For the very first and last time, the guys pick VHS tapes while blindfolded. What horrors await... ah whatever. Movies watched: The Incredible Melting Man, Starship, and Lady Avenger
Rich actually got 7 concussions filming that stunt with the tapes. Don't worry though, his neurological damage won't make him too different from regular Rich Evans.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but that was actually his stunt double Evans Rich. It's very hard to notice due to the seamless visual effects implemented within the scene. Also, the set is actually completely green screen.
Fun fact: If you watch The Incredible Melting Man backwards, it's an uplifting tale of discarded tomato sauce that morphs into a man and becomes an astronaut.
They've done the 'Rich / someone knocks a bunch of tapes over' bit before (and they're great), but that cut to Rich putting them back up while the movie's playing was beautiful.
Rick Baker, when approached by the studio to do the FX for The Incredible Melting Man, saw the script and felt it would harm his career as it could potentially be seen as a step backwards from all the work he'd done up to that point. He asked the producers for an absurd amount of money as he assumed they would've balked at the number and gone with someone else. Instead, the studio agreed to the amount and he had to work on the project anyway.
yeah, one would think the opposite, but apparently it's exactly what happened. I've also heard that Baker, being a perfectionist and a true professional, had numerous stages of melting prepared, with different props and masks and make-up, but the actor playing the melting man was very difficult to work with and refused to change into the different costumes and have the make-up applied(which tbf takes hours and requires you to stay still and wasn't very pleasant), basically sabotaging Baker's work.
Well, he didn’t HAVE to, but money is nice. Plus, what better precedent is there to set that, even for bargain bin schlock, you still get paid out the ass and do great work? Win/win.
Fun fact, Rich wasn't actually wearing a blindfold while knocking all the tapes down, that's just him trying to select a tape normally. They added the blindfold in digitally after.
I saw the Incredible Melting Man in the theater when I was 4 or 5 (parenting was different back then), and had nightmares about it for a week. I've thought about it occasionally throughout the years wondering if the movie was really terrifying or not. I clearly remembered the melting effects, but not the story at all. After watching this best of the worst, I find out there really wasn't much story to remember. As a 49 year old man now, I'm kind of hoping for a melting man nightmare tonight.
Fun fact: according to MELTING MAN's credits, the guy opening the door for his lady at 25:38 is the late great director Jonathan Demme of SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, STOP MAKING SENSE, to name a couple.
I didn't bat an eye when Rich knocked all of the tapes on the floor but felt extremely upset when Jack removed the plastic wrap from that unopened tape. Something must be wrong with me.
I loved the "Rich Evans knocks off everything" bit, because the real joke is that he's the one who has to put them all back up on the shelf after they're done shooting
I'm sorry to break it to you, but the absolute disgusting abuse Mike put his liver through actually killed him about a year ago- Rich and Jay hired the Canadian boys full time to do their special effects work to make it seem like Mike is still with us. Let it be a lesson to everyone to not drink 4 bottles of vodka in a two hour period every other day, like that dead fucker Mike Stoklasa.
Id forgotten the Toecutter/immorten Joe was in lorca and the outlaws (starship), the knightrider is funny in body melt, which is melty like the incredible melting man which should have starred Uncle Milty Milton Berle, Melty Milty man;)
I’m glad that 8 years of acting school has paid off for Rich Evans. I was fully immersed and invested in his character “Blindfolded man searched for cassette tape”
Can't remember where I heard it, but the theory is that "The Incredible Melting Man" was originally meant to be a comedy, making fun of all sorts of ridiculous monster movies. However, the the studio thought the director was making an actual horror movie. When they heard what was happening, they forced him to make script changes necessary to make it a horror film. When the film got spoofed by MST3K, the director supposedly sent a letter to the show, applauding their riffs on a movie he never really wanted to make.
I actually heard this before, I think I saw this either on the wiki or the comment section. Its also funny that the movie with studio interference was coincidently featured in the same episode, which parodied the behind the scenes on what happened with the MST3K Movie.
