Mystery Science Theater 3000, Volume XVII, Is Out On DVD!

Out now on DVD is Mystery Science Theater 3000, Volume XVII (Shout Factory), another hilarious collection of episodes from the wildly popular cult TV show about a stranded astronaut (either played by Mike Nelson or Joel Hodgsen) and his robot friends forced to watch a bunch of bad movies in space. Their wisecracks are a dizzying bunch of cultural references, and repeated viewings only add more laughs. This volume includes their first episode The Crawling Eye -- actually a very decent sci-fi film starring Forrest Tucker fighting one-eyed monsters hiding in clouds in the Trollenberg mountains. The goofy asides are pretty uneven here. The Beatniks, about the rise of a pop singer named Eddie Crane who can't shake his juvenile delinquent friends, fares better. With bad ballads and priceless overacting this lends itself to jokes easily. The Blood Waters Of Dr. Z is a low budget Florida-made mess about a loony scientist who transforms himself into a fish monster. The rubber-suit alone is riotous enough but the wisecracks here soar. The best episode is The Final Sacrifice, a dreadful Canadian film about young Troy, the son of an archeologist, who is chased by muscle-bound hooded satanists because he has a secret map to a secret underground city. He falls in with a mullet-haired, mustached, hard-drinking, schlub named Zap Rowsdower in a beat-up truck and they both fight the devil-worshipers. This is fall-out-of-your-chair nonstop laughs.