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Released by: Shout! Factory
Released on: 12/1/2009
Director: Various
Cast: Various
Year: Various
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The Movies:
Picking up where Rhino left off, Shout! Factory unleashes another four titles from their ongoing Mystery Science Theater boxed set line. For the few out there unaware of who or what the Mystery Science Theater thing is all about, basically, it was a long running show in which a recurring cast of characters - a space castaway and his robot pals - were forced to watch bad movies while doing time on a satellite. This simple premise basically allowed Joel Hodgsen or Mike Nelson (depending on how early or recent the episode in question may be), Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett (who have recently teamed up to pick up where they left off with their Rifftrax project) to crack wise about 'bad' movies. The series was on the air from 1988 through 1999 and it still has a loyal cult following to this day while it's various participants have gone on to other, similar projects like Cinematic Titanic and the aforementioned Rifftrax downloads.
This time around, the gang takes on the following four films:
THE CORPSE VANISHES
This creaky old staple of public domain cheapie packs follows a nosey journalist named Patricia Hunter who investigates a rash of murders where the victims, all brides, are found dead in their wedding dresses - only to disappear before they can be properly buried. Hunter notices one key that ties them all together - the women were all wearing an unusual orchid. Through some careful sleuthing Hunter traces the flower back to the strange Dr. Lorenz, who she decides to question about the flowers. Hunter then teams up with Dr. Foster and soon the pair wind up in Lorenz's eerie house in the middle of nowhere. They soon find out that Lorenz is quite mad, as he's prone to sleeping in coffins and has a midget assistant who helps him drain fluid from virgins which he uses as an anti-aging serum to help his wife.
An early episode, this one features the crew just barely starting to hit their stride. The jokes don't fly quite as frequently or with as much zing as they would in later efforts but compared to the episodes that came before this one, they're getting much closer. The skits that take place here are pretty lukewarm (I admit that I never enjoyed the skits as much as the plain and simple commentary) and the back and forth between the guys as the movie plays out won't have you in stitches, but it's better than a lot of the other episodes done around the same time as this one. The film provides plenty of fodder for the crew, what with Bela's bizarre assistants and the film's rather ludicrous dialogue but they don't always seem to take full advantage of it. Not a terrible effort, but not a great one either.
NIGHT OF THE BLOOD BEAST
When this epic of trash starts, an astronaut lands at a space base after a mission that took him to the far reaches of outer space and is found dead, the victim of an alien who then proceeds to take over the base where the ship landed and cut off all communication with the outside world. Complicating matters further is the fact that the astronaut gets resurrected with an alien creature growing inside of him. Members of the base's science team soon wind up dead, leaving only a small group of survivors alive inside the base, with the fate of the world resting solely on their shoulders!
This one takes a bit of time to get going but once the alien monster is on the loose and the horror movie elements starting taking off it improves. There's plenty of good material for them to take on in the last half of the picture which makes it easy to forgive the slow start. The ridiculous and completely unfrightening look and sound of the monster, the bad acting, the bad dialogue - they get to it, it just takes them a bit of time to warm up.
SANTA CLAUS
This amazingly bizarre Rene Cardona feature follows Santa Claus from his cloud castle home in the North Pole as he uses high tech surveillance gear to spy in kids the world over. He does this to see who has been naughty and who has been nice so that come Christmas Eve, he can descend upon their homes and bombard them with presents. This year, Santa has taken a creepy interest in a kid named Lupita, whose parents have no money to buy her the doll she so desperately wants for Christmas. He's also digging the son of a rich family, whose parents are more interest in their money than in their own child. Unfortunately for pretty much every body, the Devil sends his right hand man, a demon named Pitch, to recruit three bad kids and lay traps for the fat man across the globe. Hell-bent on ruining Christmas for everyone, these jerks try to stop him at every opportunity, but Santa's smarter than they are… and he's got his pal Merlin and his animatronic reindeer to help him out when the going gets tough.
Early on in the commentary for this film they describe the picture as nightmare fuel, and that's a pretty apt description of this completely off the wall movie that had to have terrified more than a few kids when it was first released. As colorful and quirky as anything you can imagine, the film is also seriously creepy and more than once Santa has an almost pedophilic quality to him, matched only by Pitch's strangely homoerotic gestures. This movie is fucking weird and the guys have a blast with it, as it really is perfect material for them and at this point in the game, they'd really started to find the right rhythm. This is one of those instances, however, where the film is just as entertaining on its own -a shame that the non-MST3K version wasn't included (for this or any of the other three movies in the set).
