Our pals at TVShowsonDVD have the news about an upcoming re-release of episode 424- “MANOS” THE HANDS OF FATE.
Previously released on DVD twice by Rhino (as a 2001 stand-alone disc, and in 2004 as part of “The Essentials” set) but long out-of-print, Shout! Factory has announced that they are bringing to participating stores this year a new 2-DVD release of “Mystery Science Theater 3000 – Manos: Hands Of Fate Special Edition.”
It will be available on Sept. 13 for a suggested price of $24.97.
Our sources at Shout have updated our info:
* Disc one will feature the classic MST3K episode, a featurette–“Group Therapy: Wherein Joel, Trace, Frank & Mary Jo relive the horror”–and the MST3K Hour wraps.
* Disc two will feature the original unMSTed movie, “Jam Handy To the Rescue!” A Daniel Griffith/Ballyhoo Production featurette (written by and starring Larry Blamire), BOTH parts of the short “Hired!” “My (Educational) Short Life,” an Interview with Joel Hodgson and–wait for it–“Hotel Torgo”. Also includes an exclusive mini-poster by artist Steve Vance.
Please use THIS LINK to preorder it from Amazon.
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My advice to Shout is to drop the Hired! shorts. Who wants those? They have nothing to do with Manos, really. In their plave they should put the Manos: The Hands of Fate the Play, if they can get the rights. If not, they should be able to dig up something else Manos-related. But in my opinion the hired shorts (riffed? unriffed?), as funny as they are, do nothing to sweeten the pot. Why have Part 2 of Hired! on the disc twice, anyway?
Having Manos on The Essentials is good enough for me.
Whenever Shout puts out a new MST disc, I always buy it. Why? Well, for starters, the upgrade of the episode from a fan copy. In this case, it’s a triple dip. But that will not stop me from buying this. Why? Because the main reason I buy the Shout discs is FOR THE EXTRAS. Seriously, they could put this set out WITHOUT the movie, and I’d still buy it! I love me some new extras, and this one’s got some cool stuff on it. Really, you might say? Shell out $20 for a featurette, Joel interview, and MST Hour Wraps? Yes sir, that’s how much I love this stuff!
Makes me wonder when the “I Accuse My Parents” special edition will come out… :)
Besides, it’s out of print, and this way newbs can walk into Best Buy or wherever and be able to buy it. I think we all can agree that Manos deserves to stay in print.
Man, I smell a “Mitchell” special edition in the works. Come on, Joe Don Baker commentary track (you know, where he riffs on the riffers!)
I’ll wait till it comes out a 4th time with scratch and sniff decals.
Ok I’m going to stick up for Larry Blamire! I enjoy his documentaries…but I was a fan of his movies before he started showing up on the mst3k disk from SHOUT!. His movies are alot of fun and his blog is a great source for discovering old cheesy movies.
SuperSwift #39 oh, bless your heart-I LOVE hearing from other folk, like me, who are WAY beyond tired of the cartoon cover art by …cue celetial harp….Steve Vance.
And then IMMEDIATELY followed by the guaranteed “oh I L O V E the cover art!!” post.
MitchellRowsdowerBeardsley # 47-can I just say man, BEST NAME EVER! Bahaha! I cracked up just now when I saw ur S/N! Thanks for the laugh bro-
Sweet! Shout factory keeps surprising me. Can’t wait, and I love the Ballyhoo features with Larry Blamire.
This will be my fourth Manos. Can’t help but think about my mom and her Elvis Aloha from Hawaii. She had that thing on ever format and special edition from LP to DVD.
Yeah, I like Blamire’s features well enough. But I’m disappointed with his last couple of movie ventures. Drink coasters. And Trail of the Screaming Forehead was apparently so bad it didn’t even get a dvd release. I don’t know how it could have been worse than Dark and Stormy Night, though.
Yawn. Waste of time IMHO. Already been double dipped. Apparently they are going the George Lucas route and trying to find out just how stupid we are.
I completely agree with Edge. I just can’t muster up the energy to purchase it. The extras just don’t interest me.
Still, there’s nothing wrong with having a back up DVD.
