Mystery
Science Theater 3000 is a cult comedy TV show that first ran on the
Comedy and then the Sci-Fi channel for the greater part of the 1990s. You
might have seen photos or clips from it of three silhouetted figures
sitting in a cinema making comments and jokes about onscreen proceedings.
Yes, that's right:
Mystery Science Theater 3000 makes an art form out of the rude
habit of talking aloud in the cinemas. Except, unlike the drunk punter
sitting in front of you, these guys are actually funny, VERY funny!
However, be warned:
this show makes fun of some extremely bad movies. If you thought
Wing Commander was bad, you'll change your
opinion after the likes of Eegah . . .
If you like
South Park, The Simpsons or Futurama,
then check out Mystery Science Theater 3000.
It is funny stuff indeed!
Are they as funny
as fans insist they are?
Yes, they are, and
some of these shorts will probably evoke some memories of the ?educational
films? one had to endure at school: badly made and shown on a 16 mm
projector whenever exam time is near and there is new material left to
teach anymore.
The funniest of
these shorts is A Date with your
Family - a
1950s treatise on how families should behave at the dinner table and
what etiquette is to be followed. Hilarious - and alone practically worth
buying this four disc set for.
The box set
consists of:
A bad 1970s
Charlie's Angels rip-off called ANGELS REVENGE (starring Jack Palance
-
cue a lot of City Slickers 2 quips). Probably the funniest episode
in this set.
CAVE DWELLERS, a
very 1980s sword & sorcery ?epic? starring one Miles O'Keeffe who began
his career playing the title role of Tarzan in the very bad Bo Derek
version. Hands up those of you who has seen this particular waste of
celluloid? Judging from Cave Dwellers it would seem that
O'Keeffe's career
actually went downhill from here on ? difficult as that may be to believe!
POD PEOPLE. More
1980s crap
- and actually the only really science fiction effort in this
set. (MST3K usually featured mostly science fiction efforts.)
A
mixture of E.T. and bad horror movies,
Pod
People actually
doesn't feature any pod people . . . at all.
SHORTS
(VOLUME 1): The highlight of the set as I've said.
Incidentally, all
these episodes have appeared on VHS, but were previously unavailable on
DVD. (I have used the covers of the VHS copies as illustrations in
this review.)
WORTH IT?
Unlike previous Mystery Science Theater 3000 DVD releases,
Collection Volume 2 has no option to watch the movie being lampooned
without the comments being made.
No big loss to be
honest, I can't imagine anyone wanting to actually sit through Cave
Dwellers without the MST3K crew mocking it.
When my
newbie brother-in-law borrowed my Eegah disc, he
made the mistake of watching a huge chunk of the movie without the
MST3K jokes and comments before realizing his mistake. I think he
has probably suffered irreparable mental damage in the
process . . .
There are no other
extra features besides the usually scene access and menu functions.
RECOMMENDATION:
To be honest, while these four discs are quite funny, they're not the best
MST3K episodes available. Fans would want to check them out, but
newbies should rather try Mystery Science
Theater 3000 - the Movie or the aforementioned Eegah instead.
Then try the Shorts disc . . .
