My inclusion is “Kitten With a Whip.”
I’m sure I’ve personally mentioned it a few times over the years but my reason for not being able to sit through it is the utter stupidity of Forsythe’s character is just painful and as it is the lynchpin of the movie, makes it unwatchable. And by that I mean the fact that the moment he saw Jody on TV he should have been running to the cops. He did absolutely nothing wrong other than getting conned and had absolutely no reason to become panicked and keep the story to himself. I try to watch it every so often but always lose it when I get to the point where he goes back to his house to find Jody there and even as it becomes clear that she’s a complete bag of crazy, he still refuses to call the cops.
So, Luke has a problem with an infuriating plot. But that’s just be one reason you might not be able to sit through an episode. Me, I’m going to go with 209- THE HELLCATS. Bad visuals, bad audio and the story meanders around and ends up nowhere, and the segments are retreads. About 20 minutes in I’m lookin’ at my watch and wandering if the dishes need washing.
What’s your pick? (Oh, and I’m sure that Sampo’s Theorem will be on full display here.)
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Monster-a-go-go. It’s the one movie that seems to have the Brains stumped. I don’t think I’ve been able to watch it from start to finish; it just puts me to sleep: or rather SLEEEEEEEP!!!
I had a tough time getting through “Starfighters.” Even though I got to watch it all the way through, I don’t think I can take it again. The only good thing about the episode was the host segments – what with COWBOY MIKE’S ORIGINAL RED-HOT RICHOCHEEEEEEET BARBUQUE SAUCE! IT’S BOLD!!!!! – and the “poopy suit” scene.
I can think of quite a few for me. There are a lot that I thought were/are hilarious for awhile but I can’t sit thru to the end. Mostly the dull black and white sci-fi ones like Mole People or Phantom Planet etc. There are also some movies that I find too annoying to sit thru even with good riffing. Either of the Joe Don Baker’s or Hobgoblins come immediately to mind. Squirm is just too yucky for my tastes.
The great disappointment for me is Hamlet however. I had high hopes for it when it premiered. I had a tape of Branaugh’s Henry V that I was watching a lot at the time and I was reading Shakespeare too so I had a expectation that it was going to push the show to another level. The movie however was such a bad print that made it even darker looking then the We’re Sorry For The Nazis producers intended it to be. The audio is just as bad and hiring folks like John Banner to elucidate Shakespeare’s Olde English is ridiculous. Completely lacking the joyous goofiness of the Russo-Finnish or Japanese imports. To never see it again I’m ok with.
That clear enough for everybody?
Hey, another opportunity to harp on my least-favorite aspect of the show! I’ll always take advantage of that. Glad to see the explainer for “Sampo’s Theorem,” by the way. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone decrying what I consider the show’s best moments, though there are plenty of choices here I can’t identify with. (I’ve always had an inexplicable soft spot for the biker movies– even Hellcats, for example.)
But anyway, here goes: the tendency toward endless repetition of running gags in later episodes is so fingernail-on-blackboardy to me that I can’t even watch the episodes. “Stay.” “Jed.” “Stop it.” It was lazy writing to begin with (actually, it wasn’t even writing), but revisiting the lines throughout the episode just highlighted the sense of a once-great show that was just coasting by that time. Depressing, lazy, unfunny. And for me, unwatchable.
The Space Children.
Any of those Europe-y secret agent-type movies. Maybe it’s all the womany sunglasses.
Castle of Fu Manchu – nothing seems to happen.
High School Big Shot – so depressing! I have to be in a a cheerful mood, otherwise the poor kid getting conned by the girl just gets me too down.
Funny, I see a lot of what I consider to be great episodes listed here. Hellcats? Red Zone Cuba? Skydivers? Tormented? Manos?!?! BOGGY CREEK?!?!?!? All are great and multiple viewings are a piece of cake. I’ve watched Castle of Fu Manchu a few times…not a favorite, but okay. The only one that I really literally cannot get through without (a) falling asleep or (b) turning it off is HAMLET! Profoundly boring…even with riffing!
