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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Stacia says: “What’s so interesting about these threads is there is never a consensus.
Totally. Having said that, I’d go with “The Painted Hills.” Not only can I not stand the movie, but none of the riffs really resonate with me. And I’ve seen this one on lots of “Favorite Episodes” lists. To me, it’s just dull. Dull and boring. Doring.
The other one is “The Incredibly Strange Creat……” Gahh. Even the title sucks. At least I find the riffing funny in this one, but the movie is just too, too painful.
Of course, it’s kind of odd to be complaining about bad movies, being fans of a show based on bad movies. :)
For me the ones that I just can’t sit through for the most part can be grouped into several…well, groups.
The majority of the Japanese movies during Season 3. Aside from Mighty Jack and maybe the first Gamera, they just drag for me. Yet I like Prince Of Space, Neptune Men, and the Godzillas, so go figure.
The line-up of Sci-Fi movies from the UK also don’t do it for me. Devil Doll, Gorgo, Projected Man, Deadly Bees just suffer from plodding plots and slooooooww action.
The majority of the Sword and Sandal epics that they did over the course of the show also were meh for me. Hercules, Samson, Colossus, whichever.
Aside from them I would think that each season has a clunker or two.
Season 1:
Boy, tough all over for me. I started watching in Season 2 and the difference is miles apart from each other. The ones I watch are far outnumbered by the ones I don’t. But Robot Vs. The Aztec Mummy is probably the one that gets my vote.
Season 2:
I’d go with Rocket Attack USA more than the biker movies for sure. The dire bleakness of the inevitable nuclear destruction has never been slower.
Season 3:
With the Japanese movies out of the running, I’ll go with Stranded In Space as being just plain dull.
Season 4:
The Hercules movies this season I skip over. The Human Duplicators has also been a snoozer.
Season 5:
The Girl In Lovers Lane is the clear winner that I don’t really watch just because like many others have said, the plot makes me just plain angry and the riffing, while top-notch, can’t rescue it from Jack Elam mauling the female lead.
Season 6:
Kitten With A Whip definitely anger-inducing because John Forsythe is smarter than the character he’s playing yet he does the dumbest stuff. High School Big Shot is depressing as well. And I can sit through hours of Starfighters rather than watching Colossus and the Headhunters or Amazing Transparent Man.
Season 7:
I find this one to be the most solid season through and through. I can watch any of them at any time. Brute Man might get painful just because knowing what Rondo was going through in real life, but still top notch riffing.
Season 8:
The Undead never did it for me. The Leech Woman is eh. Clonus Horror I always find myself watching the movie more than the riffing, which is rare for me and this show. Devil Doll is again rather dull.
Season 9:
Taking the Brit ones out, the rest are okay. Touch Of Satan gets a bit boring.
Season 10:
The peaks are high, but the valleys are low. Blood Waters of Dr. Z I finally made all the way through the other day and I don’t see that one being in my rotation again soon. Girl In Gold Boots, Future War, and It Lives By Night I can always skip over as well.
Now even with these episodes that I set aside, there is a vast majority that I love. Even later efforts in genres that did nothing for me before such as the Japanese movies done during Sci-Fi or the Film Crew doing Giant of Marathon I find quite hilarious.
As far as “This Island Earth”, I am one of those who dislike it because it is not long enough, i.e. too much editing out chunks of the movie itself. I like the riffing in that one, and the host segments where we got to see other parts of the SOL.
Episodes that, most of the time, I do not like: “The Mad Monster”; “First Spaceship On Venus”; “Ring Of Terror”; “Manhunt In Space” and “Crash Of Moons”; “Secret Agent Super Dragon”; “The Starfighters”; “Time Chasers” (not the riffing or host segments, I simply detest time travel stories, or stories that utilize time travel at some point); “The Space Children”; and “Merlin’s Shop Of Mystical Wonders”.
When I say most of the time, I am focusing Sampo’s theorem to an even finer level, in that sometimes when I watch the above mentioned episodes, I enjoy them! So it’s Sampo’s theorem on an even more individualized, episodic basis. See ya!
