Mystery Science Theater 3000: Volume XXXVI DVD Retrospective

Release Date:  July 26th, 2016

Buy Here!

Features the following episodes:
Stranded in Space
City Limits
The Incredible Melting Man
Riding with Death

Also featuring:
The 1st Annual Mystery Science Theater 3000 Summer Blockbuster Review
The 2nd Annual Mystery Science Theater 3000 Summer Blockbuster Review

There is very little beating around the bush here, the Mike episodes far outweigh the Joel ones in quality this time around.  The Joel episodes are okay but tend to run a bit dry for me, and believe me, dry is the last word you can describe Incredible Melting Man!  That said, I do quite like City Limits, making it the superior of the former two, while the star of the set it the season eight classic Riding with Death.  Meanwhile fellow TV movie Stranded in Space is the episode here you may want to skip over.

Initially offered for a limited time through Shout's website was a bonus disc including the two Summer Blockbuster Review specials, which are quite a treat.  I hope everyone got their copies, because they're gone now!  Mwahahahahaha!

Average Rating (episodes only, out of four:  3

The video and audio are pretty solid across the board, though Riding with Death and the first Blockbuster review have slightly troublesome black lines at points.

People who are looking for special features about MST itself will be sorely disappointed in this set.  While each disc has solid bonuses, they are devoted to the films themselves.  My favorite is The Devil Down in Georgia, which covers the life cycle of Film Ventures International who created those weird re-edits that MST saw from season two's Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster to season four's Being from Another Planet.  There are also interviews with actress Rae Dawn Chong (on City Limits) and writer Steven de Souza (on Riding with Death).  Meanwhile The Incredible Melting Man ports over interviews from it's own blu-ray release, offering us interviews with makeup artists Greg Cannom and Rick Baker as well as writer/director William Sachs.  Bonuses are rounded out by trailers for City Limits and The Incredible Melting Man.

The box art is again Shout's basic stock cover for the series, featuring the logo in the upper left corner and the theater seats at the bottom looking up at the volume number, which is "XXXVI" painted in turquoise.  As always the real star of thes art are the Steve Vance posters.  Stranded in Space offers Servo and government agents looking down on escaped alien astronaut Crow.  City Limits has Crow and Servo on motorcycles whipping chains and swinging baseball bats at each other.  The third has Servo playing the titular Incredible Melting Man reaching out for a woman, played by Crow.  Riding with Death has Crow posing as Agent Sam Casey while Servo dresses up as Buffalo Bill.

Disc art is Shout's basic starry backdrop with title logos plastered on.  The menus are still being done with puppets, and unfortunately they're mostly dull this time around.  For Stranded in Space Joel, Servo, and Crow fly a space pod around and Joel eats Jell-O.  City Limits has a post-apocalyptic cityscape while Joel, Servo, and Crow are superimposed upon it in montage shots riding motorcycles.  Melting Man has the coolest menu, which has Crow and Servo sitting with the Melting Man in the space pod (seen in the Stranded in Space menu) as he melts next to them.  Then we get a bit dull again with Riding with Death as Crow and Servo dressed up as Sam and Bill as they ride motorcycles next to the Grim Reaper while the movie theme plays (get it...because they're RIDING...with Death you see).  The recycling of props from one menu to another is shameless, but I understand what they're trying to do with these if it's any consolation.  I just don't quite care for the puppet menus so far honestly.  Still, that Melting Man effect was fun.

Riding with Death is a classic and Melting Man is a must see for its host segments alone (and the riffing aint too bad either), while the limited bonus disc is a treasure with two little seen gems on it, all making Volume XXXVI a no-brainer set to own.  Some might enjoy Stranded in Space or City Limits more than others, and I like City Limits personally (though Stranded has its moments), which is the only real hesitation on this set.  But even still there are some great bonus features pushing this set over the top in my mind.

The 2nd Annual Mystery Science Theater 3000 Summer Blockbuster Review (MST3K Special)

The crew of the Satellite of Love are back for another look at various blockbusters that littered our summer, covering twice as many films as the previous year.  Unfortunately this means they're less detailed, but it's still a rousing bit of MST vs. Hollywood goodness.  Behind the scenes clips provided some great fodder last year, but they're unfortunately dropped in favor of brief scenes from the films this year.  Often it's too brief to be overly funny, but one can't fault them for not picking ripe material.

