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DVD Mystery Science Theater 3000 - The Wild World of Batwoman
Nothing captures the peculiar pastiche of the pop-cultural zeitgeist like Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K to fans). The formula is simple: subject a hapless temp worker, Mike Nelson, and his robot friends, Tom Servo and Crow, marooned in space to the worst B, C, even Z-grade movies imaginable and record the results. On The Wild World of Batwoman, they quip through a movie summed up best by Crow: "It looks like they just put a whole lotta movies in a blender and turned it on really fast!" The plot of the movie is hapless at best, inexplicably puncuated by bikini-clad "Batgirls" go-go dancing with guns (Mike quips: "That's 40 pounds of butt in pants with a 30-pound capacity."). The episode starts with a '50s educational short on student cheating that is so dour in tone that Tom wonders, "Is this Ingmar Bergman's first American movie?" In a sub-skit, Tom and Crow go mano a mano (or roboto a roboto) trying to out-shun each other: "I double shun you." Tom trumps with, "I shun you version 3.0 for Windows." The worse the movie, the better and more wacky the MST3K episode; never has subpar art ever inspired such heights of hilarity, and Batwoman is as bad as they come. Which means it's great. Get it? --Tod Nelson
Review(s): DVD Mystery Science Theater 3000 - The Wild World of Batwoman
From "Wild" to mild to... I know not what.
While I enjoyed watching MST3K, I found the show a bit inconsistent. For every two eppies that contained a good load of laughs, there was one that had a decent amount of guffaws with a few dead spots, and one that grabbed only sparse laughter. Mike & the `Bots' take on "The Wild World of Batwoman" falls into the some-laughs-with-dead-spots department for me. But the thing is, after watching the opening sketch (which was actually funny, and not just "cute" and corny), and finding myself crackin' up every few seconds as the boys cut down the opening short on cheating, I was expecting just as many, if not more laughs from the main feature...
Sadly, this was not to be, although it started off fairly well. Our beloved S.O.L. denizens were in rare form throughout the first half, but then their goofs & cracks were fewer and further between down the home stretch. And when they DID come up with a comedic rejoinder, it usually fell flat, or was a pretty good "groaner" gag. It didn't help that the movie's dialogue became less and less audible as it played on, whilst the music track's volume started increasing. Ya know a flicks's not even good enough for the `bots to bounce killer riffs off of when they beg Mike to "please kill me now" about a dozen times during the flick's last five minutes. Also a hindrance was the fact that "Batwoman" became even more of a confusing, nonsensical mess than it already was as it led up to the climax. Sadly, "The Wild World of Batwoman" was one MST3K experiment that Forrester and Frank should have "pushed the button" on well before it concluded...
Bottom line: if you feel up to it, give this less-than-wild adventure a rent, if only for the "Cheating" short, or if ya wanna watch "Batwoman" all by itself without Mike & the `Bots butting in. Who knows, ya might even do a better job at cuttin' it down than they did! Then again, the mad scientist of roughly European origin and his hunch-backed Igor-looking sidekick are pretty freakin' funny all by themselves; you couldn't put `em down any worse than they do themselves here!
`Late
"It's like we're smart, but we're not!"
In one of the two Mike episodes that were wrongly labeled as Joel ones for DVD(the other is The Beginning of the End), after viewing the latest Invention Exchange between the MADs and the SoL crew, which involves Dr. Forrester getting his hair turned into the shape of a mushroom cloud, Mike Nelson, Crow T. Robot, and Tom Servo have to deal with a very bad film entitled the Wild World of Batwoman. And make no mistake, this flick is so bad I wouldn't even want my worst enemy to see it. The main villain, Rat Fink(I won't spoil who he really is... then again, you probably won't care) looks like a bad Zorro rip-off with a ski mask, the girls, for some odd reason, go-go dance almost all the time, and there's the laughable chase scene at the very end of the film that could have been performed better by pre-schoolers. Oh, and let's not get started on the mole people, strange creatures that show up in a pointless little scene and disappear just as quickly. With a flick this bad, you know Mike and the Bots are mercilessly gonna tear it apart.
And tear it apart they do. Despite this being only his third episode, this is arguably one of Mike's best. The riffing is fast-paced and always on target, never missing a beat. From the lame "initiation" at the film's start to the girls yet again dancing like crazy at the end, Mike, Crow, and Servo spout out some great one-liners, my personal favorite being their "cyanaide pill" lines about midway through. There's also a funny part during WWOB's opening credits, where Mike leaves the theater to make some popcorn! And let's not forget the short "Cheating," a cliched, badly acted educational romp about a kid who cheats repeatedly on tests, gets caught, and screws his life up as a result. "Did Johnny really know the harm he was doing with his cheating?," the narrator asks. Our three heroes give a far better question: "Is he just pure evil?" "Cheating," is one of my favorite MSTK3 shorts, up there with Hired, Last Clear Chance, and Once Upon a Honeymoon, and that alone is worth this volume. The Wild World of Batwoman is a classic MSTK3 episode, and definitely deserves a spot in any fan's collection.
