Mystery Science Theater 3000, Vol. XV (The Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy / The Girl in Lovers Lane / Zombie Nightmare / Racket Girls)

Mystery Science Theater 3000 Volume XV from Shout! Factory will include two Joel hosted episodes and two Mike hosted episodes, all from the Comedy Channel/Comedy Central period of the show.

102- THE ROBOT VS. THE AZTEC MUMMY (with short: COMMANDO CODY AND THE RADAR MEN FROM THE MOON Pt. 1)
La Momia azteca contra el robot humano was made in Mexico and was released in the US in 1959. From the grade Z costumes, acting and special effects to the mediocre dubbing, this film is perfect fodder for MST3K. If you've always wanted to see a poorly costumed mummy battle a cardboard box style robot, this is your film. This episode also features the beginning of Radar Men From The Moon, which was one of the best things about Season One MST3K. Hilarious!

509- THE GIRL IN LOVER'S LANE
This 1959 black-and-white film features Joyce Meadows and a very young Jack Elam. The film is a hackneyed story about troubled teens from broken and problem homes, but the acting is not actually that bad and it's engaging enough to really irk you when you get to the incredibly depressing outcome of this film. Even the final sketch of the show focuses on the noxious ending of the film. Still, if you focus on the jokes from the MST3K crew then you can get through it and the mostly one-dimensional and unimaginative writing make for some amusing jokes through most of the film.

604- ZOMBIE NIGHTMARE
This terribly cheap and amateurish "horror" movie from 1986 stars Adam West. The scariest thing in this movie is the scene where the kid in his white underwear leaves a hot tub. Hilariously bad teen horror that works extremely well for MST3K. Zombie Nightmare is the only color film in this DVD set. This is a strong episode from the post-Joel era of the show.

616- RACKET GIRLS (with short: ARE YOU READY FOR MARRIAGE?)
This 1951 film is about a guy who runs a women's wrestling league as a front for all manner of illegal rackets. The film has a very "Ed Wood" quality to it. The movie and especially the short, Are You Ready For Marriage?, both work extremely well for the show.

Extras features include:
* Glimpses of KTMA (when the show was on a local channel in Minneapolis before it appeared on The Comedy Channel)
* The Design And Speculative Technology Of MST3K: Joel Hodgson And Trace Beaulieu Visit M.I.T.
* New Interviews with "Zombie Nightmare" stars Frank Dietz, Jon Mikl Thor and John Fasano.
* Kevin Murphy And Trace Beaulieu in a Sneak Peek of the upcoming independent feature film Hamlet A.D.D.
* Trailers/promos
* 4 limited edition mini-posters

Shout Factory has brought us another set of MST3K episodes for their next set Volume 15. This set is as follows :
EPISODE 102 - THE ROBOT VS THE AZTEC MUMMY - this is the earliest episode to date (only 101 and KTMA episodes would be earlier). This is a K Gordon Murray low budget movie (he also gave us Santa Claus and other south of the border gems) Joel and the bots ( Tom Servo is Josh Weinstein - the only way to see him as Servo or Dr Erhardt is from Season 1) riffle through this OK, but not as good as later episodes when they mastered the technique. It is still fun to watch and interesting in a historical sense since it is an early episode. Joel & the bots big segments are with the Demon Dogs ! This has the short Commando Cody - Radar Men from the Moon Part 1 as well..
EPISODE 509 - THE GIRL IN LOVERS LANE - This is a fun, campy cult B movie with Brett Halsey (Return of the Fly) as a drifter with a young inexperienced drifter named Danny who settle into a town & stop drifting. Brett is Bix Duggan called Big Stupid by Joel and the bots. Bix falls in love but he wants to drift again. Bix also teaches Danny how to survive in the urban jungle & morals as well. Bix gets lynched too in this. Jack Elam plays a greasy bad guy in this. Jack was a great character actor & Crow does a segment to show us that he is. A very good episode and happy it is finally coming out. This is also on Alpha DVD where you can see the scenes that were cut including Joyce Meadows death scene where Jack goes after her at the end...
EPISODE 604 - ZOMBIE NIGHTMARE - Quite possibly one of the best and most popular Mike episodes (this is subject to debate but a lot of MST3K fans did rejoice on this coming out) John Mikl Thor is the zombie (until the ending)killing kids who ran him over. This has the one and only Adam West - TVs Batman. Why he got involved in this is anyone's guess...but you know it is not that awful. No it is not great, but it is a credible movie on its own.A great rock soundtrack (Motorhead's Ace of Spades is the songs intro). A few gore scenes were cut, but for those that want it uncut, toward the later part of 2009, this movie will come out on DVD from Code Red - uncut with a high def transfer.
Great episode, a personal favorite Mike episode.
EPISODE 616 - RACKET GIRLS - This is the one that contains female pro-wrestlers such as peaches. A harmless obscure fun B movie Gangster/Female wrestling movie - that really cant cause Mike and the Bots any pain. If you like WWE this ones for you.This has the short "Are you ready for marriage". I think it is a solid episode, not a popular one but I like the old black & white ones.In a way it reminded me of a cross between Violent Years, Sinister Urge and any gangster movie
This set contains the following bonus features.
Glimpses of KTMA (This was the channel MST aired on - a local Minneapolis channel before Best Brains became part of Comedy Channel)
The Design And Speculative Technology Of MST3K: Joel Hodgson And Trace Beaulieu Visit M.I.T.(NOTE - THIS FEATURE HAS SINCE BEEN AXED FOR TECHNICAL PROBLEMS)
New Interviews with "Zombie Nightmare" stars Frank Dietz, Jon Mikl Thor and John Fasano. I met Thor a few years ago and looked like Billy Idol on HGH. He is not tall, but super buffed and is a great guy - it was a honor to meet him. He played with his Thorchestra in a nightclub in my hometown
Kevin Murphy And Trace Beaulieu in a Sneak Peek of the upcoming independent feature film Hamlet A.D.D.
Trailers/promos
4 limited edition mini-posters (like you've seen in previous sets)
Overall another great set with some nice bonus features. If you own all the other MST sets, don't pass this up either. A chance to have more good episodes on DVD quality. Not every set will please everyone but overall this has some diversity with 2 Joels and 2 Mikes, and we get 2 Tom Servos as well. No Sci Fi in this set, which hasn't happened in a long time. A lot of fans came during the scifi era that did not catch all the Comedy Central episodes, this is a good opportunity for some fans to see something that they haven't seen before. Overall, personally I feel this set has solid episodes, a historical 1st season episode. I think it is well rounded & I would call this a good batch of episodes. It wont please everybody(no set does), but it should please those of us who love the show & appreciate just having more titles on DVD with superior image quality. Even if there are some episodes we like better than other,the fact is any MST3K episode released to DVD is a good release. Thank you Shout Factory, keep up the great work.

