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Mystery Science Theater 3000 - Mitchell

Mystery Science Theater 3000 - Mitchell

List Price: $19.95
Your Price: $17.96
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: One of the best MST3Ks EVER
Review: One of my absolute favorites, Mitchell is pure gold! ( If thats
John Saxon im dead!) I really enjoyed the 25 MPH car chase...
The boat scene at the end is a little slow. A must have for MST3k Fans!

PS: It has a very disturbing scene with Joe Don Baker and some
baby oil! Nuff said...

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: I'll never grow old, never die, and I'll always eat oatmeal.
Review: Mitchell has got to be one of my very favorite movies. The actual movie isn't too painful, and Joel and the bots make it great. Starring Joe Don Baker as sloppy, alcoholic cop "Mitchell". Crow riffs "Joe Don Baker would be good playing Elvis: The Dying Days". Linda Evans plays a pot-smoking hooker. Joel says, "Linda Evans? This was her pre-Yanni gig." Servo answers, "Yeah, before her face was pulled taut!" Mitchell spends most of the movie either sitting out side of someone's house, or following people around. At one point, he gets into the lamest car chase scene ever. It is truly painful to behold. Some of the best lines are delivered during this scene, such as: "Whoa, they're traveling at speeds of up to 25 mph!" "I've seen faster funeral processions!" "The vicious Mustang culls the weak ones from the herd." "Why does he keep downshifting his automatic?" "That shook up the beers pretty bad." There is also a hilarious host segment in which Tom and Crow are riding pogo sticks, singing the Bonanza song. Anyway, the movie ends with a cheesy boat scene, which nevertheless has some funny lines, like: "Mmmm, this sure is good booze!" "Ok I'm gonna start taking off my clothes, you'd better stop me!" "See ya later, CHUM!" "I guess it's one of those shots that's too expensive to show." All in all, this movie is a must have!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: MST3K at its absolute best!!!!
Review: After watching the MST3K official movie, I was dying to get some more, so I more or less randomly rented "The Beginning of the End" and "Mitchell".

"The Beginning of the End," your typical giant arthropod movie, had some funny moments, such as afterwards when Mike uses a plastic grasshopper and some postcards to replicate the special effects: "They're eating the Beatles!" And when a grasshopper eats a deaf mute: "He's signing Aaaaaah!" But generally it was slow-moving and not too funny.

Later I watched Mitchell, and was incredibly gratiated. The movie, a 70's film about a police detective, breaks several Hollywood rules, most notably that a) the star of the movie should not first appear on screen slumped in the back of a police car, b) the star must be a moderately likeable person, and c) car chases generally exceed 25 mph.

It's easily the worst movie I've ever seen, unworthy to even be called B-grade. 70's hair and clothes abound ("Can you turn up the volume on that jacket?" Tom quips), and the whole plot is revealed in the first few minutes of the film. It features about as little suspense as is possible.

Ah-the chase scene! In sluggish, ugly 70's cars, Mitchell dawdles after his opponent, both never exceeding the posted speed limits, and using their turn signals. "Next week: the Cloverleaf!" says one of the robots.

Fortunately, Joel and his robot companions save us from dying of Mitchellation with their endless barrage of quips. I don't want to give too much of it away, so I'll just give you a couple for the road:

Movie: Mitchell, what would your mother say?
Crow: She'd say he's not mine! You can't prove it!

Tom, while a guy chases another guy on foot: Hey, this is faster than that car chase we just watched.

My sister and I can no longer take the word Mitchell seriously. I've pledged to name my firstborn after this movie. A must-see for MST3K fans, and any lover of bad movies.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: MST3k and Joe Don Baker. How can you lose?
Review: After more than four years MST3k finally took on Joe Don Baker with Mitchell. Obviously a beefed up TV pilot, Mitchell has Joe Don as the only cop in his station who sees the relevance in clues Inspector Clousseau couldn't have missed (Mitchell: "The gun collection was high up on the wall and the burglar only looks about five four." Mitchell's boss: "Well, what does that mean?") He's also a fat, alcoholic, porn-reading slob. I really can't believe anyone thought the public could get behind a hero like this. He goes up against Martin Balsam (a long way from the foreman in 12 Angry Men) as a drug peddler whose house is being staked out. This means about two-thirds of the movie is just Mitchell sitting in his car watching the guy. The whole thing ends with a near shot-for-shot ripoff of Key Largo, and Mitchell returns to his house to find the hooker he's been sleeping with the whole time. After sleeping with her one more time (yuck!) he finds some pot in her coat and arrests her. Man, double standard zero tolerance is so funny, huh? Oh, and there's also a 25 MPH "car chase", and a truly surreal encounter with a little kid where both of them endlessly repeat the other. No riffs are needed here, Tom screaming his head off is enough. The host segments are great too, with Joel finally escaping the SOL in the aptly named escape pod Deus Ex Machina. Down in Deep 13, a temp worker named Mike Nelson helps the Mads out while they're being audited. I see big things in his future. I was surprised at one thing, though: Tom points out that John Saxon seems to disappear from the film, but one of the scenes that they cut from the show had him being killed! It's a lousy movie, but at least be fair to it. Still, if you're an MST3k fan you really can't afford not to have this episode in your library.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: "I thought there was just a slob walking around my house."
Review: All I can say is wow! This is, in my opinion, the best MST3K episode of the Joel era. No, the movie has nothing to do with "science"-fiction and there's no real "mystery" to speak of, so it may not be the quintessential MST3K episode, but to me, it's one of the funniest.