Here are my votes for the hardest episode to sit through for each season. Please keep in mind that I have only seen the Season 1 and 2 episodes that are on DVD:
Season 1: The Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy
Season 2: The Sidehackers
Season 3: ANY Gamera movie
Season 4: Space Travelers
Season 5: Secret Agent Super Dragon
Season 6: The Dead Talk Back
Season 7: The Brute Man
Season 8: The Mole People
Season 9: Gorgo
Season 10: Track of the Moon Beast
Because of the varying quality of the seasons (and the different number of episodes in each), there are some on this list that are much better than ones that aren’t.
And I’ve said it once, I’ll say it again: The “Gamera” movies are all so boring and so similar that they (plus Gorgo) in reality constitute a single 9-hour episode. I just can’t sit through 9 hours of TV, even if it’s of my favorite show. Maybe when the new Gamera set comes out, I’ll re-evaluate my position on the “friend of children.”
I’m also glad that someone pointed out that the biker movie episodes are pretty bad. I had never noticed, but it’s true. I don’t like any of them.
How could I forget? Lost Continent = Rock CLimbing. And Hercules v the Moon Men = SANDSTORM! SANDSTORM!
Oh, and why isn’t “Hamlet” on my list? As I stated when we discussed the episode, for me the language of “Hamlet” is like a visit from an old friend. I minored in theatre studies as an undergraduate and read “Hamlet” several times for study and pleasure. I catch any production of it that I can. It’s not a very good MST3K episode, but the familiarity I have with the Bard and his magnum opus makes what would be a thoroughly boring and distasteful experience into one that’s just minorly unpleasant.
Wow, is Luke me? That was EXACTLY how I felt when this episode went on the air. I finally got through it one day, and I had to admit that the ridiculous deus ex machina was worth a laugh, but still, I found it unpleasant and depressing. And yet I have no problem with “High School Big Shot,” since Marvin brought on his stupidity himself. (“I’ll write a paper for you,” he says without hesitating. Uh-huh.)
I think the only episode I have never made it through is Phase IV. Insect phobia here. Can’t tolerate Squirm either. Castle of Fu Manchu I can’t watch without developing severe amnesia, but it can be an effective insomnia aid so I will throw it on sometimes. Girl in Lover’s Lane I find myself not wanting to watch just because they kill off such a likable character for no good reason. High School Big Shot I avoid because it is so depressing. The season two biker films are tough to get through for those same reasons.
Batwoman is it for me — it’s just SUCH a slog; the movie doesn’t make sense, it’s slow, it’s boring, and there’s just not a lot to riff on because, well, it helps if the movie makes some semblance of sense. It’s almost like being forced to riff a bunch of random, unconnected scenes. Not the Brains’ fault that it sucks. Well, except that they chose the movie, I guess, but…
Also, I like Coleman Francis, but Red Zone Cuba is the one that tends to meander a bit in the middle/end. Though it does have some great riffs. But I always liked Skydivers and Yucca Flats. (Glad to see that one released on DVD finally!)
Easy choice for me here: First Spaceship to Venus. I find the plot incredibly dull, the riffing is shockingly under-par (even by Season 2 standards), and finding out that the full-length movie had an anti-American sub-theme didn’t help either.
Honestly, the idea of “bad” is obviously different to all of us, but I gotta go with the aforementioned Kitten With a Whip, I freaking hate that movie. There’s some great riffs in it, I agree, but I’m glad there’s someone else in this world who understands my pain. Close runner-ups would be-The Rebel Set(or is it The Wild Ones I’m thinking of? Haven’t watched either one in forever) (same problems, hoodlums who talk too much without anyone to tell them to shut the hell up)-that modern school of acting from the mid-50’s on, when done real badly and talky, is like nails on a chalkboard to me. So, anytime a movie they did featured some tortured youth screaming about how no one understands or saying “baby” and “daddy” too much, geezus, I wanna change the channel. Otherwise, the worse the movie was (as in Batwoman, Manos, Castle Of Fu Manchu, Monster A-Go-Go, The Dead Talk Back, etc.,) the more I usually enjoyed it, as Joel/Mike and the ‘bots seemed to reflect my pain and make it all better. I will admit that the episode with the German Hamlet has put me to sleep on more than one occasion, though. GOD, was that dry!!!!
