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Released by: Shout! Factory
Released on: December 6, 2011.
Director: Various
Cast: Joel Hodgson, Kevin J. Murphy, Michael J. Nelson
Year: Various
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The Movie:
Shout! Factory presents four more never before released on DVD episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000, this time pairing up a couple of Japanese imports with a juvenile delinquent morality tale penned by none other than Ed Wood and a clunky old thriller starring the mighty Rondo Hatton.
MIGHTY JACK:
The first of two imports from the land of the rising sun is this 1968 film that lets us in on a criminal organization named Q's plans to take over the entire world and enslave them, or something to that effect. Regardless, they're up to no good and so a crack team of crime fighters who go under the puzzling team name of Mighty Jack is formed to stop Q from taking over the planet. A guy named Mr. Atari is then kidnapped by Q, because he knows a lot about Mighty Jack, and Mighty Jack head out to rescue him, and then later Q steals plans for a freeze gun and some tricky ice that won't melt which they use to destroy an island. Mighty Jack is called in again to stop Q from further ruining everything for the rest of us.
Trying to make sense out of this one can be tough, at one point the commentators note that we're coming to a fork in the plot and making a wrong turn (just as a car drives up to a fork in the road, naturally) but the MST3K version is a lot of fun. Again, some pretty obscure references are worked into the riffs to reward those who pay close attention, but in addition to making comments towards the Crystal Cathedral and Arnold Schwarzenegger, they get a bit more physical in their seats, and at one point Crow kisses the lips of a man on the screen.
This season three episode all works its way to ridiculous conclusion where one of the bad guys jumps on his brief case (obviously containing some important secret stuff), seemingly mounting it from behind, a fact that isn't lost on the guys as they note, when he blows up on top of the case, that he died as he lived, loving his work.
TIME OF THE APES:
A blatant rip of Planet Of The Apes, this bizarre Japanese import began life as a TV series in 1974 which was then edited down into a ninety minute movie, dubbed into English and unleashed on an unsuspecting but entirely deserving public under the title Time Of The Apes.
The storyline follows Caroline and Johnny, a young brother and sister duo who pay a visit to a laboratory run by their uncle, a scientist working in cryogenics - his specialty seems to be freezing monkeys. At any rate, while they're touring the facility with some help from uncle's assistant, Catharine, things go horribly wrong and she throws herself and the two kids into a cryo-chamber and when an earthquake dislodges a rock which hits the controls, she inadvertently winds up freezing them and herself. They awake in a strange future where apes call the shots and humans are looked down upon. Will they be able to make it back to their own world or will they be forced to live on the run and be hunted down like animals? If a friendly kid monkey named Pepe has his way, they'll do just fine!
Made on a budget that would make Doctor Who cringe, this cheapjack production rips off Planet Of The Apes so blatantly that it's amazing it exists in the first place and hasn't been obliterated by Fox's lawyers. Not only is the concept basically the same, minus the man on lady ape romance angle, but the make-up effects are obvious imitations as well. The whole thing is just ridiculous, from Johnny's obnoxious 'I don't care!' attitude to Pepe's screwy behavior that we're probably supposed to find endearing to Catherine's decision to throw everyone into a cryogenic freezing station in the first place. None of it makes much sense and none of it is done well, which makes it prime MST3K material.
This episode finds the crew at the height of their powers, running the 'I don't care' joke into the ground and working in references to everything from Commando to Calvin Klein and Bugle Boy Jeans commercials, making stops along the way to dig at the aforementioned Doctor's archenemies, Sandy Frank productions (he's the source of all our pain!), Richard Simmons and the good old McDLT too. Remember those? It keeps the hot side hot and the cool side cool. The jokes come quickly and are way more hit than miss, making this episode the stand out in the set and one of the best in the season it came from (which, if you're keeping score, is season three).
THE VIOLENT YEARS:
Ed Wood's stab at cashing in on the juvenile delinquent movie craze was 1956's The Violent Years which tells the story of a lovely young woman named Paula Parkins (Jean Moorhead) who is the daughter of a man (Arthur Millan) more concerned with running his newspaper business than being a good father to his growing girl. You'd think mom (Barbara Weeks) would pick up the slack but that isn't going to happen, as she's more into hanging out with her friends and spending as much time out of the family home as possible. As such, young Paula doesn't really have a whole lot going for her in terms of role models - and we all know what paths that will lead her down, right?
She winds up hanging out with some bad girls and gets involved in a gas station hold up before partying it up, drinking booze, and then kidnapping a guy and taking him out into the woods... to rape him? Yep, they rape him. It turns out that Paula and her friends are working for a women who, behind the scenes, is employing wayward youths such as herself to do the work of the dreaded communists - and when Paula and her crew trash a classroom at the local high school, Paula winds up icing a cop - at which point she's hauled into court and her parents are lectured by a boring judge. At this point, locked up and tossed into the clink where it turns out that raping guys in the woods has unintended consequences. That's right, little Paula's going to be a mommy soon - unless the world catches up with her and she kills herself, which is exactly what happens. Let this one be a lesson to you, kids - don't rape dudes in the woods and don't kill cops (as tempting as it might be sometimes), it'll only get you in trouble.
