Shout! Factory continues to re-release long out-of-print episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000 originally released on DVD by Rhino. Experiment #320, The Unearthly, benefits from the inclusion of two classically-riffed educational shorts, Posture Pals and Appreciating Your Parents.
Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Unearthly
Studio:Shout! Factory
US DVD Release Date: August 16, 2011
Rated: Not Rated
Running Time: 90 minutes
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1 full screen
Audio: Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono (English)
Subtitles: None
In the not too distant future, next Sunday, AD.....
Movie: 3 out of 5
Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K) was the brainchild of Joel Hodgson, a former prop comic and frequent guest on Saturday Night Live and Late Night With David Letterman. Basically an extension of the popular hosted movie format made famous by Vampira and Elvira, the original premise was that Joel (and later Mike Nelson), along with his robot companions Crow and Tom Servo, were sent into space, orbiting the planet and forced to watch bad movies by Dr. Clayton Forrester (Trace Beaulieu). The show first aired on local Minneapolis-St. Paul UHF station KTMA in a very crude form in 1988, but was picked up by the Comedy Channel (now Comedy Central) as one of its first series a year later. The series survived for seven seasons, then moved to Sci-Fi for three additional seasons, finally falling out of first-run orbit in 1999.
With many of the Rhino-released episodes now out of print, Shout! Factory has begun releasing these episodes individually on DVD, available exclusively through their online store.
Experiment 320, The Unearthly, was not exactly one of the high points from the series third season. The movie is a bit of a bore, starring John Carradine as Dr. Charles Conway, a mad scientist trying to create the 17th gland to unlock the fountain of youth by preying on lonely, isolated subjects suffering from depression by offering to cure them. Tor Johnson co-stars as his dim-witted thug of an assistant, Lobo. As the movie progresses, Dr. Conway’s patients begin to figure out what he’s really up to when other patients begin to disappear and resurface as zombies. Joel and the bots have some clever riffs, especially their fanzine gossip recap during the opening credits. However, there are a lot of dead spots of silence during the feature, and many of the jokes fall flat.
The real saving grace is the two educational shorts. Posture Pals is about classroom of kids learning about good posture, centering around two boys and two girls who ultimately compete to win Burger King crowns for having the best posture. There are some great riffs to be found here, including references to Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Dr. Seuss, The Wizard of OZ, and (my favorite) the How To Recognize Different Types of Trees sketch from Monty Python’s Flying Circus.
The second short, Appreciating Our Parents, is a very dated view (aimed at kids) of what parents do while the kids are at school. Poor Tommy actually thought his room was self-cleaning before the short, and actually learns to help out around the house. Riffs include references to The Village People, Oedipus Rex, and an episode from earlier in the season, Pod People.
Host segments include creating a submission for America’s Funniest Home Videos, the invention exchange (the Mads create “hard pills to swallow” while Joel and the Bots demonstrate products named for celebrities), Crow and Tom appreciate Gypsy, the many faces of Tor Johnson, The Unerathly board game, and viewer mail.
Video: 3.5 out of 5
As I’ve stated in my previous reviews of these sets, judging the video quality of an episode of MST3K is difficult. The movies are usually in fairly bad shape, with sub-par transfers that the series’ producers had to contend with. The only fair thing to do is to judge the host segments, and this re-issue is a slight improvement over the prior Rhino release, with increased detail and well-defined colors.
Audio: 3 out of 5
As with the video, the audio quality is best judged by the host segments and the actual riffing during the movie. Dialogue is intelligible and overall the track has good fidelity. This is a slight improvement over the prior Rhino release, which sounded a tad muddier.
Special Features: 0 out of 5
The previous Rhino release included alternate takes of some of the host segments, and. sadly, those were not included on this feature-less new Shout! Factory release. Also missing are the creative and often hilarious animated menus we’ve grown accustomed to on Shout! Factory’s 4-disc sets.
Overall: 3 out of 5
Long-time fans of the series likely already own the previous Rhino release of this episode, and the slightly improved video and audio are not necessarily worth trading up to this new release. Still, kudos to Shout! Factory for making a long out of print episode available to fans who may have missed the opportunity to purchase this episode.
