Phase IV

It's nice to see Dr. Forrester and Dr. Erhardt in the beginning. They often didn't appear in the episode at all. It's great to see them interact even if it's not that funny. I appreciate having them promote the Pizza and Pasta place as a local ad! It's nice to also see Joel without his mullet. I'm just put off by his appearance like that. Gypsy's voice seems to be the worst of all. It does seem like the show was starting to get good here.

This is arguably the best movie that was ever featured on the show. I guess you could say it was nice to see something (sort of) good for an episode, so that made it enjoyable. It's weird when they use "Phase I" as their first riff. There were still some really good ones here especially, "You know what they say. The camera puts ten pounds on an ant". It's especially funny because I thought I thought of that joke first! I also liked, "The best thing with a movie like this is that when you're done with the cast, you can step on them!". ***

Oldest episode - at the time of writing - of Mystery science theatre 3000 that I've seen. And I hadn't heard great things about this season.

But it's better than I expected.

It follows the usual format, with segments before, during and after the film. The props and the puppets all look different and cheaper and rudimentary. So this does have the feel of a pilot season, in which things are being figured out.

The movie takes itself very seriously. And uses lots of stock footage and music that tries to be atmospheric. It's all about two scientists discovering ants are becoming intelligent. Trouble is, the use of stock footage and the ants hardly ever being in the frame with humans mean you never really feel the jeopardy.

Rather like the episode, the movie has good moments, and then dry and slow spells. The riffing, like the occasional later episode, does start off very good but then goes dry and sporadic. I believe this season was ad libbed rather than scripted, so frankly the move to the latter was for the better.

Not a bad episode, just a bit patchy. But the seeds of greatness, and some good moments, are here.