102- THE ROBOT VS. THE AZTEC MUMMY (with short: COMMANDO CODY AND THE RADAR MEN FROM THE MOON Pt. 1)
509- THE GIRL IN LOVER’S LANE
604- ZOMBIE NIGHTMARE
616- RACKET GIRLS (with short: ARE YOU READY FOR MARRIAGE?)
Extras will include:
• Glimpses of KTMA
• The Design And Speculative Technology Of MST3K: Joel Hodgson And Trace Beaulieu Visit M.I.T.
• New Interviews with “Zombie Nightmare” stars Frank Dietz, Jon Mikl Thor and John Fasano.
• Kevin Murphy And Trace Beaulieu in a Sneak Peek of the upcoming indie feature film Hamlet A.D.D.
• Trailers/promos
• 4 limited edition mini-posters
It’s scheduled for release on July 7.
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It takes a while to get the rights once theyve selected the 4 episodes, which is my best guess as to why only two sets a year are done.
I think we are getting 3 sets this year. I think Vol. 16 will be more SciFi related but you really cant tell. I can see a Season 1 with 3 SciFis next set..
To all the Robot vs. Aztec Mummy hate, I just have this to counter:
-Scene where the evil doctor and his henchmen are in the graveyard:
-Angry gravedigger walks up and yells at them “Hey!!!! What are you doing here?!”
-One of the goons cracks the gravedigger on the back of the head.
Crow: “We’re hitting people.” lol
#75: “But seriously, can we all do without the miniposters????””
Heck no! They’re great little pieces of fan art (assuming Steve Vance is a fan), they make nice little wall pinups, and a freebie is a freebie, darn it.
Sci-Fi’s season 8 is some of the strongest MST of all, and Sci-Fi overall contains more of my favorite, must-have, and show-to-non-MST-fan-friends episodes… and I started on MST back in season 1. (Season 2 held much of the same humor, but it wasn’t quite the same without Josh. But it grew with the changes, as we all should.) I ENTIRELY feel it was better during Sci-Fi than it was during the much-vaunted season 3, which I maintain is the series’ low point. So I’m good with a dose of Sci-Fi in every set.
(While I’m on the Unpopular Opinion Train, I’d like to note that Joel and Frank, love ’em to death, but… well, they got a lot better at acting by season 5, but really…)
And yes, I’d LOVE a collection of those original-content trailers and promos. Season 7’s Turkey Day bumpers would be outstanding. I’d settle for edited versions of the Summer Blockbuster Reviews as well, since obviously rights to all those movies would be a real bear.
“Turkey Day bumpers would be outstanding”
Agreed, I would also like the commercials. I don’t remember which Turkey Day it was where theyhad the commercial where they sang the turky day song but I would love to see that again.
“We gather together to watch cheesey movies
at comedy central on thanksgiving day….”
If anyone would bother to do the math, they would see that July is in perfect sync with a 3x a year release schedule. XIV came out 4 months after the 20th anniv set, and XV will come out 4 months after XIV. I would expect to see XVI in November, around 1 year after the 20th anniv set’s release.
That’s 12 MSTs a year, which is one per month, which really isn’t so bad. :mrgreen:
My only lament is this is another set where I already have all 4 from broadcast. I was very down that one of the few S1 eps I have in entirety is the one included here. I have a few eps from across the years where the cable went out during taping and I didn’t get the whole show that I want to see released, and I also hope to see more that I don’t have…mostly shows from S1-3 as I stupidly didn’t “tape to keep” until they stopped airing those mostly.
Hey #104, just to let you know, you’re not quite the only passenger on the unpopular opinion train. I always thought season 3 was overrated and was never a big fan of the Joel-Frank skits. And here is another unpopular opinion: I actually preferred the SCI-FI channel host segments. Okay, commence throwing rotten vegetables now……
I’ll trade the mini posters for Rhino-like chapter stops (access to scenes from the menu)and Episode information on the DVD cases (so I know what season I’m about to watch an episode from, etc).
Is the Summer Blockbuster preview up online anywhere?
Amen, Thomas!
