Weasley's Guide to MST3K 5 Essential Episodes

Everyone who knows me knows I just love, love, love Mystery Science Theatre 3000.  The 90s cult show about a guy in space forced to watch bad movies with his robot palls.

It combined to  of my absolute favorite things vintage (in the form of cheesy old movies) and sci-fi, in one cute and quirky package.   In fact I'm so crazy about MST3K that for Weasley's 5th birthday one of his gifts was a Gizmonic jump suit like the one MST3K host Joel wears. 

Deb from Pug Possessed made it and she did an amazing job.  I decided Weasley's jumpsuit is the perfect segue way into an MST3K essential episodes post.  Now as you can see I have a lot of MST3K box sets:

and would you believe I don't even have all of them!  Some are really hard to find.  So it wasn't easy picking 5 essential episodes and these aren't even necessarily my favorites, they are just 5 I really like (this blog feature may have to be ongoing).  Here they are in no particular order:

1) Manos The Hand's Fate: The uninitiated bad movie viewer who asks the questions How bad can a movie really get? and How funny can a bad movie be?  Needs to watch this crazy thing.  It was made on a bet by an insurance and fertilizer sales man, he also plays father in the film.  I guess he won the best because the movie is pretty famous now..   The resulting film is completely incoherent and totally hilarious.  It also features a black toy poodle though he comes to a tragic end.

This episode also features the hilarious Chevrolet short, Hired!  Manos The Hands of Fate is available on Amazon for $12.99.

2) Cave Dwellers  This 1984 Italian fantasy film was featured in the first episode of the third season of MST3K.   It is a swords and sandals type film and a pretty dreadful rip off of Conan the Barbarian, but boy is it funny.  Along with a brain dead hero, a mute side kick, and heroine that looks like she is on the way to the mall, it features a snake that growls.  That alone makes it worth watching.  Here is Joel introducing the episode for a Turkey Day special he did in 2013.

Cave Dwellers is part of the volume 2 set of MST3K and is now horrifyingly expensive, but you can rent it from Amazon prime for a reasonable price.  Also Cave Dwellers is part two of a trilogy, yes there are three of these dreadful things, and part 1: Ator, The Fighting Eagle is now available on the Riff trax website.  It does not disappoint.


3) Laser Blast-This 1978 sci-fi film was aired during the 7th season of MST3K.  It has Roddy McDowell of Planet of the Apes fame in it and some seriously awful clay mation effects.  The bots and Mike make plenty of jokes about the fact that revered film critic Leonard Matlin gave this turkey two stars.   Mike also has a fun segment where he pretends to be Star Trek Voyager's Captain Janeway

Laser Blast is available as part of the MST3K 20th anniversary pack 
and it can be streamed on Netflix.

4) The Giant Gila Monster- This cheesy 1959 monster flick was shown during the shows 4th season.  Unsurprisingly there are a lot of giant (insert animal) movies shown on MST3K but this is my favorite.  The plot is typical 50s monster fodder, peppy teens are plagued by a giant Gila lizard (a very obviously normal sized Lizard walking past toy cars).  The songs and doofy dialogue make this a classic episode.

The Giant Gila monster is available as part of Volume 10.2 (now rare and pricey) or you can stream it on Netflix. 

5) Teenage Strangler-This 1968 teen murder mystery was aired during the shows 5th season.   Basically teenage couples are being viciously murdered and the prime suspect is Jimmy a high school student with an incredibly dweeby younger brother.  Then surprise!  It was the school janitor all along.  Hi-light's include the bots tricking Mike into wearing a pair of glasses that turn him into Mikey Jimmy's whiny younger brother from the movie:


  and Mike's hilarious closing song about janitors.

If you want a funny, silly, vintagey show you just cant  go wrong with MST3K it's like watching cheesy movies with your friends, if your friends where incredibly funny. 

Leonard Nimoy-Heart Throb

My birthday is right around the corner.

and while I might not love everything about growing older, I do enjoy birthdays.  
One particularly thing I've always liked about my birthday is that I share it with one of the people I most admire, Leonard Nimoy.

I loved Leonard not just for his Mr. Spock role

but for his public profile that was always so kind and generous.  He was patient and appreciative of fans, and I really think used his celebrity status for good.  I really enjoyed reading his autobiography I Am  Spock and learning about his career and life.  It remains one of my favorite books, and certainly my favorite autobiography.   