Excluding it’s short,”The Screaming Skull” leaves my skull screaming. The black and white is more white than black,nothing,ABSOLUTELY NOTHING EVER,EVER,HAPPENS and never fails to bring me to sleepy land.
Just had to say, though, The Hellcats is a fave, I have no idea why. I think it’s the sub-par 60’s soundtrack.
pretty much 90% of the episodes pre-season 4 and from the later era’s among the hardest is Devil Doll, just so dull and dark and gloomy, plus nothing ever really happens.
Horray for #58! I thought I was the only one who just couldn’t stand the Gamera movies. It’s a shame that the super-shiny 5-disc set of the Gamera episodes is coming out, because my compulsionary fan-habits are going to force me to buy it. Sigh.
It’s not to say that I hate them, I just find them hard to do on my own. I do a weekly MST-watching group and while we had a hard time with Gamera, we had a blast with Gamera vs. Barugon. It varies.
These kind of discussion’s are fun, because you get such a wide range of answers. Sampo’s Theorem holds true indeed. Although
there are some episodes that have been mentioned several times.
My Picks:
The Wild World of Batwoman- I’ve had a really hard time sitting through this episode the last 2 times I watched it. The short Cheating is awesome but the riffing on the movie isn’t enough
to keep me out of the sheer awfulness this movie hits you with.
One of my least favorite episodes and one I don’t plan on watching
again for awhile.
The Hellcats: I may have made a mistake tracking down the OOP DVD of this. I watched this with a friend and we were very dissapointed. It had some good riffs here and there, but for the most part it was a tough one. Very boring, uninteresting characters and Ross Hagen rubs you the wrong way. The flashback host segments don’t help either.
City Limits: It’s never a good sign when I can’t remember any good riffs from this episode, my attention began to wander watching it because the riffing wasn’t grabbing me and the movie was a chore.
Crow’s love song to Kim Cattrall was the only highlight for me.
I recently watched Hamlet, and while it’s not a great episode I found some decent riffing here and there and some good host segments, so I didn’t find is as bad as some people do.
On the other hand I really enjoy episodes like Manos, Monster A-Go Go, The Coleman Francis films and Hobgoblins despite the high pain each movie delivers, because I found the riffing to be very good to excellent.
I haven’t watched Castle of Fu Manchu or some of the early Season 1 episodes like Aztec Mummy yet, so my opinion may change, but those 3 really stand out for me as tough ones.
#65-I meant The Wild Rebels.
OH-I forgot, #1-yeah, SQUIRM, oh my god, SQUIRM, and basically because of the lame protagonist. Yeah, we get the fish-out-of-water gag in the first five minutes, the rest of the time that berk is on screen make me want to punch him myself. “An egg cream?” “No, an Eccchh creme, you see, what you do is…” yeesh, shut up, we know.
OH ug, yeah #29, Teenage Crimewave was another of those. HOWEVER, I did like The Violent Years. The Ed Wood dialogue in that one almost makes it a John Waters movie. Fun!!
I agree with Luke, “Kitten With A Whip” for some reason just didn’t sit well with me. It’s nothing against the Brains or the riffing, I just flat out hate that movie and just can’t sit through it.
Sidehackers is one I just find really uncomfortable to watch. It start fine but it’s the implied rape and murder of the lead’s girlfriend and the subsequent fallout which is just depressing. Mike Nelson in the ACEG said that film was also a downer for the Brains for the same reason, leading them to more thoroughly screen their material before deciding upon which movies to riff.
High School Big Shot is just so dreary, so depressing, and so infuriating (I just feel like punching the unlikeable lead in the head every time he appears on screen!) that I just cannot bring myself to watch it anymore after a half-dozen tries over the years.