#108: I agree. And I wish they would put the unMSTied version on the other side of the disc like they did with one of the first boxed sets.
This set didn’t get me all excited like some of the others, based solely on selection (still waiting for Fugitive Alien, The Day the Earth Froze, Outlaw, Danger!! Death Ray, Samson Vs. the Vampire Women, The Undead, The Pumaman, and Final Sacrifice), but you’ll never hear me complain about any episodes coming out on DVD. Besides, Big Stupid and ZN are solid, and Are You Ready For Marriage is consistently in my Top 5 shorts.
It’s gone! Where did it go?
HE’S A SORCERER!!!
#110: I agree the unMSTed version would be a cool bonus, but I’d rather have them on the same side of the disc. Most of the technical issues I’ve had with DVDs have almost exclusively been with double sided discs. They just don’t seem to play as well.
YES!
Soo, #104 and #107 are Misties who think that
Fugitive Alien
The Amazing Colossal Man
Mr. B Natural
Daddy-O
and
It Conquered the World
are MST3K’s LOW-point?
Wow.
I, for one, am not going to say that everything that Shout! Factory has done has been perfect, but I’m really looking forward to this set. I already have these four on VHS, taped from back in the day also (although my copy of Robot vs. Aztec Mummy is horrendous). I simply want the episodes in a better format. As for the episodes, RvAM is a standard season-1 choice (which I will own only to be a completist :roll: ), Girl in Lover’s Lane is one of my favorites, Racket Girls is very funny, and Zombie Nightmare is my alltime favorite episode; the one that I have shown to nonfans and had them rolling out of their seats with laughter.
Fave riff from Racket Girls- Crow (watching somewhat older female gym manager walk across screen): strut, pout, put it out, that’s what you want from Grandmaaa.
I did an actual spit take the first time I heard that.
#114: I didn’t say it was the low point. That was the other guy. I simply said it was overrated. Still good though. I just think that the riffing improved as time went on and was almost perfect around the time of season five. I have to be in the right mood for season three, but over the years I’ve learned to appreciate it more. I’m in the middle of watching Fugitive Alien II and am enjoying it much more than I remember. Daddy-O is my favorite season three episode.
lamontcranston,
jeez, here I almost call you crazy and you reply with a completely reasonable response. Plus Daddy-O is my favorite season 3 ep too (tied with Time of the Apes, actually). Cheers!
I find seasons 2-4 the absolute best, then season 5 started to seem a little forced to me, especially after Joel left and I noticed the guys started to laugh at themselves in the theater all the time.
I hated season 6 when it aired, but because of that I have a lot of rediscovering to do. 7 was okay. 8 I thought was absolutely Mike’s best. Then 9 and 10 trickled down, with a few great ones like Werewelf, Rowsdower, and Boggy Creek 2.
Dammit, I love this show.
“Music? Why here? Why now? Why us?!”
I LOVE Racket Girls (though I would get this set to support legitimate releases of the show). While I would like to see some episodes I haven’t already seen (except for Girl in Lover’s Lane, I have these already) the more SF sees a demand for the product, the more inclined they will be to put out more. I’d love to see the Russo-Finnish movies come out, and the Gamera flicks as well. But I think this All-CC Era set is showing that the number of Scifi eps they can get the rights to is dwindling (a LOT of them came from Universal as memory serves, and would NOT be cheap to get rights to…)
I like the think cases shout uses, too bad rhino hadn’t done the same so that if every episode were ever to make it out it would be a easy to put them in order.
Though personaly I make back ups of mine, put the orginals in a fire safe and watch the back ups and keep them all in order in two massive binders (since I’ve got the both the DAP DVD’s and black disks as place holders for future releases.)
I’m a bit nuts over the show
About Season One – I am someone who didn’t start watching the show until 1993 so I missed out on all of Season 1. I have to admit that the episodes that I have not been a huge fan of the previous releases but I am more than happy to see them being released. Even a questionable episode of the show has many jokes that will have me laughing so it’s a push really.
About favorite seasons – If I had to choose, I’d say that my favorite period of the show runs from the end of Season 3 through the Season 6. I know it’s a wide range and there are definitely weak episodes in there, but the whole thing just felt really consistent to me.
