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Post by hike'em'up on Oct 4, 2020 21:14:49 GMT -5
I think I said this before but "Monster A Go Go" was not funny at all. Not a single worth riff. there is a joke early on in that one where some Army guy visits the wife's home to tell her that they cannot find her husband the pilot. she serves him coffee and the joke is he tells her how the coffee he just sipped is warmer than her husband's body its probably been 7-8 years since I last watched that episode but i vaguely remember that joke because it was the only time i laughed at anything in it. it is my lowest ranked episode, just barely ahead of 621s The Beast of Yucca Flats
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Post by Caedmon on Oct 20, 2020 17:08:40 GMT -5
I think I said this before but "Monster A Go Go" was not funny at all. Not a single worth riff. I am so weird. I find the riffing in that episode to be hilarious. Honestly one of my favorite episodes in the entire show.
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Torgo
Moderator Emeritus
-segment with Crow?
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Post by Torgo on Oct 20, 2020 18:02:16 GMT -5
The phone ring by itself is one of the funniest things I've ever seen.
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Post by comedyc on Oct 25, 2020 20:33:14 GMT -5
The worst episode is easily Space Mutiny. Like any pop act, the biggest single is usually the worst song the group has to offer. This is because of an general lack of taste among most of the public. Just like Enter Sandman or Stairway to Heaven, if you dig just a little bit deeper, you'll always find the real good stuff, the stuff that speaks to you directly. The "favorites" are always the worst because they are easy to digest entry points. Once you're through those, the fandom's world is your oyster. That's why I'm always baffled at the "fan list of top episodes." MST3k is so diverse, you would think no episode would stand out above the rest.
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Post by comedyc on Oct 25, 2020 20:36:07 GMT -5
I also take umbrage with starting people out with Space Mutiny, Final Sacrifice or even I Accuse My Parents. Because it's all "downhill" from there. If they like this easy to watch episode, it's not really preparing them for the horrors that await in the "difficult" episodes.
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Post by comedyc on Oct 25, 2020 20:42:21 GMT -5
It can be like staying in a kiddie pool, and not ever really learning how to swim in the deep end. "Eegah was easy, and I didn't drown, but Neptune Men is too hard to swim in, so I'll give up, and never try to swim again." Throw newbies directly into the deep end! Lol
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Post by jadenh on Oct 26, 2020 1:42:29 GMT -5
I don't think it's that deep dude. I think a lot of people like Space Mutiny just because it's a funny episode. It's a good entry episode for sure, but that doesn't make it bad. I personally don't like Werewolf, even though that's also a really popular episode. But I don't think it's bad because it's easy to digest episode for newbies or anything dumb like that. I just don't find it entertaining. I think a lot of lesser known episodes are actually some of the weaker episodes of the series. And I think that's precisely the reason why no one really talks about them. They're bad.
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Torgo
Moderator Emeritus
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Post by Torgo on Oct 26, 2020 15:42:05 GMT -5
I've been in this fandom long enough to know that saying less popular episodes are "bad" is a bit too broad and absolute. Fans react to different episodes differently, and less popular ones have more niche appeal that someone will respond to. I hate Pod People, but a lot of people love it. I enjoy Hamlet, most do not.
The most popular episodes are the ones that have the broadest appeal, and that's why they're usually brought up as "first time" episodes, because they're and example of "If you like this, you'll probably like this show." After that a fan weeds through all of the episodes to find which they respond to, and some of the less talked about ones will probably become favorites.
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Post by hike'em'up on Oct 30, 2020 12:11:47 GMT -5
Throw newbies directly into the deep end! Lol Nevermind the whole control freak aspect of these posts, but if youre suggesting an episode for somebody who had never seen the show before, why would you deliberately choose one you know to be a bit more of a chore to get through? Odds are they'll only end up watching a few anyway so do right by the creators and show them the goods. I like Space Mutiny well enough and even though its not among my favorites it would still definitely be on a short list of eps I'd watch with somebody.
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Post by jadenh on Oct 30, 2020 17:45:41 GMT -5
I agree. I'll revise my post above by saying that there are plenty of lesser known episodes that are also really good. The show had over 200 episodes. There's gonna be plenty of other episodes worth watching besides just those 20 or 30 really popular ones. However, I do think there's a reason that a lot of the episodes became so famous in the first place. They're good episodes, and they do a nice job of easing people into the show. This whole thing does seem to be a bit like gatekeeping honestly.