Hamlet just doesn’t work for me as a film to be riffed. Yes, there’s some good riffs in it but it’s not a badly made production, and I love Shakespeare, so this makes one of the few times I find the quips of Mike and the Bots more annoying than funny. It’s the same thing I find with some of the great movies Mike, Bill and Kevin have tackled on Rifftrax (Casablanca, Jaws, Star Wars). When it’s a good movie, or a good plot, I just don’t think it’s good fodder for riffing compared to really bad movies.
The Painted Hills is another I can’t sit through because it’s a Lassie movie and dammit, I loved that mutt when I was a kid! Sorry, but it just doesn’t do it for me as a film worthy of a riffjob (though I loved the short “Body Care & Grooming, definitely a funny one!)
Parts:The Clonus Horror is also a tough slog. I liked the first half but after the wimpy lead escapes to find his biological father the story really just bogs down and becomes tedious and well, a little sad.
I can’t make it through most of the Joel-era episodes (even though there are ones I adore like Manos, and Pod People) and many early Mike-era episodes (like a good deal of Season 5 and early Season 6.) But that is slowly changing, as I’m rewatching many pre-Season 5 episodes every couple of weeks. I’m hoping the Gamera box set will provide some laughs, because I liked Godzilla vs. Megalon.
I didn’t get into MST3K until around the time Season 7/The Movie were released, and I always feel like the dialogue and writing are at their sharpest and most consistent from late Season 6-onward. Maybe I just like the more sarcastic/mean-spirited vibe they have in the later seasons, many of the movies deserve it.
Oh yeah, Squirm and Teenage Crimewave are also on my list. The former is just plain gross, from the worms to many of the characters, including the oily sheriff, while the latter is just swimming in cliches and over-the-top acting by the so-called “delinquents” that it’s just insufferable despite the best efforts of the Brains.
Yeah I forgot Wild World of Batwoman, (probably a good thing).
The short is good though.
It isnt so much that its awfully boring, or that it stars nobody (unless you are a fan of the grumpy old gene okerlund spider invasion guy).
The thing about it is the incessant noise of the movie. It just makes me scream “SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP!”
Also the kids bantering and yelling in some of the Gamera’s and other Japanese movies is really annoying. But if I havent been drinking too much coffee I can overlook that usually.
I like The Leech Woman, but I HATE hearing Kevin yell “JED!”. It is SO ANNOYING!
And he does it in other episodes too.
I think he just gets a kick out of purposely being annoying sometimes, like in that Rifftrax short where he imitates the siren on the police car until Bill threatens him with bodily harm. (Thanks Bill!). I enjoy his presence greatly otherwise, don’t get me wrong.
As for MST3K, the only episodes I struggle to get through are in season one: The Crawling Eye, The Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy, Mad Monster, Project Moonbase… From Season 2 on it’s pretty smooth sailing, although ‘Colossus and the Headhunters’ is pretty rocky.
As for modern era riffing, I find Cinematic Titanic’s ‘Blood of the Vampires’ excruciating to sit through, what a boring, drab movie.
I can sit through any of them but the list of those I choose not to is fairly long. If an episode doesn’t have a supernatural/sci-fi element(aside from westerns), that’s one strike against it from the start. I’m just funny that way. If it does have those things, I’m inclined to forgive it a lot of boringness/unfunniness/dreariness. I think Beast of Yucca flats is actually pretty darned funny. I adore Squirm, in part because I saw it a bunch as a kid. One horror-themed one I can’t abide is Ring of Terror. Too pathetic. Devil Doll and Devil Fish are two more I don’t really bother with.
The crime/noir ones tend not to interest me, even if they have pretty good riffing, otherwise. A notable exception is The Dead Talk Back, which is one of my favorites. But of course that does have a supernatural element, even though it all turns out to be a sham.
