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Since having managed to comment on every episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000, I've let the official DVD collections bring them back to me four at a time. Even if I was watching the episodes over again as I commented on them, though, I do seem able to find fresh things about them all over again to keep the experience interesting.
The science fiction movies of the 1960s the series featured do give me an impression that by that point the filmmakers still working in that genre weren't trying very hard any more, and "The Slime People" did give me a definite impression of existing just to fill running time. "Rocket Attack USA" has just a bit more of a "message" to it, but I did find amusement in its limited production values (after what seemed a "day for night" shot, familiar from certain other period movies of the series, moths started flying through the actual night scenes, reminding me of "Manos: The Hands of Fate" itself). After those two early "Joel episodes," it was on to the Mike years with "Village of the Giants." This time around, I might have been picking up on the episode's best efforts to make a vague sort of statement about the generation gap of the 1960s, even if most of the conflict was between the thoroughly square and authority-respecting "teenagers" and the more "freaked-out" (if still quite clean-cut) "teenagers." I do have an impression there was a conflict between giant youths and the older, smaller generation in H.G. Wells's The Food of the Gods, so maybe there was something to the on-screen credit joked about in the "riffing." "The Deadly Mantis" was also enjoyable; I do have the feeling the slight meanness of some of the riffing of "The Mole People," the episode just previous, wasn't to be found this time. I also noticed how its DVD menu, like all the others in the previous Shout! Factory collections, used audio clips from the episode to tell a brief and bizarre story, except that this time quotes from Mike joined those of Crow and Tom. I'd heard speculation Joel and Mike's likenesses couldn't be used for some reason for the menus, leaving a computer-animated Crow and Tom; however, Mike appearing as a jet pilot wearing an oxygen mask might have suggested that in this singular case his still image didn't have to be "faked" into motion.
This time around, I must admit I didn't watch all of the bonus materials. Trace Beaulieu takes his turn explaining what he did after Mystery Science Theater, but having heard second or third-hand he apparently touched on how he had been in the auditions to voice Jar Jar Binks in The Phantom Menace, I was reluctant to see if he took the chance to get in digs and mop his brow over what a narrow escape he had. (However, I do know that both Anthony Daniels and Frank Oz weren't shoo-ins to voice the characters they had performed, so Ahmed Best is in good company there; this may, though, point out how David Prowse is the outlier.) With "The Deadly Mantis," though, I did mangage to watch Mary Jo Pehl's new introduction and a little documentary about the movie's producer William Alland, who had worked on most of Universal Pictures's science fiction movies from the 1950s; this managed to follow up on similar documentaries for "Revenge of the Creature" and "The Mole People."
The science fiction movies of the 1960s the series featured do give me an impression that by that point the filmmakers still working in that genre weren't trying very hard any more, and "The Slime People" did give me a definite impression of existing just to fill running time. "Rocket Attack USA" has just a bit more of a "message" to it, but I did find amusement in its limited production values (after what seemed a "day for night" shot, familiar from certain other period movies of the series, moths started flying through the actual night scenes, reminding me of "Manos: The Hands of Fate" itself). After those two early "Joel episodes," it was on to the Mike years with "Village of the Giants." This time around, I might have been picking up on the episode's best efforts to make a vague sort of statement about the generation gap of the 1960s, even if most of the conflict was between the thoroughly square and authority-respecting "teenagers" and the more "freaked-out" (if still quite clean-cut) "teenagers." I do have an impression there was a conflict between giant youths and the older, smaller generation in H.G. Wells's The Food of the Gods, so maybe there was something to the on-screen credit joked about in the "riffing." "The Deadly Mantis" was also enjoyable; I do have the feeling the slight meanness of some of the riffing of "The Mole People," the episode just previous, wasn't to be found this time. I also noticed how its DVD menu, like all the others in the previous Shout! Factory collections, used audio clips from the episode to tell a brief and bizarre story, except that this time quotes from Mike joined those of Crow and Tom. I'd heard speculation Joel and Mike's likenesses couldn't be used for some reason for the menus, leaving a computer-animated Crow and Tom; however, Mike appearing as a jet pilot wearing an oxygen mask might have suggested that in this singular case his still image didn't have to be "faked" into motion.
This time around, I must admit I didn't watch all of the bonus materials. Trace Beaulieu takes his turn explaining what he did after Mystery Science Theater, but having heard second or third-hand he apparently touched on how he had been in the auditions to voice Jar Jar Binks in The Phantom Menace, I was reluctant to see if he took the chance to get in digs and mop his brow over what a narrow escape he had. (However, I do know that both Anthony Daniels and Frank Oz weren't shoo-ins to voice the characters they had performed, so Ahmed Best is in good company there; this may, though, point out how David Prowse is the outlier.) With "The Deadly Mantis," though, I did mangage to watch Mary Jo Pehl's new introduction and a little documentary about the movie's producer William Alland, who had worked on most of Universal Pictures's science fiction movies from the 1950s; this managed to follow up on similar documentaries for "Revenge of the Creature" and "The Mole People."