Release Date: June 26, 2007
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Episodes Featured:
Ring of Terror
Indestructible Man
Tormented
Horrors of Spider Island
After the previous two film rights clusterfuck sets, I'm sure Rhino was more than happy to do a set of easy to obtain black and white films for this Volume 11 box. There's a theme of B-movie to Z-grade WTF level trash here, and I'm sure there was nothing here that got Rhino sued.
The episode quality remains in a comfort level of "Good, not great" with the exception of the earliest episode, Ring of Terror, which really anchors down the overall rating of this set for me. But other than that you get a couple of fourth season goodies with Indestructible Man and Tormented, with the latter being my choice episode of the set. The sole Mike/Sci-Fi era episode of the set is Horrors of Spider Island, which is another that I recommend, though the movie might be a little tougher to digest for most.
Episode Rating (scale of 1 to 4): 2.5
I think the audio and video of this set ran pretty well overall, with the exception of the rough film masters on the movies themselves. The bonus features are highlighted by Tormented, which has a roundtable with director Bert I. Gordon, his daughter/actress Susan Gordon, and character actor Joe Turkel. Also featured are MST Hour wraps for Tormented and a Video Jukebox of songs from the show. Rounding out the set are trailers for Indestructible Man, Tormented, and Horrors of Spider Island.
The cover art mimics a trailer park on fire, which it seems the MST logo is emulating that of a meteor that has struck it. It's a pretty fun idea for a cover, though it might have been more at home for a set that featured Giant Spider Invasion, which is a movie that actually featured a lot of trailer trash an a threat from a fallen meteor. The interior art behind the discs is dark and hard to make out, but it looks like trash from the trailer park against a starry backdrop. Rhino has fun with the disc art once again, though using internal organs for Ring of Terror might make one lose his lunch. Indestructible Man features an X-ray of a rib cage, Tormented features seaweed, and Horrors of Spider Island is, of course, a spider web.
Rhino's menus are also fun. Ring of Terror features a crypt among tombstones. Indestructible Man features stills of Lon Chaney Jr., Marian Carr, and Casey Adams, with two electrodes generating electricity. Tormented has Tom Servo falling from a lighthouse (so much for that hover skirt!), and concludes with his ghost haunting the sky with Vi's floating head. Horrors of Spider Island has Servo caught in a spider's web as the spider hovers behind him. Like most Rhino menus, all have theater seat silhouettes at the the bottom with Joel (regardless of Horrors of Spider Island being a Mike episode), Servo, and Crow. Servo however is absent from the seats in the latter two episodes as he has been inserted in the menu itself. All menus open with the doorway sequence of its respective host.
Regardless of my opinion on Ring of Terror, I don't think Volume 11 is a set MSTies will regret owning. I think most will like certain episodes more than others, but there is bound to be at least one episode on here that pleases your average fan. But there are also sets out there with more consistent episode offerings out there, so this might not be the place to start.
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