The X-Files (later riffed by Bill Corbett, Mary Jo Pehl at Rifftrax)

One of the most popular television shows of the '90's, The X-Files was about as mainstream as hard sci-fi ever got.  This feature film takes place in between seasons five and six and sees FBI Agents Mulder and Scully reassigned but still swept up in the alien invasion case that made up the titular files of the series.  I like the TV show, and I'd say this is the better of the two movies that were based on it.  Though I haven't seen either in years, so don't quote me on that.

Clips of this movie feature Mulder mumbling to Agent Skinner and Mulder and Scully questioning kids on bikes.  Riffing is steady, mostly playing up the drab and wooden nature of X-Files characters.

Ever After:  A Cinderella Story

I have not seen this Drew Barrymore chick flick, which is a retelling of Cinderella from what I gather.  It looks fine, if stuck in '90's kitsch and sap, though boys like me skipped it because it obviously had cooties.

Clips feature a discussion on Drew Barrymore's plain jane beauty with Anjelica Huston followed by Barrymore's arrival at the ball in her Tinkerbell cosplay.  It would seem as melodramatic as the film looks that this might make great riffing fodder, though the mostly goofy riffing on these clips doesn't quite gel with it.

Halloween H20:  20 Years Later

The seventh entry in the long-running slasher series retools it, bringing Jamie Lee Curtis's Laurie Strode character back from the off-screen-dead and makes her a teacher at a private school along with her son, who unfortunately resembles Josh Hartnett.  Killer brother Michael Myers of course tracks her down and slaughters a bunch of teens as he tries to kill her for some reason.  Still arguably the only other Halloween film aside from the original that somewhat comes close to being a good movie, the film is very much a take-it-or-leave-it slasher fare.  It's not that special, but it does have a wildly fun one-on-one final act which has Curtis taking on her brother head-on.

The clips for this one have Curtis seducing her on-screen love interest while confessing who she really is to him while the second has her hunting down Myers.  The riffing on the scenes is okay for the most part, but the big laugh for me was "Our family therapist says I have to hit you in the face with an ax!"

The Truman Show

Mike Nelson's favorite actor, Jim Carrey, stars as a man who doesn't know his life is a television show in an elaborate hoax designed to simulate an entire world around him.  I haven't seen this movie in a good long while, and while I remember the movie being good (-ish), the premise is somewhat fantastical and hard to swallow.  But suspend your disbelief and you might be into this artsy film, which showed Carrey's dramatic side after becoming famous for his physical comedy.

The clips see Carrey playing with a malfunction in the sets rain system and a second featuring him asking a girl on a date.  The riffs feature Mike talking about Carrey's praised performance through gritted teeth and a fun gag of Carrey being rejected by the object of his desires.

Pi

An independent film by Darren Aronofski, Pi is a film about mathematics.  Just what every crowd of teenagers wants to see in their blockbuster films nowadays!  As someone who doesn't quite respond to the films of Aronofski, I haven't seen this film and am really not interested.  It's a strange inclusion in this list of blockbusters however.

The sole clip features narration from the male lead listing three facts of some sort.  I will say that while I don't quite understand the film's inclusion in this special, the independent flair makes it one of the more interesting segments.  The unique cinematography gives them something new to work with than the point and shoot FX scenes of other blockbusters.  Their added "facts" are quite hilarious.

Saving Private Ryan

Winning Steven Spielberg his second Oscar for Best Director, Saving Private Ryan features a group of soldiers sent into enemy territory to retrieve a single soldier, the last survivor of a group of brothers, to send him home to his family.  Fueled by Spielberg sentimentality, Private Ryan owes a lot to an audience's response to it.  I quite love Spielberg's work and the movie proves to be one of his great works for me.

Clips include Tom Hanks with a klutzy private (that sounded dirtier than I meant it to) and Hanks talking about why he doesn't question the mission to save Ryan.  The riffing mostly goes for Jerry Lewis in the former, and good-natured ribbing on the latter (including a welcome name-drop for Bosom Buddies).

Small Soldiers

From Steven Spielberg to Joe Dante, this children's fantasy sees toys coming to life and declaring war on each other.  I remember enjoying it as a kid, but haven't really bothered with it since.  Small Soldiers seems to enjoy a cult following today, though I remember almost nothing about it.  Apparently it had Phil Hartman, Kirsten Dunst, Kevin Dunn, David Cross, and Tommy Lee Jones in it.  You'd think I'd remember a cast that awesome, but there you go.