The biker movies suck. The sword and sandal ones never seem to be any good. The “comedies” just plain don’t work, the way I see it. Catalina Caper and Angel’s Revenge are two of the hardest ones for me to sit through. No amount of riffing can fix Catalina Caper for me. Batwoman is supposed to be a comedy but you can’t hear most of the dialogue, anyway, so it works out okay, I guess.
Face it, they had a slot to fill every week and not every bad movie they picked had universal appeal. I showed some friends Eegah and they loved it, then I showed them Manos and they fell asleep 20 minutes in and never expressed any interest in MST3K afterward. MST3K is like a Rorschach test more than any other show I can think of.
“Wild World of Batwoman”, “Racket Girls”, “First Spaceship on Venus” and “Zombie Nightmare”. All four of these the riffing does not save it for me and the plot of these films are painful. If Shout or Rhino had all four of these in the same volume set, I wouldn’t buy it.
I can’t stand the movie. This Island Earth is cut too much and the riffing is forgettable. I watched it a second time because I couldn’t remember any of it. How can a movie be shorter than an episode.
I hate to categorically rule out anything (except for Fu Manchu, which ought to be marketed as a sleep aid). I used to REALLY hate Starfighters, but after about the 3rd time I watched it, it grew on me. But I have a hard time getting through anything from season 1. For me, the show took off when Kevin Murphy came out from behind the scenes. But I haven’t “tried” very hard with season 1, so maybe that will change.
Hamlet because it’s dark, dreary and dubbed. The brains seem afraid to really go after it because even bad Shakespeare is still Shakespeare. I don’t think I ever once got through the whole episode.
The Blood Waters Of Dr. Z because it only has one good riff- “I really have to simplify my masturbation ritual”. The rest of the time it’s an ugly, shirtless, doughy man walking around followed by an ugly monster walking around. The incomprehensible voice-over dialogue, “Sargasm! Weed of deceit!” only builds tension in that I want to kick the tv screen in.
Also want to throw in Track Of The Moon Beast which actually does have its moments so I can slog my way through but generally is a terrible, terrible movie. Especially the dated hippie rock band that the brains spend a little too much time on in a host segment sketch. Know what really ads depth and texture to a horror movie? A recipe for stew.
Sometimes the brains do really well with a dull movie but most of the time a dull movie just drags the riffing right down with it.
@ # 81: I thought you were Dale!
I have to agree with you. The riffing in the movie was too broad and cutesy. I can see why they went that way, since this would have been a good strategy to attract a wider audience to the show (if only the studio had promoted it and given it a wider release). But it doesn’t have the nerdier, intellectual riffs that the hardcore fans love.
Blood Waters of Dr Z. I can’t sit through that movie. To me it even seemed like mike and the bots were dumbstruck at it.
Castle of Fu-Manchu is like Shakespeare compared to Hamlet. Hamlet is absolutely the low point of the series for me.
@6 Sampo..The rape scene was edited out of the MST3K version of Sidehackers.
@81..The problem with This Island Earth isn’t the riffing,but the lawyers and the head honchos at the studio that went through every riff/comment and said they couldn’t say this or that.Also,the fact that there wasn’t any other movies in the studio’s library for them to do,so they went with the only one they could do..Even Paul Chaplin said “I think we should’ve just released Manos-The Hands of Fate instead” or words to that effect.Kevin even said that it was real fun making the movie,but not dealing with lawyers and the business side of it..
By the way- I always loved the movie Squirm and was really excited when they did it on MST. I actually have the unMSTed dvd.
Agree about This Island Earth (which unlike Mike Nelson I like). If it hadn’t been edited so heavily it would have been better and more watchable.
Also, you wonder why the Professor didn’t make a anti-ray shield out of coconuts to protect the car from getting destroyed.
For the most part, I enjoy some of the duller movies most of all. Skydivers and Starfighters are two of my favorite episodes because they’re such a blank slate. Likewise, I enjoy the Ross Hagen Double Feature (as I call it when I watch Sidehackers and Hellcats consecutively) immensely because of the absurdity of the movie. I can’t put Castle of Fu Manchu on the list because…well, I haven’t seen that one yet.
