Customer Rating:  
Summary: Passable Fare
Comment: I'm not so gung-ho about this collection. As I've found out over time, the best MST3k episodes are the ones with movies that are hilarious and cheesy by themselves. The movies in this collection are stupid, yes, but for the most part... not all that much fun.
The Giant Gila Monster is so-so. I adore the voice the guys give the lizard, the goofy song Sullivan sings makes me laugh, and the host segments are great. But for the most part this movie just creeps along at the speed of its villain, and there's not much hilarity to be had. It's just hard for Joel and the bots to pick this puppy up.
Swamp Diamonds is boring. There are some truly hilarious moments (such as the freakish bathing scene and the alligator attack), but for the most part it just mopes along to its climax. There are many, many shots of the swamps... many... many shots. Boring shots. The short, "What to Do on a Date," is very funny, and far more fun than the movie that follows it.
Teen-Age Strangler is moderately fun. Mikey is the star of the show here, whether anyone recognizes it or not. There are also some really slow, delightfully funny car races. The host segments are gold here, too -- especially the one where Mike puts on the "Mikey glasses." Should be watched at least once!
The Giant Spider Invasion is also moderately enjoyable. I have never wanted so many characters to die before. Thankfully, many of them do. There are some truly hilarious spiders here... specifically, a ginormous puppet, perhaps the very one Ator fought so long ago. Unintentionally hilarious characters, really wacky science, a squawking scientist, and other humorous bits abound. However, just try to keep your lunch down as you watch the white trash. Eee-yuck!
Overall, this is an okay set. Spider Invasion and Teen-age Strangler should be nice additions to your collection, if anything. But it certainly isn't the collection I'd leap to first. New MSTies would do best going for Volume 2.
Customer Rating:
Summary: MST3K recovers nicely
Comment: A good recovery for Rhino, which had to withdraw the original Volume 11 from print over an errant "Godzilla" episode originally included in this set.
That said, "Giant Gila Monster" is more than adequate as a substitution. I like this collection in particular because there is a good mix of Mike, Joel, Comedy Central, and Sci-Fi era offerings.
"Giant Gila Monster" has one of the most inventive inventions: the plot point radio. A classic host segment.
"Swamp Diamonds" is a classic Beverly Garland (a perennial MST3K favorite and a good sport) with a great prison - bayou - alligator motif.
"Teenage Strangler" should be much more sinister than it is - there's not much funny about stranglers, teenage or otherwise. But the host segments are good, and the "Frank-n-forcer" is classic.
"Giant Spider Invasion" was one of the last episodes broadcast. It was shown, oh, about 18 kajillion times during MST3K's last year on Sci Fi. That period was light on classic monster movies, and in this one we get a giant spider and the skipper. It hits the spot.
Recommended!
Customer Rating:
Summary: I love this show!
Comment: I never saw the original episode that has been replaced on this but the Giant Gila Monster is a great one. All of these are fantastic hilarious episodes from a fantastic hilarious show that never should have come off the air.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Speaking of "Teenage Strangler"...
Comment: I loved all the movies in this boxset, but I have a special tie to "Teenage Strangler". It was shot in my hometown of Huntington, West Virginia (same place "We Are Marshall" was shot) and this movie made it's world premire in Huntington in the 90's if I remember correctly (as if it deserved that). The scene at the beginning, where the girls first stop running, where there's a black stairwell, is the first apartment my wife ever got. Seeing all the places from my hometown always gives me a warm feeling. However, the piece de resistance from Teenage Strangler is Mikey. You can hate this movie all you want, but Mikey's unintentionally HILARIOUS presence makes it all worth while.
"Swamp Diamonds" is the stinker in the pact. I can't remember if this is a Roger Corman production or not, but the shoddy production would be a giveaway. The only other Roger Corman movie I've seen (unfortunately) that is worse than this is his version of the Fantastic Four. Ugh.
I haven't seen the Giant Gila Monster movie yet, but "The Giant Spider Invasion" movie is horribly funny, especially Alan Hale playing an actor trying to pay his rent by playing a sheriff. Oh, it's bad. Wonderfully negative stereotypes of country folk to (yes I am being sarcastic).
