Mystery Science Theater 3000

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Minkin
Joined: Thu Aug 06, 2009 11:13 pm

Re: Mystery Science Theater 3000

#276 Post by Minkin » Fri Nov 10, 2017 9:28 pm

Re-release of Volume 7 announced:

Hercules Unchained
Hercules Against The Moon Men
Prince Of Space
The Killer Shrew with Short Junior Rodeo Daredevils

3 Bonus Shorts:
Assignment: Venezuela
Century 21 Calling
A Case Of Spring Fever
===================
Especially now that Shout admitted they can't get the rights to the other films, I wish these re-releases weren't done in a poor budget manner. I'd much rather pay the $15 MSRP extra to get new extras / packaging / menus /etc. Oh well.

Has there been any fan art for these re-release episodes, that would at least make for suitable alternatives if I were to get slimcases? Something like this.

Also, I still have no idea how to organize my MST3K episodes. I tried by airdate, but its just resulted in a huge mess where I can never find anything + have to lookup where it goes back. I think I'm going to go with alphabetical.

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Minkin
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Re: Mystery Science Theater 3000

#277 Post by Minkin » Thu Jan 11, 2018 12:35 am

In case you don't feel like having a Netflix account, Shout is releasing the Netflix season on DVD or a $100 Blu-ray set.....

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Minkin
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Re: Mystery Science Theater 3000

#278 Post by Minkin » Wed Jan 31, 2018 11:23 pm

Re-release of the Rhino single episode DVDs, all collected into a nice collection!

The Crawling Hand
The Hellcats
Santa Claus Conquers The Martians
Eegah
I Accuse My Parents
Shorts Volume 3

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Minkin
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Re: Mystery Science Theater 3000

#279 Post by Minkin » Mon Apr 30, 2018 9:11 am

We finally bought a Roku, as cable will be ditched (goodbye TCM / MeTv) this year once the contract ends. I added a bunch of the free channels to see what all was available - when I discovered Pluto.tv! Rather amazingly, they have 24 hour MST3K and Rifftrax channels - and for Rifftrax, they play alot of episodes that are otherwise not on Amazon Prime / available outside of purchasing them - such as Psycho II and The Apple.

For those who don't have Roku (or whatever other streaming device it works on), you can also watch it online at the Pluto website. Do note that there are commercials (but at leasts its free).

We're still very slowly making our way through the new season of MST3K (3 episodes in) - and I'm still not enjoying it.

Werewolf by Night

Re: Mystery Science Theater 3000

#280 Post by Werewolf by Night » Mon Apr 30, 2018 12:10 pm

Minkin wrote:We're still very slowly making our way through the new season of MST3K (3 episodes in) - and I'm still not enjoying it.
We gave up after 2. I’m happy a new generation can have their bots and their movie sign, but me, I’d rather just watch Devil Fish or Beginning of the End for the 12th or 13th time. It just doesn’t have the same seat-of-the-pants, shoestring-budget, upper-Midwest feel anymore.

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mfunk9786
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Re: Mystery Science Theater 3000

#281 Post by mfunk9786 » Mon Apr 30, 2018 12:34 pm

And the 2nd one is the best of the season! But I agree that it feels a little scattershot at times, in the writing and in the speed and quantity of the riffs. I am going to assume that Joel knows well enough about what he's doing to make some adjustments for Season 2. It is still better than 99% of the stuff that has ever been rebooted through Kickstarter.

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colinr0380
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Re: Mystery Science Theater 3000

#282 Post by colinr0380 » Sun Jun 17, 2018 12:45 pm

It has taken a while but I have finally got through Volume 2 of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 releases. The main culprit in the delay has to have been the first film, Cave Dwellers (or "Ka-ve Dwellers?" as one of the robots puts it) which is technically well made (on the level of the middling fantasy-sword and muscle guy genre of the time coming out in the wake of Conan The Barbarian, like Red Sonja or Hawk The Slayer) but utterly bizarrely constructed with a lack of seeming continuity of scenes, which all feel as if they are coming from different films. This might be more my fault for continually trying to watch the film last thing at night, where watching a scene or two and then trying to return the next evening to continue with entirely different scenes led to not knowing where I had left off, but I am not entirely sure that the film itself is creating much of a sense of building tension and continuity of events itself! It can sometimes feel as if the MST3K guys are cutting the film to make it seem more incoherent, but I strongly think that this is just how the film itself plays out!

