K11 - Humanoid Woman

Observation: Even this early, Crow's "kitty" was an inside joke.

Movie Description: Sandy Frank presents: A bald, but still hot clone girl named Niya is found drifting in space and brought down to a scientist's family to learn how to be human. Semi-wacky things involving her telepathic powers and naivete occur and at this point I was expecting some sort of "Bicentennial Man" robot learns to live again kind of movie.

But no, it quickly, very quickly actually, goes into space where conveniently, half the cast already introduced and the girl, stowing away are on another all-too convenient trip to Niya's home planet. Once there, its not too dissimilar from the previous episode's "Space 1999" adventures as they land on a planet full of mask wearing mutants forced underground by polution. Once there, the good guys prove a little too good at cleaning up the pollution, so a midget with no real motives that I can see, uses mind control and litteral back-stabbing to try and destroy the Earthlings.

Movie Review: I can see why, when coming back to the Sandy Frank library in season three that the Best Brains skipped over this one: Its far too good. Really, even the dubbing is pretty adequate, not a single terrible screeching voice to be heard. All that being said, there were still some particularly goofy elements to this movie, the dumb robots, cheesy telekensis effects and the odd soap bubble monster at the end. But still, pretty good sci-fi.
6/10

Riffing: For the second episode in a row it's Crow, Crow, Crow as far as hit to miss ratio goes. Although to be fair, Joel had some decent barbs as well, mostly targeting the movies Kraftwerk like sound track. Its also funny to note when both Servo and Joel go for a joke at the same time, at least thus far, Servo usually bullies his way into saying it first, so Joel's jokes are a few seconds late by the time he gets them out. As much praise as I might pile on this, its still not up to the later standards of the show, if just for volume alone, thus the reluctant low rating.
Best riff: Was that Superman's dad?
5/10

Sketches: Very short for the most part, although pretty good. Good enough that the middle sketch, where Servo romances a blender, is later re-used almost verbatim and I swear the third sketch about surrealism is later salvaged as well. Not a lot to say really about the rest, the movie must have been long.
4/10

Overall: Watchable movie, enjoyable theater segements = good. Short sketches = Meh. Good, but not outstanding, even graded on a curve like I seem to be grading these early episodes. They do seem to be hitting their rhythem, at least in the theater.
5/10

What I learned: Go to the Astra. Go to the Astra. Go to the Astra.

Sh(C)ould Be MSTied: "Invasion From Inner Earth"

1974, Color, USA

Movie Description: Two words: Bill Rebane.

As in "Giant Spider Invasion" Bill Rebane. As in "Monster A-Go-Go" Bill Rebane.

Bill Rebane = Wisconsin's Ed Wood.

Anywho, as for the actual movie itself, it revolves around three scientists who are doing scientist like things in some remote cabin in the Canadian woods, and their hosts, a brother and sister who run an airline or hunting lodge or some such thing.

Meanwhile, in the outside world, all hell is breaking loose (exemplified by shots of people running around streets with lots of red smoke) as a plague is killing everybody and aliens are showing up an abducting people and communications are breaking down. Or not. Its really hard to tell because nothing makes a lick of sense when the leaves the main characters in the cabin, as the scenes remind me of one of those mid-seventies sketch movies only not funny.



Back at the cabin, they loose all communications, try to fly home but can't land at one airport because everybody is sick, land at another where everybody's dead (?) see a red light, a plane crash, find a snow mobile, talk to a guy who sounds like a kid doing a 'robot' voice, and several other unexplained things. The only explanations come from shaggy bearded Max (Paul Bentzen, the creepy cousin in "Giant Spider Invasion") who rambles on about giant roses, and martians from inside the earth.

This makes the movie sound far, far too exciting. It's mostly shots of people wandering through the snowy woods while 30 second music samples play at random, and people then talking, talking, and more talking inside various cabins. It's all quite dull. In the end, out of food, our heroes that are left stumble around in the frozen woods for ten minutes until the last two of them (bearded Stan and the token girl) meet in an empty town, hold hands, and turn into naked children in an Adam and Eve lite deal. The end.

3/10



Is it MST3K Materiel? Yes.
More of a Mike or more of a Joel? Mike.

