Keith Palmer's Multi-Purpose Journal

After watching my way through all the episodes of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 revival, I settled down to hear if more of them would be made. Some of the people commenting on Satellite News seemed to show an undercurrent of pessimism towards that possibility, though. As the summer went by and the people making the series put on a travelling live show but didn't have any news of more episodes on Netflix or anywhere else, I at least got to wondering myself. The American Thanksgiving and the traditional "Turkey Day" marathon of the show at last felt like a final chance. Then, it just so turned out that an email showed up from the Kickstarter mailing list announcing there would be more episodes right where they'd been before.

In contemplating all possibilities, though, I have to admit that no more episodes would at least mean I wouldn't be worrying what the more personally controversial people on the series might get up to. I'd even wondered a bit about resolving the small cliffhanger at the end of the new series should it have been left unfulfilled through a new MSTing; the only problem there was how little fanfiction I read these days and how long it took me to write MSTings. It was even tempting to resort to an entirely personal solution and add new "host segments" to what few revisions I'd thought of in the years since finishing my first MSTing...

Still, the beginning of the new series was a much more solid foundation for me than some that had come to mind beforehand. As much as it personally outclassed the first cable season itself, if this new series can also build on what it's already accomplished that just might be enough for me.

My copy of the thirty-eighth official DVD collection of Mystery Science Theater 3000 waited a long time to be opened. It had arrived just before the revival of the series got under way, and I suppose I was thinking a bit of potential unfortunate reactions and returning to known experiences as one way to get over them. Fortunately, the revival worked out pretty well for me in the end, and as I finished its last episode I could think ahead to opening the collection at last, and of the plans I'd made while waiting for that.

All the episodes in the collection were "Mike shows," and that did get me thinking of working backwards in episode-number order from the single "Sci-Fi Channel" instalment to the three sixth-season shows, not quite just "for a change." On starting with "Track of the Moon Beast," though, I did find myself thinking there was a sort of "comforting familiarity" to things. Before I could really distract myself considering how it compared to the revival episodes (with no intention of trying to put them down somehow), I was pretty well engaged with the episode's humour as it took on a 1970s monster movie (with an ultimate undercurrent of bleakness I can associate with a lot of the movies from that decade that wound up on the series), and I went on from it to a bonus interview with the actress who'd played the female lead, who did go to slight lengths to say she'd been leery about the whole thing to start with but did seem to have had a positive reaction to the MST3K version.

From there, it was back to the "Comedy Central era" and "High School Big Shot," just about as bleak in its own juvenile-delinquency-meets-degenerate-film-noir sort of way (even including the short subject "Out of This World," which takes a unique theological viewpoint on the delivery of bread) but which seems just about as funny in the series. Its bonus feature was the original movie, which have been included on a few discs before but which are perhaps a bit too much for me to take in. "Colossus and the Headhunters," the "Mike era" echo of the muscles-and-mythology Hercules movies from the "Joel years" (just as the revival included a Hercules movie of its own), was a cheerful change from what I'd just seen, and while a bonus feature where Joel talked about Mike wasn't directly connected to the movie it had some interesting moments, such as Mike's determination as a standup comic and Joel having contemplated the "Best Brain" Bridget Jones replacing him as a "genderswapped Joel" only to be told everyone else had come to their own conclusion. The DVD menu for "Invasion USA" just happened to reference the "host segments" of "Colossus and the Headhunters," which just might be seen as my backwards viewing order paying off in the end. I've seen other people unimpressed with the episode and its Cold War-agitprop movie put together with a great deal of stock footage, but I do have to admit a number of the sixth season episodes can impress me in a "bricks made without straw" sort of way. There's also the memorable short "A Date With Your Family," of course. The extras included a little documentary about the movie's producer Albert Zugsmith, who'd started in Hollywood with this production. (The documentary did mention how just before that he'd represented Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster in their attempt to get the rights to Superman back, if not Shuster's later suspicion, reported in Gerard Jones Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangster, and the Birth of the Comic Book that Zugsmith had made his nest egg to finance the picture by betraying his clients...) Following a career path that some of the other documentaries in the Shout! Factory sets have included, Zugsmith went on to make some fairly respectable movies, only to then then step off that path by going back to exploitation (including "Girls Town," which should be included in the next and possibly concluding collection).

As the Roman numerals that take up most of the slipcase fronts of Shout! Factory's official Mystery Science Theater 3000 DVD collections have grown ever more elaborate, I've seen the speculation about what episodes might yet be released begin to dwell on a group of "problem episodes," whose rights are controlled by what seems absolutely intractable groups or people. A collection of the "Cinematic Titanic" movies (which I'm afraid I still can't shake suspicion to get around to watching) being released did get me thinking things would be wrapping up with the original series. Then, though, I was surprised to see the announcement of a thirty-ninth collection, but the notice went ahead to say that one of the four discs will be the "host segments" of a dozen episodes from the problem group.

