MST3K: Episode K21 - The "Legend of the Dinosaurs"

Watching all of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes is a big job. More about that can be found here and here.

The show began as a local program on KTMA (now WUCW) in Minneapolis before they got a deal to go national on the Comedy Channel. Some fans of the show have copies of most of the shows the first season. 18 of the 21 KTMA shows were recorded and survive to this day. We've covered episodes K04 - K20. Now, the final KTMA episode.

Episode K21: The "Legend of the Dinosaurs"

First aired: KTMA on 28 May 1989
Availability: MST3KVideos.com

It's a Sandy Frank film. And the episode where Joel said "Never trust a man with two first names, especially if the first one's a woman."

Mt. Fuji

I can't figure out if they love Sandy Frank, or hate the viewers. The reason is probably a lot simpler: they used what they had. Of course, finding out it was a Sandy Frank film gave me hope for a hot Japanese she-villain.

But it did give an image of Mt. Fuji. Actually a couple of images of Mt. Fuji. Actually, more than a couple of images of Mt. Fuji. Okay, about eight dozen images of Mt. Fuji.

The riffing had several that referenced the background music, including references to The Girl from Ipanema, Shaft, songs by Harry Nilsson, James Bond movies, Surf City, Up Against the Wall Redneck Mothers, music by Jethro Tull, and others.

My buddy, Mad Max, couldn't believe the music either:

Whoever did the soundtrack NEVER saw the movie - light jazz and ... "softcore porn music" plays during tense life & death moments."

Joel is dead

Joel, Josh (Servo) & Trace (Crow) still stepped on each other's lines a few times. And Joel misspoke a line, cracking up all three of the riffers. Those are some of the problems with ad-libbing the riffs, rather than scripting them.

It looks like they reversed host segments one and three. If they ever release these episodes commercially (I don't think they will) things would make more sense if they swapped these segments around.

One of the funniest parts was the whole "Joel is dead" thing they did, a takeoff of the "Paul is dead" rumors from the 1960s, complete with clues in the Abby Road album. And, yes, kiddies, that's an actual album. It was before CDs.

What are CDs? That was before iTunes.

This wraps the KTMA season. After New Year's, we'll dive into Season One.

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