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Mystery Science Theater 3000 - A Cowtown Puppet Show

Daikaiju

Rated Ages 6+
(He, Him)

Update #8 from Let's Make More MST3K & Build The Gizmoplex!


Apr 23 2021​


We've got SIX MOVIE SIGNS + GIZMOPLEX APPS! Next Up: $4.4M, NINE EPISODES, MORE LIVE EVENTS and the RETURN OF JOEL ROBINSON! Plus... New ALL DIGITAL Reward Level!

  • GOAL 2 REACHED: We can now make SIX NEW EPISODES!
  • Progress Report: 76% of the way to NINE EPISODES!
  • Bonus Challenge 2: Quest of the Delta Knights UNLOCKED!
  • Experiment 85: New "All Digital" Reward Level Added
  • Livestream Update: Join us Monday at 5pm PT / 8pm ET
 

Johnny Unusual

(He/Him)
I almost switched to the all digital level. Still might but I like the idea of getting the physical popcorn bucket. But the digital also means "name on credits" which I'm down with.
 

lincolnic

can stop, will stop
(he/him)
The all digital level is exactly what I was hoping for. I don't need merch or toys, I just want new episodes!
 

Sprite

(He/Him/His)
I'm definitely really happy to see this campaign succeed, and that this franchise still has enough love to be completely fan-funded.

I'm a little confused as to how the rollout is going to work, though. They say they don't want it to be a streaming service with just MST3K on it, but... is it a streaming service with just MST3K on it, plus live events? How much MST3K will be on it at once? If I'm reading right it sounds like you get a small curated selection each month with a pass, but otherwise have to rent/buy from the voluminous back catalogue a la carte. Which is cool, since if you buy them you get a DRM-free download, but I'm wondering if I can wait until the new season is all out, buy a one-month pass, and watch them all then, or if they're shuffled off to the vault after their premiere month.

I'll likely throw some money their way at some point, if only to support creator-owned content. I'm just a little confused as to my options for accessing the content.
 

Daikaiju

Rated Ages 6+
(He, Him)
Final total is

$6,518,260​


We'll be getting a Halloween episode and a new Holiday Special as well as the full season and 12 short riffs like the infamous "Mr. B Natural"
 
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Johnny Unusual

(He/Him)
Worth noting that in one of their live streams, Joel announced two of the movies.


And

 

Daikaiju

Rated Ages 6+
(He, Him)
e6a39bc92d99fe0be6d6a6369f02e0a2_original.jpeg

That's right – MST3K is riffing another Gamera movie!

And not just any Gamera movie: Gamera vs. Jiger is by far the most ambitious and outrageous Gamera I’ve ever seen in my long life of movie riffing.

For starters, the setting is not only a tropical island which has it own kaiju god named Jiger – a brownish greyish triceratops that shoots poisonous quills from her face – but also at the 1970 World’s Fair in Suita, Osaka Prefecture, Japan, which is going on at the same time!

So yeah, you’re gonna get some fights on the land, sea, sky, and at the World’s Fair all featuring the flying turtle taking on Jiger... but then, one of Jiger's darts causes Gamera to fall asleep and turn gray, after which he ends up submerged in the ocean with his mouth hanging open. Then, two ambitious kids drive a mini-sub into Gamera's mouth, and fight a baby Jiger that’s living inside Gamera like a virus. And then more things happen, but I kinda lose track at that point.
 

Jeanie

(Fem or Gender Neutral)
Okay folks, here is the official list of Season 13 movies:
Santo in The Treasure of Dracula" Mexican wrestler El Santo invents a time machine. After somebody uses the machine to find the hidden location of Drácula's treasure, El Santo must hunt down the vampire."

Robot Wars​

"A renegade Megarobot pilot and an archaeologist must team up to thwart the Centro's attempts to resurrect a hidden Megarobot, with which they can challenge the prevailing order."

Beyond Atlantis​

"A band of adventurers invade a native island determined to grab a reported fortune in buried treasure. The islanders are just as determined to keep their sacred treasure. Complications ensue."

