Some of the ones I couldn't get into include:

• Squirm: The only parts of that episode that I liked were the Coily short and the end credits
  
  
• Episode six from season nine: I can't even remember the title, so I obviously didn't care for the episode. [If this was the movie that had the 21st Century short, then I liked *that* part of the episode.]
  
  
• Devil Doll: Snoozeville
  
  
• The first part of Merlin's Shop: The second part definitely makes up for it.

On the other hand, the episodes I loved include:

• Final Sacrifice (the first full episode I saw)
  
  
• Overdrawn at the Memory Bank
  
  
• Future War (didn't watch this one at first; thought I wouldn't like it)
  
  
• Touch of Satan
  
  
• Hobgoblins
  
  
• Prince of Space
  
  
• Time Chasers
  
  
• Pumaman

I forgot all about that quote until now.

I don't know, I thought Overdrawn at the Memory Bank had its moments ("I'll see you on the dark side of Rauuuuuulll!"), but that movie was so putrid, it was hard to watch some stretches despite the commentary. And the Pearl skits weren't all that great, especially the one where she sings. I fast-forwarded through that part.

The bit at the end of the episode, where Mike called Customer Service for "Overdrawn at the memory bank" was quite good. "What's the number?1-800-suck? Hey, it's ringing!!"

Devil Doll had some amusing moments, but the one thing Mike & the bots completely missed (which really surprised me) was this: Hugo, the evil Ventriloquist Dummy looked exactly like British Prime Minister Tony Blair! I can't believe they let such an opportunity pass by!

I liked the part where Pearl and Brain Guy do the incoherent lovers duet. It starts out as a trite love song, then they start running out of rhyming words. I thought it was a little brilliant as a love song parody. And I love the "wild applause" when Brain Guy makes his entrance. It was so "Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Elton John!" Am I the only one who loves it? Rethink it, people. Pasting lyrics:

Pearl:
When loving lovers love,
With loving love on wings of gold,
And loving love we fly above.
Their love is such a soft and precious love- it's love.
And loving love is all we seem to need when we're in loving love.
But then... it's gone. It is nothing but a memory...

Brain Guy: (entering)
Memory...

Pearl:
Memory...

Brain Guy:
Memory...

Pearl:
And then it's back.
And loving lovers love again.

Brain Guy:
Who knows where it flies?

Pearl:
The lustrous love must rise...

Brain Guy:
Into the endless skies...

Pearl:
A new day shining bright.

Brain Guy:
Your heart has wings to fly.

Pearl:
And no one else can fly.

Brain Guy:
I really can't say why.

Pearl:
I really do like pie.

Brain Guy:
I know a couple of guys.

Pearl:
They really do like pie.

Both:
And loving lovers love as loving lovers love.
Golden, shimmering, lustrous, loving, loving, loving love.

***********************************

Woo! That was long.

Okay, come on. You have to love it just a little. If not for you, then for me. I just sat and transcribed the whole thing from my new DVD (Thanks, Uncle Joe).

My whole Saturday morning routine is ruined now, thanks to SciFi. I need to buy some DVDs pronto.

The Screaming Skull
Old lady character: "Honestly, they're just like children
Crow: "Yeah children really love hanging drapes."

This scene brought to you by the superfluous foundation.

Crow (Standing): Are you OK lady. Do you need a push or something?

Oh, that's my favorite part of the whole show. "Quick! Hang up!" then they high-tailed it out of there. Ah, the comedy! Oh but Raul Julia, what were you thinking?!

apeygirl, I loved the duet too. Partly because of the absurd lyrics, partly because the thought of Brainguy and Pearl singing a love song to each other just cracks me up on its own.

One of my favorite singing bits is "Girl in Gold Boots" where Mike is singing a love song like that knothead Critter in the movie and Crow keeps popping up in a bubble to warn him that the ship is on fire, which he ignores until Crow mentions nachos.

