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Mystery Science Theater 3000 - A Cowtown Puppet Show

1307
Gamera Vs. Jiger

Osaka's World Expo is on the way and everyone is excited but one island nation is upset a large statue called "The Devil's Whistle" is being taken for the event. Suddenly, Gamera appears and tries to prevent it, causing people to assume Gamera is a bad guy now? Sure enough, a giant monster, Jiger (AKA MONSTER X) awakens and attacks Expo 70. Gamera arrives to stop him but Jiger does something to Gamera to put him out of commission. To save him, two kids will have to travel inside him to discover the truth so Gamera can return for round 2.


This is a pretty decent ep and apparently the writers had an uphill battle: usually the episodes are edited here and there for time but one provision for showing this film was showing it at full length and boy does it show in that last fight. It's only 86 minutes but it feels like an eternity. That's not to say the film isn't fun, in it's way, but it's 25 minutes of fun, tops, stretched out to 86. So it gets rough.

It also doesn't help that the kids in this Gamera movies suck. They fucking suck. I don't hate kids. I love them. But this feels like the complaint everyone has with Caillou except the kids are twice as old. The boy in this film is rude to his friends when they question Gamera's loyalty to all children and does whatever he wants with no consequence and an assumption he is in the right and he always is in the context of the movie. THESE KIDS SUCK HARD, you guys.

But it is a funny episode. Some great riffs and the sketches, which after often my least favourite part, has some good stuff. A lot of fun is had at the expense that the stakes are the enjoyment of the World Expo, specifically, and how it's sort of this big ad for the event. Watching the entire movie makes it a big rough because.. let's face it, Gamera movies are worse than Godzilla ones. but it still has some weird charm to it.

It's also surprisingly violent. The Gamera films are intended for a younger audience but after the first fight all of Gamera's limbs are impaled. Then later Gamera is infected with a baby Jiger parasite and we get film of an elephants trunk being surgically opened to remove a lot of wormy larval parasites and even if its using fake footage, it's still very gross. Then in the climax, which goes on for fucking ever, Gamera grabs the whistle he's supposed to use to put Jiger to sleep... and impales him in the eye with it. Which is actually a pretty funny swerve but fuck, that's rough.

As for Jiger... I feel like there's not a clear throughline for this monster.

latest

It looks generic but it has whatever powers the writer thinks up with no idea of theme. It's kind of the ultimate monster for the series, far less simple than "fast monster fish". "blood-sucking bat-o-dactyl" or "knife with legs" (Guiron is easily the best one). Jiger can shoot tusk darts, has a sonic ray (which they weirdly call a heat ray despite Gamera defeating it by sticking stuff in his ears), a spiked tail which infects Gamera a parasite that looks like itself and shoots sticky snot, and also can propel itself in the air with what appear to be rocket powered gills. It's too much. I appreciate that it is imaginative but... too much.

It's not my favourite of the season but it's a pretty good one and is my second favourite of the Gamera episodes (the only one I actually enjoy is the batshit Gamera Vs. Guiron, particularly for it's weird dub.)
 
Pluto TV is free. You can just click through and start watching in your browser. (not sure how it works outside the US...)
 
I tried PlutoTV on my PS4 a couple years back. As someone who doesn't have cable it was a neat novelty. The one problem I had was that zero human thought was given to where in a program the commercial breaks occur, with shows and movies often cutting not just in the middle of a scene but mid-syllable of dialogue to go to an ad. Maybe that's been improved upon since then, I don't know. But this seems like a good reason to give it another shot!
 
Yep, the crowdfund for season 14 did not work. But some interesting news; Joel has sold the show.

I know that sounds like bad news. Ever since the reboot, it's been clear how dedicated Joel has been to the series and everything involved with it. But the new owners are Radial, who were created in a merger with FilmRise and Shout! Shout! actually has been co-owner of MST3k for quite a while and have been very good to the show in terms of finding and getting movies for the show (they also work with Rifftrax, who also has an impressive crap catalogue) and making sure they are scene. They even are posting the Netflix episodes on youtube. And it sounds like there is a vague plan to bring it back.


www.mediaplaynews.com

Radial Entertainment Completes Purchase of 'MST3K' - Media Play News

Radial Entertainment, the entertainment company formed from the merger of Shout! Studios and FilmRise, has obtained full ownership over the “Mystery Science Theater 3000” brand from creator Joel Hodgson’s Alternaversal. “MST3K” had been jointly owned by Alternaversal and Shout! Studios since...
www.mediaplaynews.com www.mediaplaynews.com
 
Wow, news of Season 14 happened fast and... I'm very torn. Glad to have the show back but the problem is bringing back Mike Nelson