Why?: Although most of the movie is rather, tepid, and just features long scenes of people walking, the weird interludes of fake radio and TV shows break up the monotany just enough. Add to that the ever shifting music during the long walking scenes and I think this could of made an adequate, if not great, movie for the Mike and the bots.

K10 - Cosmic Princess

Observation: This features the first of many 'Land of Dairy Queen' references.

Movie Description: Not really a movie, but two episodes of the show Space: 1999 from 1975. Two episodes equals two plots: First, in a Star Trek Voyager like start, our heroes, who are drifting around the galaxy with Earth's moon as their spaceship are out of the precious mineral McGuffin. They find a planet that an evil guy and his innocent but naive daughter (the titular Cosmic Princess I imagine) control, complications ensue, and then do explosions. Second episode: Two, two plots for the price of one half. In the main one, the shape-shifting Princess girl keeps turning into various monsters and even though she just joined the cast, they do everything they can not to kill her. Oh, also given five minutes is something about the commander getting lost in a worm hole or something to that effect. Who cares?

Movie review: Remember that episode of Star Trek where a planet holds them hostage and Kirk threatens to blow up the ship instead? Or that episode of Next Generation where one of the crew has terrible dreams and gets taken over by some alien creature? Yeah, this is like one of both of those. Only more talky than Next Generation and cheesier than Trek the original. I can see why Star Wars was such a kick in the butt to sci-fi when it came out if THIS was the best they had. I'm sure this thing has its fans, but I am certainly not one of them.
4/10

Riffing: Crow was on fire in this episode! Usually when I take notes about my favorite riff, they're almost all Joel or Josh, today, Crow was pitching a shut out. Sadly, the other two didn't quite have too much to contribute as this movie, at least the first episode, was far far too talky and didn't leave a lot of breathing room. Both of them resorted to the 'explain what just happened' kind of riff, which get tiresome after awhile. There was some cute interplay between the three of them in the second half though.
Best riff: I think the prop department *just* ran out of money.
4/10

Sketches: Well, two firsts, both positive. The second movie break featured the first time one of the sketches made me laugh out loud and the first time Tom's head falls off. Not only does it fall off, but it continues to fall off, even as he enters the theater. I love the super low budget feel of these things. I do believe that the first break has the most easily dated sketch I've ever seen as not only do they talk about the brand new 'black Carson' (Arsenio Hall) but talk about the Super Bowl game that was on at the same time. I wonder if this was live?
4/10

Overall: Well, I gave every category a four, so in the spirit of fairness and brevity...
4/10

What I learned: It's cold in Minnesota, (duh) because the Time/Temp thing that shows up in the bottom of the screen on these has yet to rise above 40.

K09 - Phase IV

Observation: During the second to last sketch, Josh uses his Gypsy voice while voicing Servo.

Movie Description: For some vague reason or another, a bunch of ants gain intelligence in the Arizona desert and start killing everything, spiders, mantises (mantisi?) and people. A generic looking scientist type guy and a wanna be Loren Green type guy who happen to be in the desert for reasons that are equally vague sit around and pontificate on ways to kill them, leading up to a scientist v. ant war. A orphaned girl of indeterminate age rounds out the tiny, tiny human cast.

Movie review: Seriously, how much can you talk about a movie that is 40% close up, slow motion shots of ants doing... Whatever it is that ants do. Its quite neat really, even the gross shots of them getting squished. I'm quite curious how they got the ants to 'act' or how much film they wasted waiting for them to do the same. But overkill is the word. The movie is decent enough that when the crappy, no ending ending happens its rather dissapointing.
6/10

Riffing: When your movie is 40% close-up shots of ants, your riffing is logically 40% ant puns and thus, the riffing on this. If they were still improvising at this point, I have to say I'm quite impressed by the amount of puns they come up with on the spot, easy as they are. If this is typical of the rest of KTMA I think I'll be a-okay. This only looses a few points for the space between riffs.
Best riff: C. "Aww kitty." J. laughs "No that's a lamb."
5/10

Sketches: In the second movie break, I at a certain point Joel makes a joke, then wonders why the movie sign light hasn't come on, they then improvise for another thirty seconds or so before it hits. God I love the energy of this early show, even if it isn't always all that funny.
4/10

Overall: Pretty decent movie, pretty decent riffing, pretty spotty sketches, pretty alright episode. A bit of a tangent: Its interesting watching these things in order, as an isolated, blah episode is made so much better by the... For lack of a better word momentum that these early shows are building. You can see things developing like the flow of riffing or the characters. I'm now pretty pissed at myself that I haven't watched these before.
5/10

What I learned: Mystery Science Theater 3000 is brough to you by Pizza and Pasta who are only as far away as your phone.