This is only the a second purchase for me, the extras are enough for me to purchase.
And good on for Shout! making this available for new or old fans who may not have gotten their hands on it before since the Rhino releases of it are now out of print.
#63 2 backups?
I’ll be holding off for a lower price. Lets have Time of the Apes next… please….
(edit above)
A 2-DVD edition of Time of the Apes with unMST3K version of the movie. Pretty please! :D
I’m easy. Throw some extras on a DVD and I’ll rebuy it. I own the essentials DVD too, but I can’t pass this SHOUT version up. I probably would have bought the othe SHOUT re-releases if they threw some extras on them.
Not sure how I feel about buying this one AGAIN. The special features look good, but I don’t know if I want to put down 25 bucks for ’em. I’ve seen Hotel Torgo and it isn’t all that interesting.
Castle Monster, I don’t know which Amazon you’re looking at (UK? CA? AU? DE?) but I have yet to see Shouts single releases (or pre-releases) of Gunslinger, Hamlet, The Beginning of the End, or The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies on Amazon.com. Only this new Manos.
Am I missing something?
@radioman970
What do you meant two? I have the Rhino VHS, but that doesn’t count and the DVD from Rhino’s Essentials set. This one would make two. And really, if it weren’t for the extras, I wouldn’t buy this DVD.
Barth: I’m in the US, so that’s all that I know about.
I know people who buy the same album 5 times because it has a different catalogue number. So this is no big deal to me to buy this again. And weren’t people complaining about the Shout Select re-issues because there were no extras? C’mon people, just be happy they’re putting quality stuff out.
Castle Monster @60, Trail of the Screaming Forehead is hilarious. They’ve shown it on IFC a few times — it’s a note-perfect spoof of alien invasion B-movies. Don’t review before watching!
To clarify my stance:
I am actually very happy that Shout! is making OOP Rhino episodes available for those who didn’t purchase them the first time. If you were to try to find these titles on ebay, you’d be paying an arm and a leg for them. I just wish I had a job because then I would be purchasing this again.
I just didn’t want anyone to think I was begruding them if they were going to purchase “Manos” again. More power to you. You’re a much better person than me.
Hm.
I already have Manos MST’d. I already have Manos Un-MSt’d (yes, I’m a sick kitty, why do you ask?).
This is tough one….
I really can’t bring myself to buy this. It would be my third purchase of Manos, and even with all the work Shout! has done on adding extras to their sets, I’ve barely touched them. I hardly even have time to watch the episodes.
Seems like Kevin and Mike should be included in the featurette as well since they were key players in this episode.
# 45 if we can have Torgo 3 times we can have Dropo 3 times…after all Droppo is the Christmas Torgo ! :)
I already emailed shout about this predicament ..maybe they will respond…
3 Torgos,
3 Dropos,
Joels Hair
Joels Knees
uncut gamera..
Back to therapy…im getting worse
jere7my:
Well, I thought it looked funny. And with the cameos by Dick Miller and Kevin McCarthy I thought it would be a shame if it wasn’t good. But I don’t know why they put the insufferable Dark and Stormy Night and The Lost Skeleton Returns Again on DVD and not it.
What is happening at SHOUT! ? Are they completely stopping production of the boxed-sets and totally switching over to single-discs?
I love what SHOUT! has done so far compared to Rhino, but I feel like I can’t buy any of the single-discs because they might come out in a box set later. I wish we knew what was going on.
@80,
I’m not sure where you’re getting that impression. It seems like the box sets are still coming and these single discs are being made as extra for those who missed them so they don’t have to pay ridiculous amounts for out of print episodes.
Trumpy Dumpy #58 – thanks bro!
Let me join the chorus for TIME OF THE APES!!
Crap in hand! – Fling crap!!
geesh I actually loved Dark and Stormy Night and The Lost Skeleton Returns Again. To each his own I guess.