About this set – I will be preordering this set as soon as I can. You’ve got three great CC episodes that I have on VHS tapes that are quickly degrading from constant playing and one Season 1 episode that I’ve never seen before. Sounds like a good call to me!
I stand by my statements. This is not saying every episode of season 3 is bad (not remotely, NONE of them are bad), just that, taken as a whole, the other seasons were better… and I’m sorry, but “Fugitive Alien” is terminally boring in the same way that most of the Japanese films are. I swear, “pacing” is such a rare concept over there. (About the only Japanese film MST episode I genuinely like is “Prince of Space”, because it actually has steady streams of action. Bad, stupid, goofy action, but it never really lets up.) “Daddy-O” frankly doesn’t do much for me either. It’s not as patently ridiculous as your “Beatniks” or your “Kleffon Wars of Bingham Five”, and there’s not really a “hook” for the episode… the relentless butter jokes (which are a hoot) come a bit too late.
Season 3 has its highlights, to be sure (“Cave Dwellers” starts things off well to be sure), but I don’t much like the feel of the riffing. I PREFER them to genuinely laugh at each others’ jokes, because it takes one out of the feeling that “we have a timed script and we’re sticking to it, dammit” and into the feeling of “here’s three funny guys watching a movie for the first time and making jokes to amuse each other”. Far too often in that era, when they react to each other’s riffs, it feels forced.
And short of the shorts (which are rarely anything but great), honestly, none of the season 3 episodes are in my “must haves”. Add in the over-reliance on Sandy Frank imports and Film Ventures International pap… and I’ll take about any other season over 3 if given the choice.
TO MitchellRowsdowerBeardsley.
I COMPLETELY AGREE WITH YOU. IT TOOK ME A YEAR TO GET OVER JOEL LEAVING THE SHOW, BUT LATE IN 1994 I GAVE THE SHOW ANOTHER CHANCE. I THOUGHT TOO THAT IS WAS VERY ANNOYING HOW TRACE AND KEVIN WERE ALWAYS LAUGHING AT MIKE RIFFS. NOT TO GET INTO A JOEL VS MIKE THING BUT I STILL THINK THAT JOEL HAS A BETTER VOICE IN THE THEATER THAN MIKE BECAUSE MIKE HAS A DEEPER VOICE. ALOT OF THE SEASON 5 + 6 EP’S OF MIKE IT IS SOMETIMES HARD TO UNDERSTAND HIS RIFFS. I AGREE WITH YOU THAT I AM NOT A BIG FAN OF SEASON 6 BUT I DO ENJOY SOME SMALL NUMBER OF SEASON 5 + 7 EP’S. I WOULD PREFER MIKE EP’S IN THE SCI-FI ERA. I AM NOT A JOHNNY COME LATELY FAN AS I HAVE BEEN FOLLOWING THE SHOW SINCE 1992.
‘HE TRIED TO KILL HIM WITH A FORK LIFT!’,
OLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
People who don’t like Season 3 just don’t have their pants hiked high enough.
AHAHAHAHA…YOU’RE STUCK HERE!!!
M Sipher,
Talking about the pacing in Fugitive Alien – Joel even addresses this in one of the host segments. “You see, it’s not really a movie at all. It’s a series of japanese tv shows strung together to LOOK like a movie, so that’s what’s happening here.”
We both love the show, but dang we have different takes on it. I can’t even get through Prince of Space – one of the only season 8s I don’t care for (I’m looking at you Mixed up Zombies).
and frankstv – thanks for having my back!
“With Ken and Tammy, swingin’ Rocky and Joe – and those two other guys who we don’t really know – forget ’em!”
Man I laughed my butt off when Joel said that…
SORRY FOLKS AS I HAVE TO DO THIS BECAUSE I LOVE FUGITIVE ALIEN I + II.
” THIS IS THE SONG…….ROCKY AND KEN….HE TRIED TO KILL HIM WITH A FORKLIFT!!……………..OLE!!!!!