For instance the jerky, video treated opening and closing titles appear to feature two characters who never appear in the actual film(!?). Then there is one scene of cavemen fighting, for some reason, which I suppose explains the "Cave Dwellers" title, but other than that (and one later scene where the heroine gets captured and is about to be sacrificed by the cavemen) the rest of the film takes place in 'generic fantasy world' with a plot about a lady whose father has access to a magical 'McGuffin' that has unlimited power that could be used for good or evil (that we never really see properly, because it glows. It is basically a nuclear bomb, suggesting that this story is about arms brinkmanship?!?!) who has to go on the run when generic evil bad guy (a bit Genghis Khan-y) and his minion ride into the castle and kidnap the father to get access to his weapon. She was previously told about the mythical muscle bound Conan-style lunk of the film, Ator, whose backstory gets related in excruciating depth by the father to her in voiceover over flashbacks (and really feels as if an entire other film, with much more exciting action, got edited into this over lengthy flashback sequence*) and then goes to find him to have him help her save her father and stop the bad guy. Whether they get the magical McGuffin item back is not certain, since that itself entirely drops out of the film after so much time was spent setting it up! No moral quandry about its power, no fight with the baddie over it (with the baddie getting too corrupted by the lust for power that he ends up dying for it), or anything like that. The bad guy just gets defeated and that is the end! Cut to credits with the two unrelated people again!

There are a couple of basic set piece scenes that are fine here, such as the heroine getting shot in the shoulder with an arrow whilst escaping and having Ator and his Chinese martial arts coach/servant (basically his Kato) treat her before she has to, for some reason, undergo a test to prove herself. Individual scenes play out as you would expect, but they keep disorientatingly jumping into another scene without logically connecting, such as that recovery-to-proving yourself moment. Whilst the film has a larger structure from moment-to-moment the film seems to be entirely missing those moments where characters develop and events flow into each other, and instead just has characters drop into a new scene and the audience has to infer that something happened in between to get them to this point!

It is a strange kind of bad film, as this looks technically fine as a B-movie fantasy piece and the acting is passable (though the heroine of the film is very good and a bit too committed to the material!), but it is the incoherence of the overall structure of the film itself (from multiple plotlines that start and go nowhere, or just disappear from the film) that really counts against it. Probably the most representative scene in the film is the one where a group of people (leading up to the hero and heroine) are getting sacrificed one by one by a cult to a monster in a pit. This goes on for a while and involves five sacrificial figures getting chucked in one by one, a brief shot of them crying in the pit, until they cries stop and the next one goes in. It is only when the heroine goes down there herself that we find out it was a (quite well made as well) giant snake in there! There seems to have been some need for extra coverage there to make the scene play out with a bit more tension. And since the last person to be thrown down (and presumably eaten, since he does not appear again) before the heroine goes in the pit was someone who had helped them in a previous scene, that completely negated building that supporting character up as well, even just as a death that might actually have some impact on the audience!

Cave Dwellers probably stands out as one of the worst films I have ever seen. Not infuriatingly bad in message or content. Not ramshackle in its production or poorly acted. Just bad in the most important way of actually being coherent to watch. It takes a special kind of filmmaking to manage to make what should be such a simple and straightforward plot fall apart structurally!

And how the heck in an 'ancient times fantasy film' did Ator manage to get a modern hand glider in one sequence. A sequence that does not gloss over that fact but spends at least three minutes of hand gliding around to a lyrical flying theme!