Okay, so I watched Castle of Fu Manchu last night… I have to say the only redeeming part of it was the fact that even they knew how bad this movie was.
I have a possible topic if it hasn’t been done before: What movies are you willing to admit you’ve seen before MST3K got a hold of them?
Some movies I couldn’t stand the first time have grown on me. Blood Waters of Dr Z has become one of my favorite Mike Era episodes. Starfighters was also better the second time. And Overdrawn at the memory bank.
#204, I second your topic idea. I have quite a list :)
Good idea to go by seasons:
S1 – The Mad Monster (when even mad scientists can’t make themselves interesting…)
S2 – Hellcats (someone got to the bottom of a syndication package)
S3 – Anything with a II (Master Ninja, Fugitive Alien, and the jokes had all been used up in I)
S4 – Indestructible Man (what is a Season 1 30’s-talkie doing in S4?)
S5 (Mitchell aside) – Outlaw (you cannot make Golan/Globus funny)
S6 – Last of the Wild Horses (when M&tB find their own show-canon navels more interesting than the movie–which they often DO–there’s a reason)
S7 – The Brute Man (yeah, M&tB, everything sounded better in Medved’s Golden Turkey’s sight-unseen, didn’t it?)
S8 – Overdrawn/Memory (again, just….too strange to pick on–Back in the transitional-80’s, West coast PBS stations were proud they owned video-toaster FX)
S9 – Final Sacrifice (S9, the season-long experiment of the One Foreign Joke – “Hey, guys, are we making Canadian jokes now, can I make some too, huh, can I?” Result of experiment: Cancellation)
S10 – Hamlet (it wasn’t their fault: “German English-dubbed Shakespeare” sounded really funny in the on-paper description)
@204 – I’d actually seen “Santa Claus” on screen back in the long-ago days of Kiddie Matinees. (And as the documentary says, “Our first foreign film, and boy was that foreign…”)
I’d seen Robot Monster at a college theater, and c’mon, Village of the Giants is just goofy on its own, not “bad”!
I’ll have to go with the Joe Don Baker episodes, especially the neo-Fascist FINAL JUSTICE.
STARFIGHTERS, on the other hand, fascinates me for the same reason THE LAWRENCE WELK SHOW fascinates me. Who in the world THINKS like this?
Funny how some episodes are unbearable to some of us and hilarious to others. I think the Boggy Creek one and Final Sacrifice are hilarious. Two I’ve seen but would never watch again are The Starfighters and First Spaceship on Venus. Soooooo boring; I kept waiting for something interesting to happen. Even the riffing couldn’t save those two for me.
“Before the end of this century, we will make a boring movie called Space Travelers”
One more thing about Kitten With A Whip; I always thought that Forsythe’s character felt sorry for Jody and thought she had some good in her, and that’s why he didn’t turn her over to the cops. He thought she could get out of it somehow, start her life over.
And if he had called the cops, we’d have a what, 20 minute movie? lol
#192 Until you mentioned that, I’d assumed “Overdrawn” was an original movie. Now I’ve checked and it looks like it was adapted from a John Varley short story of the same name. Now I kind of want to read the story and see if it makes any more sense than the movie.
B.T.W. “The Lathe of Heaven” is one of my favorite novels, and I thought the P.B.S. version was a reasonably good adaptation. I didn’t like the A&E version, despite the better budget.
Well, you have to admit, the original Kitten with a Whip was pretty tame compared to the Tarantino remake.
Many of my favorite eps have been mentioned here, so yeah: Sampo’s Theorem all the way :) The Gamera movies; Time of the Apes; Escape 2000; The Wild Wild World of Batwoman; I love ’em. And Overdrawn at the Memory Bank is the favorite of some of my friends.
The only ep I can’t take is Mad Monster. The feature is so old, with barely intelligible dialogue, and grainy everything. Plus, being ep 103, the riffing is just not there yet to rescue it. The Brains would probably have never done that one later, after they got a budget.
