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Hey MSTies! Stop paying a fortune, it’s been re-released!

Oh, how I feel for those poor souls that dumped hundreds of dollars on Ebay to get an original copy of Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie on DVD after it went out of print. Apparently, no one was willing to wait for it to be re-released, which is has, thanks to Universal. Suckers.

So you know the long-running television show. What was the movie? In 1997 or so, Best Brains, the guys behind MST3K, struck a deal with Universal to do a theatrically-released “episode” in which Mike (Nelson) and the ‘bots would take their sarcastic aim at one of Universal’s own classic sci-fi films. Their choice: the classic This Island Earth. Now, that right there should kill off any hope for the project, as MST made its name goofing on really bad films. Earth doesn’t really fit that category. Sure, it comes across a bit campy these days, but it certainly isn’t at an Ed Wood level.

That said, this is actually pretty funny, as we get to watch Mike and company watch the movie, making jokes at its expense all the way through. Since this was a theatrical release (with a PG-13 rating), the references skew a bit more towards scatological humor. A lot of the more obscure references are also lost here. Still, it’s quite funny at times. The film-within-a-film concerns a group of scientists who are invited to a retreat only to find they are prisoners of an alien race hoping to use their genius brains to help them win an interstellar war. With the usual wraparounds and interruptions by the gang, we see Mike and his team of Crow T. Robot and Tom Servo attempt to escape the Satellite of Love, the space vehicle they’re trapped on and forced to watch bad films by evil Dr. Clayton Forrester.

While it’s not quite the TV show at its best, there are some great moments (“Believe me, I calculated the odds of this succeeding against the odds that I was doing something incredibly stupid and...I went ahead anyway”). The film is presented in widescreen format, which takes some getting used to if you know how the usual MST screen already has a faux-letterbox effect at the bottom due to the silhouettes of theater seats. The print does look quite nice though. Sadly, there is nary a special feature on here. I don’t know if that’s due to Universal simply not caring (this was, after all, one of the worst-performing theatrical releases they ever attempted) or more likely because the entire main cast and crew of the show are now tied up with other DVD companies on projects.

It’s good to finally have Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie back in circulation. It could have used some more extras, but it is what it is. Still, at least I never gave into temptation and shelled out $150 for the original release.

Suckers.

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