It was interesting to see the muscle bound hero here being played by Miles O'Keeffe. He is probably most famous for his debut in the (also terrible) 1981 Tarzan The Ape Man film with Bo Derek lusting over his pecs. Though his supreme fifteen minutes of fame came, at least in the UK, when Graham Norton in the early years of his chat show (when it was on Channel 4 and therefore raunchier than when it transferred to the BBC) almost single handedly championed O'Keeffe as his underappreciated muse figure! Which eventually led to O'Keeffe guesting on the show!

EDIT: (*)On doing some imdb checking, it turns out that the flashback in this film actually is from an earlier Ator film! There was a whole series of these films mostly directed by Joe D'Amato! The first film Ator, The Fighting Eagle came out in 1982, just after O'Keeffe's debut in the Tarzan film, and that looks to be where the Conan The Barbarian/Yor/Hercules-style origin story (with surprisingly good decapitation) flashback sequence comes from. The sequel, also from 1982, Ator: The Blade Master is the one that was retitled as the Cave Dwellers that has reached MST3K notoriety! The Blade Master is probably the title because there is one extremely short sequence in which Ator twirls around double swords. But otherwise nothing too much is made of that aspect in the film either! Then there was a gap until 1987's Iron Warrior, directed by Alfonso Brescia (aka Al Bradley of The Beast In Space and Star Odyssey 'fame'), followed by D'Amato back again with 1990's O'Keeffe-less 'prequel'(?) Quest For The Mighty Sword, with Laura Gemser!

So what we are seeing with Cave Dwellers is a the second in a series of fantasy films directed by Joe D'Amato. No wonder it feels so haphazard and rather static for long stretches!
___
The second film on this second volume, Pod People, was much better. Though strangely it too starts off with a terrible opening sequence of jerky, video treated opening credits showing two characters getting killed by an alien that does not appear in the rest of the film! And the alien in the opening and end credits is entirely different to the ones in the film! Also as with Cave Dwellers, the fog machine people are working overtime! This is kind of E.T. mixed with an alien invasion picture, as a young boy comes across a little alien and befriends it (totally sidelining his cute kitten in the process I might add! That kid seems like the kind of character who 'adopts/kidnaps' every animal they meet until they have a menagerie in their room!) whilst its meaner older mother terrorises everyone else out in the woods, probably in retaliation for those bird egg poachers smashing all of its eggs in the cave it laid them in! Luckily that kid poached the last remaining egg!

Its actually very entertaining, though a bit hard to parse visually in some spots ("Even the movie The Fog didn't have this much fog") There is a bunch of musicians and their backing dancers who decide to take a break from recording their new album in a recording studio (because every studio recording has backing dancers involved) to travel out to the mountains, simply just to get killed. And presumably bring in the Friday the 13th-loving teen audience, who could relate to those 'modern, hip and groovy' characters?

The cute alien gets called "Trumpy", with an appropriate flatulent-electronic soundtrack which of course inspires a number of Trump jokes from the MST3K guys. Of course the good Trumpy and the bad killer alien have to get mixed up at one point too.

Then it all ends with a surprisingly tear jerking ending that is less E.T. and more anticipated the abandoning in the wilderness ending of A.I. ! It was interesting to see that Pod People comes from the director Juan Piquer Simón (or J.P. Simon) in between Pieces and Slugs! I wonder what is it about the motif of completing jigsaw puzzles in J.P. Simon films. After that turns up in the killer's explanatory flashback in Pieces, the kid here tries to show Trumpy how to put one together. According to imdb it is apparently the exact same bedroom set from Pieces. I just hope that the jigsaw wasn't still the naked lady one!
___
Angel's Revenge is the third film on the second volume. This is a kind of proto-Ocean's 8, as after her younger brother is run down and beaten for not paying his drug bills by the dealers (led by Jack Palance! Who would later appear in director Greydon Clark's sci-fi horror Without Warning), his singer sister decides to build up a team of ethnically diverse, but all perfectly coiffured crime fighting women (all with traumatic pasts) to get revenge on the culprits. A lot of the first section of the film (after the action packed first sequence of the climactic raid on the compound which we flash back from, which seems rather spoilery. Though it is amusingly choreographed to a cheap version of the Bolero theme!) is devoted to getting the team together. Though all the ideas of this empowering women might have been easier to believe if every single time the main woman relates her plan to the new recruit she did not have to underminingly empty her entire handbag out to find the plan of attack, with associated "Oooh, I know I put it here somewhere...ooooh!" comments as she searches for the piece of paper. And while they are all diverse, they are diverse in strangely stereotypical ways - the teacher has the plan; the glamorous lady is the distraction; the black lady is the stunt driver turned getaway driver; the asian lady with Japanese name comes from Vietnam and knows kung fu(?!?) with associated 'Chinese theme' and inevitable gong on the soundtrack; and the pigtailed teenage girl is the plucky comic relief!

