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Posted by Sampo, on October 19th, 2017 
Mystery Science Theater 3000: Vol. XXXIX
Four DVD Box Set Features Previously Unreleased Episodes: Girls Town,The Amazing Transparent Man, and Diabolik, and a disc of unreleased host segments, Satellite Dishes.
Available November 21st, 2017 from Shout! Factory
And in the end, the laughs you take are equal to the jokes they make. On November 21st, 2017, Shout! Factory will release the almost certainly, probably definitely, maybe unquestionably final collection of never-before-released classic episodes of our favorite cowtown puppet show, Mystery Science Theater 3000.
The slings and arrows of outrageous licenses have resulted in only three episodes, so Vol. XXXIX also includes Satellite Dishes, a disc featuring the host segments of all the remaining unreleased episodes. The collection also includes a bevy of bonus features, including Chuck Love and the Anatomy of a Theme, Beyond Transparency, a new featurette about The Amazing Transparent Man, Showdown In Eden Prairie: Their Final Experiment, The Last Dance, a documentary special that chronicles the final days shooting the last episode of the original run of MST3K, Diabolik, Behind the Scream: Daniel Griffith on Ballyhoo, mini posters from artist Steve Vance, and theatrical trailers. But final has a way of not being final, and one need only turn to Netflix to appreciate that. So take one plausibly last ride of the classic series with our heroes on the Satellite of Love, and keep circulating the tapes!
Fans can pre-order their copies now by visiting ShoutFactory.com. The first 1,500 fans who order directly from Shout! Factory will also receive the exclusive bonus disc The Complete Poopie, a collection of MST3K bloopers and outtakes.
MGM’s 1959 film Girls Town is not a feminist follow up to MGM’s 1938 Boys Town, though to be fair, both are set in towns. B-movie siren Mamie Van Doren stars as a juvenile delinquent trying to survive in the eponymous nun-run reform school after she is wrongly accused of murder. It’s a feast of drag races, catfights, sexy dresses and Mel Tormé, who turns in a Blue Velvet Fog performance as the blackmailing troublemaker. The oddly child-of-star studded cast includes the offspring of Charlie Chaplin, Robert Mitchum and Harold Lloyd. Paul Anka makes his feature debut, and this may be one of his regrets that does bear mentioning. Fortunately for us, those very juvenile delinquents aboard the SoL upgrade a B movie into A+ television and reform us all.
In The Amazing Transparent Man, an ex-military sociopath plans to raise an army of invisible soldiers, but first he needs to perfect his captive scientist’s invisibilizing device by stealing necessary nuclear materials from a government vault. He engineers the prison break of a notorious thief, leveraging his wanted status to force him to do the heist. This amazing transparent tax shelter provides no dearth of fodder for Mike, Tom and Crow, who see right through the film to the riffs that ultimately make it a joy to behold.
The celebrated Italian filmmaker Mario Bava must have needed his bathroom redone. In the 1968 spy spoof Diabolik, he takes John Philip Law into his own hands and delivers an exploitation schlock-fest replete with super-criminals, underground lairs, and gadgets that would have Q scratching his head. It’s supposed to be a comedy, but it only turns into one after Mike and the bots riff it good. This film was, of course, the last one Mike and the bots were forced to endure. We thank them for their service!
Satellite Dishes
The best laid plans of mice and licensees often go astray. Despite best efforts to include the remaining unreleased episodes, the hard truth is that they may never see the legitimate light of day. So here is the next best thing: all their host segments. What these delectable dishes from the Satellite of Love lack in riffs, they make up for in irreverent, silly and delightfully nerdy sketch comedy. It’s the best we can do, so we are doing it!
