One of the best things about Shout Factory’s handling of the physical media releases for MST3K is the plethora of great extras they include, particularly the material from Ballyhoo. So I was wondering what everyone’s favorite Ballyhoo feature is. I would say mine is the Coleman Francis documentary on the Beast of Yucca Flats disc. I particularly liked their parody of the random-line-spouting narrator.
I’ve always enjoyed the Ballyhoo extras. I’d have to say my favorite is the Horror of Party Beach extra. It was neat hearing the backstory on the movie and seeing some of the locations now.
Not to put any shame on Rhino’s extras game (loved the Don Sullivan interview for the Giant Gila Monster disc), but Shout Factory rocked it left and right via the Ballyhoo features.
Those are excellent, and I’d have to go back and watch them all again to really pick a favorite. I do recall especially enjoying the ones on Bert I. Gordon and Sandy Frank (natch). The Coleman Francis one is great too, the line “filming just to film” cracks me up every time.
I think The Incredible Mr. Lippert is my favorite of those.
I can’t remember if I had a favorite, I rather enjoyed them all.
I was disappointed we didn’t get a Ballyhoo for Carnival Magic, that flick just fascinated me and I knew there had to be stories. (a recent unriffed BD release has some extras that cover those stories, at least)
A few months ago, I saw the We Brought Back MST3K documentary om Amazon Prime, and I think it was the best Ballyhoo feature I saw so far!
Seeing that one resulted in me checking out Baron of Arizona.
I agree! Not knocking Rhino, but once Shout! got the rights we started getting the good stuff. Kudos to Daniel Griffith and the Ballyhoo team. Too many good docs to mention.
I’ve had the good fortune of seeing all the Ballyhoo features (assuming there are none hiding on old Rhino releases somewhere; I’m pretty sure Ballyhoo is a Shout creation). They’re all really top-shelf – kudos to Shout for these outstanding productions – but my favorite is the three-part special Return to Eden Prairie: 25 Years of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Made before the 2015 reboot, of course. The introductory sequence alone is a thing of beauty, and can make me a little, ahem, MSTie.
A close second for me is You Asked For It: Sandy Frank Speaks!
Just seeing the Sandy Franks Speaks one for the first time. Not bad… he warmed up pretty quickly and totally got into it.
I think my favorite is the one on Rondo on The Brute Man disc. It even led me to visit to find his burial place in Tampa after a gig (before driving back over the bridge).
Sandy Frank Speaks is one of my favorites too. I think he’s pretty warm to the MST idea, but I detected a little bit of resentment under the surface. Ever the professional/salesman, I think he was suppressing his true thoughts a bit. I like how he referred to the bots as “robuts,” turning it into a one-syllable word (not unlike “slrpnls”).
If they ever wanted to pad out another DVD set (since there are only a few movies left, and the only one I know for sure they have the rights to is Quest of the Delta Knights) I wouldn’t object to them filling out one of the four DVDs with nothing but the various Ballyhoo documentaries… especially the ones they added to the rereleased Rhino sets. I’ve got all my original Rhino releases, and while I love the Ballyhoo docs, I can’t quite bring myself to purchase a whole new set just for the extra bonus features alone.