Then we get a few scenes of getting one over on silly Southern men, with the women teaming up to charm an eyes bulging car lot owner to get their A-Team like van. Then they have to get their weaponary by infiltrating a rightwing right militia compound ("can't they just buy some ammunition?") that involves Black kKklansman-style the glamorous blonde white girl (she's the most glamorous because she wears skimpy evening wear in every situation, even during daytime scenes, and that aforementioned raid on the compound) pretends to be a racist doing an inspection of the facility whilst the tough black lady has to play the part of the chauffeur. Of course the rightwing racist is a Civil War-era Colonel in full regalia who acts like a complete prat-falling buffoon ("I'm just going to look away until the funny part's over"). This is followed by raiding the racist's compound under cover of darkness with lots of associated falling over and Jim Backus dropping giant pots of gumbo over himself.

After that there is the stalking of various minions of the drug lord in various scenes in which the women use their wiles to lure a guy into their van, then tie him up and threaten him with castration. Followed by another scene shot on a foggy day ("Meanwhile on the beaches of Scotland...") in which they don skimpy bathing suits to lure the next Southern stereotype ("finally someone even Jim Varney can feel superior to") and his partner to their doom on a private beach ("Drop your pants, stud!"), stealing their clothes to steal a drug shipment (with lots of wacky "Oooh...I've got it...no I don't....watch the hair!" bickering), before a fight sequence with a bunch of sailors and associated wacky punch sound effects!

Then we get back to the present as the gang finish their task to Zabriske Point (i.e. explode from multiple angles) a drug compound. Though I doubt Antonioni would have had a guy walk out of an outhouse, the only building left standing, with his pants around his ankles, a beer in one hand and a girlie magazine in the other, after the bathroom break of his life! But that wasn't the end and the cast instead has to reckon with Jack Palance and his big boss at the boss's mansion in a climax that obviously inspired the Scarface remake!
SpoilerShow
It is also about bringing the teen girl character to the fore, as she witnesses her teacher getting kidnapped by Palance, chases them, hangs onto the car and once they reach the mansion she calls the others in. Then when told to stay back during the final battle she eventually charges into action (with the score doing a little riff on the Marseillese, which the MST3K guys pick up on) only to immediately get shot in the shoulder! I suppose one of the benefits of having seven heroines is that the villains can kidnap one or two (or a bunch of four or five at one point!) and there are still others who are able to leap out and try and tackle the baddie! The only problem with that final scene is that after these surprise appearances nobody, baddie or goodie, really capitialises on that, just stands there dumbfounded. So the teen girl got shot in the shoulder for nothing as they get recaptured! But then she manages to shoot the big boss at the end, only to still have everyone just look around in shocked surprise until the boss just stumbles into his swimming pool!

