Rhino Home Video is the distributor of episodes of the television show Mystery Science Theater 3000.
Since Rhino first release on April 30, 1996 of three VHS episodes there has been nothing but disappointment and evidence of Rhino’s ineptness to releasing Mystery Science Theater 3000.
Explanations for their incompetence vary from “they’re trying their best” to the infamous “rights issues,” are simply poor excuses for the true stupidity of those at Rhino Home Video.
The reasons of simple stupidity to outright idiocy range from things like releasing an episode with Mike as host and putting Joel on the cover to a transfer of
Merlin's Shop of Mystical Wonders that was transferred, apparently, under the supervision of Torgo himself.
Their releasing of MST3K is not only bad to hardcore MSTies, but simply bad business overall.
To be fair, we have only accumulated the facts of Rhino's carelessness, to show, gentle reader that they just didn't care
Reasons:
1. Rhino has an incredible inconsistency when releasing quality products, or at least for Mystery Science Theater.
On one release Merlin's Shop of Mystical Wonders, the picture is incredibly dark and murky, colors are off, and it looks like it should have come from one of those dollar DVD's at
Wal-Mart, not from a company that makes you fork out 50 bucks for something that you probably already taped off the television.
Recent DVD releases other than Merlin also seem a bit too dark (though not near as bad as
Merlin), episodes that could be released in stereo are still released in mono (making the digital episodes from
www.castleforrester.com higher quality than Rhino releases).
And yet again, with the recent release of Volume 8, Rhino screws up yet again by giving us a slightly too dark disc of
Phantom Planet and a glitch galore version of The Dead Talk
Back.
Human error? Or perhaps they just didn't care.
2. Rhino, since 1996, has only released 37 episodes on Mystery Science Theater 3000.
Yes, that's right, there are nearly 200 episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000, and Rhino has barely released over 15% of them over the past eight years, when idiotic shows like
Friends got a full DVD release of every episode. Although some episodes cannot be released due to the rights holders of the movies, I must emphasize that Rhino has only released 19 of around at least 50 episodes that are in public domain.
That means that Rhino had to buy the right to 18 episodes of the 37, when some episodes are just waiting to be used.
Some of those episodes, that have yet to be released are the Hercules movies, the first half of season one, any serial, and
Santa Claus. That’s right, RHINO HATES SANTA!
Further proof that they just didn't care.
3. Further proof can be seen in Rhino's so called release dates or episodes that were supposed to come out ages ago. Here's their list from back in the day:
April 30, 1996: 301–Cave Dwellers,
309–The Amazing Colossal Man, 512–Mitchell
Fall of 1996: 303–Pod People, 513–The Brain That Wouldn't
Die.
1997 was to be released in three sets:
Set 1: 305–Stranded in Space, 402–The Giant Gila Monster,
505–Magic Voyage of Sinbad, 508–Operation Double 007,
517–Beginning of the End
Set 2: 322–Master Ninja 1, 404–Teenagers from Outer Space,
424–MANOS' The Hands of Fate, 509–Girl in Lover's Lane,
605–Colossus & the Headhunters
Set 3: 212–Godzilla vs. Megalon, 321–Santa Claus Conquers Martians,
408–Hercules
Unchained, 504–Secret Agent Super Dragon, 521–Santa Claus
Some of those episodes were finally released, about a decade later.
Rhino just decided to sit on them.
Again, they just didn't care.
4. Not only have supportive MST fans taped the episode
Manos: The Hands of Fate, but they had also bought it when Rhino released in on VHS, and then bought it on DVD.
And then, after years and years, Rhino finally releases a fan favorite called
Santa Claus Conquers the Martians and makes you shell out extra bucks by double-dipping, pairing the long awaited episode with
Manos. They can't even get the title right calling it
Manos: Hands of Fate.
Are we being picky? Or they just didn't care.
5. Natural box sets are thrown out the window in favor of random episode assortments. Instead of for the first box set releasing maybe a
"Best of" for season one (or release the whole damn season seeing as most of it is PD), they put three Mike episode and a Joel episode with no rhyme or reason.
Also, the Hercules episodes were not released together.
Only two of them were on Volume 7 (and note how all of them are public domain).
Hell all of them WERE released in a box set by Rhino, only it was the UnMSTied version.
Santa Claus Conquers the Martians gets released with the double-dipped
Manos instead of it's natural partner Santa Claus (a PD movie, plus it was originally going to be released in 1997).
Once more, they just didn't care.
6. Rhino care nothing of chronology of the series.
They release Hired Part 2, BEFORE Hired Part 1.
God knows how hard that would be since Bride of the Monster is public domain.
I think you know where we're going with this...it's just more proof that they just didn't care.
7. You know that $50 dollars you have to dish out every time you buy a new box set?
You know you COULD be paying $20 for it seeing as Rhino can fit four episodes on one disc.
How? Easy....
Have a two-sided disc (like with Wild World of
Batwoman, The Crawling Hand, Hellcats, etc.)
Have two episodes on one disc (like Eegah! which features the episode and movie on one side, and don't even think for a second that it will hurt the quality as
Eegah! has the best quality of all of the DVDs).
So instead of being charged $20, you have to pay $60 in some places.
Once again they just didn't care.
8. Rhino seems to take no care in packaging their MST3K products either!
We have episodes with episodes number mistakes (The Creeping
Terror), confusion to whether the episode is a Joel or Mike episode
(Wild World of Batwoman), and quotes of riffs that are quoted wrong.
Several episodes have the Joel theme song even when it's a Mike episode.
Just about every release has the generic Joel silhouette, whether it be a Mike or Joel episode.
And at least one of these things seems to happen just about every release.
They just didn't care folks.
9. Rhino has been know to cut footage. EVEN if Best Brains is at fault for sending them a faulty tape, Rhino Home Video should be able to catch it.
They’re a professional home video company. For god sakes, they’re only owned by the biggest media conglomerate in the world. Some of the footage missing.
–Stinger from The Atomic Brain, which was blamed on Best Brains.
Even so when they went for the DVD released they never even bothered to correct it, even though they KNEW there was a mistake.
–A line from Pod People. Yes, it’s just a line, but just more evidence that they don’t really care if they cut out a line from
Pod People for no reason.
–Cutting part of the host segment from The Amazing Colossal
Man.
–Cutting the mucus riff from the Home Economics short.
–Worst of all, cutting the entire opening narration and riffing to that in
The Killer Shrews DVD.
I think you know where were going with this....they just didn't care.
10. And now after the missing footage in The Killer
Shrews, Rhino tried to redeem themselves by giving us new discs free of charge of the episode with the missing footage restored.
But it took them months and months to get them all out, according to the various members of our discussion forum.
They announced the next box set, before even fixing the problems with the old one.
Maybe...just maybe... THEY JUST DIDN'T CARE!
THEY JUST DIDN'T CARE
And there you have it folks. They could easily fit a short season (13 episodes or in the case of season 7, you got 6 episodes) on five discs, and a long season on 10 to 12 discs.
But no, instead, we are given mediocrity. Rhino Entertainment, like Salieri, is the champion of mediocrity.
But we deserved better, especially since not even a fourth of the episodes have been released, and that's going all the way back to 1996.
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