I want that dvd! The song is excellent and Pearl and brain Guy are too awesome trying to pull off that lounge act. "They really do like pie" indeed.

Yeah, my DVDs rock. I just got volume 4 with:

Overdrawn at the Memory Bank
Girl in Gold Boots
Space Mutiny
Hamlet

I have to say I liked Hamlet least of all. There just wasn't enough material to work with there, I guess. I mean, you really can't find fault with the plot or the dialogue. Which takes away half the fun, really. (Though I loved, "Honey, have you seen the ear poison?") Maybe my viewing was colored by the fact that I felt it was almost blasphemous to diss Hamlet in any form. I majored in Theater, though.

PS- Theater degrees are useless.

I got volume 4 the day after Thanksgiving. Space Mutiny is now my favorite Sci-Fi Channel episode with Werewolf and Final Sacrifice close behind. Also grabbed Volume 2 a few days ago, good stuff all around though Angels Revenge was something of a disappointment for me.

Werewolf! Love it! I also have love for that other Joe Estevez classic, Soultaker, featuring the big-faced man.

"Welcome to my world... where I'm more famous than Martin."

Like most of the MST'd films from the 70's onward, Werewolf had a real loathesome quality for me, and I can't imagine sitting through it again. (More power to you, though, pal. Different strokes and all that.) The skeeviest element for me was the "Keeper," who was constantly dressed like a militia man, or perhaps Fidel Castro, for no good reason, and who was written like a hankie-sniffing French asthete's notion of the typical American male. (After behaving like a leering psychopath for the whole movie, his dying line, delivered with shocked incredulity, is "I'm the Keeper... I'm one of the good guys...") Films like this usually leave me curled up in a little ball in the corner of the room, muttering "Unclean, unclean..."

Ahem. All that aside, Werewolf did have one of my favorite MST lines, after the creepy rival for the "fessinating" lady's affections is ejected from a party.

Creepy Rival: Oh, I'll "take a walk," alright...!
Crow: ...over to KIRK DOUGLAS' HOUSE!!!

Nope, not the only one. I love the duet.

My favorite MST3K song has to be the one Tom sings to Crow to snap him out of his crush on ?Estelle _____?, who's in the movie they're watching that day (and I think also played Endora on Bewitched). First Crow gets to sing his crush song ("She's cute, she's rooty-toot-toot, I bet she smells like Juicy Fruit") and then Tom sings a song that's a list of everyone better looking than this woman: "Oh, Pee-Wee Herman and Ethel Merman and Rin-Tin-Tin and Anthony Quinn and ? and Jesus Jones!"

As for Hamlet, as a grad student in English, I loved that episode. The highlight was when one of the guys finally said what I had been thinking from the first moment Laertes came onscreen: "I am so Simon LeBon!" The resemblance really was uncanny. I showed it to a friend from school (whose dissertation is on Renaissance theater) and she loved it too, to the point where she now greets me with "Hey, Craplet," and I growl back "Losertes." Nothing like a little geek humor to get you through the day.

As far as my volume 4 DVDs, I think the winners are Overdrawn and Space Mutiny. Because I've watched them upwards of three times since getting them. Space Mutiny has more power over me since I'd never seen it on TV and owe it more viewings than I do Overdrawn. I love the namings so much. And the grandma-daughter.

If only they'd put The Screaming Skull out. I remember having to rewind my tape multiple times because I couldn't see through the tears of laughter over Crow and Servo's reenactment of the Gumby cartoon. I think the best part is when they make the "horrid lumps of discharge" talk. My roomate and I were dying over that. I'm cracking right now just thinking about it.

Horror at Party Beach: Has the best fight scene ever. "This is not in the spirit of pride week!" " Here, let me fling a gay man at you. There you go."I'm proud to say I could take that gang.
Pumaman: The guy from the Halloween movies. In bondage gear. Mispronouncing things. Lovely."I'm falling at a sixty degree angle, breaking all laws of physics!" "A fat-free yogurt that's not short of flavor!"

