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Re-rewatch! Time to watch a carpet eat half a small town again! The great thing about this movie is nothing. The great thing about this episode is that the movie is so goofy and nonsensical that it's watchable on its own just to try to figure out whatever the hell is coming next. The riffs add onto that. This is unquestionably in the worst-of-the-worst pile, a bona-fide cinematic un-chievement. Previously and again.
posted by JHarris on Jun 3, 2021 - 1 comment

Rewatch! At least I think it is, this is one of those movies it's easy to forget exists for some reason. This is another of those movies where half of the time amounts to: "Gee whiz! Space!" There's a lot of preparing and rocketry and interviews with intrepid scientists and getting ready to let's all go to space. With cats. Then we get to space and meet aliens. Who want our cats. The short, however, is Design for Dreaming, and it's terrific, just completely crazy, bonkers, nutso, a highlight of the show's entire run. Previously.
posted by JHarris on Apr 22, 2021 - 1 comment

Rewatch! An old rich lady decides to use her considerable resources, including her own mad scientist and a nuclear reactor in her basement (wow, really?), to have her brain swapped into the body of one of three younger women. The eventual result? Let's just say she better hope she can develop a taste for Meow Mix. Previously.
posted by JHarris on Mar 18, 2021 - 0 comments

Rewatch! On of the more entertaining of the episodes featuring the 50s monster attack genre of movie. Huge grasshoppers attack (a postcard of) Chicago while the army is helpless against the giant insect menace. Directed by Bert I. Gordon, Mr. BIG himself. Previously.
posted by JHarris on Mar 11, 2021 - 2 comments

Rewatch! A brilliant scientist is thought of as "mad," and only because he saves his girlfriend's severed head when she is killed in a car crash, then keeps it alive by setting it in Neck Juice (TM), allowing her to befriend the terrible monster he keeps in his basement while he goes out trying to murder women to provide her with a donor body. But really, is that "mad?" Okay. Yeah, on further reflection I guess it is. Oh, and he has an assistant with his own weird issues. This is Mike Nelson's first episode as host of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Previously.
posted by JHarris on Feb 11, 2021 - 4 comments

Rewatch! Astronauts land on a planet of lonely women, refugees from Atlantis. They have a problem with a monster, but the manly explorers from Earth take care of it. This is the episode with "Timmy," an evil alien Crow who causes problems during host segments. Previously
posted by JHarris on Oct 22, 2020 - 2 comments

Rewatch! Another repackaging of TV shows as a "movie," but this time of the old space craze adventure show Rocky Jones, Space Ranger. It doesn't hold up too well. As a short, we have an episode from what may be the first season of the soap opera General Hospital. I think this episode is kind of a sleeper, personally. It's not the last Rocky Jones compilation movie MST would do. Previously
posted by JHarris on Oct 11, 2020 - 1 comment

Rewatch! Consider the vast field of scientific endeavor, viewed through the eyes of a B movie screen writer, or those of a blockbuster screenwriter for that matter. If you don't understand it, you figure, no one else does either. In this way, such things as electricity, radiation, DNA, evolution, robotics and anything else dealing with computers are used as stand-ins for whatever effect the writer wants, regardless of how possible it may be in actual life. That's how Lon Chaney Jr's character is brought back to life by electricity in this movie. This episode also contains the second episode of the short Undersea Kingdom, which would be the last episode of it, and the last theater serial, MST would do. Previously
posted by JHarris on Sep 27, 2020 - 1 comment

Re-rewatch! Say it with me now: When we get back to our home planet the high council may well sentence you to TORCHAA! It's tough being a space teenager. The astro-acne. The jet-fueled mood swings. Discovering your sexual and species identity. Bullshit restrictions from your culture's high rullng overuberpatriarch. And not agreeing with your expeditions genocidal mission to wipe out the population of a planet (Earth) because you need land to graze your giant food lobsters. Previously one and two
posted by JHarris on Sep 9, 2020 - 5 comments

Rewatch! Operator error sends the Earth's first ship to the moon, 828 thousand miles away, instead to Mars, which is at best 33.9 million miles away and usually much further. That's some error; some scientists would give multiple limbs to be able to make errors like that. It's the first episode of Season Two, considered the point where Mystery Science Theater 3000 started to become really good, although the movie here is kind of dull. Next time.... Previously. Remember: for the time being we're also doing Sunday shows, so if you want to watch this one you'll want to show up tonight. [more inside]
posted by JHarris on Apr 26, 2020 - 0 comments