Clips include Tommy Lee Jones's soldier toy calling his troops to attention and an alien doll being harassed by a cat ("An affectionate cat?  This is science fiction!").  The clips are fairly uneventful and don't give a lot of riffing opportunity.

Godzilla   Goshzilla (later riffed by Quiptracks at iRiffs, as well as Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy, Bill Corbett at Rifftrax)

Probably the most poorly received film of the summer, Godzilla was a big budget Hollywood take on the famous Japanese Goliath.  The film featured a giant mutated lizard rampaging around New York and laying eggs...and that's just Matthew Broderick's love interest!  The movie is more watchable than it's reputation would lead you to believe, but it's a big, dumb movie about a big, dumb animal by Roland Emmerich, who likes to destroy things in big, dumb ways.  If you like big and dumb you might have a big, dumb time.  Classic Godzilla fans may want to veer away, since creative liberties are taken.  They'd might have a better chance at enjoying Hollywood's second attempt at a Godzilla movie, directed by Gareth Edwards in 2014.

For whatever reason the folks at MST couldn't clear footage of Godzilla to be featured in this special, so Crow puts on a little puppet play reenacting the film.  It's mildly amusing.  Luckily more proper Godzilla riffs would be made down the line.

Deep Impact

The first of two 1998 films about a meteor threatening to wipe out all life on Earth, this one is a melodrama starring Morgan Freeman and Tea Leoni and was pretty much forgotten the minute it ended.  I haven't seen the movie since it came out, but I thought it was the better of the two meteor films.  I have no interest in revisiting it to see if I was wrong however, so take that for what you will.

The clips feature President Morgan Freeman questioning Tea Leoni about the crisis and a climactic scene featuring a falling meteor.  The riffing on these clips isn't very strong.

Armageddon (riffed by Matthew J. Elliot at Rifftrax)

My personal pick for worst movie of 1998, Armageddon is that other killer meteor movie which gave us all the tell-tale signs that we would eventually endure the horror of Michael Bay's Transformers series and yet we didn't listen.  No, instead we made it the biggest hit of the year because it featured a dreadful Aerosmith song we couldn't stop listening to for some reason.

This last batch of clips features Bruce Willis talking his drilling team into taking the mission and Ben Affleck romanticizing Liv Tyler to her father's screeching of "I MISS YOU BABY!"  The riffing of small snippets of this dumb movie are quite strong and I laughed out loud many times.

Tom eases us out of this final special by pointing out the unlikelihood of a large meteor hitting the Earth just as one hurtles toward the Satellite.  And as our favorite movie companions die a fiery death, we ponder another amusing half hour of blockbuster clips and lament that there would never be a third.  These Blockbuster Reviews typically came out in September and MST aired it's final episode the following August.  But maybe there never would have been another anyway, because there was no third award special in the meantime.

Not nearly as strong as the first Blockbuster review, this second is still a welcome addition to MST lore, with some fun riffs and silly interplay between Mike, Crow, and Servo.  These specials will be missed, but maybe someday we might see something similar now that the series has been relaunched.

The 1st Annual Mystery Science Theater 3000 Summer Blockbuster Review (MST3K Special)

Mystery Science Theater only made one half hour comedy special at Comedy Central, which was done at the tail end of their tenure.  While that special wasn't particularly great, they revisit the idea and try their hand at a different format this time around to much greater success.

With the 1st Annual Mystery Science Theater 3000 Summer Blockbuster Review (say that three times fast) gives a bit of a treat to the fans.  First of all, we get to see inside of the theater for the first time.  Second we get to see fleeting glimpses of the riffers taking on big budget blockbusters, of which many fans have dreamed of since the inception of the series.  Unfortunately all we get are promotional material, but that's all our little show can afford.  And it's better than nothing.

So join us as we take a look at five of the gargantuan summer movies that littered cinemas in 1997, including some that most are desperate to forget!

The Fifth Element (later riffed by Michael J. Nelson at Rifftrax)

I haven't seen The Fifth Element since it first came out (which will probably change by the time I get to reviewing more Rifftrax entries).  While I remember enjoying it at the time (I was 12, okay?) I remember literally nothing about it except how weird a lot of people looked.  If you're looking for me to go in-depth on this film, I'd hate to sorely disappoint you.

Servo and Crow introduce a trailer for the film, mocking the visual style and adding double-entendres to the taglines.  After that we get mocked interviews with star Bruce Willis and director Luc Besson, followed by a clip where Bruce Willis delightfully sexually assaults Milla Jovovich.  The riffing is fairly strong throughout, closing with one of the great lines of the special:  "If you like injecting LSD into your eyes you'll like this film."