That teen girl went from being one of the more superfluous, annoying characters of the film into the true heroine at the end! She even took a bullet for her friends, but it doesn't really matter as with her final breath (the final line in the film) she chirpily states that "Don't worry, bullets cannot kill one of the seven!"
This was great fun. The subject itself is rather routine and the sexual politics a bit iffy (still sort of Charlie's Angels, just without a man ordering them around) but its all obviously light hearted and comic toned, with its wacky wipe transitions and disco end theme. The MST3K riffing is great on this one too, especially the amusing moment with the fly-by of Aaron Spelling's enormous (model) mansion past the spaceship!
___
Disc four of the second volume is a collection of the short features that played before some of the features. It has the one from the first volume, Centron's Why Study Industrial Arts? piece and the other ones include the amusing The Home Economics Story:
Narrator: At first it looks bare and not very friendly
"Who, her roommate?"
This is all about going to College to study Home Ec, because girls it can give you skills in your future careerwoman jobs - working in a kitchen helps when you are buying stuff in bulk for your school or work canteen! Learning to sew will help when you become a home furnishing planner, or an architect. Looking after a baby can help when you become a child carer. But mostly a good grounding in Home Economics greatly helps you "in your very important career of being...Mrs Johnson".

I find it very funny that the film is structured as a lecture that all the girls are taken to a lecture theatre to attend. A male lecturer introduces a woman who will talk to the girls, then when we go into the film itself the narrator's voice immediately becomes a man's again, with all of the slightly condescending comments about all of the things that girls do. Best to run whether it is necessary to go to College altogether past mom and pop first and see if they think you are up to it or if their slightly concerned looks suggest that you should really go straight for marriage first!

Then the film turns into how an idea of how the first days at college will play out, seeing your dorm room, saying goodbye to parents and making friends.
"Now she'll race down to the Jean-Luc Godard retrospective at the campus art theatre
There are five girls focused on, each of whom goes into a different area. It seems that Home Economics allows more time to experiment and find yourself before choosing a Major. Arty? Try dress making or furnishing. Practical? Learn money handling and purchasing orders from local suppliers. Foody? Become a dietician.
Later one evening the girls got together for their usual gab session...
The film does go through all the various careers that can be had, but still ends up endorsing being a home-maker at the end in the sequence showing everyone having to manage the working of an entire household between eight people in order to pass their final exams!

Next is The Junior Rodeo Story (aka Junior Rodeo Daredevils) which comprises narration over silent footage of a man teaching a couple of kids who have been fooling around with his horse, after lassooing one of them, that rodeo riding can be fun. The rest of the film is kind of documentary footage of this junior rodeo tournament organised by the kids, which is really the same bonebreaking stuff as adult rodeo only with kids riding calfs!

The next film is Body Care and Grooming, where we are introduced to an unattractive (in the sense that Sandra Bullock at the beginning of Miss Congeniality is supposedly meant to be 'unattractive' by wearing glasses and unflattering clothes) girl being taught to brush her hair and wear properly ironed clothes, sitting properly and wearing appropriate clothes in the right social occasion to blend in properly. Did you know that you should wash your face with soap and water to keep it clean and spot free?

Discussion Problems in Group Living: Cheating is another Centron film. Not cheating in relationships but in tests at school, this film deals with the horror of forcing others to give you answers in tests, as a boy drags his innocent female friend into his schemes to pass a test! Suddenly the kid in question becomes student council president and is on the football team, but there is always the looming threat of having cheated at that test hanging over him! And his accomplice Mary has become his girlfriend too! On trying to cheat again both he and Mary get caught passing messages between them and both spiral down into becoming pariahs with the boy being fired from the student council. The film ends with a lot of discussion point questions:
But did John really intend to be dishonest? (MST3K: Or is he just pure evil?) Should Mary share any of the blame? (MST3K: Sure!)Was it fair for John to use Mary as he did? (MST3K: Yeah, she was there!) And what about his classmates? Did John's cheating hurt them in any way? What do YOU think?
A Date With Your Family - all about the importance of everyone sitting down to a good family meal. The younger daughter puts on a pretty dress and lays the table, mother has a formal evening dress, the older brother uses the time before dinner to study (it is important to also not spend too long on the phone), before both he and younger brother go to wash up before the meal. This all has to be done before father comes home, where he will have time for his family at the meal before he has to leave to do more work in the evening:
The boys greet their dad as though they are genuinely glad to see him. As though they had really missed being away from him during the day and are anxious to talk to him. This is the time for pleasant discussions and a thoroughly relaxed mood. They DON'T pick this time in of the day to spring unpleasant surprises on dad. If they have disagreeable news they will postpone discussion until another time: this is no time to ask father for a raise in your allowance, new clothes or other financial matters.
Father serves after saying grace. And we get shown the correct way to seat and the order to serve each member of the family in (Mother first!) Then we get a few 'don'ts': Don't monopolise the conversation (the sister); Don't discuss unpleasant or gruesome topics (the older brother); Don't make unpleasant comparisons about standards of living compared to friends or neighbours (the sister again) ; Don't insult brother or sister with remarks about their friends (the sister yet again). Most importantly be yourself, just make sure it is your BEST self. When ready for dessert, sister will need to help mother in the kitchen as many families do not have maids.

