Episodes
Cave DwellersGamera
Pod People
Gamera vs. Barugon
Stranded in Space
Time of the Apes
Daddy-O
Gamera vs. Gaos
The Amazing Colossal Man
Fugitive Alien
It Conquered the World
Gamera vs. Guiron
Earth vs. the Spider
Mighty Jack
Teenage Cave Man
Gamera vs. Zigra
The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent
Star Force: Fugitive Alien II
War of the Colossal Beast
The Unearthly
Santa Claus Conquers the Martians
Master Ninja I
The Castle of Fu Manchu
Master Ninja II
Shorts
Featured in DVD sets
Four episodes released on VHS (including one released exclusively on VHS)
A long-time fan favorite season of MSTies across the world, the third season shows the series at its most confident yet. Everything is refined, they know exactly what this show is, and they're ready to rock and roll! The third season is a bar for quality that most seasons wish to live up to.
That being said, there is something that does hold the season back a little for me and that is that while the film line-up can get to be a little tiringly similar. The majority of the season is seesawing back and forth between Japanese imports by Sandy Frank and cheese made by American International, while they're sandwiched in between some movies that are distributed by Film Ventures that bookend the season. While these three corners are wildly different than each other, the film selection holds little surprises as a result because we always have an idea of what to expect. And even with that taken into account, a large number of these "movies" are actually television episodes/pilots posing as movies, which while still meet the criteria of "cheesy," they make me yearn for real movies instead. Stranded in Space, Time of the Apes, the Fugitive Alien films, Mighty Jack, and a duo of Master Ninja are all television production pretenders that clutter up the season.
All of that aside, the big elephant in the room with the film selection this season is that a chunk of the season has already been featured on the series. The entire Sandy Frank package this season was riffed before during the KTMA season. The big upside to this is that the camp factor for these films is high so there is heavy rewards to redoing them when the series is in full swing as opposed to during their early amateur days, so this isn't a heavy problem unless you exclusively watch the series to see movies you haven't seen before and just about all of these episodes easily trump their KTMA counterparts. Curious omissions from the Sandy Frank package are Humanoid Woman and The "Legend of Dinosaurs," though those two films are a bit more dour than the ones they did reuse.
There are a lot of fan favorites this season...some of which aren't favorites of mine, but we can't all love everything. I'm a big downer on the beloved Pod People and I'm not a huge fan of what is considered the crown jewel short of Mr. B Natural. As for episodes I do respond to, I've always loved the show when it takes on productions from Japan, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that I tend to gravitate toward those. This season gives us nine total, so you can't say there isn't a wealth to choose from! Some are better than others, but I absolutely adore the double feature of Fugitive Alien, which make me laugh myself silly. Needing no introduction are also a series of five Gamera films, while the champion of those films for me was the wildly wacky Gamera vs. Guiron. Outside of the orient, favorites of mine include the Conan the Barbarian knock-off Cave Dwellers and the Roger Corman classic Viking Women and the Sea Serpent.
The ones that I'm not too fond of include The Castle of Fu Manchu, which is a brick wall of a movie that didn't offer much material to work with. Pod People is also one that settles at the bottom of the season for me, while The Unearthly has two shorts that try to save it but is just dull in general and Stranded in Space is the weakest of the TV productions. Of the Japanese offerings, I cited Gamera vs. Gaos to be the most lackluster.
But in spite of a film selection that could stand to be more diverse, I think the thing we're here for the comedy and that comedy is on a high. Season three brings the laughs. That's the bottom line. It's the sign that the series has a healthy life ahead of it as they unlock the code to one of the most unique and original shows on television.
Top Five Episodes:
1. Star Force: Fugitive Alien II
2. Fugitive Alien
3. Cave Dwellers
4. The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Journey to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent
5. Gamera vs. Guiron
Bottom Five Episodes:
1. The Castle of Fu Manchu
2. Pod People
3. The Unearthly
4. Stranded in Space
5. Gamera vs. Gaos
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