I've got a fairly obscure little treat today. Or tonight, rather. This is MST3K's take on the 1974 pissed-off ant classic Phase IV. This episode first aired way back in January of 1989 on Minneapolis UHF station KTMA-TV. I wanted to put this episode up since I'm not sure how many people have actually seen one of the KTMA episodes. You can find some of them on torrent sites, but there are never enough seeders for these ones it seems. They're not really as funny as we're used to, but I think it's fascinating seeing how the show started. It's all pretty weird at first. It's got a different opening, one where Joel looks like a roadie for Journey. Dr. Forrester doesn't have his mad scientist hair, the bots are different, it's kinda like a Bizarro version of the show At least after growing so accustomed to the Comedy Central/Sci-Fi episodes.
Hope some of you get a kick out of seeing this. The picture quality isn't great, but it should be pretty watchable. Plus, you get to see a couple UHF channel commercials from 1989, which is kinda neat. Nothing as great as Spatula City, but then not much is.
Here's a DVD cover for those of you who end up making a DVD with the file. I know, it's not accurate since Tom and Crow don't start to look like this until the first official season, but I think finding high quality images from those episodes would be quite hard. If anyone needs the 4MB 300dpi cover, let me know and I'll put it up somewhere.
Hope some of you get a kick out of seeing this. The picture quality isn't great, but it should be pretty watchable. Plus, you get to see a couple UHF channel commercials from 1989, which is kinda neat. Nothing as great as Spatula City, but then not much is.
Here's a DVD cover for those of you who end up making a DVD with the file. I know, it's not accurate since Tom and Crow don't start to look like this until the first official season, but I think finding high quality images from those episodes would be quite hard. If anyone needs the 4MB 300dpi cover, let me know and I'll put it up somewhere.
8 comments:
Wow, thank you very much. I really like Phase IV and will be interested to see what MST3K made of it!
As far as the KTMA episodes go, I think this is one of the better ones. I really dig this movie and wish for a DVD of it. This episode actually introduced me to Phase IV, and I think it's easily on of the best films they riffed.
Cheers! Megashare, rapidshare, I don't care just keep the MST3Ks coming!
Yes,I too say keep 'em coming.
Actually, the torrents at ThePirateBay are doing quite well--including all the existing KTMA episodes (look for the "DVD" series--not Rhino rips, but TV rips set up for burning to DVD). Slow at times--but well-seeded. I was happy to see SST: Death Flight again, and City On Fire damn near finished me off.
When all else fails, I recommend MST3KVideos.com ($, a little) or gettin' 'em direct from Digital Archive Project (despite the particular FTP software and other hoop-jumping required).
Had some time to watch it yesterday after shoveling snow. Really fun early episode. No shortage of Ant puns. I've seen a few KTMA eps and this one was a lot of fun.
If they had any business sense at all Paramount would release this along with the movie. It's a cool Sci-Fi flick even with the abrupt weird-ass ending. The score is also really nifty.
The real gem on this though is the ads for Joel's appearance at a comedy club and the one Trace and Josh do for a local pizza place. The beauty of home grown local TV. I guess YouTube is the modern version of that kind of stuff.
I also found it funny that Joel made a riff "two men out standing in their field" when that's the same line he used for himself on the Cinematic Titanic page not long ago.
billy - Thanks for recommending The Pirate Bay, for some reason I thought that one got shut down. I'm getting the DVD with City on Fire and some other KTMAs right now. That site made me realize how close I am to having all of them. Going through the different DVDs I was just sitting there going "Got it, got it, got it..."
Donovan's Brain - I've got a tape somewhere that has one of Joel's stand-up appearances. It was weird seeing it because I actually remembered seeing it on TV, before MST3K came out, so I must've been like 6 years old. I never realized it was him until I saw that tape, I guess I'd forgotten given the age I was at the time. Weird how stuff like that can happen. I need to see if that stuff is online anywhere. Glad you enjoyed watching the episode.
hi! nice template..... easy to download Thanks for the sharing......
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