T100MST3k: Danger!! Death Ray

I am very normal about my hyperfixations to the point I want to watch every single episode of this show and review it in a blog as well as make a beautiful, scrumptious, delectable spreadsheet for it (since 230 episodes is a lot and I'm not going to remember where I ranked what.) “My personal top 100 favorite episodes of mystery science theater 3000" is a long title though so I'm going with the still a little too long T100MST3K instead. I'll also be watching these out of order because I love both hosts and I don't like going too long without seeing the other. Explode me for it or whatever. 

The episode I watched this week is episode 620 titled Danger!! Death Ray (I guess one exclamation point wasn't dangerous enough.)

Going into our first movie with a title like this I wrongfully assumed that it would at least attempt to be a thought provoking piece on the ethics of creating weaponry capable of mass destruction. Couldn't have been more of a dunderhead for thinking that. Even a mediocre sci-fi film delivering a lazily educated lecture on energy based nuclear-like weapons would have been better than what this was. The plot centers more on a secret agent named Bart Fargo and less around our death ray who only gets maybe 10 minutes of screen time total? I feel bad for the death ray. I would've liked to see the death ray more. The film is a confusing jumbled mess of a spy movie and has some of the most amazingly unthrilling fight scenes of all time. I have to give them kudos for that because I'm not sure how you can snore up a car chase that leads to a gunfight and subsequent helicopter escape. The chase scenes tickled me in general though. I don't think the producer wanted to go through the hassle of obtaining permits from the city for permission to film them speeding, so both cars are going a gentle 35 mph with ample space between them. That doesn't escape the bots either and they found it just as funny as I did. 

One of my favorite riffs was Tom mentioning Kids in the Hall when our main character rips a wig off of someone. A really me kind of joke. I also loved Mike pointing out the grating music that attempts to create suspense. Them singing along every time to the reoccurring theme was also very fun despite the movie's often inappropriate timing of music. I'm a big fan of reoccurring gags and the longer they go on, the funnier it gets for me.

I think it's a very solid episode. Regardless of the movie being so lackluster there's still moments in it that are laughable by itself without the need of Mike and the bots. The host segments are good too. The opening is great with Crow's poor bloodshot eyes and I relate to him as an owner of sad dry little eyes. I really enjoy this small window of time in the series where Forrester & Frank were there with Mike too. Servo's PEACEFUL death ray made me laugh and I liked when Clayton calls Frank a slut at the end a little too much. 

I'm going to rate it a highly specific 7.6 and place it generously at 35th for now.