It's not a theory, the director confirms it on the blu Ray commentary and in multiple interviews. They went back and reshot huge parts to be serious or cut out scenes that were funny. His commentary is basically him saying how much it sucks.
That was also the movie that sped along the departure of Trace Beaulieu from the cast. There were multiple reasons why he left, but seeing a guy get scraped up and thrown into the trash at the end sort of led him to think, "What am I doing with my life?" Trace wanted Best Brains to be a real production company working on multiple projects, while most of the others were content to keep on keeping on with MST.
Next game: Best of the Wurst. Each contestant chooses a container and it either has a movie in it or a tube meat. If it's a tape, you watch the tape and talk about it. If it's tube meat, the contestant must immediately consume the entire tube meat on-camera and the entire sequence is shown unedited. This continues until at least three tapes are viewed.
good premise, but to sell the idea to the RLM crew... make it all a practical joke to see how many phallic foods they can get Rich to eat on camera. maybe add a rule: only finding a tape will pass to the next player. have Jay go first & he picks the only container with a video then Rich's turn will never end since all remaining containers have the "tube meat" optional surprise twist, actually watch black spines selected by which & how many containers Rich opens before realizing the whole game is bullshit.
"The Incredible Melting Man" is actually an incredibly interesting movie to me. It was originally written and shot as a comedy, but was changed in post to be a straight forward horror film. William Sachs, the writer and director himself, dislikes it. Special effects legend Rob Bottin says it inspired the famous nuclear man from "RoboCop". Matt Maiellaro, co-creator of "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" says it inspired him to create films. Jonathan Demme, famous director of "The Silence of the Lambs", has a supporting acting role in it!!
There is a vhs tape comically suspended inside each of these batches of jello. Whoever eats all of their jello first wins and doesn’t have to watch the films or be on the panel. It’s the meal of the worst.
There is a film like this, and Jay recommended it during the "Synchronic" review. I won't give away whether it is "The Endless" or "Spring" by the same director. It is a plot point in one of them. He may have recommended both, they're both good.
Such is the realm of shitty films not going shitty enough to actually avoid being shitty. It's an _actual_ form of irony, as opposed to every time you hear someone call something ironic. Especially if you hear the word "ironic" online. At that point, it's usually a 20-something who has no idea what "coincidence" means.
Now I understand why they read the back of the tapes. The author of those blurbs is more talented than the actual movie writers and probably had a bigger budget too.
I unironically love that despite being blindfolded Jay, Rich and Jack still found movies basically up their alley. Gross effects horror for Jay, Spaceship sci-fi movie for Rich, Action lady exploitation movie for Jack. That’s just heartwarming. Edit: And Mike won too because all 3 were unwatchable.
To be fair, the shelves are organized by genre, and I'm sure they all have a pretty good idea of the room's layout, well not Mike but, he is an alcoholic
I imagine Mike awake at 2 AM frantically thinking of new ways to torture his friends with stupidest possible methods of selecting movies for the next BOTW
I like to believe Mike was a member of the Gizmonic Institute's AV Dept who was fired not due to gross incompetence but rather he picked even worse films than the other scientists.
"You wondered why you got that package, and you wondered who it came from. You wondered who sent you a box of dung. Well, it was me, Rich! It was me!" 🎶
When I was very young, maybe like six, my grandparents me a book called something like “The Movie Monster Spotters Guide”, it was full of all sorts of monsters from Shrek to Pinhead. It talked a bit about their abilities, weaknesses, origins, and was super sarcastic. I remember one page being about the Incredible Melting Man, the picture it showed always terrified me and I never wanted to see the movie it was from. When I saw the cover on the thumbnail I thought “wait… That’s not the one in that book I have, is it?” Then they mentioned the melting man being affected by Saturn. That book was one of my favorites as a kid, it’s in absolutely terrible condition now thanks to all the use it got, and is still on my bookshelf. I wasn’t expecting to be reminded of such a specific memory of my childhood but I’m all for it.