SHOUT FACTORY ( listen up dude )
HERE IS MY ALL TIME DREAM LIST FOR A 4 DISK RELEASE :
306- TIME OF THE APES
310- FUGITIVE ALIEN
318- FUGITIVE ALIEN II
910- THE FINAL SACRIFICE ( mike’s best ep
ever! )
CHEERS!!!!!!!!!!!!
If we’re giving out wish lists – here’s mine:
306 Time of the Apes
307 Daddy-O
415 The Beatniks
416 Fire Maidens of Outer Space
“They’re NOT Beatniks!”
Oh, I’m well aware of the genesis of Fugitive Alien as a wad of “entertainment”… but the pacing is terrible even for strung-together episodes. One would hope that multiple episodes would mean a lot of things happening… but no dice. Even the Master Ninjas and Riding With Death moved quicker and had more going on. I’m sorry to say that this is not a trait unique to Fugitive Alien, but an all-too-common problem with entertainment from the land of the rising sun. Sequences are belabored to breaking point, especially talky ones. The mentality generally seems to be the same that drives soap operas… we have a story, and let’s stretch that mofo as long as possible to fill our huge number of episodes we’ve commissioned, individual episodes be damned. It’s the same principle as padding, only somehow worse. Add to it the general badness of the source material, and, well, there you are.
(Possibly the most egregious example being, of course, Dragon Ball Z. “We have a triple-digit number of episodes to fill now STRETCH this shortish manga series to fill oh crap we can’t stretch enough… you, creator guy! MAKE MORE STORIES NOW so we can stretch them out!” has never been more ridiculous.)
And Professor… are you sure you want to imply that preferring Season 3 requires having something wedged up your butt and your package bunched in tight? I don’t know if that’s the message you really wanna convey here… just saying.
To quote Leonardo Da Vinci: “What do ya want, it’s a BAD movie!”
The stretching/padding is what I hate about many season 6 eps, like Starfighters, Skydivers, and Coleman Francis flix. Plus they’re so GRAY.
“Whoa, whoa whoa, my pants got a little low there”
Professor – I hiked up my pants to try and like season 3 more. I just look like Urkel, and it’s really hot and hurts and stuff. And I still don’t like season 3 any more than I did before.
501-Warrior of the Lost World
624-Samson vs. the Vampire Women
912-The Screaming Skull (with short: Robot Rumpus)
1012-Squirm (with short: A Case of Spring Fever)
“We shape our hair in waves down here, boy!”
Though, actually, I think Shout! Factory should seriously examine releasing singles. Releasing the series in sets doesn’t have any apparent rhyme or reason.
Riding with Death
Gorgo
Violent Years
Robot Holocaust (even though I’m not crazy about season 1, I’m trying to be fair.)
#124: Yeah, it’s amazing how we all have such different takes on our favorite show. I think this fact is part of it’s appeal. It seems to me that the majority of early season fans value the good natured, looser vibe of the show back then and the host segments just as much if not more than the quality of the riffing. For me, it’s always been about the riffing. I love the show from pretty much the end of the fourth season until the end of it’s run. That’s when they had mastered their craft and they were at their best writing-wise. Before that, the riffing had not quite reached it’s peak. I still enjoy the early years (well….season one…I don’t know..)but they don’t make me laugh nearly as hard as the later years.
Hey, i stand by my statement. I love Season 3 and no pants are higher than mine. UGH!
Oh, Starfighters and the Coleman Tricrapta certainly drag like nobody’s business… but I feel the quality of the riffing, combined with the breezier tone of the time, counterbalances that better than the earlier seasons.
(Season 1, and a chunk of 2, certainly has a far different feel from the others… and there are elements to it I really missed, though I don’t know how well it would have blended. Josh’s sneeze during a Commando Cody bit and the ensuing cover probably sums up that feel best, particularly Joel’s confused “You’re not supposed to do that…”.)
As for ideal box-set-making with what’s left… ooooh… to get a good mix of eras…
– Robot Holocaust
– Fire Maidens of Outer Space
– Last of the Wild Horses (Frank had finally relaxed enough by this point to genuinely act, and it shows in the theater)
– The Final Sacrifice
Haven’t seen Robot Vs. The Aztec Mummy in years. :shock:
Can’t wait for these!