The Lost World:  Jurassic Park (later riffed by Mocktails at iRiffs)

Well, let's face it.  If you were a kid my age in 1997 then you were excited about returning for Jurassic Park.  I personally enjoy The Lost World quite a bit (a lot more than I enjoy Jurassic Park III or Jurassic World, for the record), but it does lack the innovative ideas and the imagination of the original.  However I'd very much like to point out that I grew up on monster movies, and taking The Lost World as a pure monster movie ride it's probably just as good as the original, but in a different way.  Mileage may vary on that, but that's my perspective.

Johnathan Frakes AKA Mike joins the duo for this one, but rarely leaves a comment.  Crow starts off by trying to describe the plot based on clips from the trailer (one does love how he describes Jeff Goldblum and Pete Postlethwaite falling in love) and then we are treated to a montage of "Signature Steven Spielberg Scenes of People Looking."  After that we finally get some traditional riffing as the trio watches behind the scenes footage from the movie.

Men in Black

Probably arguably the best film featured in this special, Men in Black is a movie about those guys in suits who cover up alien activity spawning many a conspiracy theory.  The film is a comedic sci-fi romp that mostly rides on the chemistry between stars Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith, while building a quirky and wild world to get lost in as the duo go on a wacky adventure.  Men in Black is a quality blockbuster that spawned a franchise that never quite lived up to that first film (though quite a few people tend to enjoy Men in Black 3, though I find it a bit closer to the level of the lesser Men in Black II personally).

Professor Bobo invades the theater to sit in with our riffers as they watch the trailer for Men in Black.  The segment is devoted to Bobo being a loud and obnoxious movie patron, which is a strange joke to have when you have a TV show devoted to talking during the movie.  Eventually Bobo is kicked out and Servo introduces behind the scenes footage.  Finally is some behind the scenes footage with some steady, funny riffing.

"Okay, who let one in the headpiece?  Very funny, guys."

Contact

I have not seen this fairly popular Jodie Foster film, which sees her making contact with an extraterrestrial being from space.  At the time it was the type of film that didn't interest me, and while I'd probably be more into it today I've never really cared enough to look back on it and see if it was anything special.  It's very possible that one day I might give this movie a gander, but it likely won't be soon.

Observer pops in and watches the trailer to Contact with the group, which features some fairly strong riffing on a quiet scene of Jodie Foster listening to an alien signal in headphones.  But the trailer is cut short when Pearl invades the theater and insists on seeing the movie her "fiance" George Clooney made this summer.

Batman & Robin (later riffed by Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy, Bill Corbett at Rifftrax)

Probably the most infamous superhero film ever made (though it might have been topped by the 2015 Fantastic Four movie, though time will tell), Batman & Robin is the fourth installment of Warner Brothers' Batman series, which sees the Caped Crusader and the Boy Wonder do battle with Mr. Freeze and Poison Ivy as they plot to freeze all of Gotham.  While considered one of the more unwatchable films of 1997, I've never had much of a problem watching it.  But I grew up on camp and kitsch, which makes Batman & Robin easier to digest for me.  While I struggle to think of any film from 1997 that might have been worse (hey, 1997 was over twenty years ago), I've always found the supposed "unpleasantness" of this film to be hyperbole.

"You know in the last one George Clooney was played by The Saint and in the first two George Clooney was played by Beetlejuice.  Listen up all you studio dumbbells up there!  George Clooney should only be played by George Clooney!  Period!"

Featuring brief clips and behind the scenes footage, Batman & Robin is probably the funniest segment of the special, with a lot of Pearl's fawning over George Clooney taking centerstage as as Mike expresses horror at Joel Schumacher's "macho" stance.  Crow then taunts Pearl by promising George Clooney but then delivering footage of non-George-Clooneys closes out this special quite amusingly.

It's probably worth noting that Pearl's observation that she wouldn't kick Arnold Schwarzenegger "out of bed" either proved to be somewhat ironic in retrospect, as Batman & Robin was the film Schwarzenegger was making when he had the affair which resulted in his illegitimate child.

The special closes with Bobo returning to the theater and recommending movies to be featured in the special, all involving apes (coincidentally he brings up Mighty Joe Young, which was set to be remade and released the following year).  And as we exit this special, MST certainly seemed to have created something fun with this half hour format that I think they could have sustained in the future.  They would go on to do two more specials after this, including a second Blockbuster Review, but if this were any indication, there really should have been more.