Okami When you were younger? I pictured a time long ago, but then "Shrek" was mentioned, and realized how young you really are! "Years ago" to me is like the eighties, 😆 Young whippersnappers, with your rock and roll, your Zima and your hula hoops.
@@natalienussbaum1155 , I was born in 1990, and some of the VHS covers of movies that they have reviewed or simply have on their shelves have triggered memories of browsing the video rental store shelves, staring at the different covers and imagining what the movies were about.
Back in 2017 I sent them a VHS tape of my first wedding with most of a bootleg softcore about sex detectives recorded over the reception. I keep hoping that on one black spine episode Rich will turn to the camera and read: "Schwaffenburg Wedding 2002" and shrug, oblivious to what awaits. Ah, what a day...
First(and only) time I saw Faces of Death was a blank tape I found in the backroom at a video store in 2006, though I didn't finish it. Could be worse, but that was disturbing when I was expecting a movie. I had heard of it, but had not been interested in finding a copy. Edit: By back room, I mean storage. I worked there. Just realized it could sound like I was looking for porn. lol
Ha wow that lady avenger cover actually meets the criteria Rich had for the BOTW episode where the cover had to include a woman getting raped and holding a gun, the rape was on the back but still pretty damn close
"Starship is proof that I will never pick a winner." Oh Rich, you are so wrong. You picked Turtle Dreams on Wheel of the Worst. You cannot possibly win any more than Turtle Dreams.
Seeing the shelf knocked over, it only just hit me that that’s the same room they watch them in. For some reason I always assumed it was a separate room, their shitty movies closet or whatever.
If you watch "The Incredible Melting Man" backwards, it's about a questionable pile of leftovers behind a Chili's that slowly materializes into a human male and, after getting into a hiking accident involving a nurse, he inspiringly becomes an astronaut and goes into space. Also, Ted Nelson.
Some fun facts about Starship: Directed by Roger Christian who did production design for Star Wars: A New Hope, second unit for Return of the Jedi, second unit for The Phantom Menace, and he directed Battlefield Earth. This film was also co-written by Matthew Jacobs , who wrote the Doctor Who TV movie.
It the film's defence, no one would have believed back in 1965 that the US military would still be issued with M16s 50+ years later. It's pretty amazing when you think about it. So I'm giving them a pass on the guns.
The best line, to me, in the MST3k episode with Melting Man: when the kids are smoking, someone does an impression of a kid saying "Cmon, we gotta get cracking on this script!"
Three things Lady Avenger has on the cover: Lady holding a gun Might take place in the post apocalypse Depiction of rape If only Rich had found Lady Avenger during the Scavenger Hunt episode. He would've saved a dollar.
The guy who holds up the Polaroids in Starship is actually (the late) Hugh Keays-Byrne, the actor who played Immortan Joe in Fury Road, and Toecutter in Mad Max, which makes Rich's Mad Max joke even funnier. I doubt he realised, though. PS. I'm not going to read through all two and half thousand comments here to see if anyone else noticed...
Rich Evans has Bill Murry plausible deniability by now. He could walk into your house, drink your soda, eat every snack cake present and then whisper "No one will ever believe you." He'd be right.
censoring Rich saying "onions" at 15:53 was definitely just a Mike edit to try to make it seem like Rich was saying something absolutely horrendous. Keep doing God's work, Mike.
His whole persona will only get funnier and funnier as he ages, watching Rich Evans in a walker fall and break his hip will be the funniest thing in our lives in 10 years
So the director of Starship, Roger Christian, won an Academy Award for Best Art Direction for Star Wars, and was nominated for the same for Alien. He also directed BATTLEFIELD EARTH, in addition to Starship. As Clint Eastwood said, "A man has got to know his limitations."
i love how each person picking resumes their personality in a nutshell. jack is picky and delicate and takes forever jay just gets it over with and rich evans is a complete and beautiful mess
Mike probably would've slammed it out of his hands ala a scene from Half in The Bag. Much like if Rich picked up a copy of It's Pat in his clumsy little escapade.