Munchie​

"A bullied boy meets Munchie, a friendly gremlin-like creature that dresses like a lounge singer, sounds like a stand-up comedian and has magic powers."

Doctor Mordrid​

"An unspeakable evil has come into our dimension and wants to rule over Earth, and only a mysterious sorceror known as Doctor Mordrid can stop him."

Demon Squad​

"Nick Moon, P.I. (Paranormal Investigator), delves into a hidden world of monsters and creatures of the night as he takes on a case to retrieve an ancient artifact with astonishing power."

Gamera vs. Jiger​

"When an ancient statue is moved for display in Expo '70, a giant, vaguely Triceratops-like monster is released. The monster goes to Japan in pursuit of the statue and ends up battling Gamera, the giant flying turtle."
(This was one of the few Gamera movies not riffed in the original run of MST3K)
The Batwoman
"Batwoman is called to investigate a whacked out scientist that is capturing wrestlers and using their spinal fluid to create a Gill Man."

The Million Eyes of Sumuru​

"Sumuru is a beautiful but evil woman who plans world domination by having her sexy all-female army eliminate male leaders and replace them with her female agents."
HG Wells' The Shape of Things to Come
"Some time in the future, man has set up colonies on the Moon, when Earth becomes uninhabitable. A madman decides to destroy the Moon colonies with his robots and automated ships, and only three people and their robot can stop him."

The Mask 3D​

"A young archaeologist believes he is cursed by a mask that causes him to have weird nightmares and possibly to murder. Before committing suicide, he mails the mask to his psychiatrist, Dr. Barnes, who is soon plunged into the nightmare world of the mask."
The Bubble
"Mysterious atmospheric effects force a pregnant woman and her husband to land their airplane in a remote town whose inhabitants behave zombie-like, repeating the same movements and sentences over and over. As the mystery unfolds the two find themselves trapped and search for escape."

The Christmas Dragon
"A group of orphans goes on a journey to restore the lost magic and save Christmas."
Forgive the formatting issues, my tablet is dumb with regards to copy/paste
 

Johnny Unusual

(He/Him)
The latter. It was created to avoid cancellation issues so basically if it goes tits up, they only have themselves to blame.

Worth noting, actor Hampton Yount claims Munchie was the first movie that "broke" him. Its also a sequel to one of the 80s countless Gremlins rip offs and the title character is voiced by Dom Deluise.

Personally, I loved Samson Vs. The Vampire Women and am excited for another El Santo movie. Particularly one where a luchadore invents a time machine to fight Dracula.
 
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Daikaiju

Rated Ages 6+
(He, Him)
Huh. I watched Dr. Mordrid back in the day. It's obviously Dr. Strange with the numbers filed off. I'm guessing it was produced when Marvel was rethinking about handing out licenses to whoever would make a movie, regardless of pedigree.
 
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Johnny Unusual

(He/Him)
Yeah, I haven't seen it but it is a reworking of an actual Dr. Strange script, as I understand it. Also, even in a bad movie, give me more Jeffrey Combs.
 

Johnny Unusual

(He/Him)
Reminder: Season 13 starts this week!

Here:

 

Vaeran

(GRUNTING)
(he/him)
Wow, this really snuck up on me, despite multiple announcements in this very thread!
 

Johnny Unusual

(He/Him)
So I guess I didn't realize that if you aren't a kickstarter backer, you'll have to wait a bit longer until the first new episode becomes available. Sorry, non-backers.

Anyway, here are my impressions of the first episode of season 13. I'll start with the bad, which, good news, isn't that bad. (EDIT: I see it is up for purchase but I don't know if it is pre-purchase or it will go up for free for Gizmoplex viewers for streaming after a couple months).

Santo in the Treasure of Dracula

First, the new intro is a step down from the Netflix seasons. It's understandable; 11-12 were flexing some serious comeback muscle but now we are having a show produced during covid and I imagine a lot more of the kickstarter money went into the Gizmoplex, the new streaming service. So it looks notably cheaper. This also extends to the door sequence, which isn't BAD yet is also the worst door sequence. See, even the cheaper looking early ones had a cool feel with it's models but season 13 has a more cardboard aesthetic. It's slicker than it sounds and is by no means bad but it's a cardboard, flat re-creation of the season 11-12 set, which is a fantastic looking sequence (which I would love to own as a toy), and it just lacks a little.