It won't surprise anyone reading this to learn that The Violent Years is a bad film (Wood wrote it, after all), but as bad as it is, and it's very bad, it's tough not to have a good time with it. Full of grand moralizing and anti-communist sentiment, it's very definitely a product of its political time, but we get this though Wood's bizarre world view rather than through any sort of sensible look at things as they were. Of course it makes sense that absentee parents will wind up driving their kids to gallivanting around town with pinko commies and wind up getting them involved in rape and murder! It only stands to reason, right?
Typical cheapjack Woodsian production values make this one look like it was made for about a buck fifty while the performances he manages to coax out of his cast are wooden as wooden can be, but only when they're not chewing through the scenery like its wet cardboard. There's very little style or flash here, it's poorly shot and all over the place in terms of pacing, but Wood fans ought to devour this one and get a big, stupid kick out of it, that's for sure.
As far as the MST3K version goes, this one is ripe for the picking and the guys show it no mercy. The performances, the production values, the direction and the pacing all come under rapid fire attack and this one winds up a highlight in an all around very strong collection. It should also be noted that, just as it was in broadcast form, this episode is preceded by an educational short called A Young Man's fancy that teaches us some sort of backwards life lesson about kitchen appliances and girls.
THE BRUTE MAN:
This season seven episode takes on the 1946 Jean Yarbough thriller The Brute Man in which a man named Hal (Rondo Hatton) gets disfigured in an accident and then sets out to get revenge on those he feels are responsible for ruining his life. He winds up making friends with a foxy blind piano instructor named Helen (Jane Adams) and he decides that because he's falling in love with her, he should help her out and get her that operation she needs to restore her vision. In order to do this, he's going to have to go out and rob and steal from innocent people, but love makes us all do strange things. As Hal goes around robbing and stealing and getting revenge, his past starts to catch up with him.
Preceded by a short called The Chicken Of Tomorrow, a bizarre bit about what the government is doing to future proof America's poultry, this is another solid episode in this set. While this movie actually plays rather well on its own as a cool poverty row B-grade thriller the guys manage to work in digs along the way that compliment things without ever getting too nasty with the movie. References to Shakespeare pop up as do some pretty funny Cat Stevens musical nods and, yes, The Pet Shop Boys - possibly the only time that happens in the entire series.
Video/Audio/Extras:
The fullframe interlaced transfers that grace this DVD set won't blow you away but they're certainly watchable enough particularly when taken in the intended context. You will see the MST3K silhouettes in front of the screen (and occasionally interacting with the images!) so purists take note, and the transfer is taken from an old TV master so those expecting the movie to appear here as it was originally intended will be disappointed. That said, it looks as good here as it did on TV when it first aired and pristine video quality isn't really the point here. If you've seen MST3K before, you'll know what to expect. The first film is in black and white, the follow up films all in color, but the skits in between viewing sessions are in color throughout and understandably and look a fair bit better than the movies themselves do.
The commentaries come through nice and clear for each of the five episodes and there are no problems understanding the participants as they're balanced nicely against the audio from the movies. As far as the quality of that aspect is concerned, the tracks are on par with the transfers. They're not great; in fact, there are times where it sounds a little shrill. Overall though the audio is perfectly serviceable.
The Mighty Jack disc includes a seven minute interview with August Ragone who offers up the secret origin of Mighty Jack, noting connections to other Japanese productions of the same time and discussing how it came to be dubbed into English. There's also a seven minute featurette here with the guy who makes the MST3K menus who talks about his inspiration for the menus that he makes and how he goes about creating them.
Extras for Time Of The Apes includes a five minute segment with August Ragone who gives some history of this feature and talks about its origins on Japanese TV and how it came to be the horrible movie that it is. There are also five minutes of old school Mystery Science Theater Hour wraps included here.
The Violent Years DVD contains a few choice supplements in the form of an interview with Delores Fuller and a second interview with Kathy Wood. The Fuller piece runs for twenty-four minutes and lets the lady talk about her involvement in this production and with Wood and the Kathy Wood piece runs eighteen minutes and lets her wax nostalgic about her relationship with the enigmatic Wood. Both pieces are shot on video some time ago and come courtesy of Ted Newsom - they're inclusion here is quite welcome.
Extras on The Brute Man are pretty neat, starting off with a four minute intro from Mary Jo Pehl that gives some welcome background information on the movie and it's central character. There's also a featurette on here entitled Trail Of The Creeper: Making The Brute Man, an excellent half hour long documentary that plays things completely straight and details not only the star of the film in Rondo Hatton but also the writing, the history of the character and the themes that run through the movie. There's some great biographical information in here on the people who made the movie and much more - good stuff. There's also a featurette on here called The Making Of MST3K from 1997, a twenty-two minute look at the MST3K phenomena, how it all came together and what it's all about. There are some great vintage interviews with the creators and cast of the show and clips that show how an average episode was put together.
The Final Word:
All in all, another great entry in Shout! Factory's line of Mystery Science Theater 3000 boxed set releases. All four episodes are well worth revisiting and there are some seriously choice extra features in here that will appeal to movie fans and hardcore MST3K fans alike.