MST3K ’26: Group Photo

The Mystery Science Theater 3000 original run on TV ran from 1988 to 1999 with a total of ten seasons. There’s been three revival seasons since then, but now, 27 years later, the original crew from 1999 is doing more episodes for Mystery Science Theater 3000: The RiffTrax Experiments thanks to crowd-funding. Yay! 

Let’s see what’s on the Holiday Horror Shelf!

    I found the 1996’s Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie DVD at Goodwill last weekend. This one’s an anamorphic upgrade from my old DVD, and it’s what got me thinking about the old crew from the Satellite of Love again. 

I think the back of the LaserDisc is more interesting than the front, so I flipped it around for this pic. The first DVD of Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie went out of print pretty quickly, and it was really expensive and hard to find for a while. The LD’s widescreen presentation was upgrade from the VHS tapes’ full frame presentation. 

The Mystery Science Theater 3000 Amazing Colossal Episode Guide also came out in 1996. I had a friend who had a copy of this book, but his was autographed by the main crew. I think he pointed that out to me every time I visited him. I nodded my head, told him it was cool for 5th time, and was secretly green with jealous rage (Hot Rod).

I knew I had an old folder of MST3K stuff, but I was thinking it was just a beat up school folder.

     I had to smile when I found this wedged between some car magazines in a box on a shelf. Luckily, the magazines kept the folder in good shape. I doubt I have opened this up since the 90’s. Let’s look inside without any commentary. 

I bought the stuff in the folder and this pin from the catalog portion of the Satellite News newsletter. I never wore the pin, even I wasn’t that nerdy, but thought the pin was cool. Years later I bought the light switch cover from a seller on Etsy. It was a decoupage project that didn’t look very good when it arrived. Daphne upgraded it with some clear varnish. 

Speaking of art projects, here’s how to make Tom Servo’s puppet head: 1) Go back in time to go to the mall to buy a candy dispenser from the Mr. Bulky candy store (remember them?) 2) Tape off and spray paint the candy chute silver.  3)Paint the floor of the candy chute black with a small paint brush.  4) Proudly display Tom in your classroom for the next 25 years even if none of the modern students have a clue who he is. At least that’s what I did.

My favorite episode of MST3K is Mitchel. It was the first episode I had seen (I hadn’t even heard of MST3K before), and I watched it at a friend’s house with three other like-minded teachers. We each had a couple of beers and laughed out loud the entire time. I can’t think of a better way to be introduced to the show. 

    I'm glad to see the MST3K gang is back in town.

Labor Day 2026: Group Photo

    Happy Labor Day! Let's see what's on the Holiday Horror Shelf!

    In 1974's made-for-TV movie Killdozer, six men on an island are hunted down by a bulldozer that has been possessed by an alien. I know, I know... but I love 70's made-for-TV movies.

    In 2011's The Innkeepers, Claire and Luke work the Yankee Pedlar Inn's final night of business. The two leads have real chemistry, and they're fun to watch, but it still doesn't end well for them. 

    In 2001's Route 666, Lou Diamond Phillips deals with road construction zombies. SPOILER ALERT: His zombie dad comes to his rescue. I like that.

    Stephen King wrote Road Work in 1981 under his pseudonym Richard Bachman. The plot deals with a grieving dad whose home and workplace are threatened by an interstate highway extension.

    I worked road construction as a way to pay for college in the late 80's. For one week all I had to do was sit at the end of a road in town and tell drivers to to turn around because they couldn't drive across the the soft, newly poured asphalt. I killed time by reading the paperback volumes of Clive Barker's Books of Blood. I still remember one old woman getting freaked out when she read the title of the book in my hand, Nice. 

    Men at Work's LP Business as Usual came out in the US in 1982. At the time I loved "Who Can it Be Now?,"  but now I gravitate towards "Be Good Johnny". My favorite Men at Work cover song is Lazlo Bane's version of "Overkill." About two thirds through the song Colin Hay comes in and just kills it. 

    Don't work too hard this weekend!

This Week's Popcorn Movie

    I recently came across some pre-production Blu-rays from Arrow Films. Arrow Films is a boutique film distributor and restorer that specializes in world cinema, arthouse, horror, and classic films. Their Blu-rays look great, and they do a good job of adding new special features to their releases. 

    The Blu-ray "screeners" contain all the features of the official discs (as far as I know), and when you find them they are usually cheaper than the regular release. The trade-off is that you don't get any art work or booklets. The discs come in either paper sleeves or in a thin, clear case like this one.