814-Riding with Death

Film Year:  1976
Genre:  Science Fiction, Adventure, Spy
Director:  Alan J. Levi, Don McDougall
Starring:  Ben Murphy, Katherine Crawford, Richard Dysart, William Sylvester, Andrew Prine
MST Season:  8

The Movie

Earlier this season MST took on the Gill Man feature Revenge of the Creature and it's easy to lament that they never riffed any other "less-than-stellar" (I love almost all) entries of the popular classic Universal Monster.  But it's easy to overlook that technically they did riff another one, bizarrely enough in a made for TV spy film called Riding with Death.  Technically this is a Universal production based on H.G. Wells novel The Invisible Man, which means technically it's an Invisible Man movie.

Barely.

For some reason producers always thought The Invisible Man would have been a great basis for a spy series, dating back to the 1942 film Invisible Agent.  The TV series Gemini Man is just one of several, including one in the 1950's, one in the 2000's (which aired on the Sci-Fi Channel), and even another series in the 70's in which this TV series was supposed to be a budget friendly replacement for.  Riding with Death edits together two episodes of the Gemini Man television series that have a loose connection and presents them as one feature, though sometimes really strains itself in being a coherent storyline of its own.

Gemini Man was the story of Agent Sam Casey who was turned invisible in an accident and forced to use a wristwatch to turn himself visible again.  However if he turns the device off he can turn invisible for short periods of time (apparently no longer than fifteen minutes or he'll turn invisible forever, but this never comes into play in these episodes).  Sam's first adventure sees him posing as a trucker hauling a scientist around, unknown that the scientist is working for the bad guys and plans on faking his death by blowing the truck up.  During Sam's predicament he is aided by a fellow trucker named Buffalo Bill who saves his life.  Later they meet again on another mission in which Bill works on a race track while Sam seeks out someone who has been sabotaging cars.

The two car themes barely match up, with the only real link between the two stories being the character of Buffalo Bill.  Even still with the fast no-time edit from one story to the next one wonders just how Bill changed professions so damn fast.  Even worse, the supporting cast from one story to the next doesn't pass along, as Sam's partner Abby disappears from the second plot, explained away by seeing her watch over the entire story through stock footage as she shouts inane, ADR dialogue at the screen.

But if I were to judge the series itself and not how it obviously doesn't work as a movie?  It's...fine.  It's dumb and a bit poorly done, but it's a mildly fun premise and there are some cute ideas.  I don't know if I would have watched this weekly, as it feels to me like it's more of the type of show I'd watch if nothing else was on.  But I do enjoy campy shows like this, where there's some stupid gimmick that it tries to hook you with when in reality it's not all that different from the next show with a stupid gimmick.  Gemini Man was too mediocre for its own good, but maybe it could have been more fun than it's showing here.

The Episode

That's it, MST!  Give it the ol' college try!

Riding with Death is as of this writing the final television-series-to-film re-edit MST has done.  While the quality of episodes riffing on "movies" like these is inconsistent (there's a huge difference in quality between Fugitive Alien and Stranded in Space, for example), Riding with Death gives us a huge argument for keeping them alive.  There is hardly anything cheesier than weekly sci-fi heroic adventure shows from the 1970's, but they can be flat out endearing despite their stupidity.  The short-lived Gemini Man was only re-edited into one TV movie, but I can't help but wish there were more just so they could feature on MST.

Ben Murphy's smugness is constantly being attacked by the riffers, projecting a narcissistic version of the character onto the screen.  Sometimes the "I'm Ben Murphy" riffs can grow to be a bit much, but the wonderfully silly storyline of the film keeps things fresh and constantly goofy in the theater.  It's hard to say which "episode" holds up better.  The truckin' half is the more watchable of the two, but the riffing during the "race car" segment is probably the funnier portion.  This part of the film relates to the earlier half so loosely and is so poorly edited to give continuity with it (the inclusion of the Abby character in stock footage snippets and ADR dialogue is hilarious) that Mike and the bots can't help but have more to play with here.  They relish in how this movie just spins out of control and gets odder as it goes along.

