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Conventional Wisdom: My 10 Least Favorite MST3k Episodes
🕑 Added 2018-06-18 19:15:47 +0000 UTCSince I’m always cosplaying as Dr. Forrester, not a single con goes by where at least ONE person asks me about the new Netflix MST3k series. Four out of five of those times are really just an excuse for THEM to tell ME what THEY think of the new Netflix series, but that’s beside the point. The rare times the other person actually DOES want to hear my thoughts, I always tell the truth: I haven’t sat down and watched every episode enough times to form an absolute opinion, but everything I see of the new MST3k is… fine. I haven’t seen any modern classics in this new season, but it seems to maintain a standard level of quality that never dips down to the worst moments of the original series.
What’s surprising to me is how many people are taken aback by that. Not so much that I don’t automatically hate this newfangled imitation show with its hipster hosts and celebrity cameos and ska music and blah blah blah, but that I’d dare to insinuate that any episode of the original series was, well, not good. Apparently all ten seasons that aired on the Comedy/SciFi channels are uniformly untouchable comedic masterpieces, without a single dud among them. Also apparently, these people watched a different Mystery Science Theater than I did.
I mean, I love the show, obviously. I woun’t keep donning that green lab coat year after year if I didn’t. But let’s be real here: they’re not ALL great episodes. NO show has a 100% success rate. It’s just science that there’s gonna be at least a few episodes even the staunchest fan isn’t wild about. So let’s talk about ‘em! This is The Internet, after all. Ultimately, the only way we know how to express affection here is by ruthlessly pointing out minor, insignificant flaws. That’s how we care! So here we go, the ten MST3k episodes I like the LEAST.
A few caveats before we start, though. First, the Netflix series is exempt from consideration on this list. That’s not me trying to go easy on the new show or anything, I just haven’t had time to form these kinds of opinions on it. The choices below are the culmination of years and YEARS of casually choosing to skip an episode, gradually building into a realization of “Wow, I avoid that episode a LOT”. The Netflix stuff still has a while to go before that sort of gradual judgment is even possible. Second, this isn’t “really” a Top Ten list, in that I mostly organized things according to what would read best rather than some kind of objective grade of badness. Sure, I grouped the ones I have the strongest feeling about at the end, but the specific order had more to do with keeping things from getting tedious than anything else. The fact that one episode is at 6 doesn’t necessarily mean it has a measurably higher ranking on the empirical scale of badness than the one at 7. And even if that were a thing, there’s still an awful lot of momentary mood to take into consideration. Obviously, this is all a matter of personal preference, and at any given moment, those preferences could shift. If I tried to reconstruct this list from scratch tomorrow, at least half these pics would probably wind up being different because I was feeling less forgiving of certain flaws and more forgiving of others that day. That’s different both in placement, and also in which episodes made the list at all (just wait for the Honorable Mentions). And yes, this IS all matter of preference. If you see one of your favorite episodes here, don’t feel like I’m trying to chainsaw apart what you hold dear or belittle your tastes or whatever. I’m just explaining why that one doesn’t resonate with me personally. To quote someone far wiser than myself: repeat to yourself, “It’s just a show, I should really just relax.”
And last of all, no. I’m not following this up with my ten MOST favorite episodes, because trying to narrow it down just ten wouldn’t be physically possible. Not twenty, even thirty would be a stretch. It almost broke my mind trying to work out this least favorite list, and that’s working from a very narrow selection to start from. There’s just many episodes I love that trying to sort them out in list form would just be impossible.
Okay, enough stalling. Let’s go:
10. The Incredible Melting Man
Strange as this may sound for a show that’s all about publicly mocking the failure of others, but I don’t really like it when MST3k gets too negative. I actually genuinely enjoy a lot of the movies featured on the show (you can always count on somebody who doesn’t know what he’s doing to come up with an idea that’s different from the people who know better) and think the riffing is at its best when it’s rolling along WITH the subject matter rather than being lobbed directly AT it. Not that The Incredible Melting Man is especially guilty of that, at least as far as the movie riffing goes. No, my problem with this episode is actually the host segment.