    Before the school year starts, my school has a "freebie" table in the office where staff can put things they no longer want when they are cleaning out a classroom or an office. I spotted a pile of these popcorn bags on the table and figured I could somehow use them for one of our many door decorating contests. 

    I used a bag to make a cover for the case of this week's "popcorn movie screener". 

    To me, a popcorn movie is a film you can enjoy without thinking too much. Let's see what's inside.

    I have not seen 1977's Doberman Cop, and to be honest I hadn't even heard of this film before, but that's an awesome title. AND it stars Shinichi (Sonny) Chiba! You may know him from his role in Kill Bill, but around my basement he's also known as the Wolf Guy and the Street Fighter, among other things. 

So, it's a Chiba flick on an Arrow Blu-Ray? Sign me up!

    I stole all this brief info from the IMDB. I think the paper matches the disc's generic vibe. A 6.7 rating on IMDB is pretty promising.

    Eventually this disc will be incorporated into one of these cases (probably Wolf Guy), but Doberman Cop will stay as a popcorn movie until I get to watch it. Should be fun.

    FYI: I forgot I even had that dollar bin DVD of The Bodyguard. I popped it in my player to see how bad the full frame transfer was, but was pleasantly pleased to see that it was fairly clean. 

    I was also suprised to see this scroll at the beginning of the film. I had also forgot about it. 

    Hmmm... sounds vaguely familiar...

    Also, according to the DVD's opening FBI warning, it is illegal to screen this DVD of The Bodyguard on oil rigs.

In Memoriams

     Let’s check the horror shelf in memory of Tim Curry.

    I found Mr. Curry’s LP, Read my Lips (1978), in a thrift store in Victoria, Canada. I think the autograph looks legit. I almost didn’t buy the record because I didn’t want to worry about how to get it home...

    But then I remembered he portrayed Pennywise in 1990’s TV miniseries It. Talk about nightmare fuel. 

    People paid to see Tom Cruise in 1985’s Legend, but they went home talking about Tim Curry’s Darkness (and his horns). Legend, indeed.

    Speaking of horns, Curry voiced the Goblin King in Scooby-Doo and the Goblin King in 2008, and that might be the only Scooby-Doo movie that scared Char. 

    Curry also voiced the Mastermind in the Scooby-Doo: Night of 100 Frights video game in 2002.

    Speaking of Scooby-Doo, I'm displaying this poster in honor of Curry’s performance as Ben Ravencroft in Scooby-Doo! and the Witch’s Ghost (1999). This poster hung in Charlotte’s room for a couple of years.

    Tim, thanks for the music, the laughs, and the frights.

    I don’t have anything scary to refer to when I write about the loss of Dolly Parton, but I do have a cherished memory. It is also proof that Parton’s music has the ability to reach anyone at any age.

    I posted this in 2017 when Charlotte was six years old:

"Char discovered this Dolly Parton song while watching World of Dance. 

Even her cats like it!"

    I think Char replayed that YouTube video over and over for about 40 minutes, and I couldn't stop smiling the whole time. 

    

    Dolly, thanks for the music, the laughs and the love.

Halloween is Just Around the Corner!

    Our local Spirit store opened its doors last Saturday.

    Our local hardware store rolled out their Halloween decorations.

    And our local grocery store is stocked the shelves with Halloween candy. 

    I even bought a couple of Halloween candy tins that I emptied and am now using as refrigerator magnets.

    Yay! x 3!

    

    I really enjoy this time slot in the calendar. Fall, my favorite season, is almost here, and the stores aren't focused on Christmas, yet. I have a brief time to walk around and enjoy a preview of October and not just December. 

    So, let's see what's on the Holiday Horror Shelf!

    Okay, let me explain. DVDs were pretty expensive in the late 90s and early 2000s. The average price of a new release was around $24.90. That's $53.85 in today's money. Going to Best Buy to look at DVDs back then was luxury shopping for a teacher on one income... I couldn't afford anything there.

But, BUT!, but, I could afford to shop at Kmart or Walmart. AND! They sold cult and horror movies on budget DVDs from a company called GoodTimes Entertainment. 

    I found both Halloween II, and Halloween III: Season of the Witch at the Urbandale Kmart (that has now been demolished). I was so excited. They only cost 6 bucks each... SOLD!

     I grew up seeing this message on VHS rental tapes and movies airing on cable. So, watching a movie I loved in "WIDESCREEN" was incredible.