At the same time, the three episodes in the upcoming collection can still catch my attention. It's been a while since I've watched "Girls Town," which seems to stand outside the most generous boundaries of "mystery science" and perhaps doesn't quite feel just like "juvenile delinquency exploitation" either, but has an eclectic cast famous both within and without the MST3K canon. "The Amazing Transparent Man" is more "conventional" at least compared to the rest of the series, but it will mean we'll get the second "Union Pacific safety short," a personal standout for me. As well, if this is to be the end it's appropriate that the super-criminal action (adapted from an European comic) of "Diabolik" is included; it even got me remembering Shout! Factory's first collection had included the previous series-closing-out episode.

With all of that to look forward to, I'm reminded I've been waiting to open the thirty-eighth collection. It had shown up right around when the revival was beginning to stream, and I suppose I'd contemplated the possibility "if I disagree with these new episodes..." That the dark outcome hasn't come to pass yet (even with three revival episodes still to watch) is a little heartening by now.

I am taking my time watching through the revival of Mystery Science Theater 3000; hour-and-a-half blocks of time are valuable and very often fine-sliced commodities for me. As I got to the second episode, I suppose I was thinking a bit of a comment or two just seen of this somehow being a moment where the revived series had to prove itself all over again and climb past "the novelty of a first episode," and I did even wonder a bit how I was taking the first minutes of "Cry Wilderness." As with quite a few of the original episodes, though, the humour seemed to build in a cumulative fashion. The movie itself perhaps wasn't quite as "high concept" as "a giant monster movie set in Denmark," but it packed plenty of absurdity all the same.
( Then, all of a sudden... )

Even before I was remembering today can be marked as "Pi Day," I was thinking ahead to Joel Hodgson's announcement the new Mystery Science Theater 3000 will be appearing on Netflix on April 14. As that date gets closer, though, I'm still struggling with what kept me from taking in any of his previous "Cinematic Titanic" project and what keeps me from trying any "Rifftrax," namely the suspicion that to comment on even a "cheesy movie" these days is perpetually to springboard into taking shots at specific "outside" targets, jabs some would proclaim "cathartic" but which just seem to grate on me after all these years. I went so far as to admit this in a "Satellite News" thread about "watching the new series," if without stating just what targets would most grate on me; nobody seemed to notice and take me to task for that, though. However, later on in the thread some were worried the backgrounds of the new people involved with the series meant not that they'd be dwelling on the party line for that ambiguous term of "geek culture," but that they'd be making "political" comments... The specific case invoked, at least, doesn't seem to bother me. It even got me thinking that to have felt sorry for some movies to the point of thinking they weren't bad after all could have some differences from humourless ideological commitment too.

(Then, thinking I'd take one more look at the "countdown" on Satellite News, I happened to notice a selection of "classic episodes" will show up in advance of the new premiere on Netflix. It's sort of intriguing to contemplate "a direct comparison" being welcomed.)

According to the official Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode guide's brief section on the show's formative instalments aired on a UHF station in Minnesota ("Oh, and trust us--you don't want to see the KTMA episodes."), "Invaders from the Deep" and "Revenge of the Mysterons from Mars" were a double feature on American Thanksgiving in 1988. When those two long-lost episodes were made available to the revival Kickstarter backers, though, I took my usual week in getting to the second show. I knew it was another "Supermarionation" epic, but could only guess how it might come across in turn.
( 'Who says puppets don't have a sense of humour?' )
( 'I would never say that.' )

Many people may be searching for "good news" right now. I suppose this only means that to a certain number of them, but I was at least surprised in a pleased sort of way to see the titles announced for one more official collection of Mystery Science Theater 3000 DVDs. The case will be crowded with lettering for the set number in Roman numerals, and as for the episodes itself they all happen to be from the "Mike years," but most of them have a fair bit of resonance for me. "Invasion USA" is an entertaining slice of cheaply produced Cold War agit-prop (which I suppose I compare to the "Joel episode" "Rocket Attack USA"), and "Colossus and the Headhunters" sort of keeps up the pattern by being Mike's counterpart to the Hercules movies of the Joel years. "High School Big Shot" is a depressing yet perhaps compelling skewed take on "juvenile delinquency exploitation," and "Track of the Moon Beast" does at least jump out of the sixth season to the tenth with a bleak sort of 1970s monster movie.

There was also a limited-time preorder bonus announced when buying from the Shout! Factory site. I haven't ordered many of those (save for the cardboard slipcase to go around the DVDs in a "canned set"), but the promise of a certain number of "host segments" from the initial "KTMA episodes" did get my attention and leave me wondering. It would be something to see whatever introduction was offered to those watching the very first episode (unless the opening credits were more or less that), but if it's just excerpted from the well-worn fan copies of the later episodes that have been passed along for years that might not be quite as compelling. The very first episodes not having been recorded that way may be my excuse for not plugging through the apparently very improvised beginning of the series.

