Home > Blogs > Nerdy thoughts on a nerdy world > DVD review: Mystery Science Theater 3000: VX

DVD review: Mystery Science Theater 3000: VX

I swear I'm not trying to make this the all MST3K blog. It just happened to work out this way for the last two entries. Next week will see an interview wholly unrelated to puppets making fun of movies, I promise.

This week Shout Factory released Mystery Science Theater 3000 Vol: XV, a set of four movies from the movie mocking show. Here's what includes.

Robot Vs. The Aztech Mummy: Scientists invent a robot to steal an ancient Aztec mummy. Unfortunately for them, the mummy won't stand for that. Or to put it another way, he will stand for it and fight the robot.

On the surface this seems like the perfect MST3K movie: science vs. magic, a crazy name and D-grade special effects. The problem? It's from the show's first season, when it really hadn't hit its riffing stride. It still has its funny moments, but they don't come as fast and furious as the later seasons.

Joel Hodgson and the original cast of MST3K are now riffing as Cinematic Titanic and have redone the classic episode "Santa Claus Vs. The Martians." I'd love to see them take a second crack at this movie. It has so much potential that seems untapped in this episode.

The Girl From in Lovers Lane: Two drifters settle in a small town, but instead of small town values they find hookers, pool hustlers, a leering man-brute and a girl with a heart of gold. You know things won't end well for her.

A solid episode, but also a depressing one. Joel goes so far as to explain to the bots that they don't have to accept the film's dark ending. At least with the ending of Manos it was so ridiculous you could laugh. This is one of the few times I felt sorry for a few MST3K movie characters.

Zombie Nightmare: When a gang of teens strike down a body-building baseball player (played by rocker Jon Mikl Thor), he returns from the dead with the help of a voodoo priestess for revenge. Tia Carrere and Adam West show up to face off against the zombie and also be pretty unlikable.

For people who complain about MST3K using old black and white movies with no-name actors, this is the film for you. Made in 1986, it's new enough and  with enough recognizable faces to make it a good introductory episode. Plus, it has a zombie with a baseball bat. Mike, Tom and Crow bring their A game for riffing, helped by a steady supply of Adam West jokes.

Racket Girls: Welcome to the twisted world of ladies wrestling, where ladies... wrestle. A lot. This film has a plot about gangsters, but mostly it's full of extended scenes of scantily-clad (for the 50s) women grappling with each other. Before you get excited, keep in mind that they all look like someone's aunt who had one wine cooler too many.

There's a lot to work with here, but there are also long stretches where nothing is happening in the movie except wrestling. Lots of wrestling. It just goes on and on. Mike and the bots play into the situation well and give wrestling a try during the host segments. Since there are long, dialogueless stretches with nothing but the wrestling happening.

Special features: Robot vs. the Aztech Mummy and The Girl in Lovers Lane come with Behind the Scenes: MST3K Scrapbook Scraps I and II. It's host segments from the show's KTMA season, when Joel, Kevin Murphy and Trace Beaulieu were doing the show from a local TV station in Minneapolis.

Segment II shows footage of them writing and riffing an episode, which is cool to watch. It might be the closest we get to seeing Mike and Joel riffing at the same time.

Zombie Nightmare includes interviews with stars Franks Dietz and Jon Mikl Thor. It's a good combo, since Dietz seems to understand he was in a bad movie and Thor... doesn't. But if you want to hear him talk about how awesome he is, this is the interview for you. Also, he has not aged in a very Thor-like manner.

Finally, perhaps the weirdest feature, is a clip from Hamlet A.D.D. an upcoming film that Kevin Murphy and Trace Beaulieu did voice work on. In the play-within-a-play of Hamlet voice robot versions of the king and his brothers. I'm not quite sure what type of movie this will be, but Iowan Leslie Hall has a part as the most famous of Hamlet characters: the zombie killer.

End result: Zombie Nightmare is the real stand-out film in this collection, with Robot vs. Aztech Mummy as the weak link. Overall, laughs abound, but I think one more strong episode would have really helped this set.

Grade: B.