Outside of the theater, we see Mike has destroyed his third planet, after the Earth (The Deadly Mantis) and the planet of the Observers (The She-Creature).  The destruction of the Camping Planet comes about as he builds an explosive as a distraction as Pearl, Bobo, and Observer are being attacked by robots.  All of this will come to a head in the next episode.  Meanwhile we get a cute song about the 70's (the REAL 70's) and Mike as a teppanyaki chef.  Less memorable is the wordy but mildly amusing Turkey Volume Guessing Man (which is a fan favorite, though I don't get much out of it) and a lackluster gag about Tom Servo as a trucker.

Riding with Death is another crown jewel in the mostly stellar eighth season of the series.  The movie is already doing most of the work with how daffy it is, but the riffing just makes it a delicious treat.  This is a must-see.

Classic

The DVD

We were graced with the presence of Ben Murphy in Shout Factory's Volume XXXVI collection.  Picture was decent, if slightly flawed, audio was good.  The sole special feature is an interview with writer Steven de Souza, who not only worked on Gemini Man but went on to an extensive film career of working on scripts for films like Die Hard, 48 Hrs., Commando, The Running Man, and directing everyone's favorite video game based film, Street Fighter.  De Souza has a tendency to overflow with what information he's trying to convey, so sometimes it's hard to follow him, but he has some colorful stories about his career and working on Gemini Man.  He also relays how Gemini Man inspired his screenplay for the film Knock Off.

1010-It Lives By Night

Film Year:  1974
Genre:  Horror
Director:  Jerry Jameson
Starring: Stewart Moss, Marianne McAndrew, Michael Pataki, Paul Carr, Arthur Space
MST Season:  10

The Movie

Oddly enough, Mystery Science Theater 3000 has done very few vampire movies in their tenure.  Wild, Wild World of Batwoman and Samson vs. the Vampire Women are as close as they have gotten by this point, and those aren't quite traditional by any means.  It Lives By Night isn't quite a vampire film either, if anything it's a hybrid with the werewolf picture, but in some ways it's one of the most true vampire films they've ever done.

Initially titled The Bat People upon release, this film is the married couple of Johnny and Cathy (played by real husband and wife duo of Stewart Moss and Marianne McAndrew) touring bat caves.  Instead of finding Batman like they were hoping, they find real bats and one of them bites Johnny.  In the aftermath Johnny slowly begins transforming into a human bat and murders people, leaving his worried wife in the wind not understanding what's going on (as well as the audience).

It Lives By Night was directed by Jerry Jameson, who went on to a career of TV work including the TV film Superdome which was featured on MST's KTMA season.  Knowing this one might assume It Lives By Night might be flatly made but it isn't really.  The film does keep an atmosphere about it that is quite genuine.  Dull performances are what kills it, as well as a lackluster script.  The movie never quite reaches it's potential because it feels underdeveloped.

And it did have potential.  I actually quite like that the film is trying portray a man turning into a monster as a horrific tragedy and adore the melancholy ending.  This could have been something special, and at times the movie does work, which makes it even more frustrating.  I admire the film It Lives By Night is trying to make, but desire and achievement are two separate things.

The Episode

Well, just when I thought I couldn't be more tepid about an episode than Track of the Moon Beast, MST takes that bet and brings up It Lives By Night.  Not to beat around the bush on this one, this is one of my least favorite episodes of the series.

If I were to note anything about the riffing the one distinguishing feature I can think of is that they make a lot of effort to take bat attributes and projecting them onto Johnny.  I'm not entirely charmed by it and it gets old after a while.  Here's the thing though, I don't really have any genuine critiques on what went wrong or how to improve this episode.  Maybe I can point out that they say the word "Squeak!" maybe one too many times.  There are a few jokes in this one I think are cute (the innuendo of "It must have been a bad one." "I've had better." is probably the biggest laugh of the episode), but I'm not entirely convinced there is riff potential in this movie.  It's bad, but it more of a boring kind of bad without any sort of distinguishing personality to it.  There is a certain tone here, and the counterweight by the riffing isn't strong enough to make it fun.  This episode is as long as any, but somehow it feels longer, because there is little enjoyment in the theater segments.

I can't help but think to myself if this is the feeling other fans get when they watch Hamlet.  But the difference between Hamlet and It Lives By Night for me is that there is an experimental playfulness to Hamlet that makes it enjoyable and the crew really pushes themselves to make it work.  This is a film that is closer to any other that they've done and it feels workmanlike and ho-hum.  Maybe doing something closer to the series identity is exactly what most fans wanted after the previous episode, but in my eyes watching it after Hamlet makes the humdrum nature of It Lives By Night stand out even more.  Even out of chronology there is just something too drab about it.

