New DVD review from The Movie Snob.
Mystery Science Theater 3000: Volume XXXI (The Turkey Day Collection).
Jungle Goddess (C). This episode starts with an episode of a Bela Lugosi serial called The Phantom Creeps, in which Lugosi plays a mad scientist. It’s pretty average. So is the main feature, Jungle Goddess, which is a 1948 “adventure” movie that is only 62 minutes long. Two roughnecks with a plane decide to go looking for a missing heiress, whose plane crashed in the African jungle six years earlier. They discover, as the title suggests, that the natives worship her as a goddess. I got a few laughs out of the riffing, but it was a pretty average episode. The extras are about some MST3K Thanksgiving marathons that I never saw, so they didn’t mean that much to me.
The Painted Hills (C). They riffed a Lassie movie? Yes, they did! Except that Lassie is called “Shep” in the movie, for some reason. The movie features two grizzled old guys with very impressive hair, an annoying boy named Tommy, and a villain whose lust for gold ultimately turns him into a murderer. But don’t worry! Lassie, I mean Shep, is on the case! It’s not that great an episode (unless you dig jokes about snausages), but I admit I did get a couple of belly laughs out of it. The opening short, called “Body Care & Grooming,” is also OK.
Squirm (B+). This is a funny episode in which the guys riff a 1970s horror flick about man-eating earthworms. It’s set in a tiny Georgia town, and the riffers gets lots of mileage out of the over-the-top Southern-ness of it all. But it does features lots of scenes of massive numbers of worms, so if you’re squeamish about worms this is probably not for you. The lead actor was a good sport and sat down for an interview about the movie, also featured on the disc. (The interview is cut with some other extra-gross movie scenes that were cut for the MST version.) The opening short, “Spring Fever,” is OK.
The Screaming Skull (B). This is a solid episode featuring a lame 1950s horror flick that is more or less a cross between Rebecca and Gaslight. A newlywed couple moves into a creepy old house owned by the husband, whose previous wife died under mysterious circumstances. There’s a creepy gardener creeping around the place, and soon the new wife is getting terrorized by weird sights and sounds. The riffing had me chuckling steadily throughout. There’s an opening short featuring Gumby, which is OK. The disc also contains a bonus feature about the creator of Gumby and a bonus feature about The Screaming Skull in which the lead actress appears and gives her two cents’ worth.
The Movie Court 