Basically, if you are unaware, it had been known for a while that Mike was fairly conservative. He wasn't a chud. He mostly kept it under his hat in his art. I heard this but never really saw evidence and Bill Corbett is a truly cool guy so it never stopped me from buying RiffTrax. But during covid, it came out Mike was producing a Doug TenNapel podcast when Doug had an episode with a homophobic, racist rant. Now to be clear, Mike apologized and cut ties. But Doug was already a known "awful person", which means either Mike must have been aware or he's an irresponsible level of "not paying attention" on who he is helping produce podcasts for. I also low-key had a problem with his apology, which I think is sincere but also... just wasn't quite enough for me. This isn't quite a conventional case of pure milkshake duck but I also really don't want to support someone who had been supporting TenNapel, a known creep. It's basically why I quit Rifftrax. I feel like I get why someone might be able to move on compared to, say, creative forces that remain overtly shit-people.

Bill Corbett? Still a cool guy. He's a really cool ally and has said he's regretted some of the more poorly aged gags and went back and removed some of the shittier jokes from earlier Rifftrax.

I do like that this season is doing what I feel like was missing from the previous New-era seasons, I like though but there's a sense that a lot of the people are working remotely because they are all busy actors while this seems like it is trying to get back to a humble and more intimate writers room. But I was really kind of hoping Mike was done with this. Well, I feel like the fact that it is subtitled "Rifftrax Experiment" implies this is a one-off so I'm hoping the next season will be about new voices.
 
Johnny Unusual said:
I also really don't want to support someone who had been supporting TenNapel, a known creep.
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I think Mike Nelson and TenNapel go way back. I don't know exactly when their relationship began but Nelson voiced the main character in TenNapel's 2015 game Armikrog, so it's been over a decade at least.

Disappointing news to be sure and I share your discomfort.
 
I always enjoyed Mike’s episodes more than Joel’s, so I might check these out after being pretty lukewarm on the newer show.

Things have gotten so awful that Mike having been friends with the shitty Earthworm Jim guy doesn’t phase me much. There’s way worse people than an asshole cartoonist to worry about. You could almost say there are entire files of them!
 
Mike's problematic associations aside, I've been a little frustrated by the some of the unexamined nostalgia in the community, especially in the context of other properties getting shit on for changing over time (see: Star Trek, Doctor Who). I mean, I get it, Mike's seasons are what I watched when I was younger, but I liked the Jonah episodes I watched (I haven't seen much of Emily). I can appreciate them for how they are and aren't different. I guess Joel taking over was in and of itself also a nostalgia trip, but this definitely feels a little more like "We gotta bring out the big guns from the past to please our aging fans who hate new things."
 
Lakupo said:
Mike's problematic associations aside, I've been a little frustrated by the some of the unexamined nostalgia in the community, especially in the context of other properties getting shit on for changing over time (see: Star Trek, Doctor Who). I mean, I get it, Mike's seasons are what I watched when I was younger, but I liked the Jonah episodes I watched (I haven't seen much of Emily).
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The Jonah/Emily/Joel season is quite good. It is a shame that Joel's plan to make a MST3k specific streaming service mean a lot of people missed it. I really like Kelsey Ann Brady, Emily's Crow, who had a sort of "kids on the Simpsons" kind of voice and the season opener ranks as one of the strongest. The season finale was a fun experiment (no pun intended) but the film itself makes it the weakest of the series Christmas specials. Overall, I hope people go back and check season 13 out.
 
Lakupo said:
Mike's problematic associations aside, I've been a little frustrated by the some of the unexamined nostalgia in the community, especially in the context of other properties getting shit on for changing over time (see: Star Trek, Doctor Who). I mean, I get it, Mike's seasons are what I watched when I was younger, but I liked the Jonah episodes I watched (I haven't seen much of Emily). I can appreciate them for how they are and aren't different. I guess Joel taking over was in and of itself also a nostalgia trip, but this definitely feels a little more like "We gotta bring out the big guns from the past to please our aging fans who hate new things."
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They also just announced Trace and Frank will be back. I don't know if it means for all the episodes (because I don't think they upped the number of episodes, but I haven't paid attention to the kickstarter) but it's interesting because they already announced the return of Pearl (and Bobo and Brain Guy). I'd call it kind of overstuffed with villains but so was the last MST3k season really, with the introduction of a new benefactor and Pearl and Erhardt hanging around and multiple Pearl Clones. They went deep on that.

Worth noting that for the last decade, Frank and Trace have continually done riffs as a duo (the Mads), mostly focusing on educational films.
 
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