I also just watched the eps in order for the first time last year (less KTMA). I put them on in the background while I worked, so it only took a few months. Watching them that way you can also tune out most of the long, boring stretches of movie and just glance back in for your favorite jokes. I find it essential to watch certain episodes that way, like The Slime People, where, even though I do like the episode, the only copy I have is from YouTube, and so not only is half of the movie obscured by fog, but it’s fog that’s been recorded at 360p and encoded as an MP4. Wahoo.
Episodes that sucked donkey giblets are The Starfighters, Devil Doll, The Screaming Skull, Tormented, Time of the Apes, Mighty Jack, Castle of Fu-Manchu, Hercules and the Captive Women, Red Zone Cuba, Monster A-Go-Go, The Brain That Wouldn’t Die, Hamlet, All Godzilla and Gamera films, and Diabolik. I’d rather watch reruns of Mama’s Family then relive the episodes that I mentioned.
Can’t watch Eegah past the first half hour. The shaving cream scene makes my stomach churn.
Also, The Brain that Wouldn’t Die, I find extremely disturbing!
I would have to say Devil Doll. It did have some good riffs, but overall the pace was too slow.
It took about three times for me to really get into it, but I absolutely LOVE the Starfighters. It just sucks me in (with refueling) and I cannot look away. It’s what I’d expect to see if David Lynch directed an Air Force promotional film.
Stoneman @203 points out that severe cuts to This Island Earth puts that episode on this list for him. Mighty Jack in the third season does this for me despite some good riffing. The KTMA Mighty Jack has less cuts so one can follow the dopey story line better, at least me, but the riffing is not as steller.
Every series has it’s share of bad episodes, this one is no exception. Hamlet and Starfighters comes to mind right away. I’ve never seen them in it’s entirety because they’re just not my cup of tea. The Screaming Skull and Devil Doll are also drab and dreary and just not entertaining. There’s others but I don’t want to get too negative here.
I really enjoy all the MST episodes. That said, there are 2 classes of episodes that are harder to get through; 1) the old, dull, dark ones, and 2) the movies where the content is just plain repugnant and gross. The older ones like Aztec Mummy and Corpse Vanishes and Ring of Terror are beyond dull as movies; riffing of course helps a lot. We in 2011 are used to a quicker pace in our plots, not so in 1938. Of the repugnants I have to be in the right mood to see Hellcats or (shudder) Hobgoblins, or Batwoman, because of the scenery-chewing and lechery, even with the good riffs.
The other class of movies hard to watch are the just plain incompetently made films, like Yucca Flats or Monster GoGo, or Manos; but I like those, because it’s so barely even a movie, is more about what the Brains are doing with it. and . . . Hamlet is awesome.
Wow, over 200 comments. There’s a lot of different episodes out there that people think are unwatchable and I agree. For obvious reasons I’ll toss out Hamlet, Fu-manchu, and Starfighters. Overdrawn at the Memory Bank was a tough one, I can’t recall finishing it. The only reason I’d rewatch Diabolik is for the host segments, this was a poor choice of ending the series with. I also have to mention Screaming Skull, only because Sci-Fi used to rerun this one so many times I would just change the channel after the Gumby short.
Oh I forgot to mention, Packers are going to the Super Bowl! Whoooo!
The first “Gamera” movie just kills me every time. I usually don’t mind watching black and white films, but Gamera is SOOOOO boring in black and white. Not only that, but he’s terrible in comparison to Godzilla, who isn’t even that awesome to begin with anyways.
Go PACKERS!!!!
OK, it’s been years since I got through The Creeping Terror so I decided to give it another chance last night.
Surprisingly, I enjoyed it. Maybe I’ll give Hamlet another chance tonight, or Batwoman….
Definitely, “The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and …” you-know-the-rest. Boy was THAT a lousy movie. Anyone complaining about Coleman Francis and Ed Wood have nothing on this movie. And I can’t stand Ortega (aka, gotta-use-him-because-Mike’s-not-available-to-play-Torgo). Not even the Brains can make this one work.
With Hamlet, you at least have the joy of playing “spot-the-familiar-voice.”
