109 Project Moonbase

109 Project Moonbase

It's a trip to the moon, but uh-oh there's a terrorist on board. Oh me, oh my is this film unpleasantly sexist. It's also a bit bland. I find myself having a very hard time thinking of something else to say about this flick other than that.
Verdict: 1/4-Awful! Dull and pumped full of sexist idiots.

I had heard quite a lot of very good things about this episode, so, naturally I was pretty excited to see it for myself. After another relatively weak Cody short, the feature started up, and the first half was really strong and had me cracking up. Sadly, after the halfway point the riff quality started to drop considerably.

Intro: The Bots and the bath
Invention Exchange: Joel's water juggling, The Mads' insect-e-sketch
Seg1: Joel and the Bots play Commando Cody, with Tom as Cody and Crow as Krog.
Seg2: Neckties of the future
Seg3: SPACOM!!
End: Letters are read. Crow and Tom Servo are upside down.
Overall: Segs 2 and 3 had me in hysterics! SPACOM has to be one of the best moments of the season.

Overall:  There are some classic host segs and some nice riffs, but the riff quality drops a bit too much later on.

108 The Slime People

108 The Slime People

The slime people come out of the earth, encase a city/country side in a force field (the hell?), kill almost everybody, and cover the place in fog. Oh my god, the fog. This movie has so much fog that there are entire scenes where you can't see ANYTHING but the onslaught of fog. The fog-less scenes where ok though and I'm a sucker for apocalyptic settings, so I kind of dug that aspect.
Verdict: 1/4-Awful! Who want's to see a movie when half of it is covered in fog?

The first time that I saw this experiment I absolutely loved it! The second time around however, I found the riffing to be very hit-or-miss. There where some really great lines, but  they where rare among the hundreds of merely amusing riffs.

Intro: Crow is a morning bot.
Invention Exchange: Joel's cartoon goggles, The Mads' screaming cotton candy.
Seg1: Cody on trial.
Seg2: The boys consider how to improve movie
Seg3: Fog. Lots of it.
End: Joel makes a pie, but Gypsy eats it.
Overall: Not much to say about these host segs. They have a bit of the old Season 1 charm to  them, but none of them are too amazing. I did love the cartoon goggles though.

Verdict:  There are some good spots, but most of the episode is pretty forgettable. 

107 Robot Monster

107 Robot Monster

The Ro-man empire has destroyed all of humanity with it's..uh...er....bubbles? Bubbles or no bubbles, the sinister Ro-man (just one) is sent to kill the eight *boom* I mean five people left on this earth. There's not much to say about this movie that hasn't already been said. It's silly, stupid, poorly acted, poorly made, and the Ro-man costume is as goofy as can be. And I loved it.
Verdict:4/4-Fun! As silly and strange as you can get....and it's awesome.

While not as hilarious as the last outing, the riffing here is still pretty solid. I had my fair share of chuckles, and a few howlers. Oddly enough, I actually had fun with the Commando Cody shorts. This was a pretty fair episode riff-wise I'd say.

Invention Exchange: Joel's cumber bubble bond and The Mads' flaming woopie cushion
Seg1: The Boy's discuss how Commando Cody flies
Seg2: Crow and Tom play Robot Monster
Seg3: Surrealism
End: The boys' Ro-Man presentation
Overall: The host segments are amusing enough, but the 3rd host segment was another KTMA remake.

Verdict:  This episode managed to keep a smile on my face and got a few good laughs out of me. An average episode overall.

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.

ABOUT THE LACK OF UPDATES

I am sorry for the lack of updates in the past two weeks. I'm not going to go into too much detail, but let's just say that life kinda got in the way. On my list of things that I have to take care of and the blog is kinda low on the list. Updates will resume as soon as I can get around to it, but I can't promise that that it will be too soon. Yeah, I know it sucks, but that's just the way things go. =/