Hey folks, Travis here with a quickie about Netflix and MST3K, one of my favorite shows ever. (We seem to be having trouble with images right now, and due to the short time left, I’m posting without trying to put any in this post. Sorry for all the words!) It appears that as of tomorrow, the original Joel and Mike episodes that they have on Netflix are going away, and I don’t know if any episodes are going to take their place. I haven’t checked out the new version of MST3K yet, other than watching a minute or two of the first episode of each “season,” so I can’t fully comment on that, but I did want to point out that there are some really good ones on Netflix for a few more hours. Hey, you’re already stuck in the house because of coronavirus, why not enjoy it?
The Joel episodes include The Day the Earth Froze, a Nordic fantasy which has a short visit to the circus at the beginning; The Beatniks, which you’ll probably not be surprised is misnamed, and that has an old General Hospital episode at the beginning; Gunslinger, a Roger Corman masterpiece about a widow who takes over as marshal of the town her husband was killed protecting; and Bride of the Monster, an Ed Wood movie where Bela Lugosi is a mad scientist. I’m not sure I’ve gotten a chance to look through them all, but I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve seen of them all.
The Mike episodes include another Ed Wood one, The Sinister Urge, about a porn ring and murders that’s preceded by a short on hygiene; Deathstalker and the Warriors from Hell, an ’80s fantasy action piece; The Beast of Yucca Flats, which we’ll call a movie because it’s on film (and Crow is reading an Amethyst comic in the teaser picture); The Atomic Brain, about an old woman funding a scientist who is using atomic energy to brain switch her into a younger body; and two SciFi Channel episodes, with The Incredibly Strange Creatures who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies, a bad dose of “film” about a dude who gets obsessed with a carnival worker and becomes her minion, and which also introduced us to Ortega, her silent servant; and Hobgoblins, which may just be my favorite MST3K episode ever. This lameass Gremlins knockoff is dumb, badly filmed, offensive to intelligent people, and it’s also got some of the most fun host segments ever.
I hope that Netflix gets a new batch of old MST3K episodes to air soon, especially if we’re all stuck inside this spring and summer, but if not, I guess I’ll have to dig out my old DVD sets. I included a link to the Hobgoblins one here, and if you click there and order anything at Amazon, you kick a little back to us and we can keep the lights running here. MST3K forever!
I own enough dvd set to be okay. Have you checked out Pluto TV? It’s a free tv app. When my parents bought a new Vizio brand television last year, it came pre-loaded. Pluto has a MST3K channel on it.
Ah, Bride of the Monster. “He tampered with God’s domain.”
I think all of those have moved over to Shout TV, a free streaming service and how we watch all our mst3k cause there are dozens of episodes there. Tubi TV is also free and has all the ones from Shout.
Travis, thanks for the heads up! I watched the Hobgoblins episode last night – that is an awful, hilarious movie! I hadn’t watched a MST3K in quite a while, and that hit the spot.
Terrible-D & Aaron, thanks for pointing out Pluto and Shout. I had no idea free services like that even existed. I still have cable AND nearly all the main streaming services, and at some point all the payments for things I really don’t watch that much has got to stop. Think of all the extra comics I could buy each month!!!
Yeah, thanks for directing me towards those services. If we all gotta be self-quarantined for who knows how long, things like that can help us all get through. 🙂
That’s one thing I love about sites like ours and having comments: that we can direct each other to cool stuff we might have missed otherwise!
I almost forgot, with the twitch app you can stream a mst3k channel there too.