K08 - Gamera vs. Guiron

Observation: At the very end of the episode, Josh breaks character as Gypsy and you can hear his normal voice giggling.

Movie Description: For the fifth movie in a row it's Gamera! Giant turtle from space(?) that battles other large monster things. In this case, it's Guiron a large dog/lizard thing with a ginormous blade for a head. He slices, dices, and makes fillets out of two episode's ago's monster Gaos. Of course, Gamera and the monsters by this point in the series are getting less and less screen time as the majority of the movie is taken up with the adventures of Kenny and Tom, two little boys that get transported to another planet and get chased around and tortured by two incompetent evil alien types. In the end, they have a fight, Gamera wins. Particle Man.

Movie Review: When I first started to try and watch the Gamera movies, I thought they were absolute rubbish, I think in part because this was the first one I saw. Lordy this sucks. "Gamera vs. Guiron" has the worst dubbing I have ever heard, or am likely to hear. Instead of changing the dialogue the three voice actors in this movie just. Take. Long.

Pauses in between each and every sentence to keep the time up. It's awful. It also doesn't help that the villains and the main characters moms sound exactly the same. Matter of fact, all the sound in this movie blows. The music is terrible, and repeats constantly, the sound effects are the same. To make matters worse, the action isn't even cool in that goofy monster movie way, its just dumb and boring. (Note: To establish how I rate this, much as I hated this movie, it gets two out of ten for the simple fact that its in focus, and, dumb as it is, its plot is coherent. Later MSTied films won't have this advantage)
2/10

Sketches: Nothing much to talk about here. The show's starting to find its rhythm. The mads appear in the first segment, and there's no more voice mails. It does feature the first ever song sung during the sketches and its mostly incoherent. About the only other thing of note is that in the second segment, Crow and the mads switch places in kind of a weird preview of "Last of the Wild Horses" in about six seasons. Also, they make a Dan Quayle joke. Gets my nostalgia meter going.
3/10

Riffing: Solid, but not nearly as uproarious as the previous episode. I think these Gamera movies were starting to wear on them, so good thing that there isn't any left. I mean, how many times can you be clever about two guys hammering at each other on fake looking sets? Especially when half-way through the movie shows about ten minutes of clips from movies they've already riffed. Sad really.
Best riff: "Lawn dart!"
3/10

Overall: Meh. Even though I'm a fan of them, I'm just a little bit sick of Gamera movies by now, I just can't muster a lot of enthusiasm for them, or maybe just this one in particular. Instead of getting a goofy grin thinking of it, I just get kind of pissed off. Weird.
3/10

What I learned: Wars are just as bad as traffic accidents.

K07 - Gamera vs. Zigra

Observation: Joel has used the same "water the source of all life" joke in every episode thus far.

Movie description: Zigra, a giant sword fish/spaceship/name of the alien race is attempting to take over the world, Gamera attempts to stop him, mouth permenantly agape. They fight, one wins. The end.

Oh, you want more? Okay. Becides from Gamera there's a bunch of human characters, most of which work at, or are the children of the people who work at some sort of Aquarium sea park dealie that happens to be near where the Zigra spaceship lands. As they're the closest humans, he kidnapps four of them including two kids, looses the kids, and sends his minion to go capture them in several Benny Hill esque segements. Turns out Zigra can only be beaten by.... I have no idea. The end of the movie comes and he's not really defeated. Gamera flies off, everybody's happy and... That's it.

