Mystery Science Theater 3000 / Commentary tracks on DVD releases usually fail to be interesting, informative or even entertaining. From Tim Burton’s blase monosyllabic comments, to Oliver Stone on Natural Born Killers simply describing the action that you’re watching on the screen, to Michael Moore having his interns talk over Bowling for Columbine, the extra features tend to feel tacked on rather than like essential viewing. But release a feature without a commentary track and member reviews on Netflix will collectively wail about how they’ve been cheated.

That’s where Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett, collectively known as The Film Crew, come to save the day. Fans of Mystery Science Theater 3000 (or MST3K) should recognize the names as the second-stringers for the beloved show where a human and two robots were forced to watch bottom-of-the-barrel awful films, surviving only by making fun off the film that unfolded in front of them. Murphy took over the role of gumball machine-shaped Tom Servo in season two, Nelson replaced host and creator Joel Hodgson in the middle of season four and Corbett took the puppetry helm for the golden Crow T. Robot in season eight. All three continued to work on the show until its cancellation in 1999.

Since then, all three have kept themselves busy. Nelson and Murphy have both released collections of essays dealing with (mostly bad) movies and Corbett co-wrote the screenplay for the film Starship Dave, slated for release in 2008 and starring Eddie Murphy. But after 11 years and 199 episodes of MST3K, it’s hard to give up what you know best. Nelson formed [Rifftrax.com], allowing fans to download commentary for a small fee over the Internet to play in sync with films like The Matrix, Casino Royale, the pilot episode for Lost and the 1971 Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Murphy and Corbett are frequent guest ‘riffers.’ And now we have the direct-to-DVD releases from Shout! Factory with The Film Crew.

This time around there are no robots, and the threesome are willing participants, hired by their boss, a man named Bob Honcho shown only in a photograph and voiced through a speakerbox, as he instructs his crew to provide a commentary track for the films that lack one. This switch in dynamics slightly affects the tone, because previously they were forced to view some truly awful films like Attack of the Eye Creatures, Sampson vs. the Vampire Women and The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies. Now, however, they’re eager to view these train wrecks, starting with their debut release: Hollywood After Dark.

And make no mistake: This movie is awful. Other reviews have expressed disappointment that the film can only be viewed with the commentary, making it impossible to view it as it was intended, but there is no reason to see this film without the hilarious comments provided by the crew. The little-known and less-seen 1968 black-and-white film features a slightly younger Rue McClanahan (best known for her role as Blanche Devereaux in The Golden Girls) forced into working at a strip club while trying to make it as an actress.

And yes, she gets up on stage, but stripping isn’t the proper descriptive term because Rue shakes her McClana-can in a painfully bad four-minute sequence that would make the worst performance artists poke their eyes out in horror. ‘She looks like my drunk aunt at a wedding,’ Nelson quips. Earlier, Murphy notes that she’s actually less sexy than when she was on The Golden Girls.

Fans of MST3K have always been a fickle bunch–they’re debating the Joel vs. Mike issue to this day. Obviously, some will simply be able to accept this current incarnation, sans puppets and shadow silhouettes on the bottom of the screen. But for true MiSTies this disk and Nelson’s [Rifftrax.com] are essential viewing. With the endless parade of bad movies released (The Film Crew’s second release: Killers From Space, is slated for release on Aug. 7), we’ll be glad to see and hear this crew’s scathing comments for years to come.

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