I just got the first DVD of the new Film Crew series. What’s The Film Crew series? It’s the new direct to DVD series being done by Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Bill Corbet of Mystery Science Theater 3000 fame. The DVD follows the format of their old series, a running commentary on a bad film with a few skits inserted throughout the proceedings.
The set up for the show is that The Film Crew has been hired by multimillionaire Bob Honcho to supply commentary tracks for films his company owns. Their first assignment is Hollywood After Dark (1968), a caper film about an ex-Navy scuba diver who gets talked into pulling a heist while romancing hopeful starlet turned reluctant stripper Rue McClanahan. Yes, that Rue McClanahan.
The film itself is a jumbled mess of plots that don’t really mesh at the end, perfect MST3K material, and the riffs supplied by Mike, Kevin, and Bill are as hilarious and full of current pop cultural references as ever. Where it all falls apart is with the skits. They are a distraction that interrupts the flow of the main part of the DVD, the mocking of the film. Plus they’re not funny. Skits like Bill’s Ode to Lunch are cute but that’s about it, and serve little purpose in the DVD. They made sense in the old show as a way to lead in and out of commercial breaks, which is unnecessary here. Plus robot puppets are automatically funny, middle age guys in bowling shirt, not so much.
For my money you’re better off going to Mike’s Rifftrax website and downloading commentary’s for much more deserving targets like Phantom Menace (1999) and Daredevil (2003).