The host segment end has a few delights.  I enjoy the opener in which they check out various colors they could paint the Satellite (and I love that Servo thinks "dried blood" is "perfect for the can!").  The Mary Tyler Moore segment is quite funny, fueled by Mike's dead-on impersonation of Ted Baxter, and the crop dusting mutation segment is fun.  I also quite enjoy Pearl's slides of her dead ex-husbands.  But there are a few duds, like Mike potentially having rabies or Mike, Crow, and Servo having mustaches.

I can watch It Lives By Night, but generally it always feels like an episode to cure nights of insomnia.  There is just no enthusiasm for this movie and they just kind of trudge through it.  If anything it feels like a "filler episode" (if such a thing is possible with this series) where they just tossed it in to beef up the episode order.  It's most likely the worst episode of the entire Sci-Fi run.

I have no clue how other fans react to the episode.  I haven't heard it discussed that much, to be honest.  One thing I do know is that when Rhino had started putting MST on DVD they teamed with Satellite News to poll fans on what ten episodes they wanted the most (Manos and Santa Claus Conquers the Martians were the top picks, resulting in the Essentials collection) It Lives By Night came in dead last.  That's right, even below Hamlet.  I'm not going to pretend that this is proof that it's a bad episode, because all it proves was that very few people had it in their top ten.  It does however point to a general lack of enthusiasm for it, and I think that describes this episode from top to bottom.

Not Recommended

The DVD and Blu-Ray

Shout Factory released this episode as a part of their Volume XXX collection.  Picture was crisp and quite good, audio was great.  The only special feature is a trailer for an independent film called The Frank, featuring Bill Corbett, Mary Jo Pehl, J. Elvis Weinstein, and Frank Conniff as the title character.

Shout Factory also included this episode as a bonus feature on their blu-ray of The Bat People (the film's original title), making it one of the handful of classic episode in the blu-ray format. The presentation is still in standard definition (the series was shot that way), but it looks sharper than ever.  The uncut film looks pretty good as well.  The special features involve primarily promotional material such as trailers and the like.

The Three Stooges' Greatest Routines (DVD Intros)

Segment Years:  1965, 1966
Genre:  Comedy
Director:  Norman Maurer, Edward Bernds
Starring:  Moe Howard, Larry Fine, Joe DeRita, Emil Sitka
Introductions By:  Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy

The Segments

The title of "Three Stooges' Greatest Routines" might be a tad bit of an exaggeration.  While technically a lot of the routines featured on this disc are reworkings of some of the trio's greatest hits, they aren't quite up to the standard of the Stooges' heyday.  If one wants to see these bits done justice than any viewer should be encouraged to seek out superior counterparts from the 30's and 40's.

If these aren't the Greatest Routines, then what makes up this disc that dares calls itself such?  Why these are actually live action wraparound segments filmed for the 60's cartoon series The New 3 Stooges.  You see, in the 60's the Stooges were probably more popular than ever it's just that the audience was different.  The original shorts from Columbia Pictures had hit syndication and were a huge hit with children, causing a career resurgence but a more simplistic restructuring of the act to pander to the kids who wanted to see the Stooges back and playing their favorite funny parts.  By the time this happened the then-third-Stooge of the act, Joe Besser, retired from the act to tend to his ailing wife, prompting Moe and Larry to hire comedian Joe DeRita to fill the void.  But DeRita was never really his own Stooge, as he somewhat adopted the persona of the most popular Stooge, Curly, to make it almost seem as if the long-passed-on legend had come out of retirement.  While certain aspects of DeRita's "Curly Joe" character were distinctly his, most of what he does is fill Curly's void and work himself into Curly's bits.

It'd be easy to call the Stooges a nostalgia act at this point, but that's not entirely accurate.  A nostalgia act implies they were only doing the act to keep old geezers who remembered them happy and not worrying about creating a new audience.  The Stooges instead were nursing a new audience that were just blooming, which means they were still in the midst of a legendary career.  In the case of The New 3 Stooges, they were actually close to the end of it.  Having finished filming their final feature film, The Outlaws is Coming, the trio were spending their geriatric days concentrating on television, including this cartoon series, TV cameos, and a proposed travelogue series.  Unfortunately Larry Fine had a stroke in 1970 which left him partially paralyzed and forced the long time comedian to retire.  Moe and Joe had made plans to continue the act with Emil Sitka playing a new Stooge named "Harry," but Moe's ill health prevented any film projects from being made with this new group.  The Three Stooges were officially retired in 1975 when both Moe and Larry passed away and Sitka and DeRita decided it was best to retire the act.