I took a look at the latest "weekend discussion" topic on Satellite News near the start of the weekend, then decided on an offhand impulse to take another look at the site today. News the titles for the next official DVD set have been announced was an electric shock, but even more than that there was more news further down the page I hadn't seen. It turns out the new Mystery Science Theater series is going to be streamed on Netflix, which is somehow more impressive to me than "an American cable channel," even if that hypothetical channel would have happened to be one I'd heard of before. I suppose this still doesn't answer the question of whether the new series will yield to the same impulse that drove a wedge into my enjoyment of the final years of "the MSTing community" and keeps me away from Rifftrax and the Cinematic Titanic archive, namely whether familiar fan targets will be brought up just to be put down in passing... but on the other hand, the "mads" of the "Sci-Fi Channel years" are going to make a guest appearance on the new series.

As for the upcoming collection, it sounds like another interesting one. Things will open with "The Human Duplicators," late in the fourth season and a sort of merger between 1960s science fiction and James Bond ripoffs, then release the last episode of the short seventh season to go on an official DVD with "Escape 2000," bringing us to a sort of Italian and rather 1980s-dystopian "Bronx." From there it's on to the eighth season and "Horror of Party Beach," another fusion of genre with atomic-spawned monsters invading a black-and-white mid-state Atlantic seaboard beach, and the set will close out with "Invasion of the Neptune Men," traditionally one of the more "difficult" movies of the series what with the slog of its final battle but nevertheless filling in the ranks of the "dubbed and daffy Japanese movies."

The back of the latest official Mystery Science Theater 3000 DVD collection is already anticipating the new series. Until then, and however it turns out (I'm still concerned "using cheesy movies as an excuse to put down familiar targets" will be all too easy for the new creators to fall into), I can keep revisiting episodes I've seen before. I can be conscious that these days I use the time in between the collections for other things, but the whole deal with not necessarily going back to the same "favourites" all the time has something to it too. I'm also conscious, though, that as much I'd like to keep finding new things in existing works, the possibility of "wearing them out" also exists.

I started off with "Teenage Caveman" and its accompanying shorts, one rather more infamous than the other. The movie itself was hokily entertaining (even if I did have a sense of just how many possible digressions drag out its rather brief running time), and there was a little documentary about it too. "Being From Another Planet" dragged me up to the 1980s (and the tag-end of the "ancient astronaut" craze, even if this was at least different from the conspiracy narratives that swallowed all the imaginative potential of "flying saucers" and congealed into something fixed as the decade wore on). There have been times I fear this episode drags by for me, but this time I was at least taking particular notice of an early-1980s home computer playing a role in the movie. Along with a brief interview with the film's composer, there's a considerable extra feature in the original "Time Walker" movie (in widescreen, no less) Film Ventures International slapped its cheap credits sequences and new name on, but there I do have to face a certain reluctance to take on most of the MST3K films "raw," such that these biggest of all possible extras sort of deflate down to nothing.

In wondering about "Being From Another Planet" dragging for me, I can get to wondering about how others might be ready to downplay "12 to the Moon," at least once its short is past, where I had sort of played it up getting to the end of commenting on all of MST3K's episodes. I did seem to have a pretty good time with it still, though, and the little documentary about the movie made a point or two about some of the good work its crew had done before (even as it didn't mention the moments Mystery Science Theater was quicker to point out...) "Deathstalker and the Warriors From Hell," in any case, seems a general favourite, and there was plenty to enjoy in its medieval-yet-1980s antics. The extra for this episode was an interview with Thom Christopher, who played the villain as distinctively as anything else in the movie. He seemed pretty content with suggesting everyone had known just how "cheesy" things were turning out but were enjoying themselves anyway.

I'm still putting some time into watching movies I've had sitting on my hard disk recorder for quite a while, sitting in a peculiar limbo of "I can't just record them to DVD until I edit them, but I can't edit them without watching them first." After watching a few respectable but lengthy old movies, however, I moved on to something a bit more dodgy. When I heard of "mockbusters," movies with names almost like those of big-budget features as if to fool at least a few people into buying something far more cheaply made, I remembered the cheesy movies of Mystery Science Theater 3000, and how the more recent "ripoffs" in that show's canon were some of my favourites. Beyond buying and watching my way through a DVD of the "raw" "Space Mutiny," I haven't devoted too much time to experiencing those sort of movies without a crew of professionals laying the comedic groundwork, but when I saw the science fiction channel was programming a string of "mockbusters" late one night during one holiday marathon (not just last Christmas, mind you) I decided I could take a chance on some of them.
( When I got around to one at last... )