I've just realized that my dancing style is an amalgum of all the not-so-tittilating dance scenes of all the MST3K movies. I think I'll shoot myself now.

"If you want the floavor of bacon in a dip."

Man, I love me that entire commercial sequence in Pumaman. I love way too many things about Pumaman.

"I am the supermodel of Christmas past."
[servo singing]"Pumaman- when will he find love?"[/servo singing]
"I say put it on..." "And you say Pute it un."
"The world's most aggressive belt salesman."

I could go all night on this train. I looooove Pumaman.

That Gumby short was truly the funniest thing ever. I literally can't think of the line, "Work the lumps, Mike" without struggling to stifle laughter.

I can do a great impression of Mike singing the Goosio song from Final Justice.

I forget the actual line when Servo and Crow broke down, but I think it went something like, "Horrid lumps of discharge terrorize robots with impunity."

"These are our lovable clay figures: Bowlus and Horse Plop."

It kills me. Especially when they make the lumps talk.

There it goes again- truly my favorite host sketch.

Hey apeygirl Here's a Pumaman quote for you :
"Three-steps-behind-man, easily bamboozled man, wool over his eyes man, Constantly out of his league man!!"
I, too, love Pumaman

On a sad note, January 31st will be the last airing of MST3K on Scifi. The Screaming Skull. *sniff*

I hope that means another channel bought the rights to the shows. I know I wrote SpikeTv about 5,000 times about it.

Horrors of Spider Island has a pretty good fight too, the best part being when one guy pushes down on one side of a table, making the other side come up and hit the other guy in the chin. Crow's comment: "Ah, he learned from his master, Moe Howard." Later we also get "My famous rubber arm puss punch!" I'm kind of surprised that got past the censors. And then there's the great final line during the very sudden cut to "The End" right in the middle of a scene. "Oh, so you want to end the movie that way, do you? All right, up yours, we're out of here."

My favorite line from Spider Island: the misogynistic guy makes a punching-the-air gesture, and Crow says, "He saw an air molecule that respects women."

I was a Theatre major as well, and while I think it's wrong to diss Hamlet in theory, it's perfectly OK when done badly!

Got Space Mutiny from Netflix last night--had never seen it. Laughed myself silly, although it seemed rather light compared to my only MST3K tape (Manos!).

"He made a bomb out of soap and Paco Rabon!" Hee!

The funniest part of Space Mutiny is the main character's (Lunk Hardpeck? Bull McRunsfast?) voice. On many instances he screams like a tiny little women. After one especially effeminate scream Mike says "He stole my purse!" I crack up every time! Fun fact: the bad guy, Cameron Mitchell also plays the main character in the series finale, Diabolik. That guy seemed to go from no acting at all to extreme overacting in the last few decades. Which is worse, I really can't say.

I never noticed that!

I don't think anyone has picked up the rights to show MST3K after SciFi dumps it. I'm going to have to have my own little marathon with all my old VHS tapes just to get through the withdrawal after January. You'd think with the huge steaming piles of crap they show, they could save one little slot for MST3K, the greatest show that ever was or will be. SciFi is evil.

I hate to nitpick, but Cameron Mitchell is actually Captain Santa in Space Mutiny, the bad guy who was in Diabolik was John Phillip Law.

Good call Eegah. Stupid credits with their words and names and things! So yeah-John Philip Law. Two movies-one sad, sad man.

I actually wondered if John Phillip Law was related to Jude Law, cause they kind of look similar, but it seems not, according to the IMDB.


Well, everything seems light next to Manos. After all, it was the only movie that even the Mads felt they had to apologize for.

No such luck...I think the big, big problem is that if a cable network wanted to buy the rights to the reruns, they'd also have to negotiate separately for the rights to all of the movies featured (or at least get their lawyers to make absolutely sure that there's no problem airing the ones that are believed to be in the public domain). And I don't think any network is going to be that eager to pay that kind of money or make that kind of effort.

