How about Favorite DVD Menu? The animated menus featured on the Shout Factory DVDs can be entertaining in their own right (which almost makes up for the lack of any scene selection menus) For me, it can be a bit hard to decide, so I’ll narrow it down to three Second runner-up: Tom fails to make Crow his Final Sacrifice (a fun bit of slapstick in that one). First runner-up: Tom and Crow trek through The Lost Continent (love how, just before the loop starts over, Crow say, “Haven’t we seen this before?”). And the winner: It’s the Wacky Fun Time Revue starring Tom Servo and his Devil Doll (Debbie!!!!!).
Then again, there are people who hate the Shout menus. If that’s the case, then go and name your favorite Rhino menus, whether due to a music selection or a chapter title. For me, it would be I accuse My Parents for Tom’s singing.
Alert reader Troy Thomas agrees, noting:
My choice would be “The Crawling Eye,” probably because I love the silly visuals mixed with the booming, dramatic score from the movie. A runner-up would be “Robot Monster.” I love that conversation the bots have that’s taken from riffs in the episode.
I think the raw violence of the menu for Episode 1005- Blood Waters of Dr. Z would be my pick. What’s yours?
By they way, for your reference pleasure, the DVD lists are here (we haven’t updated it with the latest set yet…maybe this weekend if I can find the time…
) to help our users cope with "trolls" and other commenters whom they find annoying. Go to our
#42, that’s Mr. Sour Grapes to you.
I like the ones on Set XVIII, where they use animation and clips from the episode to make a little story. And you can skip it and just start the episode if you want. Cuz, yeah, nine time out of ten, I just wanna watch the dang episode.
@48: Aw, I like it, Sampo. :-)
I, for one, LOVE the new menus. They aren’t the reason I buy the DVDs, but they’re one of the things I look forward to the most when I get them. The Lost Continent menu is more entering than the episode!
Here’s another idea for a WDT: ideas for menus to unreleased episodes.
I have an idea for “Deadly Mantis:” Crow and Tom are in the tunnel from the end of the movie, in the characters’ hazmat suits. They walk among the trashed cars, when the mantis rears over them. Crow shoots it, and then it eats Tom. Crow gets the hell out.
I don’t love the Shout Factory menus but they’re okay so I tolerate them. About the Rhino menus-some had decent music (Godzilla Vs. Megalon, Hobgoblins, the haunting Torgo theme for Manos). I don’t know if I can pick ONE top favorite, it’s kind of arbitrary. It’s a perfectly good topic, I’m not complaining about that.
#42 Sorry to ruffle your feathers Ducky. I wasn’t being mean or whining. I was just being a wise ash, that’s why I put the lol/have a nice wkend there. If there was a site where sarcasm is not only accepted but probably EXPECTED this would be the place!!! Sorry again, hope I didn’t ruin your weekend! BTW I’m being SARCASTIC again!!!!!
Actually it would be a great feature for ALL DVDs to have a DIRECT PLAY feature. Like holding down the [RETURN] button on the remote while the disc is loading.
Of course most movie companies would have a seizure that people aren’t watching the “Coming Attractions”
“You said feature twice”
I like feature.
Giant Spider Invaison. I love how the lo-res spider and scream transition well to the MST3K jukebox, which the spagetti-ball theme is a delight in itself.
Santa Crow and Pitch Servo, including the bad music and sfx.
Mike in space and Crow T. Solarite, as well as others that have M/J&tb included in the old rhino menus.
Put me in the pro-animated menu column.
Current fave is Sinbad. Especially when Gypsy the sea serpent eats him “that wasn’t Sinbad”
Also love both Master Ninja menus.
I teach a mythology class, and we watch The Legend of Boggy Creek 2 at the end of the year as a well-deserved breather after finals. I know that episode has its detractors and proponents, but it’s a great entry-level MST3K experience for new viewers (that and I teach in Missouri, and Arkansas with its very real Boggy Creek myth is less than an hour away). Every year, the students are fascinated by the radar map of the DVD menu and the elusive dot edging its way toward the center. Without fail, they insist on watching the menu spin through at least a couple of rotations.
I don’t think you should apologize Sampo. The malcontents appear to be among the same folks who were at the forefront of the Joel vs. Mike Wars, or hated Tom Servo’s new voice, or for that matter hated Crow’s new voice. For all we know, they still obsess on these issues at other forums.
Since the dawn of the DVD format, I have loathed “fancy” animated menus with the burning passion of a thousand suns. If that guy from Shout! is reading, it’s not personal. I just hate the very practice. And it really burns my biscuits when the scene selection screens have little animated snippets of the movie. All of this stuff just clutters up the menus and takes up space on the DVD.
So, I really can’t answer this question because I usually try to navigate through to the feature as quickly as possible, so I don’t really remember any of them.
I used to run a weekly poll for a website and I learned an important lesson: never apologize for the questions! That only feeds the bears. If they don’t like it, let ’em vent. Let’s see *them* try and think of something every week to talk about.
As for the topic at hand, I don’t think any of them stick out for me. I will say that I’d prefer if the Shout! ones played once then stopped. If I’m in another room or can’t get to the remote, they can get annoying! But I do like them, overall, and don’t mind that they aren’t done with real puppets (which would be nice but, really, do they have a puppet-ready studio at Shout!’s DVD authoring site?).