Includes:
Ep #201 Rocketship X-M
Ep #213 Godzilla Vs. The Sea Monster
Ep #309 The Amazing Colossal Man
Ep #311 It Conquered the World
Ep #416 Fire Maidens from Outer Space
Ep #418 The Eye Creatures
Ep #807 Terror from the Year 5000
Ep #809 I Was A Teenage Werewolf
Ep #905 The Deadly Bees
Ep #906 The Space Children
Ep #913 Quest of the Delta Knights
MST3K: Volume XXXIX Bonus Features
· Chuck Love and the Anatomy of a Theme
· Beyond Transparency–new featurette about The Amazing Transparent Man
· Showdown In Eden Prairie: Their Final Experiment
· The Last Dance– a documentary special that chronicles the final days shooting the last episode of the original run of MST3K, Diabolik.
· Behind the Scream: Daniel Griffith on Ballyhoo
· Theatrical Trailers
· Four Exclusive Mini-Posters by artist Steve Vance
Posted by Sampo, on October 19th, 2017 
Movie: (1961) An astronaut crashes on a planet inhabited by tiny people. After he shrinks down to their size, he learns they are at war with an aggressive neighboring planet.
First shown: 3/21/98
Opening: Crow and Tom challenge Mike to an Andy Rooney-off
Intro: Pearl’s World Domination Starter Kit arrives from Speigel, but the all-important “thing” has been mis-delivered to the SOL
Host segment 1: Mike and Tom focus their attention on the Good and the Beautiful
Host segment 2: Mike slips Crow’s mind; spooky sounds in Castle Forrester turn out to be less than other-worldly
Host segment 3: Crow and Tom, having taken up water glass rim music, invite Mike to try it, and soon regret that they did
End: Crow is baffled and enraged by his Solarite costume; Pearl despairs of taking over the world until torch-wielding neighbors arrive
Stinger: The “Good and the Beautiful” are extolled
  (278 votes, average: 4.25 out of 5)
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• If I choose to focus my attention on the good and the beautiful, as I should, there’s much to enjoy in this episode. First of all, the movie. I love these rocketship movies. They’re my favorite genre of MST3K movie (giant bug movies are a close second). And this one is just pure cheese from start to finish, complete with the obligatory flock of Fiddle Faddle asteroids, “Lost in Space” quality sets and squarejawed white guys piloting the space ships. The riffing is great in this one too. The host segments are hit-and-miss, but generally it’s a fun episode.
• This episode was included in Rhino’s The Mystery Science Theater 3000 Collection, Vol. 8.
• Bill’s observations on this one are here.
• The “good and the beautiful” speech became an instant hit in internet MSTie forums.
• The Andy Rooney-off classic is a classic bit that sounds like something that started as a friendly competition in the writing room.
• After the sound problem in last week’s episode, I couldn’t help noticing that the sound on this one is also a little echoey, but not enough to be distracting or any kind of problem.
• Then-current reference: Anna Nichole Smith, then young and sexy, is presented as an example of “the beautiful.” What a long time ago that was.
• The effect of Mike floating away in segment 2 looks very nice. The spooky sounds bit, however, is one of those “long walk for a little joke” things they sometimes get themselves into.
• Take note: The Francis X. Bushman character is named Sesom: that’s Moses spelled backwards.
• “I should really just relax” item of the week: Hey, suddenly Tom’s hands work in segment 3!
• The bit at the end where Crow again goes insane is similar to the several previous bits, including the Bellerian bit in Space Mutiny, but Bill commits and it works anyway.
• That’s Patrick, Peter Rudrud and Beez as the voices of the scalded villagers.
• On my Rhino disk, the stinger cuts out about two seconds too soon. Does anybody else’s do that or did I get a defect?