I like where this thread is going. I did not actually get MST on cable until the SciFi years (Comedy Central wasn’t available where I lived, if you can believe it!) and while I respect the early years, they just don’t feel as tight as some of the latter seasons. You can really see the whole show coming together watching some of the earlier eps, but they tend to be sort of hit and miss. But they were all learning their craft, which is cool. I do think the folks that have to continually tell us that they’ve been watching since season one or two should realize that us “Johnny come lately” folks are just as big of fans and just as valid as they are. I’ll just try and be nice and think of them as old timer Billy Slater from now on.
#106: You’re right about 12 episodes from October ’08 to July ’09 being a pretty good ratio. I just hadn’t expected the next release to follow XIV so many months later (compared to how soon after 20AE we heard the lineup for XIV and it was released). But since Rhino released 57 episodes on DVD from April 2000- February 2008, and that’s an average of roughly 7 episodes per year, then we are ahead so far.
I guess I got my hopes up that Shout!Factory taking over from Rhino–with their reputation, as I understand it, of being very focused on what the fans would want–would mean more releases more often.
As far as a dream set to come out, disregarding Travis’s availability research, I would choose….
The Day the Earth Froze
Robot Holocaust
Warrior of the Lost World
Santa Claus
Final Sacrifice
….because my dream set wouldn’t stop at 4!
Ukridge and Cabbage Patch Elvis,
Thanks – I finally understand what you guys are saying. I was going to ask how everyone rated the host segments because I think Joel is 95/100 and Mike is 5/100 and Joel’s were many times the best part/ biggest laugh of the show, and Mike has had a LOT of clunkers in his era.
But now I get what you’re saying. Makes sense. I do like the looser, more natural feel of Joel, it really seemed like he was watching the movie and trying to understand what the hell was going on, whereas Mike is too, but ripping it a lot more obviously.
Whew. But I’m still gonna wear my beltbuckle to the SIDE!
The best thing about the show is that with such a wide variety there is something for everyone.
I like Joel and Mike equally, but came to believe that Mike was a *much* better writer. And the Japanese shows were my favorite — actually, come to think of it, almost any movie where it is so ineptly made that it practically ground to a halt makes for the most laughter in our home (on that note, the CT movie where absolutely *nothing* happens for 10 minutes at the end is hysterical). Whether it’s Ed Wood filming a car backing up before it can go forward, or the actors waiting to move before the scene actually starts, or just long repeated shots of mountain climbing, there’s something about a filmmaker padding his film out that just makes the riffing on that priceless. That’s very different from the gentleman here who wants more action in his movies.
So — different strokes, and that’s probably why we’re getting such a mix of episodes for each release (which was the whole point of this thread). I hate season one but hope that as many from that season are released as possible — heck, let’s all pray a miracle happens and they *all* get released, each and every season (in this economy you never know :>)
Johnny come lately fan (1999).
But no greater fan than I.
Generally, I like the Joel era host segments better than the Mike era host segments, and I always felt Dr. F and Frank were funnier than the SciFi crew (Brain-guy was the only one that really made me laugh.)
Josh’s voice for Dr. Erhardt was HORRIBLE and GRATING, but he was maybe the best riffer in the movie segments during KTMA and season 1.
I have a STRONG preference for the movie segments during Mike’s era. Season 8 is easily my favorite season, with some season 9 movies real close (Puma Man, Werewolf, Final Sacrifice, anyone?).
Season 3 had some really great eps. Pod People is a classic (great example of Joel era host segments-“Idiot Control Now” song, and Frank in that I’M A VIRGIN shirt kills me everytime.) The Amazing Collosal Man, Time of the Apes, Daddy-O.
About this set: Zombie Nightmare is a top ten episode in my book. I really didn’t like Racket Girls at all. I think season 6 was Mike’s worst. Too many Coleman Francis movies and others like Invasion USA. Zombie Nightmare, Danger!! Death Ray, and Angel’s Revenge were my favorites from that season.
