It is conventional wisdom that there are some films that are so bad that they?re good. And it?s a given that, with few exceptions, say GIGLI, which stunned the press audience with whom I endured it into a stunned silence, they are just that much more enjoyable when accompanied by a panoply of snide and snarky remarks that help one savor the true ineptitude playing out on the screen or television. It somehow validates the guilty pleasure some of us feel when sneaking a peak at the bottom of the cinematic barrel. It?s one of the great regrets of my life that GIGLI will never get the Mystery Science Theater treatment. I just know somehow that Joel, a sweetly snide guy, and his robot pals Crow, Gypsy, and Tom Servo, imprisoned in low-Earth orbit on the Satellite of Love, would know just the right thing to say to make the nightmare of being forced to watch grade-Z flicks the seriously skanky fun that it always could have been.
They may never be able to take a crack at that film, or GLITTER or BATTLEFIELD EARTH, but we lucky home viewers can still thrill to their death- and sanity-defying turns with the some of the worst films ever made with Volume 6 of the Mystery Science Theater DVD series from the fine folks at Rhino. The magic is still there with such schlock classics as ATTACK OF THE GIANT LEECHES, the clueless mangling of the western with GUNSLINGER, and teenage angst and rebellion are raised to cosmically ridiculous levels in TEENAGERS FROM OUTER SPACE, which involves a giant lobster because, well, I guess, just because..
The wisecracks, as usual, come thick and fast with references go history, philosophy, and the particular Dada-esque sensibility that is the show?s trademark. If the Bartles and Jaymes crack during ATTACK OF THE GIANT LEECHES is a little too dated for current audiences, never mind, the added dialogue is light-years better, not to mention deliberately funnier, than what?s cmeing from the film. There?s ?Johnny at the Fair?, a deliciously inept short designed to lure tourists to a long-forgotten fair in Canada. The premises, little Johnny getting lost and having a set of adventures on his own becomes, thanks to Joel and company, a perfect gem of existential despair. And don?t forget the experiment exchanges between Joel and the ?bots and Dr. Forrester, the evil genius who sent Joel into space. The scratch-n-sniff report cards that brings back the smells of high school is disturbingly unforgettable.
The only beef I have is that the three flicks are each on a separate disc. It just began to whet my appetite for the schlock. Couldn?t we have another couple of prime dreck per disc? The fourth disc is a compilation of overly earnest industrial and educational shorts, including the pseudo-science of ARE YOU READY FOR MARRIAGE, a painfully low-rent Peter Pan convincing a dorky kid to join the school band in order to become cool in ?Mr. B Natural?, and ?Design for Dreaming?, a hallucinogenic flight into the future of materialism as envisioned circa 1950. That last hardly needs commentary, but who could resist as our heroine defies gravity in a diaphanous gown while being either wooed and/or stalked by a man in a tux and a gold mask?
MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000 Volume 6 is a great addition to your MST3000 library, or a great place to start building one. When the real world gets to be too much, pop in a disc, settle back, and enjoy the snarkiness delivered with extreme prejudice.
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