Do they still bring the funny? At the risk of infuriating hardcore MST3K'ers, we always felt the show's success rose or fell in relation to the cheese factor of their targeted movies. The simple equation: the more the movie flew out of control and plumbed untold depths of awfulness, the funnier the episode was going to be.....
If the Satellite Of Love crew got stuck with a film that settled into simple, uninteresting mediocrity, it didn't make any difference how many up-to-date meta gags they peppered it with. Despite the best efforts of Joel Hodgson and his team of writers, some of these movies would forever remain a tedious chore to sit through.......with or without the barrage of insults...
From the first three stanzas we've viewed, that still holds true.....so here's the rundown on the movies we've endured so far, along with robots Crow, Tom Servo, Gypsy and Gizmonic Institute's new jump-suited patsy Jonah.....all of them marooned on the dark side of the moon with films that should have been left......on the dark side of the moon.....
Reptilicus (1961) An inspired choice to kick off the show with a full speed ahead, belly laugh first episode....... outside of Ed Wood Jr., movies don't come any hilariously worse than this one. The first and decidedly last monster movie from Denmark......featuring a rampaging reptile marionette clumsily dragged by a string through Fisher-Price toy cities. With Danish actors who sound like they've been dubbed in by the guys who do your local used car dealership commercials....
Cry Wilderness (1987) Another winner....and understand, by 'winner', we refer to its perfect suitability as red meat for the MST3K grinder. The world's most annoying child actor (second only to the little blonde puppet George Lucas inflicted on "The Phantom Menace") runs away from school and bonds with Bigfoot.....who looks like a very tall guy draped with brown bathmats......
The Time Travelers (1964) Sorry, but this one stayed boring even accompanied by the Jonah and the robots' non-top heckling. A dull group of lab-coated scientists step through their freshly invented time portal into a typical sci-fi post-apocalyptic future........with spindly mutants battling well-spoken, civilized, cave dwelling nuclear war survivors. Yawn. No amount of well aimed barbs could lift this up into something watchable......Better luck next time, guys......
Despite "The Time Travelers", we still gave ourselves cramps laughing through the first two episodes and we can't wait to dive back in......we highly recommend you blast off for the newly reconstituted MST3K.....4 stars (****)
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