But the good news is these are smaller textural things and it's sort of like complaining about the utensils the food came with; valid, sure, but only really matters if it is very bad. Yeah, you might notice and sniff a bit when maybe some cool, ornate ones are replaced with something more standard, but it doesn't change the meal.

And the meal is the show. So, the sketches are fine. They've usually been my least favourite part unless they really swing for the fences with idiosyncrasies. And this era is less that and I don't mean to say it doesn't have personality but I feel like even this crew of creators, who clearly like and respect each other, do lack the same chemistry as a group that came up together in the same community and have all those weird shorthands. So there's still a little disconnect in the riffing, probably also effected on how the show is made with COVID. But this is not really different than the Netflix seasons. Again, this doesn't hurt it immensely but it does lose a small but memorable something.

What I loved is the episode finally fixed one of my big issues with seasons 11-12. The joke flow is better. It means fewer jokes per minute but it doesn't feel like the actors are rushing to get the lines out and feels more like they are reacting to the movie in real time. And I appreciate we can have more moments of quiet to let the film and the performers breathe. The jokes are still quite good and a few made me laugh pretty loud.

Now to get more specific.
The movie is Santo in the Treasure of Dracula and it's a mix of surprisingly dull (which a lot of MST3k movies are even with weird premises) and fucking wild. So the movie starts with luchadore Santo, who I must remind you is, like, one of the biggest icons of Mexico, as a masked... scientist (a nuclear physicist, I think) who is studying a way to look into past lives (making it shockingly similar to the Undead). The first half of the movie is Santo and friends, including the nerdy Fredrico, watching essentially a Mexican Dracula movie which is dumb and poorly acted (particularly the female lead's dad), based on the past life of the subject of their experiment.

So at this point, I just assumed this was just a Dracula movie and Santo is a framing device, like he's some muscular Cryptkeeper. Then half way through, they pull a lady back to the present but not before learning Dracula had a treasure. And this isn't lost on a mysterious masked villain who was spying on Santo's experiment because... he might learn were a treasure is? It's very vague. So the second half is a race for the treasure between Santo's Mystery Inc. gang and the baddies (including the villain's son, a wrestler named Atlas). After a few battles and hold ups (all of which make Santo not particularly impressive), the villain and Santo come to an agreement; each party has half of what is needed to find the treasure so in 15 days, they'll have a wrestling match to decide it. Santo wins it easily, finally looking competent in wrestling, but the baddies made a copy of the thing they gave away and are going to wait for Santo to get the treasure and steal it. The also decide to wake up Dracula so he can fight Santo, a plan that goes sideways but Santo manages to beat all the baddies and save the day. I don't even remember how, the last act completely faded from my brain.

Here's the crazy part; two versions of this film were shot; the family friendly version shown and an adult version called Vampires and Sex. But apparently, El Santo knew his audience and made a deal with the director to make sure the adult version was never released.

Notably, the episode we watched WASN'T the final cut, if only because there were no end credits and therefore no stinger. Can't wait to watch it again so I can remember what happens in the end. But I'll say this... I fucking hate Fredrico. It's basically this sketch save that his bestie shows him no resect and he never gets better as a character.


Weirdest scene; not an obvious choice but Santo, most famous wrestler in Mexico, coldly looks on as Frederico is abused by another wrestler using him as a prop to "teach" El Santo about legal and illegal wrestling moves. Frederico sucks but I think Santo might suck more now.
 
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Jeanie

(Fem or Gender Neutral)
So I guess I didn't realize that if you aren't a kickstarter backer, you'll have to wait a bit longer until the first new episode becomes available. Sorry, non-backers.
That's something that was changed between the end of the Kickstarter and recently so that's why you may not have realized.
 

