MST3K (K04)

K04 - Gamera vs Barugon - The slow start had me a little worried for the remaining 17 KTMAs I have to watch. Like a lot of the silence-filled DVD commentaries these days, I think JatB got sucked into watching the movie and forgot about cracking jokes. Once the giant monsters started fighting, they warmed up and the comments became more frequent. They are, of course, nowhere near as funny as they will be in later years. I've only ever seen one Josh episode before this (Rhino's release of 106), but between that episode and this, he hasn't made me laugh so far. The Pee-Wee Herman voice for Servo didn't help. Neither did the impossibly annoying Gypsy voice he does. I wonder if he'll get better and funnier with more practice?

Having never seen any of the KTMA episodes before, I was surprised. It really wasn't as bad as Net lore makes this era out to be. It probably helped that I enjoyed the movie by itself. It's the kind of crazy the Japanese are great at providing: giant, spinning, flaming turtles attracted to the death-ray-rainbows of giant, freeze-tongue-endowed lizards. Awesome.

The host segments are incredibly short, but I love the voicemail segments. It's too bad those didn’t last into the cable era. It's more fun to hear a fan's voice than to see a Still Store of their letter. Speaking of fans, you have to hand it to MiSTies. The copy I have of this 18-year-old UHF show broadcast in only one market in the entire country only one time is amazing. In my years of movie collecting, I've gotten much, much worse and been happy. (5/10)

film d. Shigeo Tanaka (1966)
mst d. Vince Rodriguez (4 Dec 1988)