And Coleman Francis, you’re just watching out of sheer delirium that something like that could ever have been made. And John Carradine “sings” in Mundo Fine, so it depends on your tolerance level.
But “Strange Creatures,” ugh…
The riffing is pretty good on Gamera. And it’s worth watching just for the part where Gamera rips open the building and broils the hundreds of screaming people inside alive. Woah.
Yay! I’ve been waiting for this topic to come up.
6. This Island Earth – Went years without watching it a second time because all I remembered laughing at the first time was, of course, NORMAL VIEW! Easier to get through now.
5. All the Gamera movies.
4. Devil Doll – Can anyone speak in something other than monotone please? Emotions are your friends.
3. Manos – Took me three times to get through it.
2. Screaming Skull – I was more worried of dying from boredom than fright.
1. Hamlet – I don’t think I have even made it through once.
Catalina Caper. I have sat through it, but never really paid attention. Still remember very little of the film.
Castle of Fu Manchu, it’s almost like MST is not on!!
I am frankly surprised at how much ire there is towards The Girl in Lover’s Lane. It’s just so STUPID, it moves well beyond the capacity of being depressing. I mean, Jesse presumably throttles the Girl to death, right? And yet she still manages to talk to Big Stupid, even emit one last scream (you know, so that Big Stupid can be arrested without straining credulity even more)? I mean, what? Usually people don’t pop back to life to deliver a few last lines unless you’re watching Macbeth. Plus Danny, sweet Danny, what a dorfish little weiner. He’s a fun character, with his almost instantaneous and total dependence on Big Stupid.
I’m just saying I think you should give the movie another chance. Plus there’s that lovely credits sequence song. “They could have attained / A measure of fame… / But no…”
Oh, forgot to vote. I remember having a VERY hard time getting through Frank’s last episode, and that troubled me greatly, because I wanted to like it as much as Mitchell, Laserblast, and Diabolik. But damn, those 60s-era Mexican wrestling/horror movies are INCREDIBLY dull. Just a chore of an episode.
Also, any Roger Corman movie that is NOT science fiction or fantasy is bad. The one with Bev Garland as the sheriff is terrible. No charm in that movie.
Oh: almost forgot ‘Moon Zero Two’. I tried to watch that on YouTube; wound up opening another tab on my browser and surfing just to alleviate the boredom.
I go for Blood Waters of Dr. Zzzzzz…unlike other S10 episodes that I grew to love after several years, I still can’t stomach this one. And unlike earlier movies, it was far too late in the series for such a clunker.
Right now, I’m having trouble with Robot Holocaust, although it may just be my low-quality DVD of the episode.
First time posting here, if I am stealing anyones moniker mea culpa, mea culpa, maxima culpa.
Ring of Terror. The movie is so dark hard to tell whats going on. Also of the season one eps Corpse vanishes is a tough watch.
I actually like the biker films, a bit strange as I loathe Easy Rider and that genre of movies, yet Sidehackers/Hellcats/Wild Rebels are so goofily inept they make it into my rotation of rewatched eps. I watched Hamlet last week and it is growing on me.
I see some have already posted some of what I’ve seen:
First Spaceship to Venus- I tried at least 6 times, and this thing cannot hold my attention, even with the fact that it has a Japanese woman in it.
The Starfighters- this was like Monster-a-Go-Go…the title LIED!! Plus, it felt more like watching someone’s bad vacation videos from eons ago.
Those are the two big offenders that spring readily to mind- I mean, Monster-a-go-go is bad, but that’s like car-crash bad where you can’t look away.
Starfighters felt eye-gougingly bad.
I’ve said it before…”The Atomic Brain.” That old lady is just super-annoying, even by MST3K standards.
I would have to say Hamlet. I’ve only been able to watch about 20 minutes of it and then turn it off…..the movie and sound itself is too much to handle. Also, anything from season one…..Tom Servo’s voice during the 1st season is kind of annoying. Maybe if I force myself to watch the above mentioned more often I’d have a bit more love but I am usually too busy trying to decide between watching the Final Sacrifice and Space Mutiny….Classics!!!!