Season Seven of the show was made in the fallout of doing MST3k The Movie for Universal, an experience no one involved especially enjoyed. The host segments in this episode –in which Crow selling a script to Pearl and Dr. Forrester– is where all that frustration came pouring out, and it does NOT make for a pleasant viewing experience. Every second of these skits absolutely DRIP with an anger and bitterness that’s waaaay beyond “This movies sure isn’t very good.” Half the time it doesn’t even feel like it’s trying to be funny, a lot of these bits only seem to exist as an anguished primal scream on the part of the writers. And, I mean, I understand the need to vent as an author and all that, but the average viewer still needs to get SOMETHING out of the result. All I ever get out The Incredible Melting Man’s host segments is a sense of awkward unease that’s not what I come to a comedy show for.
And the worst part is, the actual movie riffing itself is perfectly serviceable. It’s not the show’s best work or anything, but it’s as good as any of their other later-day drive-in episodes. If you’re handy enough with the skip button to just avoid the host segments entirely, it’s a fine episode. I just don’t think that’s something anyone should have to do.
9. The Girl in Lover’s Lane
Remember up above when I said a lot of the placements on this list are more about keeping things from getting repetitive than sheer quality (or lack thereof)? Well, here’s the main reason why. As much as the general public likes to remember MST3k as “that show that makes fun of those silly rubber monster movies”, a sizable chunk of the episodes aren’t science fiction at all. Some of these genre diversions I don’t mind at all, while others bore me to tears. And I’m telling you right now, the juvenile delinquent movies are my least favorite genre of the bunch.
Oh sure, it all depends on the individual movie/episode, but in general the “conspicuously twenty-something teenager gets in what 50-year-old screenwriters think is common teenage trouble” genre strikes out with me more than any of the others. The Girl in Lover’s Lane is a perfect encapsulation of all my problems with these films: it’s dull, it’s dreary, it’s depressing, it’s just an all-around downer. And yeah, those last two are what the filmmakers were clearly aiming for, but that doesn’t make me any more eager to sit through it. That’s the great challenge of this school of riff-based comedy: striking enough of a balance between the source material and the commentary that the former doesn’t overpower the later… or maybe not so much “overpower” as “smother with a thick wave of oppressive, suffocating apathy.” I’d go into more detail, but I need to save up my complaints, because there’s SEVERAL more of these to get through, and I’ll wind up repeating myself real quick otherwise.
8. Last of the Wild Horses
…and speaking of genres I don’t have much use for, Westerns! This one’s actually a bit of an inversion of no. 10, and one I can see other people giving me grief over because a lot of people LOVE the host segments on this one. I can’t say I blame them, the gimmick of this episode really is great. It’s an episode-long parody of Star Trek’s Mirror Universe, where EVIL Mike and The EVIL Bots are running Deep 13 and it’s Frank and Dr. F who are up on the satellite, and the commitment to the gag is something to behold. The whole first quarter of the episode actually has Trace Beaulieu riffing with Frank Conniff rather than Mike and Kevin (sitting on THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SCREEN!!!!!), and I totally respect any show that’s willing to go that far off-format for the sake of a joke. Too bad they blew it on such a dud of a movie.
Now, it’s not as if I absolutely hate EVERY movie with cowboys in it. I like Sergio Leone movies, I like The Wild Bunch, I like Django, I like… uh… Dead Man, and… um… El Topo? Okay, the point is that the Westerns I do like are the ones that stray pretty far from the familiar conventions of the genre. Last of the Wild Horses is not one of those movies. It kinda sorta WANTS to be, with the tease of an old-school cowboy struggling to cope with an increasingly modernized world actually recalling The Wild Bunch a bit. But The Wild Bunch actually did something with… anything. Last of the Wild Horses seems so completely oblivious to its own premise that the bulk of the film is barely distinguishable from any standard Gene Autry movie. This is like if someone remade The Terror of Tiny Town without the stunt casting, and it’s a sad day when I find myself saying “You know what’d make this movie better? MIDGETS!”
And yeah, I know the whole point here is that we’re not SUPPOSED to like the movies being riffed, but I still need SOME kind of base level interest in the subject matter before I can listen to two hours of people talking about it. 95% of the scifi movies they riff on the show are things I would (and in many cases DO) watch on their own, and unironically enjoy. The running commentary is just a bonus, and not always enough to carry the experience on its own. At least with Gunsliner, there’s a heaping helping of Roger Corman to spice things up. This? I’d say it’s a shame they wasted such an interesting host segment on such a humor vacuum of a movie, but seeing as how it’s the only part of the episode that’s even worth watching, they were probably saving it up for just this eventuality. Still not worth it, in my opinion.
