Having caught MST only in its later Mike version, I was surprised by the Joel-era-is-better crowd; their favorites seemed to be "The Day the Earth Froze" and "Manos", and neither of those seemed much fun. But "Pod People" succeeds on all counts: a poorly-assembled movie, but not tedious or morose. Badly-looped sound, sure, but at least it isn't all done by three people. Being the 80s, it's laughably bad already in the clothing department, but MST didn't even need to go after that -- there was already plenty to poke fun at in the movie itself.
Which brings us to what makes a good MST3K riff. Sometimes the material is there, but not the riffs; sometimes the film is just too dull to really breathe life into. "Pod People" is ripe for the plucking, but (more importantly) the MST3K was really raring to do so. Two of the host breaks do little more than re-enact scenes from the film, and are hilarious in doing so. References vary from high culture to low: TV commercials & shows but also verging on the surreal ("new potatoes"), and skewering the mid-80s New Age soundtrack.
By the time Joel sings a final song, the episode comes to a perfect close. Fascinating trainwreck of a movie + strong riffing + memorable host segments = one of the best; they didn't even have time to read a fan letter at the end. Definitely recommended.
Which brings us to what makes a good MST3K riff. Sometimes the material is there, but not the riffs; sometimes the film is just too dull to really breathe life into. "Pod People" is ripe for the plucking, but (more importantly) the MST3K was really raring to do so. Two of the host breaks do little more than re-enact scenes from the film, and are hilarious in doing so. References vary from high culture to low: TV commercials & shows but also verging on the surreal ("new potatoes"), and skewering the mid-80s New Age soundtrack.
By the time Joel sings a final song, the episode comes to a perfect close. Fascinating trainwreck of a movie + strong riffing + memorable host segments = one of the best; they didn't even have time to read a fan letter at the end. Definitely recommended.