Rewatch! Poor Commander Brietis has the misfortune to be a women space officer in a man's (specifically, Robert Heinlein's) world. Her peers all casually call her "Bright Eyes," and her commanding officer actually threatens to spank her at one point. But in the end she and a fellow astronaut get stranded together on the moon, and Madame President (whose existence I guess was supposed to make up for how badly Brietis is treated) demands that they be married to avoid a scandal, which they agree to because they're sweet on each other. A disheartening movie, which make wisecracks from an orbiting human and his automated mocking machines all the more welcome. Previously.
posted by JHarris on Apr 9, 2020 - 4 comments

Rewatch! It's like a zombie movie but not, and from before that became a genre! You might consider it ahead of its time, or you might consider that zombie movies were never all that to begin with. It's another first season episode, when the guys and robots were still finding their feet and/or hoverskirts. Previously. [more inside]
posted by JHarris on Apr 2, 2020 - 4 comments

Rewatch! We're baaaack.... A alien invader (guy in a gorilla suit with a fishbowl on his head) called Ro-Man destroys everyone on Earth except for a family that lives in walking distance of his cave (which has a bubble machine in front of it). The family tries to thwart Ro-Man's attempt to wipe them out, until Ro-Man gets a crush on the family's teenage daughter. At what point on the graph do "must" and "cannot" meet? In the end it's all a dream had by a comic-addled young boy. Up until this point MST had shown bad movies, but this was the first truly transcendent example they did. Some have called it the worst movie ever made. Enjoy! Also has two Radar Men From the Moon shorts. Previously [more inside]
posted by JHarris on Mar 26, 2020 - 8 comments

Rewatch! An astronaut crashes to earth and dies, all except for his hand (or hand and forearm, depending on the shot). It strangles people then hooks up with a teen to do more stranglin'. In the end it gets eaten by a cat, saving the world. Good kitty! This is an important episode in that it's the first one that sets up the "style" of the show in almost all later episodes, the opening going directly into the theater tunnel, and Joel explains the premise, really for the first time on cable. Also, the movie features the song Surfin' Bird. Previously. ----- In other news, for the extent of the pandemic, the MST Club video room will be open between shows with a playlist of as-broadcast MST episodes, funny YouTube finds, and other special appearances, for bored social distancers dropping-in. "Enjoy!"
posted by JHarris on Mar 18, 2020 - 2 comments

Rewatch! An amiable handyman is turned into a furred killer by virtue of a syringe of Wolf Juice, in service to that diabolical process called science. When it is proclaimed of our our somewhat-hairy, yet still humanoid, victim that he has "become a wolf," it is a profoundly silly moment. Comes with Pt. 2 of Radar Men From The Moon. Previously [more inside]
posted by JHarris on Feb 27, 2020 - 3 comments

Rewatch! Evil Dr. Krupp, aka "The Bat" continues his plans to steal a treasure from the body of an Aztec mummy. This time he builds a robot to do it for him, which, why? Sell the robot, get more money than the treasure is worth! No matter. He's opposed by the virtuous Dr. Almada and the mummy, Popoca, itself. Also riffed is the first part of Commando Cody serial Radar Men From The Moon. Previously
posted by JHarris on Feb 20, 2020 - 2 comments

"Science Shocker of the Space Age!" "See!! A 6ft astronaut shrink to 6 inches before your very eyes! See!! The Moon Maidens! See!! The attack of the Fire People!" An astronaut is stranded on a planetoid that makes him small. There are other small people there, and he assimilates into their culture. Then they're destroyed and he's rescued. Film that for long enough and you have yourself a movie. You know, every year of my life I grow more and more convinced that the wisest and the best is to fix our attention on the good and the beautiful, if you just take the time to look at it. In Castle Forrester, Pearl gets her Mad Scientist kit. Promo YouTube (1h32m) Premiered March 21, 1998. 24 episodes left. [more inside]
posted by JHarris on Nov 8, 2017 - 11 comments

Non-threating, clunky robots from space invade Japan, and the country's only defense is a bunch of children and Space Chief. The robots turn into women, but their threat level does not increase measurably. Satellite News identifies this as another of the worst movies MST ever did, where a lot of the humor comes from the suffering of the riffers. There are a lot of little moments to watch for, like Tom Servo's "Song About Stock Footage," him saying "Just when I think I've seen the worst movie ever made, along comes the WORST movie EVER MADE!", Mike and Crow just wandering out of the theater at one point, and a number of excellent host segments including Noh Theater, Roji Panty Complex, the return of Krankor, and Crow's Letter To Japan. Oh, and the sudden and unexplained presence of the Hitler Building. Despite all of that, I'd say this one of tough going. In the subplot, an amnesiac Bobo is revealed to be the "Mad Goth," who gets his memory back just in time to get him, Pearl and Brain Guy captured at the end of the episode. YouTube Premiered October 11, 1997. [more inside]
posted by JHarris on Oct 4, 2017 - 9 comments