7. Teen-Age Strangler
See, I TOLD you there’d be more of these things. True story, I had to look up these episodes REPEATEDLY while typing this out, just to make sure I wasn’t getting my memories of the various teen crime episodes mixed up. The titles are all so generic and the plot points so similar that it’s VERY easy to misremember a subplot from Movie A being in Movie B and involving a character from Movie C. But after checking my notes SEVERAL times, I feel confident in my recollection that Teen-Age Strangler is a different movie than The Girl in Lover’s Lane. This one’s in color, and it has that ghastly Buddy Holly-looking kid who spawned a dozen “And he didn’t steal no bike, neither!” callbacks… and no amount of riffing can make it an enjoyable sit. It’s still an unpleasant joy vacuum that sucks all the fun out of whatever riffs are thrown at it. A whole town of over-acting idiots making each other feel miserable. Whooptie doo.
Part of me wants to cut Teen-Age Strangler at least a little bit of slack (there’s a sentence that can be take the wrong way) for at least having the decent short Is This Love? in addition to the main feature, but that would imply that sitting through a dreary episode is the only way we can see a short, and that hasn’t been the case for years. And besides, Is This Love? may be alright, but Are You Ready For Marriage? beats it in almost every way, so it’s not worth THAT many points. And even if it were, Teen-Age Strangler would still be a dreary, over-wrought, melodramatic glob of sludge that no amount of riffing can make me enjoy.
6. The Crawling Hand
I was tempted to put the entirety of Season One on here as a single entry, just to be dramatic, but I think that’s a tad overkill. Still, even at its worst, the Netflix revival can hold its head high in the knowledge that its first season was better than THIS. The show still hadn’t fully shaken off the improvised nature of the KTMA days (incidentally, the KTMA episodes are except from consideration here on the grounds that I’ve never once managed to sit through more than ten minutes of one) and a lot of the episodes are DREADFULLY dull as a result. If you were to pick a single quote to embody each season of MST3k, Season One’s quote would be thirty seconds of dead air. BUUUUUUUUUT as I said, it’s not ENTIRELY bad. The Radar Men on the Moon shorts are good for a few laughs, Robot Monster is watchable under any circumstances, and Women of the Prehistoric Planet is a genuinely good episode from start to finish. But The Crawling Hand? Oh boy…
This MIGHT have been an okay episode if the riffing were better... though even at the show’s peak, pulling that off would have been a challenge. Not only is it a slow, dreary, and CHEAP little pile of tripe, but it manages to squeeze in just enough of the teen melodrama I’ve been complaining about that it could get on my bad side for that alone. Don't worry, I'm not gonna repeat myself over the teensploitation stuff, I already have enough to say just about what a tough sit The Crawling Hand is. I swear, the opening sequence in the office-GAH I MEAN FUTURISTIC SPACE COMMAND CENTER is so tedious and threadbare that I still have trouble believing the film it kicks off was ever released theatrically, and not just another of Larry Buchanan’s made-for-TV duds like Attack of the (the) Eye Creatures. I get restless VERY quickly watching this thing run out the clock.
But it’s the riffing that really sinks the episode, or the lack thereof. It really feels like there’s only four or five jokes throughout the entire opening credits, and the pace doesn’t pick up all that much for the other ninety minutes. And even when the riffs do come, it’s WEAK. I’m not sure what the exact scientific limit is for the number of times you can safely reference Gilligan’s Island during an Alan Hale Jr. movie, but I DO know The Crawling Hand's commentary exceeds it several times over. I’ve watched actual amateur hour life riffs at conventions that managed to consistently score a laugh more often than this actual episode
Admittedly, though, there IS a bit extra behind my singling out this particular episode over the rest of Season One. For year, this was the only episode of that season to be legitimately available on home video. Without knowing anyone who traded tapes, and with online streaming not a thing yet, those early Rhino releases were the only way I could see pre-SciFi era episodes, so the few I had, I watched a LOT. Even episodes I didn’t like, I still watched over and over. So I know the badness of The Crawling Hand backwards and forwards. A careful, clinical, side-by-side comparison could well reveal that, oh I dunno, The Mad Monster or The Slime People made me laugh even less that The Crawling Hand, but I had FAR more viewings of this one to build up an irrational hatred for it than any of those episodes. Remember, this is less about objective badness, and more my own personal dislike, and I dislike The Crawling Hand on a very personal level.