    None of this information meant anything to me decades ago. I didn't know "non-anamorphic" was a thing. These DVDs looked great on my 27 inch tube TV, and I couldn't have been happier. (BTW, no one called them CRTs, and no one could have predicted they would become collectible.)

    I was disappointed when I played my old GoodTimes DVDs on my new HD TV years later. I was used to the black stripes above and below the film, but the smaller image, imprisoned by black bars, threw me off. I could "zoom" in the image, but that made the film look even more pixelated. 

    I donated my GoodTimes DVDs when I upgraded to DVDs that were "Enhanced for Widescreen TVs" or in "16:9 Widescreen." I was totally pumped. The new movies looked so good!

    But then something weird happened. I  began to miss my old Halloween GoodTimes (don't we all?) when I started the Holiday Horror Shelf displays. That prompted a thrift store search that has proven to be more difficult than I thought. These budget DVDs are now 25 years old, and I guess most have probably been tossed away. 

    

    So, I was surprised to find H-III at a local Goodwill last week. The H-III DVD is in perfect shape, and I upgraded the case with a nicer one from a DVD that I bought from our local library for a buck. 

    Rather than hoping lightning would strike twice, I went ahead and bought H-II from a seller on eBay. That DVD arrived today. Its case didn't need a library upgrade.

    The total price of both DVDs is less than the original $12 that I spent back in 2001, and I'm totally pumped. They look so good next to each other with their "WIDESCREEN" banners. It was also satisfying to slide them next to their anamorphic Halloween brethren on the media shelf.

    

    I don't care if people think nostalgia for inferior DVDs is strange. I have always told my students, and my daughter, to not be embarrassed by what they like, "What you collect is a reflection of who you are and how you represent yourself. It doesn't matter how many people don't agree with your style. Those people aren't coming over to your place to hang out. But your friends are coming over, and they like you no matter what is in your room."

    I like how the GoodTimes VHS logo is dunked into electrified waters and emerges with a steaming new DVD logo... so modern.

    PS. I also enjoy that a '66 Dodge Sportsman Van was used for a crash scene in Halloween II. 

     I had a '66 Sportsman that I drove to college in 1987. Here we are together. I had a lot of fun in that van. Glad I didn't crash it.

Shark Week 2026: Group Photo #7

 We've made it to the end of Shark Week! Let's see what's on the Holiday Horror Shelf.

    2003's Open Water is an indie film based on true events that happened in 1998. Roger Ebert (a hero) wrote that he wanted to walk around in the sunshine to cheer himself up after seeing this in the theater.

   2004's 12 Days of Terror is a made-for-TV movie about true events that happened on the nothern New Jersey shore in 1916. The DVD's tagline said these events inspired the movie Jaws, but I don't know if that really true. I suppose it could be.

    Search for the Great Sharks is short documentary from 1995. The most exciting thing about this release is the DVD's cover photo of a great white shark apparently swallowing another shark whole.

    2004's Frakenfish was inspired by the actual discovery of northern snakehead fish in a pond in Maryland in 2002. These fish breathe air, can survive on land,  can "walk" to other bodies of water, and they can spawn several times a year. Oh yeah, they're also aggressive and have long rows of sharp teeth in their snakehead mouths. Their discovery also inspired the films Snakehead (2004), and Swarm of the Snakehead (2006).

    If you haven't noticed, today's theme is "based on true events." But I bet you did.

    Parting shots and thoughts:

    Gotta go back to the original Jaws for today's tee shirt. 

    

    A few years ago Daphne surprised me with tickets for a special screening of Jaws at Flix Brewhouse. Here are the souvenir  glasses we brought home.

    Okay, Monstro is a whale, not a shark, but here's a pic of his jaws that we sailed into when we visited Disneyland on our first trip to Oceanside in 2015.

    

Me, in Oceanside 2026, wearing my "Snorkel Bob Cares shirt" (Man, I love that shirt). I'm yelling, "Hope everyone had a great Shark Week!"

Shark Week 2026: Group Photo #6

    MEG: a Novel of Deep Terror by Steve Altin came out in 1997. I had a first edition hard cover, but I kept it in my classroom when I exclusively taught language arts, and it got really beat up by the guys who would fight over it during my required reading time. 