But what do I know. I AM a Johhny come lately fan, Right?
Johnny :smile:
Garth Arizona – I’d buy that. Overall, I do think that the Joel era had better host segments (Idiot Control and the sixties flashback sequence from Catalina Caper are good examples) and they did a lot to endear Joel to me. I also liked the set up of the Invention Exchange format. Watching episodes out of order as I like to do (I don’t think I could go chronologically-how structured!!!) the scifi era was a bit soap opera-like for me. Ancient Rome, the Castle, Planet of the Bobos…you never know what’s coming next. That being said, and why I wish Shout! would set up chapter stops so I could skip to or from host segments, I truly believe that the best riffing was done later on in the series. I think Mike and Kevin are better writers and riffers later on, and the fact that you hear so much more laughter at each other’s jokes is proof of that. It’s one of the touches that really makes the later episodes special to me.
I love the all-CC set! Who knew pre-ordering DVDs could be so much fun?
Oh, and Garth? Since I started watching in ’95 and you didn’t until ’99…mmm, yeah. You make me kind of sick. :mrgreen:
My dream set includes the Lippert movies, anyone else like the Lippert ?
Isn’t there a list somewhere that details which episodes are almost guaranteed NOT to ever make it to DVD release? I’m assuming most of the Universal product and the Sandy Frank episodes, but curious what else.
As for these episodes, I’m not complaining (ZOMBIE NIGHTMARE– yes!)
Never mind– found it:
https://www.mst3kinfo.com/?p=180
http://forrestcrow.proboards47.com/index.cgi?board=mstchat&action=display&thread=6297
Wish list: Fire Maidens of Outer Space Samson vs. the Vampire Women Girls Town Time of the Apes…I think that sounds right.As far the sci-fi era,especially towards the end,the movies weren’t really bad bad,like the Coleman Francis ones.I didn’t care for Quest of the Delta Knights at all.I do prefer Dr.F and Tv’s Frank,but Pearl,Bobo and Brain Guy had some good moments,too.
I would say that Joel was the BETTER host, but I LIKE Mike more. I started watching intermittently around season 2, so the Servo voice I was used to was Kevin’s, who I still think is better than Josh. I am becoming a huge Josh fan on CT though. Erhardt was a deeply irritating character and I’ll never miss him. The SciFi-era host segments were very hit-or-miss, some hilarious, some downright bad. I prefer Mike & the Bots laughing at each other’s jokes; it feels like actual camaraderie.
4-disc Dream Set:
Agent for HARM
Deathstalker (and the Warriors From Hell)
Samson vs. the Vampire Women
Night of the Blood Beast
All of my favorite episodes that haven’t been released yet (in order too). Although I would love it if Shout! would release “theme” sets, like a Gamera set (probably not gonna happen); a director’s set, like Roger Corman, Ed Wood or Bert I. Gordon; the previously-suggested Russo-Finnish grouping; or a sword-and-sandal batch (perhaps the other Hercules movies with Colossus & the Headhunters and, um, Viking Women & the Sea Serpent?)
I’ve been watching since KTMA. All the seasons are good. There, that’s settled. :)
Seriously, this is a “win” set for me. ‘Zombie Nightmare’ is one of my all-time faves, an absolute must-have, and the other three were all ones I missed due to my dad’s maniacal insistence that we didn’t need cable. :) I’d agree that the Season One episodes are a bit loose and that they were still finding their way (mostly in terms of realizing how fast they could throw out jokes, I think–they tend to go at a slower pace in the early seasons), but they’re interesting as historical artifacts, and I enjoy watching them to see how the show came together.
It’s worth keeping in mind, for those who wonder why they seem to concentrate on a certain era or why they put certain “weak” episodes in a set…well, apart from remembering that your weak episode is someone else’s favorite, it’s worth remembering that MST3K has hurdles that other series don’t. Jim Mallon has already said that he thinks there’ll be about fifty episodes that never get released on DVD, simply because the rights hurdles are too difficult. So if they haven’t released your favorite episode/season/era, it could just be because there’s a patch of episodes in it that rights issues prevent them from getting to.