Me when I was first seeing RLM BOTW episodes years ago: "Gawd that guys laugh is annoying af..." Me years later: "I would take a bullet for Rich Evans... nothing will befall this precious man."
I tried adding his laugh to my alarm clock. I managed to sleep through it, dreaming about sleeping in clouds with that angelic voice. My neighbors however didn't appreciate 3 hours of it.
I always love how they demonstrate how cheap and poorly made a scene in a movie is by comparing it directly to something that they themselves have made.
It’s kinda the perfect way to do it. Because either way the movie studio loses. Either it is cheap and poorly made like what RLM does, or the only other option is that is wasn’t cheap and they spent a lot of money of something that looks about as good as 3 middle-aged slobs from Wisconsin can make as a joke. Either way it doesn’t look good for whoever made the movie
This is a sham. There are more tapes of Nukie than any other, so statistically 3 people picking a tape at random would give us the best chance at seeing a review of Nukie. But it's possible we needed to just send in a few more tapes of Nukie.
As a child of the 70s I feel compelled to say that the smoking, cussing, playboy perusing children scene is quite accurate. We had a fort in the woods for those specific activities. We probably started stealing liquor when we were a mature 12.
I was born in the mid 70s, grew up in the 80s and now have two teenage boys... and I give them shit all the time... "Stop talking to all your friends over internet headsets... get outside and accidentally burn down a strip mall after an illegal fireworks accident... or go knock up the neighbors daughter... do something interesting dammit!!!"
I mean, I have friends who did that in my generation (Millennials), but it's because they're parents divorced and they got ignored. Or because they were sent to live in a group home and needed to be drunk/high to cope. As long as there is abuse and neglect, children will always steal and get wasted. It just isn't always a positive experience or fond memory for them, because they might never stop. Sorry to rain on your parade, but my mom is from your generation and was abused by her parents and she doesn't have fond memories of drinking or smoking as a child and teenage. She did it to survive, not because it was fun.
I believe Rich’s destruction is a purposeful art form. He knows exactly what he’s doing. He falls for Mike’s amusement, but his real goal is to destroy all the tapes so he won’t have to watch them.
I remember watching the MST3K episode of The Incredible Melting Man and howling with laughter when self-proclaimed Dr. Ted Nelson won’t stop shouting who he is at the guards, gets blown away, and while they and the melting man stare at each other, Tom Servo (or Mike) calls out, “Nope! No relation to Ted Nelson! Don’t shoot!”
9:25 I know everyone talks about Mike and Rich bickering like an old married couple but the "do you need your peepers?" jab is definitely one of my favorite examples
In the end it's probably going to be Rich who tidies up and puts it back anyway. He only goes as far as he's comfortable, I'm sure, which makes the degree to which he commits extra impressive.
Rich is like the Tom Cruise of geriatrics, letting countless tapes fall on his withered bald spot knowing instant death awaits for the sake of art. A true legend.
I'm amazed they were able to convince whoever owned that gargantuan dump truck to let them use it for "Starship". That thing probably cost orders of magnitude more than the budgets of all 3 of these movies combined.
So glad I caught the debut episode of Blindfold Picks, it's an historic day my dudes. This is going to be one of the all-time great series, like Star Wars. RIP Blindfold Picks, it was a great run, I feel honored to have lived at the same time as Blindfold Picks was airing. Future generations won't know what they missed.
I appreciate that RLM never asks for us to like and subscribe. I feel like they deserve to do so at this point since they have been hovering below 1.5M for awhile now
The Incredible Melting Man is a modern retelling of the HP Lovecraft short story The Outsider, about a man who is reviled everywhere he goes, unable to fit in, and does horrible things for the sake of mere survival. The movie is a masterpiece of modern cinema. I dunno, I haven't seen it.
I just want to say that I really like the phrase "why are all the robots at the discotheque?" It's such a simply sentence by construction, but it evokes such a powerfully bizarre image. It feels like a sample sentence in a "quirky" English textbook.
The whole gang praising the old couple in Melting Man must've been a real difficult moment for Mike considering his hatred for the elderly combined with his utter silence during said part of the conversation.