5. Teen-Age Crime Wave
Oh goodie, yet another Teens In Trouble movie. What can I say about this one that I didn’t say about the others? Well, this one adds a heaping helping of home invasion into the usual rebel without a cause melodrama, and… um… I don’t much care for it?
Okay, look, instead of trying to rehash my utter apathy for this genre AGAIN, let’s instead look at a few of the exceptions. Which juvenile delinquent episodes do I NOT hate? Well, I Accuse My Parents is a lot of fun, largely because its attempts to be scandalous and dramatic are so quaint and harmless that they reach Reefer Madness levels of adorable. Likewise, The Violent Years is a hoot and a holler simply thanks to the Ed Wood screenplay. And speaking of whom, parts of The Sinister Urge could be seen as a juvenile delinquent film, both in terms of subplot focus, and because certain scenes were literally shot for a different film (Rock and Roll Hell) before being recycled in this one. The Girl In Gold Boots is also a bit of a descendant of this school of film, though the replacement of 50s sternness with 60s grooviness is enough to turn it into it’s own animal. Oh, and then there’s the short featured before The Atomic Brain: What About Juvenile Delinquency? That’s probably my favorite of the bunch, and only partially because it’s over in less that half an hour. Let’s just let Centron handle teen crime from now on, please?
…now where was I? Oh, right. Teen-Age Crime Wave. It sucks. Moving on.
4. Hamlet
Okay, here we go. This is one of those episodes EVERYBODY likes to complain about. This is the one that people like to single out as proof that the show was running out of steam by Season Ten. I sort of agree, seeing as how it’s on this lost and all, but I find it’s for different reasons than I’ve heard other people pick on. A LOT of people like to blame the fact that they picked Hamlet in the first place, less this particular German TV adaptation than just ANY version of Hamlet. Like, they either think it’s disrespectful to even try and riff The Bard, or they think that even pork-filled German Hamlet is still good enough that the riffs fall flat. I have several problems with this attitude. For one thing, the suggestion that even a bad Hamlet is better than everything else is pretty erroneous. This movie looks like it was shot in an underground Mario level, and aside from Maximilian Schell, the whole cast looks like they’re about to fall asleep. Shakespeare or no Shakespeare, there’s plenty to criticize about this movie. But as I said before, I don’t see riffing as something that HAS to be negative. It can really help, but if you’re funny enough you can still riff a movie that’s good. I mean, look at all the good stuff RiffTrax has covered over the years: Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jurassic Park, they even riffed friggin’ Casablanca just to prove they could!
No, my problem with this episode is just how dull the commentary is. Forget what I said about the cast looking sleepy, the riffing in this episode is just DEAD. Blame the uninspiring visuals and dense dialog for providing little material as much as you want, but these are the same people who managed to make watchable episodes out of Castle of Fu Manchu and Monster a Go Go. They could have done something with this. They SHOULD have done something with this. Hearing the same team that managed to work through The Beast of Yucca Flats be so utterly defeated by a film here is just depressing. And this is from the same season that gave us Girl in Gold Boots, Boggy Creek II, Horrors of Spider Island, and Merlin’s Shop of Mystical Wonders! They ended the show on Diabolik, for crying out loud! They weren’t incapable of delivering a good episode at this point, which only makes it that much more frustrating that they didn’t here.
Case in point: did you know this episode has Ricardo Montalban in it? I mean, he’s not on screen, but he dubbed the English dialog for Claudius. You won’t be able to unheard it once you know, but the riffing sure doesn’t take advantage of it. I mean, it’s the one time in the show’s run that they had FRIGGIN’ KHAN at their disposal, and they totally let it slip by. There’s one single, solitary “rich Corinthian leather” reference, and I don’t believe for a second that it was even on purpose. For shame, Best Brains. For shame.