Movie Review: You know what I like about this movie as opposed to most of the other Japanese monster movies featuring little kids? The kids in this movie act like real kids. They don't save the day with clever ploys or their relationship with Gamera or scientists or what have you... No, other than outsmarting a really stupid but hot alien chick, they pretty much just get in the way and irritate everybody. Honestly, with these big monster type movies it comes down to: Are the human characters likeable? In this case, yes, in an extremely goofy way. And, are the fights cool? No, but luckily for this movie, they are very, very short, which, I suppose, is the best alternative to cool fights.
6/10

Sketches: Waaaay less reliant on the voice mails this time, and that's a good thing. Cute as they are, I was already starting to get tired of them. Doing them once and episode, like the letters, is just fine. While none of the sketches are particularly funny nor un-funny, they're very homey feeling, even if it appears nobody's quite sure what exactly they're supposed to be doing in them. For instance, Joel mentions writing the theme song and then they preview the next episode's movie. But in the same episode they introduce the mad scientists and start what small framework of a plot the show has. It's odd, but works in a small town goofy way.
5/10

Riffing: Crow is unfrozen, (which means, hopefully that we won't see the clip of him being frozen for the sixth time) so with all three of 'em in the theatre, the riffs come much more frequently, and funny. I laughed a lot, and was smiling through the whole thing. You could also see some early versions of later re-occuring gags, like Joel's "Saaay" for attractive girls, repeating the movie's odd sound effects, and interactions with the screen, like Crow trying to look up the villain girls' skirt. Good time had by all. I only give it a fairly low score because of the pure small number of riffs, not the quality.
Best riff: "They need to fit more people into this shot."
5/10

Final Thoughts: If not for the gaps in riffing, this might of been one of my favorite episodes, I am extremely pleasantly surprised. Only a few, niggles get on my nerves, and most of that is just because of the differences between the KTMA's and the later episodes. And some, like the fact that in the sketches they always call him "GameroN" bug me regardless of the later changes. I think I see the show clicking, but I'm going to probably have to wait until a duller, or less goofy movie to fully decide.
5/10

What I learned: Fire acts the same under water, as it does above.

K06 - Gamera vs. Gaos

Observation: At one point Joel calls Servo 'Josh,' a few seconds after you hear his watch go off.

Movie plot: The construction of a highway is delayed because of some locals not wanting to sell. Some near riots break out, but none of that matters because the construction has awakened Gaos, a sort of flying lizard who shoots laser beams and is never really explained. But none of that matters because here's Gamera! Friend to all children! Enemy to all other monsters! Other things! There's an engineer guy who never takes off his yellow helmet, his dopey fellow engineers, a little kid who sounds like a 40 year old woman huffing helium and of course, the standard monster movie array of large eye-browed scientists and lots and lots of extras. Oh and the villagers. And some politicians. There's a lot of characters in this movie. Look out for a especially goofy scene involving a revolving restaurant.

Movie review: Okay... Now the Gamera movies are getting bad, mostly because of "Itchy". Okay, the majority of screen time in this movie is given to adult characters, but lordy, Itchy is annoying. It makes me root for the villains, and that's not a good thing as far as the movie makers are concerned. Then again, I'm not a little Japanese boy so I'm far from the target audience. (Thank God for small miracles.) The thing that really gets me about these movies is how bloody they are! Legs are ripped off, hands are sawed in half and each time torrents of 'blood' come out. It's just oddly contrasting with the goofiness and general kid-ness of the films. Weird. Ya, that's what it is, weird.
4/10

Sketches: Once again, dominated by voicemails and the frozen corpse of Crow. They're very cute, especially the one where the little kid invites them to his birthday party. Couldn't do that on the Sci-Fi channel, that's for sure. The second segment brings Servo's 'new voice' which is the one Johh Weinstein uses until the end of first season. I love it, and the sketch that introduces pretty funny too, even if some of the impersonations are quite, quite bad.
3/10

Riffing: Whew. Thank god Joel has some back-up in the theater, and Servo was on fire for the first half of the movie, until he kind of drives his re-occurring jokes, funny as they were, into the ground. That's okay though, because Joel's odd understanding of Itchy and Gamera's special friendship rules the second half of the movie. Best effort yet.
Best riff: "Mooo!" (Repeat ad naseum)
5/10

Overall: I got to admit. I'm impressed and surprised. I was laughing quite heartily at points in this movie, almost as much as Joel was at Josh's quips. When the improvised nature of the early show works, it really works, like in this one. Although its so hit and miss, I can see why they changed. I get the feeling I'm just lucky that this is such an easy target of a movie. Fun though.
6/10

What I learned:
A couple of mildly incompetent private engineers, a little kid, and his sister(?) have permanent access to the highest parts of Japanese government.