Despite his ubiquitous link to his Vulcan alter ego,  Leonard had an interesting and varied career that spanned that later half of the 20th century.  One aspect of that career did surprise me somewhat, his 1960s and 70s status as a heart throb.

While it makes perfect sense that Nimoy's nerdy outside character Spock would appeal to angst ridden 1960's teens (see below this touching letter Nimoy wrote to a young fan struggling with her bi-racial heritage, Spock of course was also bi-racial being half Vulcan and half human)

his popularity with female fans comes as something as a surprise, because well,  lets be honest Leonard Nimoy was not exactly handsome. 

Still, from the minute Star Trek appeared on the airwaves in 1966 it was Leonard Nimoy as Spock, rather then the more traditionally handsome William Shatner playing the womanizing Captain Kirk

who got the majority of female fans attention.  Something that Shatner has admitted irked him a bit at the time.

 So surprising was Nimoy's popularity with female fans that none other then famed science fiction author and Star Trek screen writer Issac Assimov wrote an article about the phenomenon.  You can read it here.   It is a great vintage article and dream reading for any vintage loving pop culture geek like myself.  In the article, Assimov explains that his teen daughter finds Mr. Spock "dreamy" and speculates that this is because smart is sexy.  Personally, I think Shatner might have been more on the nose when he said that Spock's appeal lay in his inaccesability and the general human desire to want what we can't have.  Both are probably correct.

Personally, I love both Kirk and Spock, and possibly Kirk a teensy bit more.  I think the character get's less attention then Spock in general and I've always had a thing for the underdog.  Regardless, smart and nerdy is always best in my book.

Spot's New Collar and Third Cross Stitch

Little Spot

Is not so little anymore.  In fact he grew to big for his collar.   I kept finding his grey break away collar around the house and when I went to put it back on him I realized it was a bit tight on his neck, so he was rubbing against thing's to get it off.  (Of course we only use break away collars on our cat's for safety.)  All our cat's are strictly indoor only, but Spot is the only one of the four to show any curiosity about the outside world.   He has gone out the door a few times and of course we always bring him back immediately, but I still feel he must wear a collar in case he escapes.  

15 years ago our now 16 year old cat Baby opened a screen in our Brooklyn basement apartment and was missing a week.  We papered Bay Ridge in fliers and miraculously found her but the experience has made me a maniac about preventing cat escapes.  (Interestingly it has also made Baby terrified of the outside world and she never even goes near the door.)   I never open windows, even with screen's, and I'm very careful about the door.  If a delivery person is coming the cat's get locked in a room.   I'm constantly checking on the cats, particularly, Spot, to make sure they are inside.  So the second I realized Spot's collar wasn't working I knew he needed another one.

Luckily I found a cute larger collar in the adorable etsy shop Furocious Kitty  and bonus!  It's a Star Trek collar, Spot is named after Commander Data's cat on Star Trek The Next Generation:

so this collar is perfect.   Spot and I both love this collar.  He has been wearing it three week's and hasn't tried to get it off yet.  

I love how the retro Star Trek fabric look's against his white fur and the live long and prosper tag is too cute.

I really recommend Furocious Kitty if you are in the market for a cat collar.  They have ton's of collar's with adorable charms in lot's of different themes Holidays, animals, food, etc.  I can already see myself purchasing some Holiday collars.  It's also nice that the shop caters exclusively to cats.  I think that's partly why the collar fits so well.   The collars are very reasonably prices, between $10 and $12, Spot's collar was $10 and the seller was very nice about answering my questions.  

In other news I finished my third geeky cross stitch.  This one is Fry and Leela from Futurama and I'm really happy with how it came out.   

I'm working on Twin Peak's themed cross stitch next.  

Second Cross Stitch Done and Mr. Tuvok Get's His Teeth Cleaned

I finished my second cross stitch.

It's Castiel from supernatural.  Though I messed up his eyes a bit.

In other news we took all 5 dogs to the vet so we could renew heart worm meds.  It was crazy

And Mr. Tuvok got his teeth cleaned.   We had made an appointment for Weasley to do the same but our vet said his teeth weren't that bad yet and we could wait a year.  I love my vet he's very honest and saved us 800 dollars.  He did say Tuvok had lots of tartar for a two year old dog and would be needing lots of dentals over his life time.  We expected that though since he is a toy poodle.  Tuvok isn't happy about it though.

