majorjoe23

To celebrate the show's 20th anniversary, all the singles are $10 starting tomorrow on the MST3k.com website. I've missed a few of these, but at this price I can't pass them up, assuming shipping doesn't suck.

drak b

Not an incredible bargain (shipping hurts) but quite respectable all the same.

For $68.95, I picked up:

RS2272 I Accuse My Parents $10.00
RS6602 Eegah! $10.00
RS2265 Mitchell $10.00
RS2334 Red Zone Cuba $10.00
RS2277 The Crawling Hand $10.00
RS972275 The Hellcats $10.00

Happily, this completes my collection of MST3K released on DVD (so far... )

Thanks for the post!

The Monkees

Wow, I figured it would be all the ones in the packs, but it's only like 9 titles. I wanted Santa Claus Conquers the Martians...

Unless I missed something.

Mikael79

It's hard to believe it's been 20 years since I was a little kid watching this show on TV back in Minnesota.

I believe I have 2 more single DVDs left in order to have every one released so far, so I'll get those two and wait for the next set to come out.

minnesota

deepdiscount has it
http://www.deepdiscount.com/viewprod...uctId=5782767#

edit: every time I post the link the forum ads a bunch of scripts junk to the link. Is this normal?

HockeyMan2000

I love MST3K but their DVDs are so overpriced it's absurd. $10 for 1 EPISODE is a bargain? Lame....

darkside

$10 for a movie riffed. Hardly expensive. Each episode is 92 minutes and they typically have to pay rights for the movie used on top of the royalties for the performers. These definitely cost Rhino some money to get produced.

whotony

was there an ep of ms3tk were they were making fun of sinbad and tony danza?

they were pretending to hypnotize someone by saying "sinbad is funny, tony danza is an accomplished actor"

Qrusher14242

That was Santa Claus Conquers the Martins

excom101

Yes. It makes it so DVDTalk gets affiliate credit/money back from your purchases.

digitalG

You'd think they'd give a special for the box sets, man they are charging way to many beans. I will be happy with my pirates ass copies until they give better pricing on dem' box sets..

HockeyMan2000

A load of these films are public domain so I highly doubt they are up to their arms in payments to whatever companies they got them from (if any). It'd be one thing if it were STAR TREK V or BATMAN FOREVER but the large majority of the films -- not all, but I'd say most -- are cheapies not produced by major studios or are entirely public domain. I can find MANOS or SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS or MITCHELL in about a dozen public domain compilations, no reason they have to charge extra for "licensing" those titles.

As far as "royalty payments" go -- that doesn't make any sense either. If your explanation were true, we'd be paying over $100 per-season for every major network live-action series that's been released on DVD. I highly doubt the MST3K guys are making a fortune off these.

Any way you look at it, Rhino is charging a premium for these discs, no question, and they can get away with it because the fan base is so rabid that they'll buy anything regardless of the price.

Jay G.

Just because a film is in some compilation with public domain titles doesn't mean it's actually public domain. Also, while some of the films may actually be in the public domain, there's still a good number that aren't. Negotiating the rights to these films may not be as easy or inexpensive as one would expect, especially if the rights-holders know that the MST3K releases are likely the only way they'll be making money on some of these films, and may mistakenly have the impression that these releases are huge sellers.

Also, it's possible that some of the releases that were of a lower cost to produce are in part financing other releases that cost significantly more. It also makes sense to keep the pricing for the releases as similar as possible, so fans aren't complaining about higher prices for the more expensive releases that, on the surface, aren't offering anything different than the cheaper releases.

I believe I've read that the performers don't get any royalties from the DVD sales; a point of contention and one reason behind the lack of supplementary material on the releases.

The lower price of many major releases is because those releases are going to sell a high volume of copies. MST3K is a niche title, and the DVD releases of it are never going to make any best seller lists. It's a good thing that the small but fanatical fan base is happy to pay a premium for a lower-volume title; otherwise, the DVD releases may have died out by this point.

darkside

Rhino does license many of the films. We have seen evidence of this when they lose the license and pull the DVDs. Also sometimes a film may be public domain, but the version used by MST3K is a version for TV that is under license. One of the reasons they went for the box set format was to make the episodes more affordable. Maybe only 2 of the 4 films are licensed to bring down the costs. I've been able to get most of the sets around $30 which helps.

I think I also read the performers get none of the royalties. Hell, Mallon and Joel may be the only ones that get any money depending on how the deals worked. Rhino is paying something to Best Brains for the release however.

Another thing to remember is these releases are niche. They are probably not printing up the numbers they do for Seinfield so they may need to charge a bit more to make the profits they want. The fanbase may be rabid, but it is fairly small.

There is just no way you can convince me a 92 minute episode of one of the greatest shows in history is not worth $10. Cinematic Titantic is running a pretty lean operation and they still needed to charge $13 for the pilot episode. Hell, a simple Rifftrax is $4.

ElCambio

If Rhino wanted to offer this show at a lower price per episode, one thing they could do is put two episodes on each disc. They're probably spreading the sets across four discs and using more expensive "special" packaging in order to justify a higher price.

Jay G.

The Cinematic Titanic release is $16, not $13. The comparable Film Crew releases have an MSRP of $19.99, and can be bought for around $13. So $10 for a MST3K episode of the same length as those is a good deal.

billz

I'm just glad we all have something to argue about here. The MSTie players are still working! That benefits us all.

darkside

This is definitely true. I was thinking download only which wasn't available on the pilot. The service they use charges an extra $3 to send you a disc. It would have been $13 for direct download to burn yourself.

creekdipper

I went to the MST3k.com site & only got links to short vids to view...no store or discs to purchase. Am I going to the wrong site or just missing the links??

{Edit: Never mind...tried clicking on the very bottom of the screen at the edge of the window & got connected to the store.}

Lecithin

Sometimes Amazon puts these on sale for $9.98 or so and you could get them with free shipping (that's how I got all mine, anyway) if you want to hold out for a slightly cheaper option, but sometimes the license expires and they have to pull certain episodes, so sometimes waiting for a price drop can be hazardous (like the Vol. 10 box set I almost missed out on) so weigh your options.

domino harvey

A thing to remember about licensing is that the films that are in public domain may contain music which is not, which has to be paid for and cleared. Same story for when your robot pals start singing lines of a song they didn't write for comedic effect-- there is actually a limit to how much you can sing/hum a song before you have to pay for it.