying giant turtle monster. Gamera protects Expo '70, held in Japan that year, from a monster attack. This is the longest MST3K episode of all, since they were required by the licensor not to cut it. It's also been less than a year since the first time we saw it. It's one of a small number of the first generation of Gamera films that the original run of the show didn't cover. (Another is Vs. Viras.) Previously.
posted by JHarris on Jun 22, 2023 - 1 comment

Rewatch! Joel Robinson returns to the SOL to riff this movie about a private paranormal investigator who works the seedy demonic underworld of Mobile, Alabama. It's a bit like Constantine, and while it's very low budget it's a fun movie! Released in 2019, at the moment this is the most recent movie MST3K has done. Of particular note, a couple of months ago the makers held a Kickstarter to make a sequel and appealed to MSTies to help fund it, and they were successful! Previously.
posted by JHarris on Jun 15, 2023 - 0 comments

Rewatch! Emily and her bots are handed this Doctor Strange knockoff (word is it was originally written as a Strange movie), where an occult wizard guy, who also owns an apartment building in New York, fights evil by the behest of a pair of giant eyes. Not actually too bad, this is one of a genre of MST movie I like to call a very indie film, although not nearly as indie as something like Manos or Carnival Magic. Previously.
posted by JHarris on Jun 8, 2023 - 2 comments

Rewatch! While a sequel to the horror movie Munchies, Munchie has little to do with it, and isn't even a horror movie, but a fantasy comedy about a kid who gets a magic gremlin-like pal, voiced by Dom DeLuise, who tries to help him out but keeps messing things up. This is a notably bad movie, compounded by terrible special effects for Munchie. Good luck with this one. Previously.
posted by JHarris on Jun 1, 2023 - 1 comment

Rewatch! Some ne'er-do-wells seek to steal a fortune in priceless pearls from a island tribe who are the last remnants of an undersea race. Things don't go well, but at least everyone is laughing in the end! A highlight of the season, the movie starring Sid Haig as archetypal scumbag East Eddie. Previously.
posted by JHarris on May 25, 2023 - 0 comments

"Beyond the earth... beyond the moon... beyond your wildest imagination!" It's the future in space, and there's a plague, and important drugs are being brought from a distant planet, and Jack Palance is trying to take over the universe, and there's a teleporting robot, and some kids in one scene. I couldn't make heads or tails of this one folks. There's a plot synopsis on Wikipedia, read that. It's another movie that tried to cash in on Star Wars' gigantic success. It's not nearly as campy as Starcrash, but that makes it very bland as a film. Even with Jack Palance as the villain, he's simply not in enough scenes to make it memorable. Other than sharing some character names and being set in the future, this movie has almost nothing to do with H.G. Wells' novel. Premiered October 7, 2022, in the Gizmoplex. [more inside]
posted by JHarris on Oct 15, 2022 - 1 comment

"She Rules a Palace of Pleasure ...for WOMEN! the most DIABOLICAL... BIZARRE... SADISTIC WOMAN WHO EVER LIVED!" Evil lady woman Su-Muru girlingly tries to take over the world with her nefarious army of maiden damsels. The character was created by Sax Rohmer and the movie produced by Harry Alan Towers, both of whom also responsible for Fu Manchu, so you probably should load up on coffee before attempting this one. If you're casting a Sax Rohmer movie about one of his standard megalomaniac characters, would you pick Frankie Avalon? These people did. Premiered September 2, 2022, on the Gizmoplex. [more inside]
posted by JHarris on Sep 8, 2022 - 5 comments

Originally "La mujer murcielago." A rich socialite lady decides to spend her spare time in a bat mask and cape, wearing a bikini, and fighting crime. She tracks down a mad scientist who is using pineal fluid from wrestlers to make fish people. Oh, she's a wrestler too. All of this takes place in Mexico. Other than being a blatant ripoff of them, has nothing to do with DC Comics characters. It's a fun episode, with a crazy movie and good host segments! Premiered August 19, 2022, in the Gizmoplex. [more inside]
posted by JHarris on Aug 25, 2022 - 4 comments

aka Night Hunters. "Monsters don't stand a chance." A private investigator specializing in paranormal cases is looking for an artifact, and fights demons in bars, among other things. This episode is notable for featuring the return of Joel Robinson as host for this episode! It also has Dr. Erhardt returning, and for the second half of the movie J. Elvis Weinstein reprising his role as the voice of Tom Servo from the show's first season long, long ago. Premiered Friday 24, 2022, in the Gizmoplex. [more inside]
posted by JHarris on Jun 30, 2022 - 5 comments