• Cast and crew roundup: Producer-screenwriter-story guy Fred Gebhardt also did “12 to the Moon.” Hmm, I think we know who to blame for this one. Production designer Robert Kinoshita also worked on “Viking Women.” Assistant director/production supervisor Maurice Vaccarino also worked on “The Screaming Skull” and “Teenage Caveman.” Assistant producer/editor Hugo Grimaldi also worked on “First Spaceship on Venus,” “Human Duplicators” and “Hercules and the Captive Women.” Editor Donald Wolfe also worked on “Human Duplicators.” Special effects guy Louis DeWitt also worked on “Viking Women.” Special effects guy Charles R. Duncan also worked on “The Crawling Hand” and “Slime People.” Costumer Oscar Rodriguez also worked on “The Magic Sword” and “I Was a Teenage Werewolf.” Set designer Joseph Kish also worked on “The Rebel Set.” Sound mixer Al Overton also worked “Screaming Skull,” “Earth Vs. the Spider” and “Attack of the Giant Leeches.” Score composer Gordon Zahler also worked on “First Spaceship to Venus,” “Hercules and the Captive Women,” “Human Duplicators” and “Women of the Prehistoric Planet.”
In front of the camera: Coleen Gray was also in “The Leech Woman.” Anthony Dexter was also in “12 to the Moon” and “Firemaidens From Outer Space.” Dolores Faith was also in “Human Duplicators.” Francis X. Bushman was also in “12 to the Moon,” as was Richard Weber. Lori Lyons was also in “Human Duplicators.” Richard Kiel was also in “The Magic Sword,” “Human Duplicators” and “Eegah.” Marvin Miller is also in “King Dinosaur” and “Day the Earth Froze.” Leon D. Selznick was also in “Hercules and the Captive Women.” Gloria Moreland was also in “The Rebel Set.”
• CreditsWatch: Produced and directed by Kevin. Brad gets another credit–Technical Supervisor. This would be intern Todd Severson’s last of two shows. The “Teachers of America” are again thanked at the end of the credits, but after this they are gone for good.
• Fave riff: “Thank you for attending pleated skirt day here at Combat Rod Park.” Honorable mention: “So you can just take a hard left in space?”
Posted by Sampo, on October 16th, 2017  Sometimes it takes a while for word to get out of the passing of a MSTed movie cast member, because he or she is long retired to flyover country and is out of the public eye. Such is the case with James “Jimmy” Clem, who had a memorable role as Old Man Crenshaw in the movie in episode 1006- BOGGY CREEK II. Clem died July 22 at his home in Texarkana, Texas. He was 84.
Find out more about him here.
Thanks to Rick for the heads up.
Posted by Sampo, on October 14th, 2017 Alert reader Torque the Dorque opines:
As fans, we love crappy movies. We mostly realize that wrong-way movie making can be spotted due to a variety of reasons; bad acting, script, special effects, directors (I’m looking at you Mr. Corman), editing, bad financing, etc. That’s what makes it so much fun for me. However, there are those WTF moments that leave me confused and want some sort of explanation of what happened.
A perfect example is the movie THE HORROR OF PARTY BEACH. Why was Elaine Gavin’s part dubbed throughout the movie? Why did the “horrors” have a mouth full of hot dogs/pickles?
I am sure others feel the same way. Please add your WTF and/or explanation for these events. Speculating is fine but if you have data that backs up your claim please provide.
Um, the gun sliding down Mitchell’s pant leg. I know this sounds horrible but I think somebody thought it would seem sexy.
Off we go!
Posted by Sampo, on October 13th, 2017 Here’s some stuff going on with our favorite people.
 Mary Jo (isn’t that an adorable photo of her?) is taking part in something called the “10,000 Laughs Comedy Festival” in the Twin Cities Oct. 19-21. Find out where you can catch her here.
Mike and RiffTrax writer Conor Lastowka have been doing a podcast called “372 Pages We’ll Never Get Back,” which they describe as a “podcast book club” which involves rifffing Ernest Cline’s book “Ready Player One” which, as the podcast’s website says, “they’re pretty sure they’re going to hate.”
It’s on itunes, or wherever you get your podcasts, and at 372pages.com.
J Elvis is doing several days at the Acme Comedy Company in Minneapolis. Details here.
Anything else goin’ on?
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