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Mystery Science Theater 3000 Collection, Vol.5

It's a lazy afternoon, and you're sitting around with some of your friends. You guys could be doing something productive, like planning an anti-fur rally, say, or pondering the mysteries of existence. But who are we kidding? You've got the TV on, and when a stupid show comes on, one of you blurts out a comment that set the other ones cracking up. Such a thing is undoubtedly one of modern life's simplest pleasures.

What if the best of your comments could be captured and set to a really, really, laughably awful movie? What if, instead of you and your friends flopped on the old living room sofa, it was a guy and two robots making the cracks? If this sounds appealing, I've got good news for you: such a thing exists.

Created in the early '90's, Mystery Science Theater 3000 follows just such a premise. Basically, the story's like this (and it's explained much more eloquently and succinctly in the theme song): a guy (first Joel Hodgson, later Mike Nelson) has been shot into space by two mad scientists who torture him by sending him horrible, horrible movies to watch. However, humor and the human spirit triumph…our prisoner sits in the theater critiquing these horrible movies, accompanied by Crow (voiced here by Bill Corbett) and Tom Servo (voiced by Kevin Murphy), two robots made from salvaged ship parts. The trio do get breaks in their movie watching, though, and these breaks are filled by short skits or parodies of the film.

If all this sounds ridiculous, you'd be right. If it sounds hokey, you're correct. If it sounds stupid "” you'd be dead wrong. See, unlike many shows or movies which, in mocking campiness, become overly campy themselves, MST3K (as it's known to hardcore fans, or MiSTies) maintains its wit and intelligence. When the crew enter the movie viewing room and are reduced to mere silhouettes at the bottom of the screen (for a good illustration of this, look at our Cinema Source flyers), their comments range from silly (in Merlin's Shop of Mystical Wonders, as the corpulent Ernest Borgnine settles himself onto a couch, the group makes the grunting, gassy noises you'd probably really hear when the corpulent Ernest Borgnine settles himself onto a couch), to esoterically erudite (in one skit, Mike and the 'bots have taken a shine to 1920's college pranks).

Sadly, unlike so many cult series, Mystery Science Theater 3000 doesn't have DVD box sets for each season. The reason for this can be learned in The Mystery Science Theater 3000 Amazing Colossal Episode Guide (published by Bantam Books) "” it's just too hard, because for each film watched, there's copyright stuff to worry about.

Thus, MiSTies and novices to the show have to settle for selected episodes. Here, then, is the latest MST3K release "” a 4-disc (1 episode per disc) set that includes the movies Boggy Creek II: And The Legend Continues, Merlin's Shop of Mystical Wonders, Time Chasers, and The Touch of Satan.

I'm not going to review each disc and each episode. In a sense, you know what you're going to get from each one: an awful movie (and I mean awful — for the most part, not-even-released-in-theaters-awful) that's made watchable by Mike (our guy for these four episodes) and the ‘bots' commentaries. True, some of the movies are worse than others. In fact, despite its bad title, Touch of Satan ("Softens hands while you do the dishes," Tom Servo announces when the credits begin) has a profundity that could have made it a decent flick "” even a great horror movie "” if only the people who made it could have done it right. On the other hand, Merlin's Shop of Mystical Wonders, a dark, cruel set of stories disguised as family fare, seems to be a lost cause. It's interesting is to see just where these films went terribly wrong. Sometimes seeing mistakes can make you appreciate a good, or even decent movie, more than before. Though none of the MST3K cast and crew are Film majors or even critics (the world's noblest profession), like most people who watch enough movies, they know the basic do's and don't's of filmmaking. For example, have a lead actor who's at least mildly appealing (an oversight which, for Crow, condemns Time Chasers before its first scene has ended).

But no one here's a know-it-all; it's the spirit of fun that makes MST3K work so well. In its most glorious moments, when you're laughing so hard you have to back up the DVD to hear what you’ve missed, you forget you're watching a guy and some puppets talk about movies "” all that remains is that what's been said is hysterical, and often because it's just what you're thinking, too.

The skits on each episode vary in quality. Some are funny, some amusing, others dull or even stupid. If you've never seen the show before, in terms of skit quality, I'd recommend an MST3K DVD like Manos: The Hands of Fate; this one, and others from the older seasons, tended to have funnier stuff going on in the segments between the films. Still, even in this present set we get a few gems. For example, the sight of human-sized monkey Professor Bobo pretending to be the evil cymbal-playing monkey toy from Merlin's Shop of Mystical Wonders as he is not-so-subtly nudged from a coffee table into a garbage bag has to make you laugh.

If you don't believe the

inherent niceness and brains behind MST3K, check out the bonus features (admittedly skimpy considering how much information and fun stuff is to be found in the Episode Guide book). Mike Nelson (who, in addition to being these episodes' human star, was also the series' head writer) gives us a brief, factoid- and reminisces -filled intro before each film. For diehard fans or the merely curious, check out the featurette on the Merlin's Shop of Mystical Wonders disc. In it, we get an hour-long interview with Nelson and producer/director/writer/voice of Tom Servo/role of Professor Bobo Kevin Murphy (talk about multi-tasking!), in which questions about how the show was conceived, birthed, and brought up, are addressed with equal parts honesty and humor.

If nothing else, I hope this review has left you at least somewhat curious about Mystery Science Theater 3000, if not downright enthusiastic. I highly recommend this, or any other MST3K collection. It's a perfect show to watch anytime, especially those lazy days lounging with your own (most likely not robot) pals.

Episode Grades: ADVD Grade: BOverall Grade: A-

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