Who greenlighted a movie like this?: an LSD addict
Oh my God. I don't even understand how the movie "The Wild World of Batwoman" was made...what kind of sick mind--it's like they were expecting Mystery Science Theater years later, and they crafted a movie perfect for the purpose of the show...
...so, I guess, thank God for "The Wild World of Batwoman". This one is hillarious. The chase with the arch villian Ratfink around tables and near beakers is brimming with funny. And the annoying, gum-chewing kidnapper, who's "shirt just screams British advertising executive" is equally hillarious.
In the beginning of the movie, a tough thug stops a whistling gentleman and asks for a light. The man replies, "Sure buddy," and searches his pockets for a lighter while Mike says: "Havin' trouble getting to it cause of all the money...jeez, I got THOUSANDS in here..."
Ya gotta buy this...guaranteed laughs.
Related DVD's Mystery Science Theater 3000 - The Wild World of Batwoman
Mystery Science Theater 3000 experienced a changing of the guard with this fifth-season episode. Departed series creator and lead Joel Hodgson was replaced by head writer Mike Nelson, playing a hapless temp named... Mike Nelson, who was sent into space to cover for Hodgson's escape. The opening credit sequence and title theme (warbled by Nelson) were also new, but the show's basic premise--poking fun at atrocious B movies--remained the same.
If Coleman Francis had never existed, he would have been invented by the writers of MST3K just for the perverse enjoyment of ridiculing him. Here the director of the jaw-droppingly inept The Beast of Yucca Flats tries his hand at a jailbreak film, which takes a surreal veer into an American invasion of Cuba apparently hampered by military budget cuts ("Once all seven of them are in place, the invasion really begins") before ending up in an American tungsten mine. Why? Who knows, but the bots have a ball skewering the film with some of their funniest comments ("I want to hurt this movie but I can never hurt it the way it hurt me") and Mike Nelson becomes so disturbed he turns into Carol Channing. Believe it or not, costar John Carradine rasps out the theme song "Night Train... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Michael J. Nelson - Joel Hodgson - Trace Beaulieu - Kevin Murphy (II) Director(s): Michael J. Nelson - Joel Hodgson - Vince Rodriguez - Trace Beaulieu - Kevin Murphy (II) DVD Release Date: Released the 26 March 2002 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Leapin' locusts! It's giant-insect time again, only this time the radiation from an agricultural experiment has turned Chicago into a breeding ground for gargantuan grasshoppers. It's all courtesy of '50s sci-fi schlockmeister Bert I. Gordon of The Amazing Colossal Man fame, and with Peter Graves as the nominal bug-busting hero, it's no wonder the guys at MST3K decided to roast this 1957 turkey on their popular TV show. But which is funnier, the movie itself or the skewering it gets from the snickering silhouettes of Joel, Crow, and Tom Servo? No matter, because you can have it both ways on this dubious DVD--plain or nutty! Some of the MST3K gags are cleverly twisted for trivia buffs (as when a cop approaches a wrecked car and Tom Servo says, "Uh... Miss... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Peter Graves - Peggie Castle - Morris Ankrum Director(s): Bert I. Gordon DVD Release Date: Released the 30 January 2001 Special Order
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"Joel, don't you have anything better to do than psychoanalyze a bunch of robots?" Apparently not in this hilarious installment of MST3K, in which Joel Hodgson and the robots of the Satellite of Love deconstruct this starched and stiff juvenile delinquent drama with everything from art projects to a giant mobile representing the hero's roiling subconscious. Square high school kid Jimmy is on trial for murder in this cautionary drama told in flashback, in which we learn all about this nice boy driven to lies, crime, and the arms of a nightclub floozy by a negligent father, an alcoholic mother, and his own utter stupidity. The film's cheesy nightclub number inspires Joel and the bots to put on their own version: Gypsy lip-synchs the lyrics while the other three pop in and out of... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Sam Newfield DVD Release Date: Released the 26 March 2002 Usually ships in 24 hours
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This farewell episode for Joel Hodgson is a sentimental favorite but even more worth it for the hilarity spawned by our captured Satellite of Love friends. The movie centers on the hapless, big lug cop named Mitchell (Joe Don Baker), who fights the rich and powerful drug-dealing bad guys. Along the way, Mitchell finds himself investigating murder, falling "in sex" with Linda Evans, helping an elderly woman like a good son, and telling a bothersome wisecracking kid to buzz off. Match that with clothing and music from 1975 and you've got prime fodder for the biting remarks of Joel, Crow, and Tom Servo--which, of course, they take advantage of handily and in abundance. Mitchell has a few quiet areas but these are spotty, and when Joel and his mechanical friends start ... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Andrew V. McLaglen DVD Release Date: Released the 20 November 2001 Usually ships in 24 hours
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