Johnny Unusual

(He/Him)
That's unfortunate. As a backer I didn't NEED the exclusivity. They said end credits weren't ready so maybe they thought they could get a mostly ready product out to see and then have it available to sell when it's complete. That's the optimist in me.

I will say, The Gizmoplex site itself isn't bad but I'm a little disappointed. Technical difficulties in live-streaming notwithstanding, Joel seems to have a fantastic knack for reinvention and I feel like he's great at aesthetic AND utility so I was expecting something that would have a little more fun with the streaming service idea. Knowing Joel, I have no doubt we'll see something else down the line where he gets to experiment with format, both of service and of the show itself, but I was hoping for some more treats and innovation which I'm not noticing yet.

EDIT: Though one cool thing is it kept all the experiments I earned from the first kickstarter campaign, most notably the first two KTMA episodes. Granted, they aren't good but they are historical curiosities (and were long thought lost at the time).
 

Johnny Unusual

(He/Him)
1303

Beyond Atlantis

I missed talking about episode 1302 - Robot Wars, but I'll say that's a decent episode two.

But Beyond Atlantis is a weird little movie where three criminals travel to a remote island in the hopes of acquiring a bonanza in precious pearls. While there, they learn the local tribe are actually bug-eyed fish people.
image-w1280.jpg


Its as dopey as you might expect and frequent Rob Zombie collaborator Sid Haig plays one of the anti-heroes. The ending is... a choice, where our protagonist go through the scary adventure, loose all their profits and... just laugh it off.

The thing really worth noting about this episode is it is the first canonical one with new host Emily Conner (Emily Marsh) and her Tom and Crow, who have new voice actors. Emily and the new Tom are good but I LOVE the new Crow. The voice took me aback at first because the actor, Kelsey Ann Bradley, is doing a very different take on Crow. Rather than trying to sound specifically like a previous Crow, she has a similar personality but a voice akin to when a 90s female voice actor provides a voice for a young tough boy. It's husky and arch but it really does work in a way I wasn't expecting and though the Tom is very good, the Crow is my favourite of this particular crew.

I like that they felt they could work with a bunch of concurrent crews and the fans would still be on board. The episode is really good and I feel I'll really enjoy rewatching this one.
 

Johnny Unusual

(He/Him)
1304
Munchie


This film is about a young boy with a big imagination who frees a magical being named Munchie. Munchie, thankful for being freed, tries to give the boy everything he ever wanted but also gives the boy more challenges in his well-intentioned efforts to help the boy.


Munchie is an episode we were warned about with the claim that this is the episode that "broke" the writers. This isn't Manos-level incompetence and comparisons are made but this isn't this not nearly as incompetent on a DNA level. Instead, the problem is the film is an unfunny comedy for kids and bad comedy is particularly hard to watch. It is going for something from the lead kid in that it feels like it wants a whimsical Nickolodeon-style humour, except shitty. But then the titular Munchie shows up, it's Dom DeLoiuse giving constant stream of consciousness gags and NOTHING lands. It hurts a lot.

But the episode itself is actually is very funny. I feel like despite the challenge of doing a 90s direct-to-video kids movie that's a sequel to one of the less-watched Gremlins rip-offs, it's very good. There are one or two that don't work because it just explains the joke, weirdly, but most of them are pretty tight and some are the hardest I laughed in a while with some having Simpsons level of wit. My favourite is "He died doing what he loved; wishing he was dead." and it works great in context. Despite the fact that I'm much more cynical about the content in episodes where the movie was produced by schlockmeisters like Corman or Full Moon, I think I might enjoy the episode more than the stupid but weirdly sincere Santo and the Treasure of Dracula. The movie is much more of a flop-sweat soak crash grab but the strength of the riffing means I think this one will be one of the strongest of the season.
 

Johnny Unusual

(He/Him)
1305
Doctor Mordrid

The film is about a cosmic entity in mortal form named Anton Mordrid who is tasked with protecting the Earth from his evil childhood friend. As a cosmic sorcerer, he finds his old enemy, Kabal, has finally initiated his plane to create the philosopher's stone and unleash an army of demons unto the Earth.