Customer Rating:
Summary: "I sing whenever I sing whenever I sing..."
Comment: Opening Credits (beginning remarks):
Didn't we just go through this?
The first version of Rhino's Volume 10 of their MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000 box sets included a copy of GOZILLA VS. MEGALON. Unfortunately, it didn't appear that they had the legal right to distribute it, and the discs quickly were recalled from store shelves. Only we few who were quick enough on hitting the pre-order button we able to snag a copy before the lawyers descended.
However, Rhino decided to take pity on the MST3k fans. As their last act before letting the rights to MST3k itself go over to "Shout! Factory", they re-released Volume 10 -- this time as Volume 10.2 -- with THE GIANT GILA MONSTER in place of the giant Japanese monster.
As an extra bonus, included on the GILA MONSTER disc is a brand new sketch featuring Trace Beaulieu (as Dr. Clayton Forrester and Crow T. Robot), Frank Conniff (as TV's Frank and Tom Servo) and Joel Hodgson (as Joel). They describe the "real" reason as to why the DVD sets had to be recalled and demonstrate how exactly one should upgrade their Volume 10 package to 10.2. As sad as I am, I was not only delighted to see the crew back in costume (albeit looking a tad older), I also noticed the glaring continuity error. (I should repeat to myself, "It's just a DVD extra; I should really just relax.")
THE GIANT GILA MONSTER
From the title, one might expect this to be a typical rip-off of a Japanese giant monster movie. In actuality, the eponymous monster gets relatively little screen time. Most of the story is about a teenaged tow truck driver who by the end of the movie is looking to improve his singing career. That's right, THE GIANT GILA MONSTER is a musical.
This is a very silly movie which takes itself a little too seriously. A normal sized gila lizard on a series of models to make it look like a monster; a lead character who's a teen heartthrob trying to break into the rock'n'roll industry; a know-it-all parent who finally learns his lesson: this would be a cult film even without the MST3k treatment. Although I didn't find the movie riffing to be among the MST3k gang's finest (mediocre MST3k is still better than most TV), the whole package is a lot of fun.
SWAMP DIAMONDS
When the plot summary contains a gang of jail-breaking female bandits on the run from the cops and attempting to find diamonds they buried before their previous arrest, "boring" should not be the adjective one would use to describe the final product. And, yet, there is no way around using that descriptor here.
The film stars Mike Connors (a.k.a. Mannix), credited here as Touch Connors. A police woman infiltrates a gang of three woman, along the way capturing and falling for Connors' character. This is a typical Roger Corman piece of fluff, but fortunately -- once again -- Joel and the bots keep us from falling asleep.
TEEN-AGE STRANGLER
If TEEN-AGE STRANGLER had been made in the 1970s or 80s, then it would have been what we now call a teen slasher movie. However, this was made in the relatively more restrained 1960s, and therefore is only a teen strangler movie.
The plot of the film is almost exactly what the title suggests. A suburban high school is being terrorized by a criminal who goes around at night strangling the local teenagers. As the cast is made up mostly of teenagers, the quality of the acting is really all over the place which gives the MST folks lots to mock (their send up of the nerdy Mikey character is hilarious).
THE GIANT SPIDER INVASION
I hadn't seen this episode since back when it had aired on the Sci-Fi Channel, so I was really looking forward to it. As you can guess this one involves a giant spider from outer space terrorizing rural Wisconsin in the 1970s. The casting director must have been calling up people completely at random; I can see no other way in which they got both Barbara Hale and Alan "The Skipper" Hale in the same movie. The Wisconsin setting gives the gang a lot of fodder for jokes (remember that Mike Nelson and a few of the writing staff had once lived in Wisconsin). The repeated references to the Green Bay Packers team and players never failed to crack me up.
Love Theme (conclusion):
It's good to see that Rhino was able to correct their mistake and get the three episodes from Volume 10 (and the new offering) back out into circulation. This is one of the stronger sets from Rhino with each of the four standing up well to multiple repeated viewings (especially, for me, THE GIANT SPIDER INVASION). Let's hope Shout! Factory will give us something equally fun for their first release.
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