I’ve started that one twice, but didn’t make it far. I figured I just wasn’t in the right mood for it—it must not be just me, then.
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Yeah. Rollergator…I have made it through it, but in like fifteen minute segments, lots of pausing.
It’s just impossible.
Was initially hoping What Ever/Baby Jane was the real one, but seeing still frames from this remake…I think that one will not happen for me. That kind of television-style lighting and camera work…sort of makes me a bit ill, or something.
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Yes, the cinematography is so shabby that it’s really off-putting. It actually makes me queasy to watch it.
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That’s one of the few I’ve never made it through, and I’m not even going to address the end credits. “Going postal” is definitely in the “aging very, very badly” category.
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Oh, my word, yeah. I don’t think I’ve heard the “going postal” thing said IRL as a joke except a handful of times since the late 1990s/early aughts.
It just got a bit too real, and still is.
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I’ve tried and actually made it once or twice but I just can’t sit through Castle of Fu Manchu.
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I’ve yet to see a Jess Franco film that wasn’t in some way seedy and unpleasant. The visual style of his work makes me feel like I should be watching in a raincoat.
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I was going to say “Jesus Franco films are in the categories-of-films-that-MST3K-shouldn’t-riff”, because I had forgotten he directed Castle of Fu Manchu.
Most of his films are not healthy for children and other living things.
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The riffs in Racket Girls feel so mean to me the episode is hard to watch. The nerve of those women- being over 30 and not a size 0! Mock them for it!
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I focus on the wall art in that one. I consider it the only real star of the movie.
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Revenge of the Mysterons from Mars 
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I’ve never been able to get through The Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy.
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No, I agree it’s not great.
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I recently watched “Hamlet” for the first time on the MST3K Twitch channel, and so glad that’s the first (and possibly last) time I saw it. Without the company of the chat component I would have felt so… alone in an uncaring universe. The chat on the Twitch channel - like this place - is fantastic, so many smart and funny people. Some of the participants knew Shakespeare really well, and it was super interesting to read their comments and insights. The rest of us just cracked wise! All fun though.
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Not much instantly available information on that movie or the people in it. But Clara Mortensen was all of 35 in 1951, when Racket Girls came out. Not exactly one foot in the grave even if no longer a youth.
(See also them calling Mrs. Snow “Uncle Lady” for the crime of being over 30 in The Screaming Skull . Even though she’s a super-nice character and does what she can to save the heroine from her rat of a husband.)
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The only one I can think of that’s exactly right is Liz in the short Is This Love?. If my research is correct (which is rare), when Lynne Gorman played a college student, she was 37. Course there’s nothing wrong with a 37-year-old college student, but Craig Slocum who play her fiancé Andy was 23. And I think we’re meant to think she’s the same age. She’s close to George E. Mather playing a college student at 42 in Ring Of Terror. Sigh I could talk about Ring Of Terror all day . . .
Looking up George today, I found out he was the Visual Effects Supervisor for Star Wars! Also a Production Manager on Big Trouble in Little China, though not much else worth mentioning.
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Hard agree! This one is such a snore-fest. Over the Lockdown I watched a huge number of eps that I normally wouldn’t have given a second watch to and this one was the hardest to sit through (even as background filler while I was doing other things)…
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If The Starfighters was supposed to be propaganda, that was a Defense Department epic fail on the level of Bay of Pigs.
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It’s always amazed me how many people will claim to be MST3K’s “biggest fan” then list off the episodes they hate because the movie’s so bad. THAT’S THE WHOLE POINT OF THE SHOW!
Red Zone Cuba? Hamlet? The Starfighters? One should be delighted and AMAZED at those episodes! How did they find these things? How did they ever even get made? Just the plain ol’ WTF-ness of movies like this should propel the viewer gleefully to the end credit stinger!
For years I claimed to not be able to sit through just one episode. The Castle of Fu Manchu. (BTW, I’m not including the KTMA eps in this rant, although from Humanoid Woman on, there’s much to enjoy.) I probably hadn’t bothered to watch TCoFM since the NINETIES. Then a couple of months ago, I decided to give it a try. IT’S BRILLIANT. In fact, it’s actually the perfect episode to introduce someone to the show, since all the host segments are about how The Mads are TRYING to destroy Joel and the 'Bots with the movies terribleness!
OKAY, I’m DONE! waaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh, Riiiiicccckkkkkyyyyyyyy…
(Five minutes later) - OK I guess I’m not done.
Can I come to the defense of The Christmas That Almost Wasn’t? Which was the only Netflix episode I felt like I didn’t want to watch again, but around last Christmas I did? Yes, the first 20 mins are dreadful… but when Santa starts his job at The Department Store… peeps, I was ROFL. (Actually RIMBL, since I watch MST3K in bed.)
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I see your point. While also accepting that each of us has a breaking point, and it might vary from person to person.
CTAW is a fine episode, even if it doesn’t quite reach the heights of its forbears. So we’re on the same page there.
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