@ Finnias Jones #24… You don’t seem to understand how HD works. Not everything is HD or can even be turned into HD. Things originally shot on film can be re-transfered from their original film elements as a new HD transfer. This includes almost all films made before the introduction of shooting films digitally. It also includes older TV series like the original Star Trek series, which was created completely on film (for most TV shows like that before 1980s then they were shot, had special effects created and added, and the final edit all done on film) so they have original 35mm prints of every episode that they could easily transfer for the recent HD blu-ray releases. Things shot on SD video on the other hand CAN NOT be made HD. The highest resolution MST3K will ever be is 480i. 35mm film contains about six times the resolution of 1080p HD video so you can take those old movies and TV shows that already exist on 35mm film and make a 1080p version no problem. It’s actually a big step down from the 35mm original. But you can’t take something that was created from the ground up on 480i video tape and magically make it 1080p.
And since MST3K itself was shot, edited, and distributed entirely on SD video tape that is the case here. Even if they went back to the original raw footage from the show the best it could EVER be is 480i. Standard DVD is already more than enough to give us a pretty darn accurate representation of what the original MST3K episode master tapes look like. Simply putting that 480i/p video on Blu-ray does not magically make it HD, or even make it look better, and so called “upscaling” does not either. Any of the “bad” MST DVD releases we have seen so far are mostly because of poor DVD mastering (though some are because of damage to the original master tapes as well), and that has nothing to do with the video being SD or HD. I HIGHLY doubt Shout Factory is using Rhino’s old DVD masters for their rerelease DVDs. They are most likely getting the original MST3K master tapes directly from Best Brains and making their own new DVD masters from those, so this isn’t going to just be the old Rhino DVD video slapped into a new 2-disc set. For one thing every Rhino release I’ve ever bothered checking was on a single layer disc, where as from what I’ve seen Shout has been using dual layer discs for their releases, giving them much more room to keep the video quality up. Given that the Shout DVDs have so far been pretty excellent this new DVD of Manos is bound to look as good as it ever could look unless they screw it up some how in the mastering process. Just plopping it on a Blu-ray wouldn’t magically make it look any better.
So yes putting MST3K on Blu-ray would be “pointless”, and serve absolutely no purpose except to have an old SD TV episode on a fancy new Blu-ray disc. The show simply CAN NEVER be HD. The only reason Shout Factory would ever have to put MST3K on Blu-ray is if they wanted to do something like fit an entire box set on one disc, but the video itself wouldn’t see much benefit. It would still be SD, and still look the same on your HDTV.
Yeah, I shouldn’t have brought it up…
@78 – LOL “Droppo is the Christmas Torgo”. You gave me a good chuckle with that.
Cronkite @ 84:
Yeah, I get what you’re saying and appreciate your explanation. Thanks for the detail and general politeness. At the end of your post you provide the solution to my main complaint:
“The only reason Shout Factory would ever have to put MST3K on Blu-ray is if they wanted to do something like fit an entire box set on one disc, but the video itself wouldn’t see much benefit. It would still be SD, and still look the same on your HDTV.”
Personally, I am trying to buy less physical product in an effort to conserve space and money. I would be thrilled if Shout would start putting their boxed sets on single Blu-Rays (I imagine the 5 DVD Gamera set would fit on two Blu’s). I’ve watched a few of their DVDs on my HDTV and they look just fine to me (as do the old Rhinos). I wasn’t really expecting this Manos to look any better, just for Shout to utilize the new format in a creative way, i.e. they could easily fit this 2 disc set onto a single Blu-Ray. Also, I wouldn’t be surprised if these new bonus features were made in Hi-def.
A pro-active alternative would be for them to look into digital downloads like CT & RT do. Even devise a way for users to pay for and download the individual featurettes they want to own. I for one do not need the unMSTied Manos in my library.
Overall, I’m glad Shout are rereleasing this in such a deluxe package. It’s such an iconic episode and I encourage folks to see it (I had no idea it was out of print in the first place). But the fact is I stopped buying DVDs once I got a Blu-Ray player. The only ones I still buy are the MST box-sets, so I wish Shout would service this new market.
Eventually this will end up on Netflix so I’ll rent it then. Maybe even stream it if the extras are included. I was looking at the MST titles available for Instant Watch and most of the Rhino & Shout titles are available (though not the most recent set – I guess there’s a delay built in to encourage sales). I can envisage a time when I stop buying the DVD sets entirely because they’ll be viewable online whenever I want.