However, there are a number of eps that I don’t watch all that often, like Hamlet and The Leeches and Shrews movies. I’d put The Projected Man up here, but that’s only because I have a copy of the original showing with the wonky audio. I’d have to put, at this point, The Crawling Hand as the most difficult to watch. I’m not personally a fan of the first season, mainly because the riffs are a lot fewer and a lot more laid back. That said, I do like some eps, like The Crawling Eye and Women of the Prehistoric Planet, because the movie works well enough. The Crawling Hand is so slow and plodding, that it doesn’t save the slow and plodding riffs, and vice versa.
I’m going out on a limb here, I liked Fu Manchu. Wouldn’t call it a fave, but I’ve seen it many a time.
On ones I have a hard time getting through here’s my top five
1. Creeping Terror
2. Batwoman
3. First Spaceship to Venus
4. Crawling Eye
5. Hamlet
Why? Because they just drag. True story…I tried watching the Creeping Terror probably about six times before I actually got through the whole thing. Just terrible.
My MST-3K experience is limited to almost exclusively the SciFi years, so my answer is pretty predictable. (In a fictional MST-3K class, I’d be the developmentally disabled guy in back eating paste). HAMLET HAMLET HAMLET! Never again will I subject myself to Hamlet. Never.
Hamlet springs to mind. I’ve never made it through and I LOVE pretty much all the other Sci-Fi episodes.
To #92 I agree about Fu-Manchu. Other than the bad print of the movie it wasn’t that bad. Any movie with Christopher Lee and the always strange Klaus Kinsky can’t be all bad. Disagree about Creeping Terror. It’s one of my favorite episodes. There’s a difference between an badly made movie like this or a dull one. Terror is perfect for riffing by MST3K.
Robot Vs the Aztec Mummy it doesn’t go anywhere combined with the staffs inexperience with riffing makes it a disaster to sit through. I hate to think that was the first episode of the show.
1. Robot Monster. This happened to me a few weeks ago, when watching Robot Monster for the weekly discussion. I could not finish the episode. I got through most of it, but shut it off towards the end of the episode. The spartan, season 1 style of riffing didn’t help either.
2. Robot vs. The Aztec Mummy. I’ve only seen this once, when I went through the DVD set. I am not all that interested in seeing it again. Maybe the riffing was nice on this one, as it is in The Crawling Hand. The movie, however, is painful. It is so god-damned awful.
Other than those two, and I haven’t seen all of season 1, I can sit through any episode of MST3K.
‘First Spaceship On Venus’ immediately springs to mind. For the longest time I was actually desperate to see this all the way through, as I had only the first half on tape. When I finally got to see the whole thing on Netflix, I was sitting there wondering what the hell was wrong with me! The movie is SO boring, and the riffs are on a par with KTMA episodes for long stretches between jokes. It took me about two weeks to watch it in 10 minute installments. I may wait another 15 years before I watch it again.
A close runner-up is ‘It Lives By Night’. I had read about this movie long before hearing of MST3K, and thought it sounded like crap. Seeing it being made fun of by Mike and the ‘bots did nothing to improve my opinion.
That being said, I’m kinda surprised to see ‘Hamlet’ turn up on here so often. I think that one’s hilarious (I know, I know, Sampo’s Theorem).
For me it would be either Hellcats or First Spaceship on Venus. Every time I try to watch them I fall asleep.
I actually like Hamlet, in my book it gets a C+ over the unfunny gluttony jokes of Final Justice. For a while I was scared of returning to The Beast of Yucca Flats for obvious reasons, but I’ve since warmed up to it. The only one I feel like I’ll never watch again is Lost Continent. Good God what a boring movie, not just from the rock climbing or the only okay riffs, but also in a scene towards the end, where they’re looking for the rocket and one of them publicly announces they are bored. That sums up the entire movie. On a similar note, I’ve never gotten all the way through King Dinosaur because of similar padding issues. It just felt exactly the same as Lost Continent, and I wasn’t impressed with the riffs.