I just think it's amazing that "MST3K" has lasted this long on Sci-Fi after the cancellation was announced, and I can date it using my own personal life: there was a story about the cancellation in the newspaper on the day I left Pittsburgh to move to L.A. at the end of February 1999 (the last day of my Pittsburgh Post-Gazette subscription), and then the last batch of new episodes aired on Sci-Fi in the summer of 1999...but reruns have been on Sci-Fi ever since.

After watching Overdrawn at the Memory Bank, my coworkers and I would sometimes ask each other, "What do you have against anteaters?" Currently our running gag involves saying, "You, _________ (whatever someone is doing, be it cough-choking, captioning a commercial, or surfing the Web)! You, rock on the porch all night! You, swat at imaginary elves!" Good times.

Ah! One of my favorite lines from Hired! Part 2 (Electric Boogaloo)

"We're gonna run this business the way my old man used to!"

As a Duran Duran fanatic, I must say that quote's a classic.

From Overdrawn at the Memory Bank: (Snow is falling.) "That's how much pure cocaine you'd need to enjoy this movie."

BWAH!

"Fasten your seat belt, Fingal"
"It's the law."

I'm very sad that MST3K is ending. But I am happy it's ending with The Screaming Skull. I must have that Gumby sketch. I've been so down ever since my tape ate it.

Manos bothered me so much. I found the movie extremely disturbing (not in a good way) and even the commentary couldn't get rid of the over-all ickiness of it. The loungerie fight club? Makes me shudder. Ick.

I just feel like the maker of that movie had some serious issues. There was something so oogy about the whole thing. I can't explain it. It's the same problem another poster had with Werewolf, I guess.

Maybe it's the fact that they made a six-year-old girl one of the wives. Eww! I loved the way Joel and the bots booed that part, lol.

I'm so jealous. My only exposure to MST3K is the movie (I'm geographically challanged, I'm afraid) but during the summer ITV screened the film, and I laughed my sweet ass off. I'm bitterly enranged and full of righteous anger at the sheer lack of MST3K in UK/Irelandland. Grragrgh. Thankfully when I realised how good the film was, I managed to tape some of it. Yippie Hooray! And God bless the internet, honest to God, I'm like a junkie.

Let's slip out under the cover of daylight in the biggest car in the county.

That's funny, because after seeing this episode, my friends and I spent the next month randomly greeting each other by yelling "I'm interfaced!" at each other. Oh, lordy. And I think it took me about ten viewings of that movie to figure out what the hell was supposed to be happening and why.

For those who are not aware, Mike, Kevin, and Bill appeared last weekend at and MST3k "symposium" at the San Francisco Sketch Fest. You can read a recap of the event here. Strangely, the writer ignores the real "most surreal" audience comment, when a woman stood up and announced that she had seen a recent documentary about sidehacking. I guess that validates its existence as a sport, or something. To their credit, Mike and Kevin looked fluxomed at this revelation.

(As a bonus, the guy in the black baseball cap and green shirt getting his book signed by Mike in a photo near the bottom of the page -- is me. Woo hoo! My profile -- and prominent right ear -- is a little famous!)

Cool, Jedzz! Did you like Death Rat? I did; it was quite amusing. That symposium looked like a blast; too bad San Fran is soooo far away from me. I disagree with Bill though: MST can never wear out its welcome. Not running the same 8 episodes every Saturday is fine, but not running it at all is tragic.

The funny thing is that the writer got his facts mixed up a bit; Mike was signing my copy of Mind Over Matters. I've never read DR, but here's an amusing fact for you: during the Q&A, Mike claimed that he was working on a screenplay adaptation. So set your DeLoreans for 2006, y'all!

To be titled "Death Rat: The Movie!", I assume. Since three of the characters in "Death Rat" are thinly-disguised versions of Minnesota's three biggest celebrities, my first thought is, "I wonder if they can get any of them to, basically, play themselves in the film." Two of them, at least, are no strangers to the silver screen.

