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mygif

In terms of MST3K canon I’d say Hobgoblins is worse than Manos. Manos has the charming backstory of complete incompetence – its a murky, nigh-unwatachble garbage, but its also so incoherent that’s its often hard to follow anything that happens on screen. Hobgoblins, by contrast, is very clear in its depiction of the most loathsome, unpleasant, need-to-take-a-shower-after-watching humans in all of cinema. Manos’ worst crime is that for long stretches its inert – Hobgoblins makes me angry.

In full riffing canon, though, The Doomsday Machine for Cinematic Titanic may be the worst film, what with its ‘let’s weld an unrelated Finnish movie on to this sucker and run a fifteen minute scene of helmeted astronauts sitting in chairs SAYING NOTHING.’ It’s not just boring, it’s aggressively, venomously boring. At least the opening of Manos had visual stimuli.

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mygif

Oh, there are definitely some other candidates I’ve seen since then that are punishingly bad. You’re dead-on right about ‘Hobgoblins’ being terrible, and I’d say that any of ‘The Beast of Yucca Flats’, ‘Monster a-Go-Go’ and ‘The Creeping Terror’ are just about unwatchable without the riffing and all for the same reason. They’re just gray, mushy pantomimes with narrators employed in lieu of actual dialogue, and it hurts.

But in the full riffing canon, it’s tough to beat ‘To Catch a Yeti’ and ‘Rollergator’ (Rifftrax). They’re not even so much films as home movies shot with a camcorder that someone decided to see if they could make a buck by releasing professionally. I don’t think anything could be worse. Even ‘Doomsday Machine’ has some life until that last fifteen minutes. (They ran out of money and had to shoot that scene months later, well after all the original actors had departed the production.)

But back in the mid-90s, ‘Manos’ was my A-1 go-to for “WTF?” so that was what I told my mom and my aunt. They did not argue, especially when my sister backed me up.

Bad movies, good memories. 🙂

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mygif

When picking the worst episode, I differentiate between the most incompetently made movie (The Creeping Terror, for my money. Manos at least has dialogue.) and the most difficult episode to make it all the way through; the movies so boring even the riffing can’t save them (the top of that particular heap of horror is The Starfighters.)

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mygif

@Alex: If only they’d introduced the poopie suit earlier in the movie. As soon as you hear the words, “poopie suit”, it’s like the riffers’ eyes light up and suddenly it’s a whole different movie.

(That said, I always crack up at the refueling scenes. They go to some very filthy riffs there, and some of them are amazing.)

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Cookie McCool said on November 30th, 2015 at 7:15 pm

Am I the only person on the internet who does not enjoy Felicia Day at all? Also “Mitchell” was the best and that is all there is to it.

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Voodoo Ben said on November 30th, 2015 at 7:43 pm

I’ve always said that if I ever got clout in Hollywood – like, Peter-Jackson-remaking-King-Kong-because-he-felt-like-it clout – I would do a shot for shot remake of ‘Mitchell’ with as much of the ad-libbed dialogue actually in the movie as I could squeeze. (“I specifically came here for dinner!” “Word on the street is, you’re a jerk.” etc.)

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mygif

@Cookie McCool: I’m not a part of the Cult of Felicia Day (I’ve never seen ‘The Guild’, for example) but I liked the way she portrayed the character in the Kickstarter video and I’m intrigued to see what will happen next. There are certainly plenty of people who went, “Aw, no, not Felicia Day!” when she was announced, but my attitude right now is “Repeat to yourself, it’s just a show…” until we have some episodes to like or dislike.

If we’re talking the best, rather than the worst, ‘Mitchell’ is a strong contender. I feel like the absolute best pound-for-pound back-to-back-to-back set, though, is ‘Space Mutiny’, followed by ‘Time Chasers’, followed by ‘Overdrawn at the Memory Bank’. That’s three of my top ten, one right after another.

@Voodoo Ben: I like the way you think. You’d have to see if Harlan Ellison would do a cameo, though. 🙂

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mygif

For best and worst, I’d have to go with “Invasion of the Neptune Men” for worst and “Merlin’s Mystical Shop of Wonders” for best. “Invasion” devolves into World War II stock footage for long stretches, so you get the joy of being bored by actual people dying real deaths. “Merlin” is hilarious on its own, just the background of turning a horror anthology into a kid’s movie provides so many great gags.

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mygif

*Every* spinoff effort? Even the Crow and Tom Servo cartoons that featured no riffing (and no recognizable humor)?

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mygif

@Funkula: I _greeted_ it with the greatest of joy. It just didn’t take long for the joy to wear off. 🙂

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