The Film Crew
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| The Film Crew | |
|---|---|
 Box Art for Hollywood After Dark |
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| Written by | Michael J. Nelson Kevin Murphy Bill Corbett |
| Starring | Michael J. Nelson Kevin Murphy Bill Corbett |
| Distributed by | Shout! Factory |
| Release date(s) | July 10, 2007 August 7, 2007 September 11, 2007 October 9, 2007 |
| Running time | Approx. 90min. |
| Country |  United States |
| Language | English |
The Film Crew are a comedic team similar to Mystery Science Theater 3000, comprising former MST3K cast members Michael J. Nelson, Bill Corbett, and Kevin Murphy. They hosted Legend Films' colorized Three Stooges DVD release, packing in the four Stooge shorts that have fallen into the public domain: Disorder in the Court (1936), Malice in the Palace (1949), Sing a Song of Six Pants, and Brideless Groom (both 1947).
The Film Crew also maintain a website with humor columns and other content geared toward its fans. They also contribute regular humor articles to the RiffTrax Blog.
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[edit] On television
The Film Crew also occasionally hosts segments between movies on American Movie Classics, Sundance Channel, and the Starz/Encore cable channels in the United States.
In August 2005, during Encore's "Midnight Movies" schedule, The Film Crew provided introductions for the documentary on the subject Midnight Movies: From the Margin to the Mainstream and for the cult classics The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Reefer Madness, Night of the Living Dead, The Harder They Come, and Pink Flamingos.
[edit] On DVD
[edit] Announcement
On October 19, 2006, it was announced that The Film Crew would be providing commentary tracks for a series of B-movies beginning in July 2007 through Shout! Factory. To promote their announcement, the Crew offered a poll on their website asking viewers to sample clips of each film and choose which they would prefer to see released first out of the four titles announced.
The four titles, in order of votes received (and, as a result, their release order), are:
- Winner: Hollywood After Dark, starring Rue McClanahan (of The Golden Girls fame)
- Second Place: Killers from Space, starring Peter Graves
- Third Place: The Wild Women of Wongo, a movie described by the popular board game Balderdash as "A group of ugly cave men living with a group of beautiful cave women meet a group of beautiful cave men living with a group of ugly cave women."
- Fourth Place: The Giant of Marathon, starring a "well-oiled" Steve Reeves
Clips from each of the films with The Film Crew's commentary are currently available through YouTube and other popular online venues.[1] The four films are available for sale through Amazon.com, Shout! Factory, and other online retailers.
[edit] Premise
The Film Crew, stuck in the confines of a basement at work, lay down commentary tracks to every obscure movie without one as dished to them by their boss, Bob Honcho. As part of their job, each of the three wears a matching 'working-class' uniform and an unwieldy headset while riffing on each film.
From the viewer's perspective, the film commentary sounds exactly like a latter-day MST3K episode (Mike, Kevin/Servo, Bill/Crow), only without the silhouettes of the MST characters at the bottom of the screen.
[edit] Segments
In a nod perhaps to the old Mystery Science Theater 3000 host segments, each release contains a short 'Lunch Break' sketch.
[edit] Production
The episodes were produced in 2005, and then shopped around to distributors, eventually being picked up by Rhino Entertainment. Unfortunately Rhino Entertainment was approached by Jim Mallon of Best Brains, who threatened to pull future releases of MST3K from Rhino's distribution unless they passed on the series (Mallon claiming that it was "too similar to MST3K" and that Rhino had to choose either MST3K or Film Crew). Rhino then ended their relationship with The Film Crew. It wasn't until 2007 that arrangement were made with Shout! Factory to release the material (requiring some "looping" of lines from the original scripts - specifically, "Bob Honcho" was originally named "Bob Rhino", and this had to be changed due to Rhino no longer being the distributor). During the delay, the cast had already moved on to the similar project RiffTrax, which complicates the issue of any possible future Film Crew episodes.[2]
Releases are NTSC but have no region encoding (known as Region 0). Thus, they can be played in any DVD player and television combination supporting the NTSC signal. Each released episode contains at least one 'extra' ('Ode to Lunch' in Hollywood After Dark and 'Did You Know...' on Killers from Space).
As of May 14th, The Film Crew's website www.filmcrewonline.com is no longer active, and now seems to be another generic link page being operated by GoDaddy.com.
[edit] References
- ^ The Film Crew Online
- ^ "Talk to me, peoples" - online chat with Bill Corbett on the RiffTrax site
[edit] External links
- The Film Crew Online (currently inactive)
- Kevin W. Murphy's website
- Michael J. Nelson's website
- Michael J. Nelson at the Internet Movie Database
- Bill Corbett at the Internet Movie Database
- Kevin Murphy at the Internet Movie Database
- Satellite News
- RiffTrax
- Shout! Factory
- Film Crew: Wild Women of Wongo - Review
- Film Crew: Killers From Space - Review
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