"The only thing they don't use... is the scream" We know a remote farm in California, where Dick Sargent lives. Every July, dweebs grow there. One day a particularly upity dweeb decides to go see this "America" he's been told is so great and discovers he's a clone raised by a secretive organization to provide transplant organs for powerful people, in his case an important senator. Really. It's a stupid fate for a stupid guy in the stupid world of a stupid movie. The movie has the advantage of a higher budget than the average MST film, but that's more than offset by the great ridiculousnesses of the plot. We're expected to see the campus of the Clonus Project as a terrifying dystopia akin to The Village, but most of the time it ends up looking more like a resort for chowderheads. BTW, it has both Peter Graves and Keenan Wynn in it! In subplot news, Pearl and company find a group of runaway omnipotent space children and have to play babysitter. Bobo takes quite a bit of abuse. Trailer - Promo - YouTube (1h32m) Premiered June 7, 1997. [more inside]
posted by JHarris on Aug 10, 2017 - 9 comments

"From time unborn... a hideous she-thing!" Guy invents a machine that can send things to and from the future. One of the things that comes is a winsome young future girl who seeks a mate to save future humanity. Sounds good, right? Ha ha no it's a horrible radioactive hellscape and she wears a leotard with sparkly bits on it and kills people and must be stopped. At the end they wonder if they should have helped the future folk after all, and conclude they can do that by avoiding the nuclear apocalypse that created the bad future. Yeah, I'm sure that will happen. It's the last full episode on Observer World, and it's the last Observer-takeover stinger. Mike and the bots get up to some time travel adventures themselves. YouTube (1h32m) - Promo Premiered March 15, 1997. [more inside]
posted by JHarris on Jul 12, 2017 - 3 comments

"The Most Dangerous Monster That Ever Lived!" "Out Of a Million Years Ago... A Thousand Tons of Terror!" A big bug eats people and destroys things, until someone crashes a jet into it. Weak sauce! I'm just saying, the Giant Claw wouldn't have been undone by a simple jet crash. The episode's got a pretty good reputation! In this week's subplot watch, some bomb-worshipping mutants show up in Deep Ape. This results in the end of one theme (Deep Ape itself) and the beginning of another one (Mike seemingly being unable to keep himself from blowing up planets). Oh also, Pearl finally begins the chase of the S.O.L. promised in the theme song. Episode 804 doesn't appear to be on YouTube. Premiered February 22, 1997. [more inside]
posted by JHarris on Jun 21, 2017 - 3 comments

"No girl was safe as long as this HEAD HUNTING THING roamed the land!" An astronaut dies on reentry. Aliens are emerging from his skin, including one really big one that roams the countryside, stopping watches. Everyone wants to kill it except the astronaut, who is now not dead and full of shrimp. With short Once Upon a Honeymoon: More celestial interfering with mortal affairs, this time with an angel helping a composer write a jingle so he and his wife can go on their honeymoon. Roger Corman again, this is his next-to-last featured movie. Daddy-O informs us that the exactly same costume and location were used in 315 TEENAGE CAVEMAN. This is a weird episode because there are two sets of host segments. The first showing was on Turkey Day 1995 and an alternate storyline was written involving Thanksgiving dinner with many of the show's Comedy Central movie cameo characters, making this a nice retrospective on the CC years. Because this is the first episode of the infamous Season Seven, only six episodes long and the end of the show's run on that channel. 701 701T (1h32m) Turkey Day '95 extra bits & alternate host segments Premiered: 701T on Thanksgiving Day, November 23, 1995; 701 on February 3, 1996. [more inside]
posted by JHarris on Apr 19, 2017 - 8 comments

"A NATION AT HIS MERCY!" "INVISIBLE and DEADLY" Ahem! An escaped convict teams up with a mad scientist and gets turned invisibabble, but then have a disagreement as to how he should use his invisibabibility. With short The Days of Our Years: A minister tells us about his parishiners, who have to a man all been maimed, blinded or killed by machines, because God is just and holy. The poster for this movie, besides comparing the antagonist to a fart, also warned that the invisible man himself had vowed to make a personal appearance in every theater showing the film. Sigh. There is a particularly hilarious pre-movie host segment here, where Dr. F and Frank, as "Auntie McFrank," ask Mike and the bots to provide "local color" for their bed and breakfast. "Y'all got any matches for Mikey?" Jonah Ray is going to have a hard time living up this. We've also got a great short, the second of the two railroad-sponsored industrials, this one devoted to telling us about all the ways terrible, terrible machinery wages war against its creators. By the way, this is "TV's" Frank Conniff's penultimate show as Dr. F's assistant. YouTube (1h35m) Premiered March 18, 1995. [more inside]
posted by JHarris on Mar 29, 2017 - 12 comments