    The MEG movie came out in 2018, and I was disappointed the filmmakers didn't use the same opening as the book. In the book's prologue, a herd of Shantungosauruses are on a beach feeding on a smaller group of dinosaurs when a T-Rex breaks up the party and flips the script by making the herd his prey. But when he stumbles into the nearby ocean, a Megalodon emerges from the depths and kills the T-Rex with it's superior size and jaws. Or something like that... I think The MEG 2: The Trench used this idea for its prologue. Both films used Jason Statham, and that's always a good thing.

    Great White's LP Once Bitten came out in the summer of '87. I was working 60 to 80 hours weeks on a road crew so I could pay for my freshman year of college. I had my tuition covered by the end of June. I had enough cash for my dorm room, books, and food by late July. In August I bought a few records to bring with me, and Once Bitten was in that lot. I'm not gonna lie. Working the road crew was zero fun. It's probably also the reason why my dermatologist keeps coming at me with a scalpel. 

    The Black Demon movie came out in 2023, and the novel Extinct by Charles Wilson was published in 1997. Both also have a Megalodon as the antagonist. I like how the covers echo each other. Extinct's cover says a it was coming to NBC-TV presumably as a made-for-TV movie, but that - spoiler alert!- didn't happen.

    When I bought Shark Night from Goodwill, I didn't know the original title for the film was Shark Night 3D. Of the four Jaws movies, Jaws III, or Jaws 3D, is my least favorite. I also didn't know that during the credits the cast was going to be in a music video performing the song, "Shark Night Cast: Shark Bite."     

Here's Char hamming it up at Flix when she was about to turn eight

Shark Week 2026: Group Photo #5

    The plot to 1981's The Last Shark is so similar to Jaws that Universal sued, and the film was removed from theaters after two weeks. I like how the AI generated summary on IMDB states that the "shark" in this film resembles a pool float. 

    At least the filmmakers of The Last Shark tried to use their own special effects. In 1976's made for-TV movie Shark Kill, they used previously shot stock footage and wrote their boring screenplay around that.

    I'm using the soundtrack to West Side Story because the rival gangs in the film were The Jets and The Sharks. Even I'll admit that's a bit of a reach.

    What can I say about 2003's Shark Zone? It's the third sequel to 1999's Shark Attack, and a bunch of scenes were taken directly from Shark Attack: Megalodon and the unrelated Dog Watch. At least the cover looks good. This DVD is going back to Goodwill because...

     I now I own the four film collection the Shark Attack movies. I haven't even torn the plastic off of this set yet, but Casper Van Dien stars in the first Shark Attack film, and any movie with Johnny Rico can't be all bad.

    Today's vintage t-shirt is in honor of The Last Shark's inordinate amount of windsurfing.

Shark Week 2026: Group Photo #4

 

    Like the movie Jaws, The Deep also stars Robert Shaw. 

    Like the novel Jaws, the novel The Deep was also written by Peter Benchley.

    Like the novels Jaws and The Deep, the novel the The Beast two-part TV series is based on was also written by Peter Benchley.    

    Today's LP is Deceptive Bends by 10cc. I chose the album based on the cover art work by Hipgnosis. The LP's title was inspired by a warning road sign in Surrey, England. I assume the art work was inspired by the word "bends" being associated with the decompression sickness some sea divers can experience.

    I999's Deep Blue Sea is the only proper shark movie on the shelf today. I saw this film in the theater, and at the time I thought it was the greatest shark film ever after Jaws. I probably still think that.

    Here's the back of today's shirt. Charlotte found it for me when we were thrifting in Oceanside, CA. Good eye, kid!

Shark Week 2026: Group Photo #3

    For today's post I'm picking the soundtrack to 2021's The Suicide Squad due to the King Shark character voiced by Sylvester Stallone. You can see him there on the left.

    I think buying Blu-ray movies just because they have a slipcover is dumb. I thrifted 47 Meters Down because it came with a slip cover...

    One of my biggest thrift store pet peeves is getting stuck in the checkout lane behind someone who is is buying glassware. I found 47 Meters Down: Uncaged today at Goodwill, but the woman ahead of me ended up buying $93 in stemware. I was standing there for over 15 minutes while the clerk wrapped the glasses in brown paper. I hope the movie moves faster than that.

    1979's Up from the Depths was supposed to be a horror comedy, but Roger Corman had all the comedic elements removed in the editing room to make the film an outright horror piece. That didn't work. The VHS cover looks cool, though.

    I almost forgot to add this Flix Brewhouse picture from 2017 ----> link

    Today's outfit is courtesy of Snorkel Bob.