As much as I love MST3k, I have to admit that most collections feature at least one sub-par episode. Something fairly weak compared to the other three episodes. But this set was all winners in my opinion, no Swamp Diamonds or Catalina Capers to be found, just good, funny MST3k.

I should also say that, since I was born in 1987, I didn't catch a lot of early MST, so while I'm very familiar with most of the Mike years, some of the earlier stuff passed me by. I bought this volume out of interest in Zombie Nightmare, but I hadn't ACTUALLY SEEN any of these episodes before. So all 4 episodes were completely new to me.

With that in mind, here's my opinions of each episode:

THE ROBOT VS. THE AZTEC MUMMY
You'd think with a title like that, they woulda brought the Robot in BEFORE 80 mins of the film pass you by. But you'd be wrong. All in all, its your standard incompetent 1950's horror schlock. But I enjoyed the movie's cheesiness and was pleasantly surprised by how good the riffing was. Being a 1st season episode (the 2nd episode of the 1st season, no less), I expected it to be pretty slow. The Crawling Eye had been my only previous experience with season 1 and I thought this would be much the same. But the riffs came faster and were actually pretty funny. Not the best episode ever, but very solid and I could easily see myself watching this one again. The robot alone is a riot, it very obviously has a PERSON inside it (they don't even try to hide his face!). Also comes with a Commander Cody short, which I've heard some people complain about but personally I found it very funny.

THE GIRL IN LOVERS LANE
In a word... AWESOME! This bumped POD PEOPLE out of my top 10 list and replaced EEGAH as my favorite Joel episode. Its the story of two drifters that come into a town and one falls in love with a waitress. Its actually not a terrible movie, the plot is cliched and its fairly low budget, but the acting is solid enough for you to care about the characters, which brings me to the problem some people have with this movie... the ending. Some MST fans are really bothered with the ending. And it raised an interesting question for the writers: What happens if your movie has a dark, toxic ending that's just downright depressing? Do you still riff? Joel and the Gang kept on going (how could they stop?), and the results make for one of the edgiest and most uncomfortable 4th acts in MST3k history. Because the movie's ending deals with a horrible tragedy, the riffing really borders on being tasteless, and it IS hilarious, just in a very uncomfortable way. I can totally understand why it bothered some people but I loved it. Overall a stellar episode, as long as you can stomach the ending. The best on the set by far.

ZOMBIE NIGHTMARE
Total 80's schlock in the vein of Hobgobblins. The movie is ridiculous enough on its own, but the riffing adds quite a bit (I love when the girl and her boyfriend are talking and Servo is just muttering "Shut up. Shut up." between every slight pause in their conversation). Its got Adam West and Tia Carrera in it, so you know it has plenty of potential! A good episode, but I found my particular DVD copy to be incredibly dark. I dunno if the movie itself was just very poorly lit, or if the master copy of the episode suffered some damage or something before the digital transfer, but most of the time I felt like I was watching a radio broadcast the movie was so dark. Anybody know whats going on with the darkness thing? Is it just me? Either way, very entertaining. A great Mike episode.

RACKET GIRLS
Did Ed Wood make this movie? It really really feels like an Ed Wood movie. You'd think with the endless scenes of female wrestling matches this movie would get boring, but Mike and the Bots keep it going. Very very funny, the movie also has one of the most hilariously inept endings of any MST3k film, just awesomely terrible. Also has a short about getting married which is really good. Another stellar episode.

All in all, a great set. Not the best beginning point for people new to the show (I'd start with volume 1, even with Catalina Caper the other three eps are great intros) but I can't see any fans being disappointed in the episodes on hand here. I mean, I never saw any of them before and I loved ALL FOUR!!!