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Post by comedyc on Oct 30, 2020 22:57:47 GMT -5
I just want people to watch every episode of MST3K
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Post by jadenh on Oct 31, 2020 0:51:34 GMT -5
I mean, I can agree with that to an extent. I'm all for giving every episode at least a try. I just don't think starting fans with more "difficult" episodes is the right way to go about things.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Dec 27, 2020 14:20:49 GMT -5
I've already mentioned a couple of these but I decided to do a bottom five cable episodes. I'm not including the KTMA and Netflix stuff because I'm not nearly as familiar with most of those episodes and because those are technically different series. In order from most to least watchable: 320 The Unearthly 102 The Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy 103 The Mad Monster 907 Hobgoblins 515 The Wild, Wild World of Batwoman The Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy and The Unearthly are riffable movies, it's just unfortunate that they were featured on the show when they were: we all know about Season 1's extremely laid back and sparse riffing, but while they continued to up the pace over the next few years, the show still had a relaxed atmosphere in late Season 3, and IMO that approach doesn't suit a movie as boring or as bad as The Unearthly. I think these could have been more successful episodes had they been used during the late Joel or mid Mike years. On the other hand, I'm not sure The Mad Monster is suitable for the show. Creaky poverty row horror movies of the '40s just don't seem to be in the show's wheelhouse, although BBI managed better with The Corpse Vanishes (another borderline-unacceptable movie for the same reasons) in the very next episode they produced. Maybe Corpse caught their interests better. Regardless, as I said in a previous post, the transfer they were stuck with for 103 ruined any attempt they could have made on that episode. I wonder if that's the episode that made them realize they couldn't use *any* bad movie the network could get... My problem with 515 and 907, however, isn't in the riffing. I think BBI gave their best efforts on those episodes, but I just can't get past the movies themselves -- I find it impossible to enjoy any movie that has such open contempt for its audience. Unless I'm overlooking some, I think every other movie featured on MST3K was intended to earnestly serve as some level of entertainment (never mind that most failed) -- these two, however, were made by "filmmakers" who were well aware of their shocking limitations and tried to exploit that for very cheap laughs. It's like Sharknado, where the concept is so (intentionally) stupid and the execution so (intentionally) poor that the movie's effectively mocking anyone who watches it. IMO, part of the appeal of bad movie is that the filmmakers tried and failed. That's simply not the case with either Batwoman or Hobgoblins. They're the only cable TV episodes I avoid (again, unless I'm overlooking another). And yeah, the shorts on 320 and 515 are terrific, but they're strong enough to salvage those episodes for me. I also like the Radar Men chapters on 102 and 103, which are basically up to the par of the other early S1 episodes.
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Post by mylungswereaching on Dec 27, 2020 15:12:51 GMT -5
I tend to like episodes where I would have laughed at even if it wasn't riffed. I watched the show when it was first on. I was alive before the internet or even VCR's. I remember getting drunk or stoned with my friends and flipping on the TV at 2am and having a choice of a movie like Monster a go go or an infomercial. We'd watch a really bad movie or TV show and laugh hysterically over a movie that was supposed to be serious. The beer and weed probably had something to do with it. The funniest movies were bad movies when the director and producer seemed to believe that they were making the best movie ever. Movies like Monster a Go Go were funny even unriffed with a few beers and few friends. I couldn't do that with Hobgoblins because it was trying to be bad.
The worst movies tend to fall into three categories for me. First are movies that are unwatchable because of the bad print. I find Hamlet a bad episode because the print of the show hurts my eyes. I don't like Fu Manchu for the same reason. The second category are movies like Hobgoblins that are intentionally bad. Movies that are earnestly bad are much more fun. The third are movies that I just don't like at all for some reason like The Incredibly Melting Man or The Brute Man. I just didn't like the movie at all. It wasn't the right type bad for me to laugh at without the riffs.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Dec 27, 2020 16:59:16 GMT -5
The worst movies tend to fall into three categories for me. First are movies that are unwatchable because of the bad print. I find Hamlet a bad episode because the print of the show hurts my eyes. I don't like Fu Manchu for the same reason. This is one of the most notable downsides of the show being produced when it was, since the technical standards and requirements for the presentation of movies on video and TV were very lax then. (But hey, at least they got some good riffs out of this through the years.) It's almost unfair that they riffed Scope-size films when they could only watch roughly one third of the frame. Fu Manchu will obviously never be a good movie, but the presentation BBI had to use makes the film even worse than it originally was. I've never seen the original version (and have practically no desire to) but I have seen screenshots from the Indicator Blu-ray: from that alone, my impression is that the photography was at least competent, sometimes (*gulp*) even appealing. There's no telling that from the butt-ugly version they used on the show. For those morbidly curious... DVD Beaver has some screenshots from two Blu-ray releases of CoFM. The U.S. Blue Underground release looks pretty wretched, especially in contrast to the aforementioned Indicator release. Be warned, there's some slight NSFW content in there.
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