Oh, I see. Sorry, my personal X-Files lexicon is a little rusty. 
Please forgive my ignorance, but I’ve just awakened from a 20-year sleep. Is this show still airing new episodes on cable? Or is it only available on dvd? I’ve looked around at sites and am finding it surprisingly difficult to find out.
The last new episode aired in 2000, and reruns were shown on the SciFi Channel for a few years after that. Currently the show doesn’t air anywhere, but Rhino Home Video releases DVD box sets now and then. Quite a few episodes are available individually on DVD (and older VHS).
Oh my…I envy you the joy you’re about to discover. If you haven’t been to this site , it’s a good place to start.
And Happy Birthday Mike!
Off the top of my head, about 25% of the episodes are available on Rhino. The rest are available through other means, which aren’t hard to find. wink wink
I love it when people tell me that. 
I saw a few new or rerun episodes years ago, and enjoyed them a lot. When I was a kid in the sixties there were 3 movies we eagerly awaited every year, two of which were probably done on MST: The Crawling Eye and Donovan’s Brain. Many deliciously scary memories of those old films. Now I just need to find me some friends to watch the MST dvd’s with. This stuff is so much better when shared.
Don’t trust your memory – when I was a kid, I thought The Killer Shrews was scary. I just saw it for the first time in 40 years, when the MST version when the latest collection came out…hooboy.
I just checked my checklist, and it looks like 40 of the 176 episodes are available through Rhino (including the collection to be released next month.)
I saw Donovan’s Brain about a month ago. Hate to break it to you, but it’s probably not going to scare you now. Crack you up, maybe. I don’t think it was ever featured on MST3K though.
No worries, I fully expect to be laughing at the old flicks, especially with MST. I forgot to mention The Crawling Hand too. All the kids in the neighborhood would gather for mass viewing when one of these came on tv, a dozen or more kids all sitting on the floor. The fear and excitement was contagious. My younger brother got nightmares from them, but he was the one who wanted most to see them. These are the memories that are delicious, but I certainly wouldn’t expect the films to be of any great quality.
(I just remembered seeing Crack in the Earth and Hercules in the Haunted World when they came out in the theatre. They made a really big impression on us!)
Ah, Attack of The The Crawling Eye. The Movie Where They Just Didn’t Care!
No, that was Attack of the the Eye People. We’re getting movie treatments mixed up now. :eek:
I love it when the producers don’t care enough to fix the Title of the Movie. The only other case of this that I remember is the “Brain That Wouldn’t Die” becoming “The Head That Wouldn’t Die” in it’s end title.
**MST3K 4.06 - Attack of the Giant Leeches **
Available on Collection 6.
As we join the crew on the SOL, Joel’s struggling to fix the Holo-clown Sequencer, which seems to be stuck ‘on’. Mike, as one of the holoclowns, delivers a line… wow. “Hey, little girl. Would you like a salted nutroll?” Even creepier when on the screen. The Mads invent leeches that work as nicotene patches.
We get our first short of Season Four, Part One of **Undersea Kingdom **, which seems to be some kind of slice-of-life Navy recruitment movie until they introduce the Earthquake detection machine, and the stars hop a sub down to Atlantis. Crow and Tom engage in some amusing R2D2 and C3PO riffing during the short, too.
Host Segment One : The crew discusses serials, villains plans and fashions thereof particularly.
Now, our main feature. It’s a Corman. It’s a pretty solid episode - Joel and the Bots sold me as soon as they describe the gathering of hicks in the general store at the beginning as a ‘Hee Haw writing session.’ The general store owner is a big fat guy with a blonde bombshell wife that openly defies him in front of his friends. That will end well. We also meet a conservation officer type who comes off as pretty bland, and smug. Well, the bombshell finds a victim of the giant leeches, and the conservation guy happens on the scene, and all heck starts breaking loose - actually, they search the swamp pretty calmly.
Host Segment Two : Coffee Talk. (In reference to the continual coffee drinking in the movie.)
We learn the bombshell is having an affair (Shock!) and the fat guy discovers her in the arms of her lover. He chases them through the swamp with a shotgun, just to scare them a little, and they end up getting pulled under by the leeches while the fat guy watches. He gets arrested, naturally, ultimately hanging himself in jail - and two more of the local hicks go out looking for the bodies to collect on a reward… ‘scuse me, ree-ward. They get pulled into the leeches’ secret lair, too and kept with the first two as snackpacks. More swamp searchin is done, and over the objections of Conservation Guy, dynamite is used, and the concussion causes the bodies of the leeches’ victims to rise to the surface.
