Fulvue Drive-In.com
Current Reviews
In Stores Soon
 
In Stores Now
 
DVD Reviews, SACD Reviews Essays Interviews Contact Us Meet the Staff
An Explanation of Our Rating System Search  
Category:    Home > Reviews > Comedy > Satire > Camp > The Film Crew: Killers From Outer Space/Wild Women Of Wongo/The Giant of Marathon (DVD)

The Film Crew: Killers From Outer Space/Wild Women Of Wongo/The Giant of Marathon (DVD)

Picture: B-     Sound: B-      Extras: B-     Episodes: A

 

 

Our old friends from the Satellite of Love (a.k.a., Mystery Science Theater 3000—MST3K) are at it again with hilarious commentary on three "all-new", "all-bad" B-Movie bombs.  Comedic commentators Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Bill Cobett make up The Film Crew.  Three wacky guys under the employ of eccentric millionaire Bob Honcho, who regularly asks his men to provide DVD commentaries on films he feels have been neglected and desperately need them.  Whether these three films really need a commentary or not, the guys deliver them all the same.

The Killers from Outer Space possesses few redeeming qualities aside from a positively wooden performance by a young Peter Graves.  Bad effects, poor picture, terrible acting, and a lousy script would normally render this stinker unwatchable, but the guys transform this otherwise painful experience into eighty minutes of fun.  Riffing on everything from the main character's strange relationship with his wife to the unintentionally zany appearance of its alien villains, The Film Crew cut of Killers is superb.

Unlike Killers' black and white print, Wild Women of Wongo (also featured on The 50 Worst Movies Ever Made DVD elsewhere on this site) was filmed in not-so Technicolor, on what appears to be faded stock.  This complements the uniformly horrendous acting and laughable story.  This tired tale tells the story of two tribes of stone-age peoples struggling for survival amidst the lush beaches of what looks like either Bradenton, FL or Palm Springs, CA.  Of course, The Film Crew eats this stuff up like Jell-O Pudding!  The fellas strike early and often with comedic barbs that often hit the bull's eye.  Perhaps the simplest humor works best for a movie as bad as this one, and likening the appearance of one tribe's less than attractive Alligator Priestess to KISS rocker Paul Stanley hits a home run for laughs.
 
The Giant of Marathon marks the Film Crew's first foray into the 1960's popular "Sword and Sandal" genre of films.  This genre was made famous (or infamous) by numerous Steve Reeves/Hercules films, and these movies spawned a host of imitators.  Several of these flicks were covered by the lads of the Film Crew back in their MST3K days.  What MST3K fan can forget the horror of the "sand storm" scenes from Hercules Versus the Moon Men?  The Giant of Marathon sees Reeves reprising his role of mythical hero, but this time he is the mighty Phillipides battling the Persian invaders for his homeland of Athens.  Sound familiar?  Reeves amazing physique aside, the Crew finds laughs aplenty under every loin-cloth in this hackneyed re-telling of the Battle of Thermopylae.
 
The extras on these disks are thin, including a few skits and some commentaries on the commentaries (is that meta-commentary?), but the features themselves provide plenty of fun for the entertainment dollar.  As we have pointed out in past reviews of MST3K and Film Crew offerings, sound and picture are really not critical aspects to the enjoyment of these features. All non-film image and video quality is fine, while the poor picture quality of the movies themselves sometimes enhances one's appreciation of their awfulness.
 
The Film Crew nicely fills the void left by the demise of MST3K, and we can only hope the fine folks at Shout Factory see fit to bring more "bad cinema" our way courtesy of Mike Nelson and his faithful comrades!

 

 

-   Scott Pyle


Marketplace


 
 Copyright © MMIII through MMX fulvuedrive-in.com