3. Kitten With A Whip
This is another one that I’d probably get some grief over, as I’ve seen quite a few people people cite this as one of the best movies an episode of MST3k ever tackled. I mean, that’s “best” in a thriller/exploitation sense of the word, which is a much trashier sense than one usually hears. But still, a lot of people regard Kitten With A Whip as one of the most successful, intentionally effective films to appear on the show, and I don’t disagree. While technically of the same pedigree as all those other youth in revolt films on this list, those movies are primarily defined by punishing boredom, THIS movie is unrelentingly tense. I mean, yeah, the “good Samaritan gone wrong” plot is driven almost exclusively by the lead character making incredibly poor choices, but they aren’t UNREALISTICALLY poor, and it gets genuinely hard to figure out how the dude’s supposed to get out of it. Yeah, actual unpredictability and uncertainty. INTENTIONAL uncertainty, not like where you’re not sure how Manos will end because you barely comprehend what happen in the first place. And Ann-Margret… let’s put it this way: at no moment does her anthropomorphized bipolar freakout ever resemble a real human being, but as a loud, hammy cartoon psycho she’s legitimately threatening. So, yeah, by MST3k standards, I absolutely consider Kitten With A Whip a good movie.
That’s why I can’t stand this episode.
Again, it’s not that I don’t like riffing over a movie that doesn’t suck. I think good jokes and a good movie can complement each other quite nicely if done correctly. But that’s the problem: I don’t think Kitten With A Whip and MST3k complement each other at all, and I think the very things that make it work as a movie are what make it not work as an episode. It’s hard to laugh at the ha ha funny jokes when the movie underneath is legit stressful. I mean, if I wanted to deliberately invite tension and suspense into my life, do you really think I’d be watching a show where robot puppets say goofy stuff for two hours? Life is frightening and uncertain enough as it is, I watch TV to get AWAY from that stuff.
And really, that’s the underlying problem I have with MOST of these teenage delinquent movies, they’re just too depressing. Not just in the tedious, dreary filmmaking sense, but the sob story plots themselves are just the opposite of what I want to experience when I watch MST3k. It’s one thing to watch a fanged carrot from Venus taking over the minds of a small town, quite another to watch a bunch of people just be terrible to each other for ninety minutes with no fantastical elements whatsoever. Again, if I wanted that, I’d just go outside for a while.
2. Invasion of the Neptune Men
Heeeey, you know what’s really fun and in no way awkward to write about? RACISM!
So, MST3k has quite a few episodes covering Japanese movies. All those Gamera flicks, a few Godzilla ones, the various additional fluff Sandy Frank picked up, there’s a bunch of ‘em, and inevitably every one of them bust out a few Japanese stereotypes. A little cram school here, a bit of miniaturized technology there, the occasional ultra violent XXX asian cartoons sprinkled about, you know, the usual. For the most part, it’s pretty easy to shrug off, especially since it’s not as if they don’t crack “regional” jokes about every place their films come from. MST3k busts out jokes about England, Mexico, Italy, Finland, The South, New York, whatever. Go watch Giant Spider Invasion again and just count how many riffs AREN’T about The Midwest. They don’t play favorites, is what I’m saying. What’s more, the Best Brains crew were usually pretty good at maintaining a tone that ensured the riffs didn’t come across as malicious, like they were laughing at the idea of somebody saying that stuff as much as saying that stuff for a laugh. And then there’s Invasion Of The Neptune Men.
The story I’ve always heard is that the original, unedited version of Invasion Of The Neptune Men used actual WWII newsreels as special effect stock footage. As in actual footage of real, deadly explosives getting shot at real people, to kill them. In a children’s superhero movie. Needless to say, the writers weren’t very pleased to see this, and the footage was edited out of the TV version. The problem is, that displeasure didn’t disappear with the footage, it bled all over the riffing for the whole episode. This is an ANGRY episode, one of those episodes where it’s CONSTANTLY apparent that they’re out to get the movie. Sometimes they’re just cracking jokes, other times it’s personal, and this one is clearly personal. Now, I’ve already said that I don’t like the really malicious episodes as much, the ones where they go out of their way to radiate legitimate hate towards the makers of the film. That’s bad enough when it results in direct shots at the filmmakers themselves, but Invasion of the Neptune Men doesn’t have a Colman Francis or a Bill Rebane to serve as the focus of that malice. Instead, all that negativity manifests in the Japanese stereotype jokes. Gross generalizations about an entire racial group, delivered with palpable venom and hatred… there’s a name for that sort of thing, and it’s bad.
