While I agree with many other reviewers -- this is not the funniest of the many MST3K episodes -- I must say it still has much merit.
An astronaut goes completely off his rocker and blows up his ship. Soon after, a dorky med-school student named Paul finds the astronaut's severed hand on a beach while taking a romp with a foreign chick. He takes the hand home(Tom: "Thank goodness he brought a handbag!"), puts it on a pantry shelf (isn't that an odd place to keep body parts?), and the next thing he knows it's on the loose and in the mood to kill. The sheriff (the skipper from Gilligan's Island), shows up on the scene, and his arrival marks the beginning of an endless stream of Gilligan jokes.
When watching this episode, one must take into consideration that this was a very early episode. They still had some bugs to work out of the show -- it was still a work-in-progress, and it took many seasons before finally reaching the peak of funniness.
Even if it's just for the Def Leopard crack (visual: severed hand; audio: "didn't you used to be with Def Leopard?"), anyone who likes MST3K should give this one a shot.
i'm gonna come right out and say it...
...i don't like season 1!
i don't like dr. erhardt as much as tv's frank (who does?) and the riffing is more sparse and of a slightly weaker style. but i was thinking, for a new fan seeking to discover mst3k, this may not be a bad jumping off point (although manos is a better start).
this episode is indicative of the true original philosophy of mst3k. most of the best episodes aren't mystery or science-oriented (manos, mitchell, many sci-fi eps such as jack frost or final sacrifice), but the crawling hand is a true, cheesy, BAD scifi/horror movie. and that was the original intent of the show: to riff on bad scifi/horror flicks. and the riffing IS good, it's just not as good as it would become in later seasons.
nobody should miss out on this episode, but other episodes are better, and once you're well-versed in mst3k-dom, you'll revisit this episode less often than the others.
"Mrs. Burke, I thought you...were Dale!"
This episode is just one of many that contain the "deathless" line: "Mrs. Burke, I thought you...were Dale!"
Naturally, our whole family likes these episodes, because we starred in the original 1968 Grape-Nuts TV commercial from which this riff comes. (Yes, Mrs. Burke AND Dale are real, alive, well, and living in the USA.)
Many thanks to MST3K's Best Brains for riffing our commercial decades after it ran (and to Mr. Murphy for helping to clear up the trouble about the origin of this riff)!
Hellcats begins promisingly enough, with a catchy little theme song ("Heeeellll-cats! Heeeellll-cats!") that you will not be able to dislodge from your brain for days. It's perky and happy in exactly the way that the movie is not. Then the movie descends into extended periods of boredom punctuated by stupid biker tricks. As another reviewer noted, everything in this movie is padding.
This is one of those movies that would be intolerable were it not for the MST3K treatment. You get to see unattractive people spray beer on each other, make out, ride motorcycles, and engage in dubious feats of strength, although I fear this description makes the movie sound much more entertaining than it actually is.
As for the "plot", Ross Hagen shows up in the US on leave from Vietnam, hangs out with... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Robert F. Slatzer DVD Release Date: Released the 11 June 2002 Usually ships within 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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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... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Jerry Warren DVD Release Date: Released the 30 January 2001 Usually ships in 24 hours
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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.
"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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