Why Study Industrial Arts? - the male equivalent of the Home Economics film all about the importance of a grounding in woodworking and mechanics.

The Chicken of Tomorrow - a film about breeding and tending chickens until they are ready to lay eggs or produce meat. Plus a handy guide to sexing chicks! It ends with a paen to industrial indoors farming and some figures to keep handy: 210 eggs and 70 pounds of feed good; 70 pounds of feed and 70 eggs, eat it! And with industrial processes it makes plumper chickens when they finally do get exhausted of eggs! And then a chicken auction gets shown! Strangely the film really gets excited over the "motor truck, fuelled and lubricated with quality petroleum products" that provides the infrastructure to move chicks, chickens, eggs and meat around the country:
"Did America really need to be sold on the automotive industry at this point?
"There's no driver! The chickens are taking over!"
Last edited by colinr0380 on Fri Feb 08, 2019 5:54 pm, edited 3 times in total.

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Gregory
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Re: Mystery Science Theater 3000

#283 Post by Gregory » Sun Jun 17, 2018 2:17 pm

I love the old 1950s and ’60s classroom films and have often watched them outside of the context of MST3K.

Sticking with the examples you reviewed, colin, here are a few more gems from the narrators of these films:

Body Care and Grooming:
Many men ignore their cuticles.
A Date with Your Family: [The father comes home from work]
These boys greet their dad as though they are genuinely glad to see him.
[At dinner]
Tell Mother how good the food is. Maybe Sis rates a compliment too. It makes them want to to continue pleasing you.
Cheating: [The smug, gloating narrator, who seems to love watching John go down in flames after his moral failing:
Yes sir—you felt pretty pleased with yourself! ... So you were caught. You were exposed in front of the class! [etc.]

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Re: Mystery Science Theater 3000

#284 Post by djproject » Mon Jun 18, 2018 10:10 am

colinr0380 wrote:
Sun Jun 17, 2018 12:45 pm
The second film on this second volume, Pod People, was much better. Though strangely it too starts off with a terrible opening sequence of jerky, video treated opening credits showing two characters getting killed by an alien that does not appear in the rest of the film! And the alien it the opening and end credits is entirely different to the ones in the film!
That was The Galaxy Invader. I am not sure what was used for Cave Dwellers/Ator 2/The Blade Master.

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PfR73
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Re: Mystery Science Theater 3000

#285 Post by PfR73 » Mon Jun 18, 2018 2:16 pm

colinr0380 wrote:
Sun Jun 17, 2018 12:45 pm
For instance the jerky, video treated opening and closing titles appear to feature two characters who never appear in the actual film(!?).
___
The second film on this second volume, Pod People, was much better. Though strangely it too starts off with a terrible opening sequence of jerky, video treated opening credits showing two characters getting killed by an alien that does not appear in the rest of the film! And the alien it the opening and end credits is entirely different to the ones in the film!
Those unrelated title sequences were a trademark of Film Ventures International
MST3K Wiki wrote:After bankruptcy, FVI was purchased by INI Entertainment Group, a small TV syndicator seeking to trade on FVI's name. Beginning in 1987, the new FVI got into the legally questionable practice of acquiring the rights to show clips of movies, and then using "clips" which consisted of the movies almost in their entirety with the "FVI treatment"—replacing the music, releasing them under new titles with new opening credits sequences—and then claiming the copyright to those elements. Many of these "FVI-retitled" films were subsequently shown on MST3K.