Of course, it also doesn’t help that Invasion of the Neptune Men is a DUUUUUUULL movie as well, with stretches of nothing that rival The Starfighters for sheer tedium. I know “60s-era scifi/action movie from Japan” and “boring” aren’t ideas one normally associates with each other, but this flick pulls off that impossible feat, and the blame falls on the titular villains. You know how a lot of old scifi movies will have a clunky robot suit, one of those boxy water heaters with arms that’s more prop than character? Imagine if that was EVERY SINGLE BAD GUY IN THE FILM. Yep, not just the occasional henchman, but the entire race of Neptune Men. They’re ALL faceless, awkward, slow-moving Robby the Robot wannabes, and they absolutely MURDER the film’s momentum. As you watch scene after scene of these things silently stumbling around a cheep spaceship set, your mind can’t help but wander in an attempt to stay awake… and that’s when you find yourself considering how that last riff sounded uncomfortably like your drunk grandpa who never got over The War.
To be clear: I’m not accusing the crew of MST3k of being closet racists, nor am I implying that I can’t watch ANY of the Japanese episodes. Heck, the sister episode to this one, Prince of Space, is a friggin’ masterpiece. But that one has more energy, a memorable villain, faster pacing, and all-around more enjoyable riffing. All Invasion of the Neptune Men has going for it is The Hitler Building. (…WOW that sentence won’t make sense to anyone who hasn’t seen the show)
Well, we’re almost at the worst of the worst for me personally, but first let’s get a few of the least of the worst out of the way. Here’s some honorable mentions that ALMOST made it onto this list but weren’t QUITE bad enough:
Obviously, there’s the rest of those juvenile delinquent movies like High School Big Shot, Untamed Youth, Daddy-O, The Beatniks, and Girls Town. I don’t particularly like any of them, for all the reasons I’ve already outlined, but they’ve all got enough little things going for them to elevate them from “active dislike” to just “forgettable.” (In particular, the mesmerizing miscasting of Paul Anka in Girls Town is a standout) Heck, my dislike of the teensploitation tropes is enough to turn me off towards Earth vs. The Spider, The Giant Gila Monster, and I Was A Teenage Werewolf, and those all have the titular monsters to look forward to!
I nearly included Master Ninja 1 & 2 as a joint entry, even if it would have been cheating a bit, but decided against it because… honestly, I’m not sure WHY I don’t like those episodes. Something about them just makes me INSTANTLY restless. At first I thought I had something against the “guy in a van drives around solving mysteries in the late 70s/early 80s” formula, or just the “TV episodes glued together as a movie” format, but Riding With Death has both of those, and I love that episode. Maybe I just have a pathological hatred of Timothy Van Patten?
And then there’s plain old “the riffs aren’t quite good enough to overcome the movie” instances like Jungle Goddess, Tormented, Attack of (the) The Eye Creatures, Squirm, and The Unearthy (the latter of which is also guilty of waaaaaay to many “fast-talking 50s slang” riffs). I can make it through any one of those episodes if I’m in a good enough mood, which is enough to make it off the list.
Oh, and I also have irrational aversions to Jack Frost and The Painted Hills simply because I was really sick the first time I saw either of them. That’s totally unfair and in no way indicative of their quality as episodes (especially Jack Frost’s) but I’ve skipped over them a LOT over the years anyway. See what I meant when I said this list was primarily a matter of personal preference?
But enough stalling. Let’s get on to the main event:
1. The Hellcats
A lot of people don’t even seem to remember this episode exists, which is pretty damning evidence itself. The movie’s not great, but it’s not remarkably unwatchable either. There’s little about this biker flick that one wouldn’t also see in Wild Rebels or Girl in Gold Boots or, most importantly, Sidehackers. No, the problem here is entirely with the riffing.