I think one of the main reasons for that is that the movie really isn't that poorly done. Yeah, it's boring, unoriginal and downright goofy at times, but it was not all that poorly made. With many of the episodes, the writers could just sit there and point out continuity errors, editing foul-ups, flubbed lines, and many other things in succession for the whole movie. With this one, they were forced to work a little harder and I think the jokes show that.

Really, the director seemed at least competent, the production design, while not spectacular, was at least not poor. The acting, for the most part, was serviceable, especially from vets like Martin Balsam and John Saxon.

Really, it had many great elements for an MST3K movie: 1) slovenly, unlikeable "hero", 2) goofy, stereotypical villains ("I'm-a Italian you know"), 3) Merlin Olsen, 4) a guy who looks like Andy Kaufmann, and the list could go on. Each one of these elements helped to allow for the MST3K writing team to just rip into the movie without remorse. The fact the Mitchell as portrayed by Joe Don Baker was such a jerk, slob and lowlife meant that they didn't have to feel bad about pointing out those things. They had carte blanche.

For many MST fans, this episode was the last one they can watch, as it is Joel's final appearance. For other fans, the episodes got better and better as they went on, even with Mike replacing the beloved Joel. I actually tend to like the Mike episodes better on the whole, but I have no problem watching episodes from season 3 through 7 (before they jumped to Sci-Fi channel, andlost Trace Beaulieu) interchangeably. With that said, I think this is by far the best Joel episode, and on par with Mike greats like Red Zone Cuba (619), High School Big Shot (618), and Escape 2000 (705).

I think Joel's send off was appropriately done. Many people may dispute that, but if he had to go, leaving on a box of hamdingers was a nice touch.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Disappointed..
Review: Unless you want to buy this video because it's Joel's last episode, stay away. Although I didn't notice the quiet areas that other reviewers have, the comments that Joel and the bots did make were flat and boring. This movie was only saved by a few funny parts scattered throughout, but definitely not worth buying.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Mitchell! Heart poundin... veins cloggin...
Review: This one was a classic for anybody who is a fan of the MST3K gang. They are both brutal and hilarious in this episode. We watched this one with a group of people (it's always better to watch these movies in a group) and we were laughing so hard we had to stop the movie a couple of times just to recover our senses. They are just unrelenting on this poor slob of an unlikely action hero. The worse car chase and story line of any cop movie you'll ever see. Classic line... John Saxon asks Mitchell how he likes his scotch and the gang blurts out "By the quart!!" See Mitchell go head to head in a yelling/whining match with a 9 year old boy. See Mitchell drink beer after beer and constantly whine about wanting to eat. Oh yeah.. there is something about a drug deal and stuff, but just watching this meathead gasping for air after every chase was hilarious.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: I love Mitchell
Review: this is without a doubt the funniest thing I've ever seen. The fact that this was ever seen as a serious movie just makes the whole thing funnier. If you enjoy smart humor and bad movies this DVD was made for you.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Joel's Last Stand
Review: In Joel's bittersweet last episode of MST3K, we are treated to the ultimate anti-hero. You'll need to see this to appreciate the full effect of Joe Don Baker's breezy, boozy performance. How Linda Evans survived the lovemaking scenes if beyond me, it was difficult enought just watching.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: BUZZ OFF!!!
Review: Hey kids, I don't know if Mystery Science Theatre gets better than this. While the movie in question might not be as inexplicably horrible as others that have been lambasted by Joel and the Bots, all of it's elements (cheesy dialogue, incomprehensible plot, ridiculous cops and robbers scenes, and of course, Joe Don Baker the fat slob hero) make for some great opportunities for the MST3K gang to do what they do best. What do they do best? Well they make offhand comments about the movie of course! And they're HILARIOUS!!
Mitchell is some sort of story about a drug bust, and a misfit cop who is given the assignment. At least I think so. There's also some junk about Mitchell and a prostitute, and Mitchell's life as an unloved police officer. But are plots important in these movies? NO!!! The lack of a plot just makes this funnier.
It is well that this should serve as Joel's final hurrah with MST3K, because it's a finely crafted episode, and I'm thankful we can own it on video. So say goodbye to Joel, and say hello to Mike with the next episode, "The Brain That Wouldn't Die."

Oh, and watch out for falling rocks.


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