Host Segment Three : “Danger to Myself and Others” song, parody of Hee-Haw.
Our action packed finale has an autopsy on the surfaced bodies, which leads to advanced theories about ‘giant leeches living in underwater caves’, which leads to diving gear and spearguns. There’s a moderately tense underwater tussle between the leeches, the Conservation guy, and his diver buddy - and then ultimately, more TNT is used to kill the giant leeches.
Finale : The leech has been on Frank through the whole movie - has grown to human size, wants to produce movies.
We have a non-MSTied copy of Attack of the Giant Leeches that came in a very cheap DVD set of very cheap monster movies. We watched it one night, but I fell asleep before the end. I look forward to seeing this version, which sounds infinitely more watchable.
**MST3K 4.07 - The Killer Shrews **
Available on Collection #7 - there was a problem with the discs, and they’re missing a minute of footage inside the theater. Replacements are being sent out, but rather than further delay this project, I decided to go ahead and watch. The Disk includes some bonus shorts as well, including the otherwise-unavailable Assignment : Venezuela.
We open as Joel gives the Bots some presents; Crow is disappointed to receive dress pants. Joel also invents Edgar Winter Babies - creepy.
Our short this week is the folksy Junior Rodeo Daredevils - lots of fun as Joel and the Bots rip on this one. Muuuch better than the main feature.
The main feature - directed by Ray Kellogg, the man who nearly killed me with Giant Gila Monster. Our protagonist is a boat captain played by James Best - AKA Roscoe P. Coltrane. And to make matters worse, here he’s teamed with Ken Curtis, TV’s Festus. Festus plays the drunk surly caretaker for the scientists whose experiments gone awry give us the overlarge mammals of the title. The whole movie is poorly miced and poorly acted - which is really bad because it’s 80% dialogue. There is a cute blonde as the scientist’s daughter … and she has a speech impediment (She’s Swedish. ) that Joel and the Bots mock mercilessly.
Host Segment One - Joel plays Will Rogers and does Western schtick.
Section two introduces us to the pudgy assistant scientist character, and lets us know that there’s a hurricane comign toward the doc’s island, and that seems to be why the ship captain is there, to take passengers to the mainland. It’s hard to hear what they say, sometimes. Well, the first mate of the ship decides to come up on shore, and is chased, treed, and licked to death by the titular shrews.
Host Segment Two - Killer Shrew song, the Bots have a small psychological breakdown.
Section three starts off with the shrews killing a horse. We learn a little about the experiment’s purpose, to combat overpopulation. The captain takes charge as the islanders try to decide what to do after discovering the shrews are loose. Festus, the drunk, gets drunk. Manservant Mario is mauled in the basement when he and the captain check it out… those darn shrews get in everywhere. Apparently, they can chew into the house, made of adobe, but the wooden fence outside stops them cold. We also leanr the shrews have poisonous saliva. So they really can lick you to death.
Host Segment Three - Joel is bartending, Tom and Crow show him how to make a ‘Killer Shrew’.
The climax of the film has a lot of scuffling between the captain and the drunk; the shrews start getting into the house, and the survivors lash together big metal barrels and play ‘turtle’ all the way from the house to the shoreline, escaping the shrews and swimming off into the sunset.
Finale : Shrew costumes.
Sorry for the lateness and shortness of this entry. It was difficult to get through. Slightly better than Giant Gila Monsters though.
I can’t believe you didn’t mention Hugh Beaumont! When the Beav’s dad shows up in an MST3K flick, you KNOW it’s bad…
Joel: “And the crowd goes wild!”
Bots: (in unison) “Yaaaay.”
This may well have been the first MST3K riff that had me crying with laughter. I love this short.
Beaumont? In Killer Shrews? Nope…
He was in Mole People, Human Duplicators, and Lost Continent…
I think this riff was an homage to the Tom Slick segments of George of the Jungle. They did this (word-for-word) a lot.
I haven’t seen Killer Shrews, but DAMN that sounds awful! I’m not sure the world can handle a Roscoe/Festus team-up.
Killer Shrews!
Killer Shrews!
K-I-L-L-E-R Shrews!
So How was “Assignment Venezuela?” I’ve never seen that. What episode was it in?