K05 - Gamera

Obsevation: About 40 minutes in, Joel is eating something in the theater. Wonder what it was.

Movie: Ah Gamera. He's not Godzilla. He's no Mothra. Heck, he's not even Rodan, the painter or the pteranodon, but none the less, I love this kind of movie. Give me a giant monster destroying Toyko while a bunch of scientists sit around pontificating any day. You can take your torture porn or fantasy epics, give me a turtle that breathes fire and I'm a happy, happy lad. That being said this is an incredibly mediocre example of the genre... But it's still in the genre so I'm mildly satisfied.
6/10

Sketches: Once again, all but the first and last sketches involve voice mail messages, and unlike the last time, no annoying Crow rants. Not great, but better than K04. I particularly liked Joel and Gypsy singing 'Oh Tannenbot' over Crow's frozen body that's been dressed up like a Christmas tree. Nobody could ever accuse this show of not working within its budget eh?
3/10

Riffing: Well, with only Joel and a particularly low energy Joel in the theater the riffing well, stunk. 70% of the riffs were on the level of "Hey, he's doing that thing." In other words, Joel just describing what's already going on on screen, not very funny. The last half or so brings some funny jokes about Kenny's Gamera obsession, but that's about it. I imagine it can't get worse than this.
Best riff: "The Piper cub is Gamera's natural enemy."
1/10

Overall: In the third sketch, they let the 'S' word get through on one of the voice mails, but on screen say it's 'ship.' Makes me pine for those lazier TV days of yore. Thank god the movie was alright because if it was one of the later, more boring type movies I'd probably be waking up from my coma about now. Joel alone was just out-matched, especially for never seeing the movie before. The sketches, though good spirited just couldn't bring this out of the doldrums. Good thing I know its pretty much nothing but upwards from here.
2/10

What I learned:
Gamera has certain organs that function like a hydro-electric plant.

K04 - Gamera vs. Barugon

Observation: The lead character looks a lot like a Japanese Martin Sheen.

Movie: As the only Gamera movie without an annoying kid or, amazingly, any kid at all. It gets extra points for that. The human cast is pretty decent for one of these things, especially the heel and the lead type guy, none of whos names are worth remembering. But then the monsters show up, and well, bore and confuse the crap out of everybody. The fights are horribly filmed, dark, and pointless. Also, Gamera is barely in this movie at all! He shows up in the first five minutes, all exposition, a fight scene halfway through and a deus ex machina appearence at the end. Sad really.
5/10

Sketches: I love the voicemails! But sadly, little else. Crow ranting and free associating takes up half the sketches and even Joel says that they're tiresome. The middle sketch got more laughs than the rest combined, and was quite, quite funny... Mostly because it relied on the voicemail. Oh well, it's early yet, only being the third real show and all.
2/10

Riffing: Great, hilarious, with a hit to miss ratio that beats later episodes and Rifftrax. Only problem; there's barely any riffs at all. The first five minutes only seemed to have two, and the poor quality copy available made them unintelligible. It did pick up about halfway through, luckily or else it would've been really hard to get through it.
Best riff: "This monster does not know the meaning of around."
3/10

Overall: Right before the first break, I suddenly noticed that Crow wasn't sitting in the theater anymore, and neither was Tom. Joel sat there by himself for about thirty seconds, then with no fanfare, got up and left. It took me ahile to notice this because they were being just as quiet then as they had the previous five minutes. Truth be told I was dreading watching this because of the horror stories of how bad and slow these were and well, the slowness holds but not the bad. I'm more dissapointed than annoyed because the riffing is so spot on when they acually bother to say something. We all gotta start out somewhere, eh?
2/10

What I learned:
A rainbow is a very powerful weapon.

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