Asterisk Dan is doing a Mystery Science Theater-inspired riffing project!

I've been wanting to do this for years now and after plenty of practice and careful calculating I've decided to full go through with it. I'm almost done constructing our resident bot who is built, in true MST tradition, out of junk found I around the house. When He's all done I'll be sure to post pictures for all of you curious types. My cohort and I are still working on the scripts for both the riffing and the host segments and I have to say that I am pleased with what I have so far. It probably won't be finished for a few months (I still need to work on the set and get a new camera and video editing software), but I'll post any updates as they come!
If you have any thoughs/feedback either leave a comment or send an e-mail!

106 The Crawling Hand

106 The Crawling Hand: One night, when I was but a young lad of 12 I went on YouTube in search of trailers for old B-movies. I found quite a few, 'Godzilla VS The Smog Monster', 'The Killer Shrews', 'TNT Jackson', ect. I eventually found a Trailer for a film called 'The Crawling Hand'. One the side bar I found a link to a Video titled 'Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Crawling Hand 1/8'. It looked curious, so I went ahead I clicked it....

A killer arm crawls around strangling people and bugging a young college student that is beginning to be taken over by the same evil space power that now posses the hand. EGADS! Now that's a plot! It's also a cheap and extremely silly movie. Also, I think that it should be called 'The Crawling Arm', but that's a nit pick.
Verdict: 3/4 Watchable! Complete with overacting and silly production.

I really love the riffing in this episode! This is by-far the best job that the boys have done in the series this far! A lot of the time it's a swift and witty as the riffing from a season 2 or 3 episode. There where a lot of big laughs to be had and it makes for one of the best riffing of the season! It may not have left me completely intoxicated with laughter, but I'll be damned if it wasn't a fun time!

Intro: Joel explains the show.
Opener: Joel's safety saw, the mads' limb lengthener
Seg1: Bowling (from a KTMA ep)
Seg2: The boys act like Shatner w/ some crawling hands.
Seg3: The boys discuss the crawling hand and why it's not scary.
End: Good thing and bad thing for ram chips
Overall: I gotta say, I really like this season's trend of having host segments that revolve around the boys talking about the film's monster(s) (ie seg 2). It reminds me of the kind of conversations that I have with my friends a lot.

Verdict: This episode is just short of an A. It's really a very much above-average episode. Especially for season 1.

105 The Corpse Vanishes

105 The Corpse Vanishes:

 Bela Lugosi is a hunchback-whipping, corpse-snatching, mad scientist! If that doesn't get you attention then I don't know what will. This was a pretty basic little caper with a silly plot.
Verdict:3/4-Watchable! A cute little spook flick.

Coming off of 'Mad Monster' and 'Robot VS the Aztec Mummy' (keep in mind that 104 is actually the season finally, it was just aired out of order) I was hoping to be seeing more signs of MST3K's soon-to-be magnificence. Sadly (to some extent) this episode isn't too much of a step up from the last. The riffs are a bit less sparse, but quite a bit of them (notably in the short) seem to fall flat. However, much like the last episode, there are still a few howlers among the theater. Joel's Bela impression got some of the biggest laughs out of me in this one.

Opener: Joel's chiro-gyro and the mad's flame throwing flower.
Seg1: Servo and Crow talk about Tiger-bot magazine.
Seg2: Tag (as seen in a KTMA ep)
Seg3: Joel and Crow at the barbershop (also from a KTMA ep)
End: Good thing and bad thing for ram-chips.
Overall: I loved Seg 1. It's so rare to see Crow and Tom just hand out and get along. It also fleshed out their personalities a bit. Speaking of which, the relationship between Josh's Tom Servo and Trace's Crow was a bit different than the ones between the bots while under their other puppeteers. Trace and Josh's bots got along pretty well (as opposed to the slight rivalry between Trace's Crow and Kevin's Tom) while still feeling a bit like siblings (unlike the roommate vibe of Kevin's Tom and Bill's Crow). The other segs where cute, but I really dig seg 1.

Verdict: The riffing was still a bit sparse, but there where just enough just enough good/great lines to keep this from completely sinking.