Really? Not to venture too far OT, but who are the three celebs, Trainman? I've been meaning to read Death Rat for a while, and now you've piqued my interest.

In the meantime, Rhino has announced that another DVD collection is on the way, according to Satellite News. Vol. 5 will supposedly be out as early as March. Hooray! No titles have been supplied yet, but apparently Mike & Kevin are going to be doing some form of commentary for this set. I don't know if this will just be more episode introductions, as was the case with Mike in the Vol. 4 set (actually, I enjoyed those, and wouldn't mind seeing more), or if we'll get full episode commentaries from the 2 guys. The latter paints a rather surreal picture, doesn't it?

Frankly, I can't believe that the assorted minions of Garrison Keillor, Prince and Jesse Ventura haven't disappeared Mike by now. (Does that answer your question?)
Fun show moment: Joel adjusts Tom's Sarcasm Sequencer in Ep. 211, King Dinosaur.
Crow: You've got him set on constant sarcasm, and you're gonna want to have him on random...
Joel: Uh, duh, no kidding. Yeah, I put him on random sarcasm, so he'll only be sarcastic at the appropriate time. Like uh, when someone mentions, uh, like, uh, Pia Zadora?
Tom: Well, actually, I think making fun of her has become a cliché. Everybody does it. And you know, in her favor, she was in a John Waters film, you guys.
Joel: Okay, well, what about...ummm..Dan Quayle?
Tom: Oh, look, Dan Quayle scares me as much as the next guy, but everybody and their sister has come up with a sarcastic Dan Quayle quip. It's just too easy.
Joel: I'm not even gonna mention Gallagher, then.
Tom: Ooooooooooooh, he is my absolute all-time favorite! Oh, paying money to have watermelon sprayed all over you? Oh, give me more of that. Oversized props mixed with undersized talent? Oooooh, put me in the front row. Excuse me, Mr. Shopkeeper? Can I trade in my volume of Annotated Shakespeare for a tape of "Melon Crazy"? Oh, please, may I? Ooooooooooooooooh!

I love Tom's sarcastic voice, but when I try to use it, people just look at me funny.

Question...is there anywhere online I could find an MST silhoutte? I got an idea for a Pixel Challenge, and it involves slapping that on a picture.

Maybe the lack of airing means we'd literally have to circulate the tapes. Depressing, right?

I was able to find one pretty easily by going to ImageSearch at Google.com and entering "MST" and "silohouette."

If anybody's interested, they've announced the 4 titles for the next Rhino DVD set, all of them from the Sci-Fi Channel years: Times Chasers, Boggy Creek II, Merlin's Magical Shop of Wonders and Touch of Satan. Yay.

Oh. I got all excited about "Touch of Satan", but then I realized I was thinking of "The Undead", a very early Sci-Fi one:

Crow: "Life!"
Mike: "Choose Death!"
Servo: "The box! Take the box!"

Anyway, "Time Chasers" is a really good one. The others are all right, mostly.

I've only seen "Merlin" and "Time Chasers", but that looks like a pretty good set overall. The other two sound intriguing.

Consider yourself lucky! If you can track down the tapes, you can have the experience of watching them all for the first time -- something I'd pay good money for!

I had the pleasure of seeing the guys perform This Island Earth live at one of their conventions in Minneapolis. I never laughed so hard for so long in my life. When Russell Johnson first came on screen (the professior from Gilligan's Island) and Mike said, "What's all this 'and the rest' crap?!" I swear I hurt myself laughing.

I'm really looking forward to the next boxset. Of the four episodes, I've only seen the first few minutes of the Merlin episode.

I'm still excited for "Touch of Satan." The whole grocery-store "Zah!" scene never fails to make me hurt from laughter, and the sweaty walnut farming sketch is genius.

I appreciated Rhino's promise that not all releases will be Sci Fi eps though. I need, need, need "Girls' Town" and "Deathstalker."