"Land on the moon with the intrepid first astronauts!" An international team of smarties haul themselves and cats up to the moon, where Gidney and Cloyd make ridiculous demands of them (they want the cats) before freezing North America. With short Design for Dreaming: One of the more bizarre things ever screened on the Satellite of Love. An annoying musical lady goes with her masked suitor to see GM cars on display, pausing in the middle to engage in Jane Jetson domesticity. If the premise to the movie sounds a bit familiar, it's got the same general idea (for the first half anyway) as 211 FIRST SPACESHIP ON VENUS. BTW, if you like the "many names of David Ryder" from 820 SPACE MUTINY, this episode has a good number of toughguy lunkhead names too! It also seems it shares some production elements with the movie in 902 THE PHANTOM PLANET. The short is a highlight of MST's entire run, and is a great introduction point. Also, this is the final episode of Season Five. YouTube (1h35m) Premiered February 5, 1994. [more inside]
posted by JHarris on Oct 5, 2016 - 7 comments

"The Screen's First Full-Length Science-Fiction Thriller with Real Live Creatures!" Peter Graves is a serious science man with an interesting discovery: a substance that makes vegetables grow king-size economy style right out of the ground. But what will happen when the local insect life discovers them? Bert I. Gordon, "Mr. Big" is back with a tale of grasshopers terrorizing a helpless postcard. Say what you want about these old sci-fi movies with questionable effects, they're still more fun than your standard contemporary Warner Bros. superhero flick, or so says me. By the way, did you know that Peter Graves went to the University of Minnesota? YouTube (Official, with annotations!) (1h32m) Premiered November 25, 1993. [more inside]
posted by JHarris on Aug 4, 2016 - 5 comments

"Fantastic! Weird! Horrifying!" "Alive...Without A Body... Fed By An Unspeakable Horror From Hell!" How gifted does a doctor have to be that, when his GF is decapitated in a crash, his thought is, "I can fix this!" Two-for-two on a bad idea streak, he goes out and tries to kill attractive women so he can get her a new chassis. This movie teaches us that not only are free-standing heads capable of speech, they can communicate with horrible monsters. It's Mike Nelson's first episode as host, and boy, they change a lot of things with this episode, including updating the set and changing the door sequence! It's a pretty good episode riffing-wise, too. YouTube (1h31m) Premiered October 30, 1993. Did you know there is a stage musical based on the film, "Head: The Musical!" (Vimeo 1h40m) [more inside]
posted by JHarris on Jul 6, 2016 - 6 comments

"An Astronaut Went Up... A 'Guess What' Came Down!" "The Picture That Comes Complete with a 10-Foot Tall Monster to Give You the Wim-Wams!" "How did a 10-foot-tall monster get into that little bitty space capsule?" "You've Never Seen a Picture Like This--Thank Goodness!" It's never a good sign when the poster taglines themselves make fun of the movie. One of the absolute worst movies in MST history, and of all time. With short CIRCUS ON ICE: A newsreel report of the 40th Annual Carnival of the Toronto Skating Club. It's iceberg time again! You may think you know what a bad movie looks like. You may think you can handle bad movies. You may think badfilm is nothing to be afraid of. The punishment for your hubris takes the form of a viewing of MONSTER A-GO GO. If you're a fan or born MSTie this should not be missed, but it can be lethal if you haven't built up an immunity. One of a handful of the most terrible movies MST ever did, up there with the likes of Robot Monster and Red Zone Cuba. And don't relax yet, one its primary rivals is on the way in just three weeks.... YouTube (1h32m) Premiered January 1, 1993. Trailer - Unriffed (DO NOT WATCH) [more inside]
posted by JHarris on Mar 16, 2016 - 8 comments

"Classic Sci-Fi Advenure" Two moons are going to crash into each other, natch. It's our old friends Rocky Jones and Winky to save the people living on them! With short General Hospital #2: More scenes from very early episodes of the long-running soap opera. Deja-vu! One month ago we watched a short made of old General Hospital scenes matched with a movie made of old Rocky Jones, Space Ranger episodes. And lo, we have the same composition for this episode! This is the one where one role is played by John Banner, Sgt. Schultz himself, and the guys won't let you forget it. Satellite News points out that the title card of the movie leaves out the "The," so by their naming conventions the movie is not titled "Crash of the Moons," but just, "Crash of Moons." So, where did the "The" go? Tune in next week and find out.... YouTube (1h32m) Premiered November 28, 1992. [more inside]
posted by JHarris on Feb 18, 2016 - 1 comment