Weasley's Crush on Wesley Crusher from Pug Notes

Just in time for Valentine's Day Weasley is breaking out one of his Christmas gifts.  A Star Trek The Next Generation Wesley Crusher inspired sweater by pug notes.

Now all he needs is a Valentine to send to Wesley:

 

Product Review: Geeky Bandannas from Electrolucy

It's taking me a while to get around to writing this post, and not because I don't love the products I'm reviewing but just due to be being busy.  I ordered 3 bandanas from Electrolucy back in September for Fry's second birthday.  

I found the shop while doing a search for two of my favorite things on etsy Star Trek and dogs.   Electrolucy makes awesome geeky dog bandannas and collars with themes such as Harry Potter, Dr. Who, Star Wars, Sherlock Holmes and of course, Star Trek.  I ordered three Star Trek themed bandannas.


A Star Trek Dr. McCoy themed bandanna:

A Star Trek The Next Generation Wesley Crusher Bandanna:

A tribble themed bandanna:

The bandannas are all made of nice sturdy double sided fabric, with the design and wording stitched on. and a tie around the neck,.   I really like the neck ties as I find them quicker and easier to take on and off then bandannas that slide  over a collar.  Each bandanna comes in sizes small, medium, and large and retails for ten to 14 dollars, depending on size.     I ordered smalls and found them to be generously sized for the pugs, and perhaps a smidge to large on Tuvok.  

These bandannas are too cute and I definitely recommend checking out Electrolucy.

Cinema Spotlight on The Weirdest and Worst Holiday Special of All Time-The Star Wars Christmas Special

Anyone who reads this blog knows what a devoted trekkie I am:

 

                                                           

 

 

On the other hand, I've never been much of a Star Wars fan.  I appreciated the original movies as fun, goofy, block busters but I never saw them as particularly great.  However, I have recently begun to enjoy Star Wars a bit more, I liked the Force Awakens a lot, and I loved Rogue One.  So maybe I've been seduced by the dark side a bit, and I even bought this:

40 hours of extras!  I mean what the hell could be on this thing.

Still Star Wars will never hold a candle to Trek for me and my absolute favorite thing in the Star Wars oeuvre is something that most people have either never heard of, or would rather forget.  The Holiday Special

It aired in November of 1978 after the first movie had become a mega-hit and it is incredibly weird and awful.  I pride myself on being a connoisseur of so bad there good, as in funny, movies and I'm a devoted fan of the make fun of bad movies show MST3K and its later incarnation Rifftrax, still the Star Wars special threw me through a loop.  Even after a life time spent watching bad movies, the weirdness of this one comes as a shock. 

The basic premise of the special, if you can go so far as to say that it has one, is that Chewy the Wookie is trying to get home to his family to celebrate the big Wookie Holiday Life Day 

Obviously it is a mistake to focus a television special on characters that communicate by grunting.  Never the less the producers of The Star Wars Holiday special did just this, at least half of the special is Chewy's family grunting at each other.

  At some point CBS must have realized they couldn't get by on grunted conversations alone and they threw in some guest stars of the kitschiest caliber and created a sort of variety hour.   Art Carney appears as the Wookie neighbor

 Bea Arthur sings in an alien bar

and  Disco Star Dihann Carol appears as some sort of virtual reality entertainment of a rather mature sort :

 The whole thing culmintates in the Wookies donning rather creepy red robes for Life Day and walking off into the stars while Princess Leia sings the Life Day song:

The special is so bad that it remained virtually hidden for years with George Lucas trying to bury it and erase it from the collective conscious.   It was never re-aired and never released, but it couldn't be destroyed and with the release of the Force Awakens the Holiday special crawled out of the wood work.  It can be seen on you tube as can all of the wonderful 1970s commercials:

   but if you are going to watch it, and I strongly recommend that you do because it is hilarious, you really need to see the Rifftrax version.  

It's just so bad and so weird that I'm afraid without the riffing it would be unwatchable, but with the riffing it may well be the funniest Holiday movie ever

Happy Life Day!