Films distributed by FVI which were used on MST3K always had a new, distinctive (and low-quality) title sequence. These FVI title sequences are easily recognized as they all have the same elements: framerate stutter or freeze-frames, pixelization, and posterization. In almost all cases the title sequence uses footage from a completely unrelated source as a background, be it another movie, stock footage, or even a stock rendering.

The low-budget appearance of FVI title and credit sequences did not escape the notice of the MST3K crew, and a large number of riffs are aimed at the sequences. Episode 301, Cave Dwellers, even features a host segment where Joel and the Bots try to recreate the film's title sequence, and inadvertently wind up creating one that has more relation to the film than what was actually distributed with it.

Cave Dwellers
The bottom half of the screen is cut off, displaying only a black background upon which the credits are shown. The top half of the screen and the end credits use footage from the 1960 Italian fantasy film Taur, the Mighty.

Pod People
The opening and end credits use footage from the 1985 film The Galaxy Invader by director Don Dohler.
So yeah, the real title of Cave Dwellers was Ator, the Invincible 2 or Ator, the Blade Master; and Pod People was really titled Los Nuevos Extraterrestres or Extra-Terrestrial Visitors

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Re: Mystery Science Theater 3000

#286 Post by colinr0380 » Mon Jun 18, 2018 2:22 pm

Gosh, that makes the multiple unrelated film mash-up practices of Godfrey Ho seem like high art in comparison! Thanks for that information!

It sort of makes the otherwise inexplicable title "Cave Dwellers" make some kind of sense as some distributor just having come across one or other of the only two scenes involving cavemen-types (or the couple of scenes of Ator in his cave at the start of the film) and just choosing that for the title. Presumably if they had seen other scenes they might have ended up calling it "Giant Snake Massacre" or "The Joys of Handgliding" instead!
Last edited by colinr0380 on Mon Jun 18, 2018 2:52 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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PfR73
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Re: Mystery Science Theater 3000

#287 Post by PfR73 » Mon Jun 18, 2018 2:34 pm

Another FVI/MST3K film was Space Travelers, which was really Marooned, notable as the only Academy-Award winning film to be riffed on MST3K. In their book, The Mystery Science Theater 3000 Amazing Colossal Episode Guide (one of my most cherished possessions is an autographed copy), they recount a story about meeting Dennis Miller and him admonishing them for mocking it.

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Re: Mystery Science Theater 3000

#288 Post by Polybius » Mon Jun 18, 2018 10:58 pm

Hard to pinpoint the precise start of Miller's decline but that incident is a solid contender.

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Re: Mystery Science Theater 3000

#289 Post by mfunk9786 » Mon Nov 12, 2018 2:28 pm

The movies in the new season (premiering on November 22nd) have been announced:

MAC AND ME (1988)
ATLANTIC RIM (2013)
LORDS OF THE DEEP (1989)
THE DAY TIME ENDED (1980)
KILLER FISH (1979)
ATOR, THE FIGHTING EAGLE (1983)

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Re: Mystery Science Theater 3000

#290 Post by Monterey Jack » Mon Nov 12, 2018 4:42 pm

Shame we're getting so few episodes this time out, but that's probably because they have to pay for them themselves now.

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Re: Mystery Science Theater 3000

#291 Post by mfunk9786 » Mon Nov 12, 2018 4:46 pm

I think Netflix is footing the bill for this one. Six episodes feels right for the show as it exists now, especially with the entire season being dumped wholesale on the same day and how many things are drains on viewers' attention now compared to when the show originally aired. I remember waiting for each episode to come on and it being a family event to sit down for two hours and watch, but that doesn't happen nearly as much with so much out there vying for that two hours.

The first season felt overlong, which was mostly the result of the success of their Kickstarter campaign and wisely using the promise of additional episodes as a stretch goal. But six episodes every year seems to me like the sweet spot, especially if they're good ones.