WARRIOR OF THE LOST WORLD
This cheap Italian Mad Max cash-in is set after the apocalypse where a nameless warrior (Robert Ginty) travels through the wastelands on a supersonic motorcycle that is equipped with a remarkably irritating computer named Einstein. While being chased by the Gestapo-ish law enforcement agents of the future, he somehow manages to drive right through an invisible wall. He learns that this is because he is 'pure in spirit' and so he is recruited by The Elders, a mysterious group determined to overthrow the evil Prossor who rules this crappy future with an iron fist. The Warrior must first find and free professor McWayne, their unfortunately captured leader who is soon to be put to death so that they can succeed in their mission and so he and a hot chick named Nastasia (Persis Khambatta with a full head of hair) head into the city to battle the Omega soldiers and save the day. Fred Williamson co-stars.
Robert Ginty - he's the Gintiest. This is another really strong episode, with enough bad movie making elements in it to provide the perfect sort of material for the crew to take on. The jokes in this episode are consistently funny and entirely appropriate. Sometimes the commentaries can get a bit sidetracked, but here the crew are consistently on target and the movie is all the better for it. There's a moment in the first third of the film where, in unison, all three tell Einstein to shut up - and you'll find yourself thinking or possibly saying the same thing at the same time. The timing this time around is pretty much perfect.
Video/Audio/Extras:
The fullframe interlaced transfers that grace all four films in this set won't blow you away but they're watchable enough particularly when taken in the intended context. You will see the MST3K silhouettes in front of the screen so purists take note, and the transfers are taken from often times edited down old TV masters so those expecting the movies to appear here as they were originally intended will be disappointed. That said, they look as good here as they did on TV when they first aired and pristine video quality isn't really the point here. Are the transfers great? Nope, but they don't need to be.
The commentary comes through nice and clear, there are no problems understanding the participants and they've balanced nicely against the audio from the movie itself. As far as the quality of that part is concerned, it's on par with the transfer. It's not great, in fact, there are times where it sounds quite shrill. It gets the job done, I suppose, but it's nothing impressive.
Shout! Factory has put together a fairly decent slew of supplements for this, though the disc housing The Corpse Vanishes contains only a trailer and some menus and chapter stops (which are standard on all four discs in the set). The Night Of The Blood Beast disc has the Turkey Day '95 bumpers that played with the episode when it first aired on Thanksgiving back in 1995. You can play them on their own with an amusing introduction from Kevin J. Murphy or with the episode as it was originally seen. Basically the bumpers are roughly twelve minutes worth of amusing Thanksgiving themed sketches.
Warrior Of The Lost World features a great twenty one minute interview with the film's director, David Worth, who gives a very laidback interview about where the idea came for this film, how he feels about it by today's standards, and how he feels about the MST3K treatment that it has received. Worth, who has since made a name for himself with the notorious Shark Attack films, has definitely got a sense of humor about his work and you can't help but like the guy. Worth also supplies a commentary that plays over top of a five and a half minute still gallery of production photos releases to the movie.
The most stacked disc in the set, as far as the extras go, is the Santa Claus disc which contains an excellent forty-two minute documentary entitled Santa Claus Conquers The Devil: A Fifty Year Retrospective. This is an excellent look at the history of this truly odd picture, from how it started in Mexico with Rene Cardona only to be imported by K. Gordon Murray to the United States where it was dubbed and found a whole new audience. Of course, the piece also explores the film's enduring and unusual legacy and elaborates on why it remains such a favorite. If that weren't enough, there's also a promotional spot for the upcoming documentary, The Wonder World Of K. Gordon Murray, which looks like a fascinating exploration of the late producer's life and work. A still gallery, an original trailer and a collection of radio spots are also included.
Inside the packaging along with the discs (packed in slimline cases) you'll find some neat mini posters. In addition to that, the limited edition release comes with a way too cool Tom Servo toy.
The Final Word:
This isn't a set you buy for the A/V quality so much as you do for the commentary but Shout! Factory have done a pretty decent job here, especially with the extra features this go around. Not every episode is a classic but this set is worth it for Warrior and Santa Claus alone. Think of the other two as a bonus.