Watched: Mystery Science Theater 3000, Season 11 [tv]

I've loved MST3K for a long time. I watched the show as it aired when I was a kid with my family. I can remember Saturday afternoons as being reserved for the show, coming home from wherever I was to get back in time for snacks and our favorite program to watch together (I have similar memories of TNG). MST3K had a huge influence on my sense of humor and my appreciation for imaginative, silly, absurdist, and simultaneously high-brow/low-brow style of television shows. And I have followed these guys throughout their careers, especially with Rifftrax, the post-MST3K project of my favorite of the hosts Mike and friends. Anyway, all of this is to say I was nervous about the revival of the show with a new host (Jonah), new mads (Felicia Day and Patton Oswald) and mostly a new writers' room. And while there are tweaks in the basic premise, some a return to original form and some acknowledging interesting changes made in the later seasons, plus an uptick in the pace of the joke delivery during the films, at its heart season 11 still feels like the show I know and love. I started screen-capping just to grab the cameos and some fun skit moments and there are a few shots from films in there but about halfway into the season I decided to just enjoy it. I may go back at some point and write about the individual movies because they picked a really great batch for this effort, and I was happy to see that the selection moved beyond the strictly sci-fi angle of the SciFi Channel days to include lots of silly B-movie genres.

Watched: Илья Муромец (Ilya Muromets/The Sword and the Dragon) [MST3K]

Racist. So, so racist. This is one of those old, semi-forgotten movies that has, like, a dozen titles because everyone named it something different when they released it in their country. Why you do that, movie people? Bizarre. Anyway, Wikipedia has a fun note about how the MST3K guys thought this movie was from Finland for some reason even though it's actually just Soviet (although maybe filmed there? I don't know) and so all the jokes are at the expense of the Finns. They're pretty good, to. Really skewers those upstart Finns and their bloated regard for their own historical epic poems. Which just happen to be WILDLY racist, in the cinematic incarnation. Yikes.

Watched: Морозко (Jack Frost) [MST3K]

This movie is real, real bad but there is a kind of Baltic ridiculousness to it that makes it kind of enjoyable, even before the riffing from Mike and the gang. Like, it feels like it is being upsettingly true to its original fairy tale origins. One of my favorites.

Watched: Werewolf (1996)(MST3K)

Oh my god is this a good episode. Between the weird old prospector to the semi-famous brother of Martin Sheen, Joe Estevez's cameo, to this heroine's strong eastern European accent and completely emotionless acting/monotone speech pattern, to the ridiculous inconsistency in lighting, makeup, hair, and set design, this one is just a classic. The opening bit (Mike slips and hits his head and won't stop interviewing Crow as though he is James Lipton) and the closing bit (Mike becomes a were-Crow and Tom Servo accidentally gets a little bit of the Mike serum on him so he has hair and thinks he's midwestern) are pretty great too.

I mean, probably not in my top ten, but still great. For the reference, here are my top 10 MST3K episodes, 1 being my all-time favorite ep:

10. Manos: Hands of Fate
9. The Brain that Wouldn't Die
8. Mitchell

7. Jack Frost

6. Parts: The Clonus Horror

5. Soultaker

4. Time Chasers

3. Space Mutiny

2. Overdrawn at the Memory Bank

1. Final Sacrifice

If you can watch all 10 of these episodes and not find yourself emerging as a die-hard Mystery Science Theater 3000 fan then please understand that we'll probably never fully understand each other as human beings.

Maybe I will try to write about the others this year. Hungover New Year's Resolutions are the best resolutions!

P.S. You'll notice that all of my top 5 picks are Mike episodes, and that there only a couple of Joel episodes included. Joel just does not cut it for me. Give me Mike or give me... Pearl and Bobo and Brain Guy! I'd take them kibitzing at a movie over Joel's sleepy mumbling. Hell, I'd take Dr. Foster and TV's Frank over Joel!