User Reviews

I guess I prefer Mike over Joel, if only because I grew up watching the Mike episodes on TV. There is still a lot to be said for the Joel era. The best riffs were probably with the "Johnny At The Fair" short. This seemed a lot shorter than most of the shorts. Maybe I'm just used to having two shown at one time. The best out of theater segment was probably the last one. It featured them trying to Kevin Bacon all the actors and actresses in the film series. I don't know any of these names. There's too many of those guys out there! Anyway, the best line with "Johnny At The Fair" was probably, "Johnny distracts the tightrope walkers making them fall to their doom". There's even a great call back as Tom remarks, "All this happened because Johnny got lost at the fair?".

Speaking of Tom, he listed a lot of movie references and I'm glad I was able to at least get most of them. I'm glad I'm not the only one who's heard of Miss Marple. I wasn't even aware Dos Equis was around at this time. It shows you how timeless the series is. It was great to have these guys play off the actors. A well detailed one was "You put a bullet through his head!" followed by "I only hit him!" and finally, "I hit him with a bullet!". Crow does a great impression with "God knows, Davey". Another great one was, "I'm gonna kill that milk to impress Jodie Foster". ***1/2

Rhymes with "Johnny Doesn't Care!" - Coincidence? Don't think so!

Solid episode. The short is hysterical, along with a decent main feature. Kinda long-winded - which isn't the best quality in a film to riff, IMO. But definitely another solid Joel episode from the height of his cleverness.

In order to make the MST 3K "riffing" really enjoyable, the movie they choose to spoof must have something to offer. This 1959 movie mocks the "Beatnik" culture that emerged in the post WWII era, and it is hilarious. The 1950s Beatniks had an enormous influence on the 1960s "Hippie/Counter Culture" movement, but, let's face it, a lot of the things the Beatniks did were pretty goofy, and this movie parodies their worst affectations. OK, it's a fairly "bad" "crime/caper" movie but it's one of those bad movies that is fun to watch. It's also educational for students who want to know more about how American culture changed in the second half of the 20th century. It's not a scholarly treatise of course, but you can actually learn a lot from popular culture products like this film. I imagine that many of the actors in the film had some personal experience with Beatniks, as both the acting profession and the Beatnik culture had New York City as their home base.