Most people who DO remember this episode do so for the novelty of it being MST3k’s only clip show. That’s not to say that they re-riffed parts of previous movies (actually, that would have been an improvement), just that the host segments are primarily flashbacks to skits from earlier episodes. That’s already a questionable choice for a show that was only halfway through its second season, as most of their “greatest hits” hadn’t even happened yet, but it’s not the host segments that turn me against the movie. It’s the riffing, the terrible, terrible riffing. The jokes in this episode are as bad as the darkest days of season one, except there’s a lot more of them now. Unfunny running gags take up far more time than they should ever be allowed to occupy, and GREAT GOD ALMIGHTY are there too many Sidehackers callbacks! That’s a complaint I have about Season Two in general, actually. The Brains seemed to think that episode was approximately 75% more hilarious than it actually was, and ran a LOT of quotes from it into the ground over the course of the season. Obviously, their second biker movie starring Ross Hagen in a single year couldn’t be allowed to pass without a FEW callbacks, but they overplay it beyond all reason. I swear if I ever hear another person yell “THAT WAS NUMBER FIVE!” at any point in my life EVER I will serious contemplate physical violence.
The source of both the riffing deficiencies and the host segment shortcuts seems to be that the episode was written under bad conditions. I’ve heard different explanations over the years: sometimes that most of the team had the flu that week (hence the setup of Joel & The Bots being sick) so the writing room was abnormally understaffed, other times it’s that a lot of the staff had to travel out of town so as many shortcuts as possible were taken to finish the episode ahead of schedule. Either way, the end result is an episode that absolutely feels like a rushed, under-cooked first draft. And again, I’m not picking on the fact that 90% of the host segments consist of pressing play on a VCR (although the Invention Exchange with the reused props is genuinely lazy and more than a little confusing), I really do think the riffs on their own are some of the weakest in the show’s history. This is lest like watching a professional comedy troupe and more like a particularly uninspired movie night at a friend’s house when half the usual gang isn’t there and everybody’s tired from being at work. What I’m about to say, I don’t say lightly, because it’s such cruel slander that there’s no taking it back, but in this case I think it’s unavoidable: The Hellcats is so bad, it’s the sort of thing I could have written.
(And just to add insult to injury, this movie is a Tony Cardoza production, meaning there’s a whole mess of familiar faces from the Coleman Francis movies… years before anyone knew that Coleman Francis movies were a thing, so none of it gets acknowledged. I know it’s not fair to complain about stuff that hadn’t been on the show yet, but it’s REALLY glaring now.)
And there you have it! My ten least favorite MST3k episodes (and then some). Now, the next time some rando at a con acts surprised that I don’t automatically hate the Netflix series, I can just point them to this list and they can learn why… assuming they’re also Patreon supporters, or are willing to shell out at least $2 so that they can view this blog post. Um… why did I write this again?
Comments
Simon Ladd
Yeah, High School Big Shot does seem to have a lot more energy to it than the other teensploitation flicks. Like, it feels like one of the few that honestly wanted to be entertainment rather than a *ahem* SERIOUS COMMENTARY.
Simon Ladd
I have a surprisingly easy time with Racket Girls. There's just something about that "squeaky clean dorks trying to sound sleazy" brand of early exploitation that carries me through the riffing lulls during the wrestling bits (though, man, if ever you wanted something to make you appreciate WWE's production team...) Aztec Mummy was probably worth an honorable mention, though. I seem to recall hearing that was one of the few films where the Brains had to resort to booze to get through... and I'd believe it.
Kurt Yoder
Also I can totally understand the dislike of the teen delinquint films but I enjoy both Teenage Strangler and Girls Town a good bit. I think out of all those depressing teen crime films they did the one that was far an away the best was High School Big Shot. They really made some good humor out of an incredibly overwrought film and the short Out of This World is lot of fun too. Also it probably has one of the best physical gags they did in the theater ever with Mike throwing Servo.
Kurt Yoder
Hellcats is one of those episodes I've seen once years ago and even owning the old Rhino DVD I have never wanted to revisit it. It really is a void of an episode and easily the weakest episode of season two by a long shot. Two of my picks of weakest episodes you didn't mention have to go to Racket Girls, you'd hope a bad cheeky creeky crime film using women's wrestling would be a great choice but they really struggle making good commentary on the numerous long wrestling scenes. Then there's the borefest of Robot vs. The Aztec Mummy, my pick of season one's weakest offering. The sparse riffing on a very talky film that's recapping not one but two other Aztec Mummy movies before it for 2/3rds of it's running time is a huge snooze to me.