Keeping this in context, these segments that make up The Three Stooges' Greatest Routines are a bit of a fascinating curiosity, because it's one of the final legacies of this group's career, but it would be for the best if you kept expectations in check.  We do get to see this wonderful group doing quite a bit of material and they're pretty spry for their age.  The problem is that they're done fast and on the cheap for children's programming.  There is very little production value, the timing is off, and the kinetic energy they had in their early years is just absent.  It's the Three Stooges, it's just not their best work.

Die hard Stooges fans may want to see this material at least once.  There are a few chuckles at least.  I for one enjoyed Curly Joe doing the Maharaja routine here.  There's also a pretty funny bit late in the compilation which has Moe trying to get a fortune at an airport weight scale which informs him that he has been fooling around so much that he has missed his flight.  This isn't stuff I'd watch on rotation, like the best Three Stooges shorts, but there are some diamonds in the rough.

The Intros

Mike and Kevin are back for another round of Stooge antics, and Bill is nowhere to be seen.  But I'd dare say that the intros on this disc are a bit stronger than the ones on the Three Stooges in Color disc, which might make this one worth having for someone's MST and Rifftrax collection.

This time about Mike and Kevin discuss various Stooge setpieces throughout the years and how they interact through them.  They have fun playing with typical props (yes, there is a pie, and I won't spoil whether or not it's thrown) and dissecting what types of settings the Stooges might find themselves in.  All of these conversations are humorous of course, and serve no insightful purposes whatsoever.  There are seven intros total, and even though they do delight they tend to feel somewhat similar and sort of "mesh together" after all eighty minutes is over.  If I were to pick a favorite I thought the scene in a dentist's chair was pretty funny, where Mike states he'd love nothing more than to receive dental work from a "small, ugly, rage-filled little man with a bowl haircut."  The garden spade intro is pretty fun as well.

The biggest drawback in this entire experience however is the material shown for the Three Stooges.  It's not horrible, it's just not that good.  And when that's the centerpiece, I have to knock the grade down a tad.  But if you're buying this disc for the intros alone then it's definitely a step over The Three Stooges in Color.  But if you're a Stooge fanatic the earlier disc is the one to get.

Average

The DVD

Being public domain material a lot of the footage on this DVD is in rough shape.  It's watchable and audio is coherent, but be prepared for this material to look its age.

Special features include three New 3 Stooges cartoons:  Baby Sitters, The Three Astronutz, and Three Jacks and a Beanstalk.  Like the live action segments, they're fine but targeted at a fairly young audience.  Also featured are colorized trailers for the following films:  Swing Parade (featuring the Three Stooges), The Three Stooges in Color, Africa Screams (featuring Abbott and Costello, Shemp Howard, and Joe Besser), March of the Wooden Soldiers (featuring Laurel and Hardy), The Jackie Robinson Story, and The Shirley Temple Collection.

Improve Your Pronunciation (Rifftrax Shorts)

Rifftrax Year:  2011
Riffers:  Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy, Bill Corbett

A bunch of teenagers are put on display and publicly shamed for their poor word usage.  Remember to improve your own pronunciation or else this could happen to you.

Of course the butchering of the English language in favor of slurring, slang, and emojis is probably something that should be avoided to prevent further "dumbing down" of the nation.  This short however is kind of a dick about it.  While the kids featured smile and try to appear like good sports about the constant correction, the way it corrects their various errors barely stops short of pointing and laughing going "I CAUGHT YOU, YOU FUCKING MORON!"  I'd argue these kids have every right to shout back "You know what, eat me.  You can't pronounce shit too otherwise you wouldn't be here."  All of this makes the short unpleasant and not very fun, and while the lesson it gives will stick with you, you might ignore it out of spite.

The one thing enjoyable about this short:  The riffing.  Mike, Kevin, and Bill work their magic with this short and the results will keep you laughing.  They zero in on the judgmental tone and emphasize it, often portraying the teens as being more bothered by it than they let on.  There is also a glorious moment in which Mike catches the short's host in a mispronunciation of his own which left my sides splitting.

As the short ends with our group making a list of words they have trouble that appears above them before we close, as Kevin points out the implication seems to be letting your failures hang over your head.  There are no words to describe just how perfect a description of that scene is, so I'll let that close out this review as well.  And don't forget to buy this one too.

Thumbs Up

👍