Pod People (“It’s got nothing to do with pods, nothing to do with people, and everything to do with hurting.”) and Cave Dwellers (“Cah-vay Dwellers? Who’s he?”) are both terrific. I’ve gotta get me another box set soon…
The poll results are in! The big winners? The Puma Man (“Does that sound right to you?”) and The Final Sacrifice (“Rowzdower!”). Both excellent choices—let’s hope Rhino can make them happen.
The pool seems slanted towards the Scifi years a bit - ah well.
Wow! Checking Satellite News tells me Mike Nelson is appearing in Columbus at the end of August at the Shadowbox Theater… I’ve been there! Wish I could go see… stupid work.
I’m surprised that Monster-a-go-go did so well. I mean, that movie sucked and all the riffing was barely able to cover the crappiness. But I am VERY happy at the prospect of replacing my worn tapes of Puma Man (“Vadinho, are you an onion?”) and Final Sacrifice (“This music is better suited for plate spinning.”)
Must have been a bigger audience than when on CC. I still maintain the last Joel Season and the first Mike Season were the best, with the edge going to Joel. Yeah, I know Mike was a writer for the Joel stuff, but Joel really had a way about his presentation, ya know?
I must not be drawn into a Mike vs. Joel debate, especially with someone who is so clearly irrational. 
The riffing bacame sharper and a little hipper after Joel left. That improved things in my opinion. Also, despite the interference of the sci-fi channel, the later seasons were more polished.
Polish!?
English wasn’t good enough for them!?
Also, I think the JvM debate positions have more to do with who was the host when you first were exposed to the magic of MST3K. I saw it from the start of the first CC season up thru when it left for SFC. So, to me it’s a lot like the Kirk vs Picard debate. Yeah, Picard may be smarter and played by a better actor, but I still like the irrational ripped shirt Kirk best.
Generation gap.
I wonder how much of that was due to the influence of Bill Corbett, who came in at the end of the sixth season.
Aren’t the earlier seasons more well-represented among the DVDs that have already been released? I didn’t go back and count them all, but I think the majority of the existing DVDs (either in single discs or box sets) are Joel episodes, and he made fewer episodes than Mike, IIRC.
They’re actually almost even… Joel got 13+13+24+24+12 = 86; Mike got 12+24+6+22+13+13 = 90. (not counting KTMA era episodes, which would push Joel up by 22 more.) 18 of Joel’s are collected; 18 of Mike’s are collected with 2 more announced as ‘in the pipeline’. (Not counting Amazing Colossal Man, which got pulled due to a rights snafu)
Wow, I never realized the numbers were so close. I do think I voted for mostly Mike episodes in this poll. I like both Joel and Mike, but if I had to pick a favorite I’d go with Mike so I guess it makes sense.
But I agree that the changeover from Joel to Mike was during the “Golden Era.” And both are just as good. It’s really the movie and the riffing rather than who’s saying it. I mean, it seems to me that the host sequences didn’t make or break the episode.
They said that they had people choose from “eligable” episodes. I don’t know how they defined that, but if they only included episodes for which Rhino has rights, that would cause a strong lean toward the Sci-Fi years.
The poll included Sandy Frank films - I think Gamera came in in the top ten, in fact.
While the title of this little failed TV pilot might seem ironic for Joel, the movie itself doesn’t play out that way.
We start off with a dueling invention exchange, as Joel and Dr. F go back and forth showing sound-effect-flag toy weapons.
Once again, the credits sequence is superimposed on clips taken from a completely different movie. Our protagonist, Neal, is an astronaut who, thanks to an accident, ends up the lone survivor of his space mission, crashed on a twin of Earth that orbits on the opposite side of the sun, aka Terra, aka ‘Planet of the Plymouth Furies’. It’s run by ‘the Perfect Order’, and is something of an Orwellian socialist dystopia. They get a lot of mileage out of the ‘twin of Earth’ thing, and as Crow comments, ‘Space looks like Sacramento!’
The thing’s loaded with second-rate TV stars, inspiring a second-rate TV stars trading cards host segment. It includes some random, sudden fade-to-blacks, and the crew starts to leave at each one, only to be ‘surprised’ as the movie continues.
Once, as an old man injects himself with medicine they use (for the first, or possibly second time - may have heard it once before and forgot to note it) ‘Nyaho, that’s some good smack!’ If you haven’t heard it, imagine it in an exaggerated Jerry Lewis-esque voice.
I have to say, despite the disadvantage of being a failed TV pilot, full of second-rate actors, from the 70’s… it wasn’t THAT bad a movie. Better than a lot of what we see on MST anyway.
Other host segments include a bit where the crew chews scenery while playing at being second-rate TV villains - which includes a cameo by Tibby the Turtle… and the final segment, which is Tommy Servo - Exec Producer.
I thought “Stranded in Space” was the retitled version of “Marooned” – the high-budget Gregory Peck space movie. Guess I was wrong.
That was “Space Travellers”.
Actually, they’re imitating Floyd Turbo, a character that Johnny Carson used to play on the “Tonight Show.” Floyd was a salesman from the days when mid-morning movies would be hosted by aluminum siding companies and the like as a precursor to our modern infomercials. Often, he would sample the product and give the famous, “Wha-ho! That’s good [whatever].”