It looks like it should have had the credit roll over it, but they forgot / couldn't figure out how to alpha layer it (or whatever the tape/film equivalent is)
"And that turkey leg was disgusting too, that was like a 70s turkey leg. I don't even know what that means, but ya look at it and ya know" I don't know why this makes me laugh so hard but its definitely up there for Jay quotes.
I remember picking out Starship from a grocery store’s rental section as a kid. I wanted to rent Army of Darkness, but I wasn’t allowed because it was rated R. I think I made it through 10mins before giving up and going outside to play or something. I never thought I would ever see that movie again. Leave it to RLM to bring back weird memories from my childhood.
Ah Space Wars classics. Who can forget the amazing story of Mark Cloudjumper as he goes from grass farmer to Space Samuzard along with lovable scoundrel Sal Co-op, the lovely princess Lina Oregano, and who can forget the funny bots S3-E3 and D-4OP. As they join the Rebel Squad and fight the evil Kingdom and the evil Lowitt.
Genuinely glad to hear Rich describe Reacher the literal exact same way I've described it when recommending it to my friends: "It's just high-quality action schlock."
Great to have someone who can effortlessly string coherent sentences together and give genuinely funny and clever views on things. Josh, the Canadians, Jack, the best!
Yeah, he's a good foil to the other, less animated lads. Some people find him annoying, and sure, he can be at times, but I find his energy provides some nice contrast to the depressive alcoholism the other regulars deliver. Besides, he's a feckin' riot when he gets drunk.
I swear, I want Mike to watch "Arena" for best of the worst, it's such a sci-fi B movie, and he'll go nuts once he realizes Gul Dukat and Quark are in it.
Jay has already mentioned it, I think in a Half in the Bag? If memory serves me he said it should get remade so not sure he thinks it's BotW quality, feels more like a random HitB like Rawhead Rex
Imagine having your skin melt and people start calling you 'incredible', as if that's a miracle. I bet the dude would have taken offense had he heard that. I mean the guy was an astronaut, he was probably very credible.
Incredible Melting Man, one of my favorite MST3K episodes, and one of my favorite movies featuring the director of Silence of the Lambs in a cameo role. Plus Rick Baker being let off the leash as far as special effects and inspiring himself for his later work in Robocop.
If you haven't seen it, the MST3K treatment to The Incredibly Melting Man is utterly hilarious, with one of the funniest lines ever: Crow: "How many monsters movies end with a janitor scooping the monster into a garbage can?"
This gimmick really does reveal a lot about the philosophy of Jack, Jay, and Rich. Jay does the bare minimum, and he's happy, Jack is far more exploratory and thoughtful about his selection and the way each case feels, and Rich just wants total destruction.
As a librarian and collector, seeing Rich fall step on tapes and throw them around with reckless abandon is a deep pain. As a fan of comedy, it's one of the greatest parts of my day.
I just found out: The German release title of "the incredible melting man" is "Der Planet Saturn lässt schön grüssen" which translates as "nice greetings from planet Saturn."
Fun Fact: Regarding the song "Don't Bring Me Down" by Electric Light Orchestra, the often misheard lyric, "Don't bring me down, Bruce" is actually, "Don't bring me down, grüss."
Jack has a spontaneous quality to him, which in actuality i think is more of an honed skill. His movements and expressions are always on point, his timing is pretty good, while seemingly passing for the less comedic of the group. Mike lets us peek into the mind of the comic sometimes, lets us take a look behind the curtain with his exaggerated delivery, Jack is more deadpan and gonzo but, like i said, i think it's intentional. Josh is great too, maybe the nerdier of the group in a way, he has that " music store owner" persona, really enjoyable. You just know he knows his stuff
In 5 years, Mike will just put everyone in a sensory deprivation chamber for a week and then let them pick a film. Only to go against the rules and just watch something he wants.
It brings a tear to my eye, the amazing care and effort rich evans in particular puts into maintaining your vhs archive to preserve history for future generations. He truly has a passion for his work the likes of which most of us could only dream of.