I’m very happy with the Bot figurines Shout have provided and I’ve got the stress ball. But I don’t need another tin box taking up space on my shelf. Looking towards the future, I just hope Shout Factory will embrace the new technology and distribution models a bit more.
Wow, I feel like I should be taking notes….is there a quiz later? Obviously, I don’t think I could handle Torgo (or his weird area) in any more depth than regular dvd will afford. I remember when I first got HD channels on my tv, and watching Madman on IFC HD game me motion sickness. If I win the lottery, I’m going to buy an old drive-in and watch MST3k there. That would be the perfect amount of definition.
Wouldn’t MST3K The Movie on Blu Ray be nice though? :)
All movies benefit from a HD transfer. MST3K: The Movie can be seen in 720p on some internet HD streaming rental services like itunes (I think they have it in HD), but its likely never to get much better than that.
MST3K episodes can benefit somewhat from a transfer to a better medium like blu-ray as well. Resolution will not increase, but compression artifacts will likely disappear entirely. Uncompressed audio would also be nice.
Pretty much all retail releases of MST3K episodes have been more compressed than most DVD movies as they’re usually sold on single-layer DVDs. Making them look a bit chunkier in fast-action scenes such as the doorway transitions into the theater. Audio is always compressed to 192kbps on MST3K retail DVDs as well which is okay, but could always be improved from that low bitrate.
MST3K: The Movie is streaming on Netflix, and I watched it in 1080i the other night and it looked amazing. It’s the only MST that can be HD. Hopefully, one day, MST3K: The Movie will see a blu-ray release.
As far as Manos on blu-ray (or any other episode for that matter), this is a way I could see it being done. It would be a two disc set, one Blu-Ray disc and one DVD. The purpose of the Blu-Ray disc is to have the un-MSTied movie in 1080p as well as the newly created extras in 1080p, while the DVD has the episode on it. They may even be able to squeeze all of this onto one Blu-Ray disc. That way, you get a mixed package of HD and SD, but some HD is better than none. Of course, this would involve Shout! tracking down film prints of these obscure old movies, and that could be quite difficult and costly. Hmm, just a thought.
Overall, I’m glad we don’t collect VHS anymore. Talk about taking up too much space!
Ohh, if they could find the print of Hired, they could include that in HD as well. But where does one find a print of Hired?
I have every previous release, but I’m still excited for this. I agree that they should limit the number of Special Edition re-releases, but if ever an episode deserved one it’s this. I’m mainly excited for the MST-Hour wraps.
A question for Sampo: is there any info on the un-MSTed Manos being uncut? The Alpha DVD release is missing the opening scene.
Also, I have to say, seeing (unMSTed) Manos in 1080p would indeed be a wonderful, format-mocking, event!
“But where does one find a print of Hired?”
Sadly, the original print, along with all our jobs, was shipped overseas……. :-(
Nice! Can’t wait for this one to come out. Sounds like an awsome solo :D
It’s Barbie with a new hat. But, dammit, IT’S BARBIE… And she has a NEW HAT!
@#5- What can you tell me about the book, “Greater Magic”? ;)
@#97
I don’t know, I never read it. I did see Hotel torgo and It was not very good. That’s All I Know. Hi Lance
why is everyone happy to own 3 copies of the same DVD? Wouldn’t you be happier to see a release of an episode that has NOT yet been releaed…I just don’t understand it, third time for this DVD and folks are doing backflips for it, Shout found out that most of you are MST marks
A Manos enthusiast might opt to pick up a second copy or balk at buying a third, while Manos completists aren’t going to listen to reason, anyway. If I ran Shout, I might have to take those odds. They’re still releasing sets of new stuff, so it’s not like Shout (first time for them) re-releasing the most (in)famous episode in a SE is something to get worked up over. With their record, why object to their profiting from the occasional Manos sicko? And you never know how many people will actually be introduced to it this time around. As far as I’m concerned I have every episode I care about in one form or another, so they don’t always get my money on the sets. I’ll be more inclined to buy singles, assuming they aren’t just doing that for the Rhino re-releases.