Completed Collection Thoughts: MST3K XXX
Sep. 1st, 2014 06:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerHaving finished another official Mystery Science Theater 3000 DVD collection, I can once again take a look at the juxtaposition between episodes I've seen before and the new bonus features included. "The Black Scorpion" was the last episode of the first season to be released on an official DVD, but watching it did prompt the uncertain feeling of wondering just when I would return to any of its episodes without the prompt of them being included in a new collection. Watching all of them in "production order" does seem to be both the "necessary" "new way to try it" and threateningly slow. However, there was a mini-documentary on the making of the actual movie included, as much as its "this was a reasonably budgeted production and contributed to the evolution of 1950s science fiction movies" tone might have left me wondering about an impression while watching the episode itself of the movie skating on the upper slopes of the necessary "cheesiness" that makes for a memorable episode. Still, I did get to wondering if I'd really considered before how the movie had a little Mexican boy constantly stowing away with the heroes into ever-escalating danger; looking back at my "episode thoughts," I did see I'd at least mentioned it.
With "Outlaw," though, I had something that does make a fair number of memorable episode lists. It included three interviews, the first with an associate of the author of the "Gor" novels the movie was based on. He did get to how there's a certain amount of controversy to the novels having a definite amount of barbarian male domination and subjugation of minimally clad women in them, but hastened to point out that as with just about everything there are people of both sexes who hold the philosophical underpinnings presented in the novels as superior to those elsewhere. I was mostly inclined to think of a certain number of other "fantastic" stories and novels I've come across from that narrow span of years post-dating the "sexual revolution" but pre-dating "women's liberation," such that their female characters seem there not just to be very decorative but to service the heroes too. The other two interviews were with people who had worked on the movie. Where the "riffing" had picked up on the names in the credits and decided the movie was Italian, these interviews revealed the movie was in fact made in South Africa, and I remembered hearing that both "Space Mutiny" and "Alien from L.A." were also made there in the 1980s; the interviews at least touched on the certain uncomfortableness of that time and place.
Getting on to "The Projected Man," I suppose I was willing to see myself already beginning to wind down the collection, although this might have in the end let the episode sneak up on me a bit and prove more enjoyable than I'd been expecting. In returning to my "episode thoughts," I realised that this time around I understood just why the movie's protagonist had messed up trying to "project" himself: not only had he ordered his secretary to help, the scientists who'd been assisting him before had burst in at the critical moment of the process. This, of course, wasn't touched on in the movie afterwards. The special feature this time around was a rather brief description of the making of the movie.
Closing things out with "It Lives By Night," in returning to one of the movies from the 1970s in the Mystery Science Theater 3000 canon which have bleak, depressing, all-of-a-sudden endings at least as unsatisfying to me (if acceptable enough in the show's context, of course) as contrived happy endings may be to others I did get to wondering whether the proximate "blame" for the movie's main character turning into a (sort of) man-bat should be pinned on him or his wife; probably they more or less share it, which explains in a small way the ending. That, of course, wasn't the sole amount of enjoyment I got from the episode, although in place of any bonus material related to the movie we get a trailer for an independent production featuring Frank Conniff and other Mystery Science Theater performers in "The Frank."
With "Outlaw," though, I had something that does make a fair number of memorable episode lists. It included three interviews, the first with an associate of the author of the "Gor" novels the movie was based on. He did get to how there's a certain amount of controversy to the novels having a definite amount of barbarian male domination and subjugation of minimally clad women in them, but hastened to point out that as with just about everything there are people of both sexes who hold the philosophical underpinnings presented in the novels as superior to those elsewhere. I was mostly inclined to think of a certain number of other "fantastic" stories and novels I've come across from that narrow span of years post-dating the "sexual revolution" but pre-dating "women's liberation," such that their female characters seem there not just to be very decorative but to service the heroes too. The other two interviews were with people who had worked on the movie. Where the "riffing" had picked up on the names in the credits and decided the movie was Italian, these interviews revealed the movie was in fact made in South Africa, and I remembered hearing that both "Space Mutiny" and "Alien from L.A." were also made there in the 1980s; the interviews at least touched on the certain uncomfortableness of that time and place.
Getting on to "The Projected Man," I suppose I was willing to see myself already beginning to wind down the collection, although this might have in the end let the episode sneak up on me a bit and prove more enjoyable than I'd been expecting. In returning to my "episode thoughts," I realised that this time around I understood just why the movie's protagonist had messed up trying to "project" himself: not only had he ordered his secretary to help, the scientists who'd been assisting him before had burst in at the critical moment of the process. This, of course, wasn't touched on in the movie afterwards. The special feature this time around was a rather brief description of the making of the movie.
Closing things out with "It Lives By Night," in returning to one of the movies from the 1970s in the Mystery Science Theater 3000 canon which have bleak, depressing, all-of-a-sudden endings at least as unsatisfying to me (if acceptable enough in the show's context, of course) as contrived happy endings may be to others I did get to wondering whether the proximate "blame" for the movie's main character turning into a (sort of) man-bat should be pinned on him or his wife; probably they more or less share it, which explains in a small way the ending. That, of course, wasn't the sole amount of enjoyment I got from the episode, although in place of any bonus material related to the movie we get a trailer for an independent production featuring Frank Conniff and other Mystery Science Theater performers in "The Frank."