Cheap Mystery Science Theater 3000 - I Accuse My Parents (DVD) (Sam Newfield) Price

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Customer Reviews of Mystery Science Theater 3000 - I Accuse My Parents

I accuse the producers
I love Mystery Science theater and I've written several reviews for episodes I've bought on Amazon. When I was looking for new episodes to buy and came across this one, the reviews made "I Accuse My Parents" sound like the most amazing DVD in the world. It wasn't. I did, do, and always will like Mike better than Joel. This episode (wih Joel) was a huge dissappointment after reading all the fantastic reviews.
The movie is about a kid who's on trial for something...murder or robbery or drug smuggling...and he blames his neglectful and adulterous parents for causig him to go to the dark side. The movie was tedious, the comments weren't all that funny, and I found myself wishing I had spent the money on blank videos to tape the episodes with Mike on the Sci-Fi channel.
The funniest part was the short at the beginning of the movie "Truck farming" which had its moments.

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the stirring sequel to j'accuse...
i accuse my parents is kinda underrated. it's a good episode. it features one of those great, inexplicably weird characters: the guy who runs the hamburger stand. if somebody was being that kind to me, religious or not, i'd get out of there tout suite.

i was just thinking, this movie really defies the title MYSTERY SCIENCE theater 3000. there's really no mystery or science, except perhaps the twisted psyche of main character jimmy, which mike and the bots explore in one of the skits. the truck farmer short is pretty funny, and provides a frigteningly unflinching look at mexican near-slave labor (apparently it's not a big deal).

i try to mention something for NEW fans in all of my reviews, so here we go: i wouldn't START here in exploring mst3k, but it's a good place to go once you've experienced some classic episodes like manos and red zone cuba

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One the funniest, most charming episodes with Joel as host
This DVD from Rhino offers up one the funniest -- and most charming -- episodes of the legendary TV show "Mystery Science Theater 3000," where they take on a 1944 drama/gangster movie/message flick called, "I Accuse My Parents." There are few episodes of the show I recommended higher for all-around quality.

For those of you unfamiliar with "Mystery Science Theater 3000," (MST3K for short) it is a ninety-minute show featuring a silhouette of a man and two robots (Tom Servo and Crow T. Robot) in movie theater seats projected in front of a bad movie. The hosts provide hysterical, satiric, and culturally-savvy wisecracks to accompany the movie. The episodes also includes sketches and songs and adds up to some of the most hilarious comedy you will ever see.

"I Accuse My Parents" is episode #507, from the last days of Joel Hodgson's run as host. Although the movie itself is actually not that bad, this episode comes at point in the show's development when the writers and performers were at the peak of the powers, and the result is one of the most hilarious episodes, and one that really grows on you with its sense of warm parody. It's a good episode for newcomers as well, since the film is average enough so that its awfulness doesn't distract from the wisecracks. (I've noticed that when I show an episode of the show to a friend who has never seen it before, the worse the movie being parodied is, the more my friend focuses on the movie instead of the hosts. This, therefore, is a good "training" episode.)

The camaraderie between the cast is quite wonderful here, and the warm, jocular style of the Joel years is at its strongest. After Mike Nelson took over as host (a few episodes later), the comedy style became more satiric and antagonistic toward the film. I love both hosts, but there is something rather magical and pleasant about the comedy of Joel's stint as host, and this episode displays that style perfectly. It is one of quintessential Joel Hodgson episodes.

The movie is a competently shot 'B' programmer from low-budget studio PRC. Our hero is Jimmy, a really stupid high school graduate who has to get a job at a shoe store despite his skills at essay writing (he won an essay content and mentions it endlessly). While lying to impress a girl, Jimmy idiotically ends up getting into debt and having to go to work as a courier for a gangster, while he also romances the gangster's girl Kitty (played by actress Mary Beth Hughes, who also appears in another MST3K episode, "Last of the Wild Horses.") Well, pretty soon our poor fool is in trouble with the law and the mob and on the run. And when it all explodes in his face, whom does he accuse? Yep, the title gives it away: His Parents! And why? Because they drink and argue. See, it's all their fault.

What makes this episode so dang funny is not that the film is particularly rotten looking or the acting is awful, but because the film's premise and main character are so stupid. The hosts lance into the characters at every point: Jimmy's incessant lying ("I liberated France while you were out dancing"), Jimmy's constant bragging about winning an essay constant ("Welcome to the Annual Essay Awards Ceremony!") his alcoholic parents who keep throwing money at him ("I'm up here with the D.T.s, honey! Would you get the yellow lizard out of the bathroom?"), Jimmy's rank stupidity ("Sir, I just don't get the holy spirit. Is it a bird?"), and the extremely obvious gangster organization ("Organized crime, please hold...organized crime, please hold...). This is a very 'character'-driven episode, and it's hilarious. There's also some great sketches between movie watching. In one sketch, Joel and the Robots psychoanalyze Jimmy to show that more than just 'drunk folks' are behind his problems. (Crow, or course, determines that Jimmy is just stupid.)

This DVD is a laugh riot, and a quintessential Joel episode. It feels like plunking down on the couch and watching a film with your best buddies; I think that's the main charm of the Joel years of the show. Newcomers and old fans alike will want this classic. (There are absolutely no extras on the DVD, however, but the episode is such a gem, it doesn't matter.)