"Jeffery Combs is" Doctor Mordrid! Master of the Unknown! Also, landlord of a building in New York! And yet the movie wants to believe he's a force working for good. He was sent to our world by a pair of blue eyes to save all reality from the eeeeevil Kabal! Sadly it seems his mystical abilities provide him no defense against getting arrested. It's the fifth episode of Season 13, and not such a bad movie. The story goes it was originally written as a Doctor Strange movie but they lost the rights, so they renamed some characters and made it anyway. Emily hosts this one; it looks like Joel will be hosting the next! Premiered in the Gizmoplex on June 10th, 2022. [more inside]
posted by JHarris on Jun 11, 2022 - 4 comments

"Roger Corman presents..." "Munchie just moved in... There goes the neighborhood." "Magical. Mystical. Munchie!" a kid beset by bullies and the school principal (who hates him for some reason) opens a mysterious box and inside is a dead-faced animatronic puppet with the voice of Dom DeLuise. While a sequel to Munchies, there are no horror elements of this movie, other than the stark horror of the puppet's construction. Reputedly this was a very difficult movie for the MST guys to write for. Jonah and his bots riff this one, but he has a conversation with Emily, and Emily and her bots have a couple of segments before and after the movie. Premiered on the Gizmoplex on May 27, 2022. [more inside]
posted by JHarris on May 27, 2022 - 6 comments

"Forgotten by nature... invaded by modern man... half human... half fish!" ""Their spawning ground... the ocean depths!" Some people go to an island in search of pearls: Vic, the similar-looking Logan, Kathy and "East Eddie." It's populated by an inbred race of people, supposedly from Atlantis. Only one of them is fertile, the daughter of the chief, Syrene. A lot of movies from around this time were obsessed with fertility for some reason. Ultimately Syrene dies, dooming the island race to extinction. They march into the sea, but one of our "heroes" gets a fortune of pearls from them as they go. But after some intrigue between the group they're lost overboard. Everyone laughs. "Ha ha, those islanders are going to die and for no reason! Easy come easy go!" Not an uplifting movie. This is the first episode with Emily riffing, on the "Simulator of Love," with her own Crow, Tom Servo, GPC, and "GPC2," a smaller and more maneuverable version. Premiered on the Gizmoplex on March 8, 2022 (after a preview some weeks earlier). [more inside]
posted by JHarris on May 9, 2022 - 5 comments

"Crank Up the Carnage." While it looks kind of like the thing The Asylum would make now, this movie in fact was made back in 1993, and has some decent stop motion robot effects. The movie is similar in many ways to Robot Jox, from the same director, but their stories are unconnected. In the future the world has been divided into two factions, the "North Hemi" and the "Eastern Alliance." A war was fought between giant robots, but now only one is left, and it's currently being used as passenger transport and tourism. There follows a plot involving "Centros," perfidious Eastern Alliance military leaders, and of course at the end a giant robot fight. It's a real mess. In MST3K's story, Kinga and Max's damaged Kingadome has been saved by a financier from the future named Dr. Cabal, who tells them, for their venture to be a success, they must find a second host to subject bad movies to.... Premiered Friday early to Kickstarter backers, it is not currently possible to watch officially; its official premiere will be on May 7. [more inside]
posted by JHarris on Apr 5, 2022 - 9 comments

Rewatch! Ray Dennis Steckler, a.k.a. "Cash Flagg," was one of the more infamous Z-list Hollywood directors, and he was responsible for this film, which is something. A guy gets hypno'd by a carnival fortune teller into becoming an insane killer. The fortune teller's assistant Ortega is a sight, and immediately became the Torgo of the Sci-Fi Channel era of MST3K. Lots of the movie is just time spent watching bad performances on-stage at the carnival, pointless and unabridged. This movie is one of the worst in the show's history. Previously. [more inside]
posted by JHarris on Mar 10, 2022 - 2 comments

a.k.a. Santo en el tesoro de Drácula, Santo and Dracula's Treasure. "A COLORES!" El Santo, the Silver Mask, is a luchador who likes to dabble both in Super Science and the supernatural. He's invented a time machine that sends a young woman back into a past life, which was turned into a vampire by Dracula, while he watches. But never mind the infernal terror, El Santo learns about the great treasure of Dracula's family, and he wants a piece! But so does the mob! There's a lot of movies in this movie. The episode is missing ending credits, and way a bit marred by technical difficulties, but it was shown last night, and was pretty good! Kinga and Max escape the storage room of Moon 13 by exploding it, causing a cave-in. So they're currently set up on Moon 1, on the lunar surface, and opening Kinga's newest venture, the Kingadome. It contains the Gizmoplex, which in the show's lore is a physical place, but it's also the website the episode can be viewed by backers of last year's Kickstarter, here. A more general release will come in May. [more inside]
posted by JHarris on Mar 5, 2022 - 17 comments