Well not exactly. As I may have mentioned in many other posts in the past three of the members of Mystery Science Theater 3000 have reformed as The Film Crew and are currently riffing away at bad movies once again which means, of course, life is once again worth living.
The Film Crew consist of Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett, and Kevin Murphy who on MST3K were know as Mike, Crow T. Robot and Tom Servo respectively.Mike Nelson has been running a website for a while called Rifftrax in which he makes tracks of humorous commentary on recent big films and TV series and you should definitely check that out as well. He was interested in getting some of the crew back together again but without all the hassle of mounting a television production. The interest and support was there and so now we have a MST3K reunion of sorts as The Film Crew.
Hollywood After Dark ~ Out Now!
Killers From Space ~ Out Now!
Wild Women of Wongo ~ Out Sept. 11
The Giant of Marathon ~ Out Oct. 9th
Instead of a TV show they decided to go with straight DVD releases and after watching the first two as well as watching the samples of further volumes at the San Diego Comic-con I can safely say the guys are still as funny as ever and I highly recommend them. There are some negatives however. The guys are basically playing themselves as common workers who are forced to create commentaries for old bad films that don't have them. As such, the charm that MST3K ahd with all its silly trappings of robots and mad scientists is sorely missing. The barebones nature of the productions further highlight the issue for fans like myself that we are indeed getting a stripped down version of MST3K. The in-between comedy sketches are painfully unfunny and seemed as though they were just added quickly as an afterthought.
The efforts of TV's Frank (Frank Conniff) and Dr. Clayton Forrester (Trace Beaulieu) are sorely missed.
All is soon forgiven however, once they get back to the movie and the comedy gold ensues once again. To me though, there still is a little too much noticeable dead air here and there in the commentary on the DVDs I've watched so far and I find myself doing my own commentary to fill in the gaps. These, however, are just the first DVDs of what will hopefully be a long running series and it always takes people a while to get into the swing of their surroundings; a fact that anybody who has seen the early episodeds of MST3K will attest to. Get the DVDs, slide them in the player and enjoy!
Did I ever tell you the story of how TV's Frank got me sick? It's true!