MST3K (522)

522 - Teen-Age Crime Wave - Living Room: The Movie. This is definitely the dullest of the juvenile delinquent films we've had so far. Lots of Bible readin', phone callin', and standin' 'round with guns. Not one person was offered a recording contract. Imagine.

Mrs. Kernunrex was in the room for a portion of the episode. She: "Is this a much later episode?" Me: "No, it's the one right after the one we watched." She: "Oh, their comments are so much funnier." I don't know about that. I think she was just more awake today. Maybe the riffing during this one had slightly more "pure funny" comments as opposed to references, which would appeal to her more. The riffing was pretty standard for this point in the show to me. Or maybe I'm the one not awake?

Some of the host segments seemed to be lacking something. The "Doughy Guys" song never really broke into a true MST3K-style tune. It also could've used some visual aids. In the Joel era, we would've at least had some colored pencil drawings on cardboard to illustrate the doughy guys of the song. Instead, we just get a scrolling list. The "Mythos" parody of a Mentos commercial was probably a lot fresher back in 1994. At this point, the proportion of Mentos parodies to real Mentos commercials I've seen is around 20:1. I was hoping the guys might have an extra joke or two to spice this particular parody up, but all they had were some clever lyrics.

The movie and host segments were too short for the 92-minute slice of Comedy Central programming they had to fill, so the guys pulled out an old trick. I still think the first time we had a never-ending series of false starts for the end credits was funnier. This is probably only because of the novelty of the idea two years ago; clearly, Frank dressed in tights and screaming in pain should be the more hilarious of the two. I wonder if Frank still has that costume?

"I'm afraid you're going down, kitten. Hard." (6/10)

film d. Fred F. Sears (1955)
mst d. Trace Beaulieu (15 Jan 1994)