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Re: Mystery Science Theater 3000

#292 Post by Big Ben » Mon Nov 12, 2018 6:14 pm

Mac and Me should be a delight to anyone not familiar with that atrocity. The Ator film should be great to laugh at too. For those uninitiated to the four mockbusters that comprise it's quadrilogy and it's essentially a rip off of Conan the Barbarian and it's awful even by rip off standards (One of those films even reuses props from Troll 2. That's how low budget they are.).

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domino harvey
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Re: Mystery Science Theater 3000

#293 Post by domino harvey » Mon Nov 12, 2018 6:22 pm

Over/under on the number of Paul Rudd jokes in the Mac and Me episode?

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mfunk9786
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Re: Mystery Science Theater 3000

#294 Post by mfunk9786 » Mon Nov 12, 2018 6:25 pm

Atlantic Rim appears to be a direct to video ripoff quickly made to coincide with the release of Pacific Rim - those films tend to be truly, truly terrible so hopefully there's some charm to it to make it more compelling than just low budget robot fights.

I wouldn't be surprised if Paul Rudd cameos in the Mac and Me episode considering how many people they brought in for the host segments last season

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domino harvey
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Re: Mystery Science Theater 3000

#295 Post by domino harvey » Mon Nov 12, 2018 6:28 pm

Pacific Rim was def lacking in ways only Graham Greene and Treach can rectify

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colinr0380
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Re: Mystery Science Theater 3000

#296 Post by colinr0380 » Tue Nov 13, 2018 4:49 am

Just in case anyone got excited by domino's comment, he means Graham Greene the actor and not the novelist.

(I was imagining The End of the Affair adapted to Pacific Rim in which a couple involved in an affair have to break it off due to their existential Catholic-tinged guilt after miraculously surviving a bombing, but they are the only ones able to pilot a mecha to save the world from alien invasion. Come to think of it, didn't that happen in Neon Genesis Evangelion anyway?)

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Kracker
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Re: Mystery Science Theater 3000

#297 Post by Kracker » Tue Nov 13, 2018 11:13 am

Joel gave a long explanation to backers on the decision for the six episodes, mainly citing quality over quantity. Fans seem to love the idea because its reminiscent of Season Seven which also only had six episodes but each one was legendary. The fourteen we got with the revival was appropriate. With MST3K being gone for so long, fans needed that extra dosage. Also, it was unknown whether we'd get another Netflix season, even though the MSTies, including myself, were ready to pony up money again for another Kickstarter to get fourteen all over again.

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dustybooks
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Re: Mystery Science Theater 3000

#298 Post by dustybooks » Sat Feb 06, 2021 10:34 pm

For anyone still slowly working through collecting the DVDs like me: Shout!'s Volume 34 (Viking Women and the Sea Serpent / War of the Colossal Beast / The Undead / The She Creature) has recently gone out of print, but copies are still lurking around online for the moment. The deletion is apparently due to a documentary included on the set and not to any of the episodes, which are still available digitally.

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Kracker
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Re: Mystery Science Theater 3000

#299 Post by Kracker » Sat Apr 10, 2021 5:17 pm

KICKSTARTER ALERT:

www.makemoremst3k.com

After the disappointing run and cancellation on Netflix, Joel is returning to Kickstarter once again to bring the show back. This time, he plans on launching his own streaming service, the Gizmoplex, and using it to perpetually fund and host new episodes and content going forward without depending on a network. One of the rewards is a year-long season pass to the streaming service, which most people are going for. Stretch goals are the same as the first one but they are adding Shorts and live events which will also be available on the streaming service. The campaign is already almost halfway funded despite just launching several days ago. So if you'd like to save MST3K (again), check out what the campaign has to offer. After seeing how well Season 11 came out, a lot of MSTies should be jumping to see it happen again.

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Monterey Jack
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Re: Mystery Science Theater 3000

#300 Post by Monterey Jack » Fri Apr 16, 2021 10:21 pm

Can't they just...pay for it themselves?

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