MST3K (821)

821 - Time Chasers - What a pleasant surprise: the host segments were different, funny and something to look forward to. Mike's visits with Pearl, bookending the film, were a great change of pace. They were slow -- the polar opposite of a "crazy Joel" segment from back in the day -- and neighborly. Mike and Pearl chatted like two friends sitting on a porch on a breezy summer night, except with appropriate dialogue changes regarding space, evil and time travel. Beats the hell out of Rome. I liked it.

I also liked Crow's journey into Mike's past. Mike, dressed as a scuzz-bucket complete with bad mustache, mullet and aviator sunglasses, was hilarious as his 1985, cheese factory-working self. Maybe the novelty of a host segment having nothing to do with ancient Rome helped, but the entire ambience of the cheese factory scene was fun. I especially liked Patrick in the background, throwing out a helpful "dude!" when required. I laughed harder than I have during a host segment in quite some time when Mike revealed the name of his band (Sex Factory). We even got the first reference to Joel since Gypsy's Joike sweater from 521 in these segments when Mike's evil brother Eddie mentions a "sleepy-eyed guy" that he replaced. Cool.

"Man, I wet every bit of me." Though I laughed with Mike and the bots at the film, I have to respect it, too. It was directed by a 22/23/24-year-old guy in his local, non-LA/non-Vancouver/non-NY community. He managed to wrangle the participation of some local Revolutionary War re-enactors who were undoubtedly clueless as to what the heck these damned kids were doing with their movie cameras and time machines and whatnot. I'm still not sure how they filmed the "hanging off the airplane wing" stunt. Sure, the main character was a complete moron. You need grant money, so you sell the rights to a time machine to Evil Co.? Uh, how about traveling back in time and investing to make some scratch? Traveling to the future and grabbing some tech to sell in the past? Think, man! Anyway, I liked the movie and admire the effort that went into it.

"You had the misfortune to run into me. I'm a life-wrecking idiot." (8/10)

film d. David Giancola (1993)
mst d. Michael J. Nelson (22 Nov 1997)