This is an OK episode, consistently funny. And it helps that the movie is actually, though not GOOD, is watchable. It has some genuinely cool visuals (though being a cheap movie, only in fits and spurts) and basically imagine Jeffrey Combs in full Combs mode playing Doctor Strange. Not as wacked out as The Frighteners, more like Weyoun from Deep Space Nine minus the "thinly veiled menace under friendliness".



The movie itself is clearly modelled after Doctor Strange. Legend says that the film started as a Doctor Strange script that was rewritten but according to the film's writer, who appeared in live interview after the episode premiere, this is not true. However, the film DID come about due to an attempt to get a Strange movie made and states that he absolutely was a comic nerd who intentionally made it an off-brand Strange adaptation but also intentionally read/re-read no Strange prior to writing instead trying to make his homage from the memory of what those comics were to him. Good approach, in all honesty. Also, in the early stages, Jack Kirby was involved and created the character of "Dr. Mortalis", which is a better name, but Kirby dropped out of the project fairly early (sadly meaning the writer, who seems like a cool guy, never got to meet his childhood hero).

The film is hampered by a budget and the script isn't GREAT but it also isn't bad. As far as Full Moon Pictures go, I feel like there's more love here than in Robot Wars (though I think in both movies, the effects team is trying and having genuine fun) and though Mordrid never solidifies as a compelling hero, the film does make a wild wacky world for him. Some good ideas but overall a kind of modest all around result.

The comedy itself is not one of my favourite of the season. I'm feeling like my favourite movies are the weirdest films or the ones that clearly made the writers the angriest, so my top three are Santos and the Treasure of Dracula, Beyond Atlantis and Munchie. Mordrid is one that appearantly a lot of fans were excited about because a lot of them grew up with it but for me the riffs were mostly good (though there are definitely a few laugh out loud moments) and the film itself was slightly better than the usual MST fair but had that early 90s direct-to-video feel that's not QUITE as charming as the 50s-70s b-movies but far ahead of the ultra-cynical Asylum movies.

And again, I REALLY like the new Crow for Emily's squad voiced by Kelsey Ann Brady. That said, I hope it's a voice that doesn't... like, hurt her throat. I feel like it must.
 

Johnny Unusual

(He/Him)
1306
Demon Squad


This film is about a private investigator who kills demons for a living learning of a conspiracy involving a wealthy woman and stolen demon parts that might mean the end of all of Mobile, Alabama.


Demon Squad is a very bad movie and it seems like a shame it is. Yes, it's clearly a rip-off, in this case of supernatural detective stories about the secret society of demons who live among us like the Harry Dresden books, Angel and Constantine. But this isn't a Asylum mockbuster, this is clearly some people with a sense of fun but weak writing and acting skills wanting to make their own neo-noir action adventure and simply failing. It's a movie that is pretty bad but it is trying. Even the big monster at the end, despite being very cheap looking, at least looks interesting.

BI7RcRQ.png


But the attempts at Marvel-style smart-ass remakes are hard to take. This is a bad movie but while watching it isn't fun, it is clearly a labour of love and I wish good will for the creators for giving it the old college try for this 2019 film.

As for the commentary, this is the first episode in 29 years where Joel makes a FULL return to riffing a movie as Robinson. Not only that, J. Elvis Weinstein, the ORIGINAL Tom Servo, also returns as Tom Servo (explained as his voice is returned to factory settings, despite not being made in a factory). Do they do well? Mmm... yes, I have no problem with the performing. But I find the writing some of my least favourite of the series. No big missteps, just a lack of gags that hit hard.

I think it's also partially the movie's fault; it is a bad, silly episode but I feel like there's something about it that makes this micro-budget film that makes it a trickier riff. It's an admirable attempt but just a bit lacking. Still, the episode is still quite watchable between the novelty of a movie that really is trying and some veterans doing good work. I also like the detail that it sets up Joel's return that Dr. Ehrnhardt is retrieving him from time but instead of the past, he's inexplicably survived a thousand years in the future. I hope they never unwrap that weird detail.
 
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