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Apr 03, 2015 Web Exclusive By Austin Trunick

While Mystery Science Theater 3000 was still on the air, the end credits included a message to fans: “Keep circulating the tapes.” While many of us are still clinging to low-quality VHS dubs of select episodes, these DVD re-releases have been a welcome upgrade, providing better-quality sound and typically great extra features. (And, at least in my case: no commercials to fast-forward through.) Factor in the complicated rights issues involved with clearing many of the movies riffed on the show and the company’s efforts are even more appreciated.

Since they landed the home video rights for the show in 2008, the folks at Shout! Factory have released at least a dozen episodes per year spread out across multiple DVD sets (almost half of the series.) This quest for completion is a contributor to the problem encountered by their latest volume, XXXII, in that not all episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000 were created equal. Sometimes the riffs fall flat, or the host segments miss their mark—in some rare cases, the movies featured on the show just weren’t terrible enough to warrant Joel/Mike and the bots’ ridicule. As Shout! Factory work their way through the show’s entire catalog, they’re eventually going to run up against the series’ more forgettable episodes.

So where do the chips fall with the four included in this volume? We’ll take a look.

Hercules – The gem of the set is the 1958 Hercules movie, starring Steve Reeves. (MST3K had tackled its sequel, Hercules Unchained, previous to this fifth season episode.) In contrast with many of the low-budget films targeted by the show, Hercules is a large-scale production, with fancy sets, special effects, and hundreds of extras. To be fair to Hercules, it does a decent job knocking off a sword-and-sandals epic in the vein of Ben Hur or Spartacus; however, to be fair to those other films, Hercules is terrible. It mixes-and-matches myths, sacrificing logic in favor of throwing battle after battle at the well-oiled, stone-faced Hercules. (Reeves’ performance is about as nuanced as Arnold Schwarzenegger’s turns as Conan.) This gives the crew of the Satellite of Love plenty to riff on—from the cheesy special effects to poor acting and inexplicable plot holes. Hercules features some of the most rapid-firing riffing you’ll find on the show, and much of it is hilarious. The main bonus feature is a short documentary on legendary Hollywood producer Joseph Levine, the founder of Embassy Pictures, who made his early fortune importing foreign films and remarketing them for American audiences. Not only was Levine responsible for bringing to light such turkeys as Hercules and Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, but he also had his hand in several bona fide film classics, including The Graduate, The Lion in Winter, and the Americanized version of Godzilla.

San Francisco International – Wild hijinks occur at the titular West Coast travel hub in this made-for-TV movie, starring Bonanza’s Pernell Roberts as a hot-shot airport administrator. Thieves hijack a Federal Reserve money shipment, but don’t worry, Pernell’s on it. A woman is kidnapped at gunpoint, but Pernell’s got that, too. A little boy takes off in a small plane without knowing how to land it. Thank goodness Pernell’s around to rescue him. And that’s all in just one single, zany day at San Francisco International Airport! There are some classic riffs here—particularly a few great ones at the expense of a goofy, hippie-type character that could have only appeared on a network TV show circa 1970—but the host segments are a bit dry. (There are three full segments built around Mike Nelson’s Steve Urkel impression, which is certainly stretching the joke.) The DVD includes a short history of Satellite News, the go-to fan site for MSTies since the ‘90s. It provides a great snapshot of fandom in the early days of the Internet, and is a nice tribute to an important part of the online community that’s kept this show alive in people’s memories for so long after it’s gone off the air.

Radar Secret Service – An entire film built around special agents who use radar to fight crime, written by a screenwriter who apparently had no idea what radar actually does. The special agents drive around with a large “radar” ball on the top of their car, which they use to spy on criminals, determine whether a car contains stolen items, and even locate a murder weapon hidden in a swamp. Why bother to solve a mystery when your miraculous radar can do it for you? Once the jokes about the heroes’ obsession with their radar eventually wear thin, Radar Secret Service becomes tiresome very quickly. The plot centers on the agents trying to recover stolen uranium from a group of gangsters. Unfortunately, the gangsters and good guys are nearly indistinguishable from one another, and most of the action involves a black car being pursued at low speeds by another black car. (You can tell which one belongs to the good guys, because it has a big, dumb radar ball on its roof.) The short feature included at the beginning of Radar Secret Service is the best part of the episode: Last Clear Chance is an incredibly morbid little film produced by a railroad company to warn drivers of the dangers of not looking both ways before crossing train tracks. Unfortunately, the primary bonus feature on this disc is about as exciting as the riffed movie; MST-UK is a videotaped travelogue of Frank Conniff and Trace Beaulieu’s trip to a sci-fi convention in London. Like most vacation videos, it’s only fun to watch if you were there.

Space Travelers – Space Travelers is a repackaged, re-edited and re-titled version of the space race-era thriller, Marooned, starring Gregory Peck and Gene Hackman. In the film, three astronauts are stranded in an orbiting space capsule when they equipment malfunctions. A cross between Apollo 13 and Gravity, Space Travelers focuses on the men’s survival and attempts to find an alternative way to get home. Despite its star power and decent production values, Marooned was not a very good movie—which may explain why it fell into the hands of Film Ventures International, a smash-and-grab production and distribution company that slapped a new title and butt-ugly credit sequence onto it. Space Travelers’ problem is that it’s so slow-paced and uneventful; much of the film involves astronauts chatting with ground control over blurry video screens, or scientists discussing plans of action in bland conference rooms. To boot, the film is incredibly drab to look at—the fact that its original widescreen, Cinerama presentation is chopped down into a 4:3 aspect ratio doesn’t help matters. Joel and the bots can only milk so much mileage out of a movie where so little happens—it’s a lot of talking, and very little else. As Frank Conniff frankly states in the disc’s introduction, there was some hesitancy about the show taking on this particular movie, as it wasn’t their typical disaster made by an unknown filmmaker, but a rare misfire by actors and a director—John Sturges—who they all admired. The bonus feature is a brief background documentary on Marooned, where a film historian provides a not-quite-effective defense of a very dry, very boring film.

In all, MST3K Vol. XXXII nets viewers one great episode, two so-so ones, and a genuine clunker. For newbies to the series, there are much better places to start and get more bang for your buck—Shout! Factory’s previous volume, XXXI, was particularly strong, and XIII is an old favorite. But for those who have been grabbing these sets release-by-release, Hercules makes Volume XXXII worth the price of admission.

www.shoutfactory.com/film/film-comedy/mst3k-volume-xxxii

Author rating: 6/10