"Out of This World SHOCK SENSATION!" "SEE: The Strangest of All Rites in the Temple of Love!" Astronauts land on a hitherto unknown moon of Jupiter and discover lonely nubile maidens, our solar system's greatest resource. This episode is especially notable for containing the saga of "Timmy," an evil alien Crow that comes aboard the SOL. The Timmy puppet was actually one of the theater puppets; they're painted back to give them a better silhouette. YouTube (1h31m) Premiered November 26, 1992 (Turkey Day marathon). [more inside]
posted by JHarris on Feb 11, 2016 - 3 comments

"Teenage Hoodlums from Another World on a Horrendous Ray-Gun Rampage!" "Before...A Beautiful Girl. One Moment Later...A Skeleton!" Despite the ad lines, the titular teenagers number only two, and one of them is the milquetoast "Derek." Their mission: to prepare Earth for the coming of their lifestock, which naturally take the form of gigantic lobsters. It's a good episode! This is the movie that gives us the infamous "TORCHAA!!" catchphrase, beloved of MSTies everywhere. It's also Mary Jo Pehl's first episode writing! YouTube (1h33m) Premiered June 27, 1992. [more inside]
posted by JHarris on Oct 29, 2015 - 6 comments

"The Towering Terror From Hell!" "SEE a Sixty Foot Giant Destroyed...in Color!" When we last saw Col. Glenn Manning, he was 60 feet tall and had fallen into the Colorado River, where we might presume his corpse would have stopped its flow at some point, or at least provided free sustenance for weeks to its aquatic wildlife. But they never found his amazing colossal body! Well that's because he survived, somehow, improbably, even though he was supposed to be close to death from his untimely embiggening. His sister (the first movie said he had no family but no matter) is determined to find out what happened to him. With the short MR. B NATURAL: A magical pixie that gives off mixed gender signals comes to visit a confused young boy and tries to sell him band equipment. The movie's another Bert I. Gordon monsterpiece, and a sequel to the movie featured in episode 309, THE AMAZING COLOSSAL MAN. It's a black and white movie, but it's color for the very VERY end so they could say that ad up above wasn't a lie. The episode's okay, but tends to languish in the shadow of the short which, in terms of concentrated riffing power, might be the funniest thing the Brains ever did. YouTube (1h37m) BONUS: A real rarity, Mr. B Natural (26m) on YouTube, un-MSTed! [more inside]
posted by JHarris on Aug 27, 2015 - 14 comments

(1956, Black & White, Sci-Fi, Venus, Carrot Monster, Roger Corman) "Every Man Its Prisoner... Every Woman Its Slave!" A carrot from Venus enlists the aid of scientist Lee Van Cleef in order to save mankind, through the strategm of attacking them with string-borne, mind-controlling bats. Hero Peter Graves reminds us at the end that Van Cleef learned almost too late that man is a feeling creature.... With the short Snow Thrills, about winter sports. Shields up, red alert! In addition to containing Peter Graves, Lee Van Cleef, and the most insufferable ending monologue in MST3K's history, it's the first movie we've gotten from our heroes' long-recurring nemesis Roger Corman! YouTube (1h37m) First shown August 8, 1991. [more inside]
posted by JHarris on Jul 2, 2015 - 11 comments

(1955, B&W, Sci-fi, Short, Gordon, Lippert) "See a Prehistoric World of Fantastic Adventure Come to Life!" Said world is teeming with lizards dinosaurs, but it's nothing a good ol' atom bomb won't take care of. With the short X Marks The Spot, which poses the question: what if Judgement Day is a traffic court? We've already had a number of films produced by Robert Lippert (a watchword for pain if ever there was one), but this is the first of eight movies directed by our old fiend Bert I. Gordon, aka "B.I.G.!" But let's not get too down on the guy, he's still alive and has a web site! Rock on Bert, we'll celebrate your name better when we get to The Magic Sword. YouTube (1h37m) First aired December 22, 1990. [more inside]
posted by JHarris on Mar 11, 2015 - 2 comments

1958, B&W, Horror, Sci-Fi. A thick fog engulfs the side of a mountain, containing big puffy eyes with tentacles that control people's minds. The first cable episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 features many of the elements that would make the show a success: lots of jokes, whimsical performances, and a movie bad enough to peel paint. But as with most of the first season, it's really not the guys at their best. For devoted fans only. [more inside]
posted by JHarris on May 14, 2014 - 29 comments