TOP 20 MST3K EPISODES (Part 1: #11-20)

After being a huge fan of the show since I was a little kid, I have seen every Mystery Science Theater ever made. Some I watch over and over again because they are just so damn good! So, I had an idea to list the Top 10 episodes of my favorite tv show, Mystery Scince Theater 3000... But I had such a hard time makin the list that I extended out to the Top 20.

This week I give you the Top 11-20 MST3K episodes, followed by the Top 10 next week.

Now, if you've never seen any of these episodes, or any episode period, I suggest you take the time to watch them right now! I'm sure you can find them on Netflix, iTunes, or YouTube.com. And if you don't agree with my list, make your own and share. In the meantime, enjoy!

20: Laserblast - Leanord Maltin gave it 2 1/2 stars, which I hope was based on a 10 star scale, but probably not. Although it is the screen debut of Eddie Deezen and features Roddy McDowall in a few scenes before involving himself in a very confusing death scene. It's about a shirtless teenager in the desert who gets a lasergun attached to his arm which also changes him into a psychotic alien. The real story is trying to figure out what they two cute little claymation aliens are talking about, but Mike and the bots translate for them very well.

19: Zombie Nightmare - When a group of suburban teenagers start terrorizing a small town, they accidentally run over a local softball-playing, robbery-stopping badass whose mother exacts revenge with the help of a Voodoo witch doctor. The story then barely shows the muscular revenant exacting his revenge on the teenage hoodlums. With a confused Adam West miscast as the police chief, his cameo is the only reason anyone had even heard of this dimly-lit roll of toilet paper.

18: Bloodlust - Based on "The Most Dangerous Game", which I think we all read sometime around middle school, this story revolves around a group of teenagers who decide to venture to the shore of an "uninhabited" island for a clam bake, but end up captured by a man who hunts humans for sport. Of course, knowing more about the film's protagonist, Robert Reed, we know just what kind of private island he'd rather have. But this movie lives on not as his screen debut, but one of the best episodes with Mike and the bots.

17: Riding With Death - We all know Death doesn't chip in for gas though. Ben Murphy leads a two-star cast in the made-for-TV movie that aired on NBC in 1976. Originally meant to be a TV show, the plot's continuity seems almost like two separate movies in one. Loosely based on "The Invisible Man", the main charachter and even the truck itself disappears. If H.G. Wells would stab himself in the neck if he saw this sack of crap.

16: Merlin's Shop of Mystical Wonders - Merlin's back and he's insane! Not really. Ernest Borgnine recalls horrific tales of terror that he wrote about the sorcerer to his grandson when the power goes out. The two stories he recants are one a lot like "the Monkey's Paw" except it's a toy monkey that claps cymbals together instead. The one before it, however, is terrifying about a man who uses Merlin's book for evil and has demonic things happen to him. How or why this movie was geared towards children, I'll never know.

15: Dead Talk Back - A wonderfully forgettable film involving a mystery surrounding a house full of strange characters, all of whom have reasons why they would kill the victim. They tell who the victim is and when she will be killed at the very beginning, so at that point it just becomes a countdown to when the murder takes place. With the inept policemen baffled, they turn to one of the tenants, a scientist who talks to the dead, to trick the murderer into implicating himself. You can imagine how many jokes hit the nail on the head in this one.

14: Werewolf - Starring another acclaimed actor to make this list, Joe Estevez! Overlooking that it must've been a full night every single night while this movie was made, most of the "werewolves" in this movie become on by being scratched by dead parts of lingering body parts of old "werewolves". Since the continuity of what the werewolf is exactly supposed to look like differs from actor to actor, it's easy to see why this poorly-made film was busted up as easily as it was by our heroes.

13: Agent Of H.A.R.M - Looking for another James Bond film from the 60's, drenched in nostalgia and devoid of a main plot? Then look no further for Agent of H.A.R.M., which stands for Hot And Ready Man! Adam Chance is your hero who really doesn't do anything except hit on girls 20-30 years younger than him. The best parts are when one of the villains who never takes his sunglasses off talks like Prince throughout the movie.

12: Parts (the Clonus Horror) -Peter Graves starred in this oddly forgettable B-movie before he went on to do Biography. Although he'd been in a few other MST3k's, this was the only one to make my list. One part a science fiction look at corporate greed and the other a story of teenage growing up and rebellion. A movie called The Island came out some decades later that pretty much mimicked this movie entirely, but the original hold more affinity because it landed itself on MST3k, which endears it to us all.

11: Hobgoblins - If Gremlins was made with $15,000 as opposed to $11 million, it would be this reject from the Jim Henson house of production. It feels like the producers just found a bunch of the same handpuppets in storage and threw together a stupid, nonsensical script that is almost a complete rip-off of the movie I named before. God help whoever shoveled money on this travesty.


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Now, check back next Sunday for numbers #1-10!