Product Details

• Format: Color, NTSC
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Rhino / Wea
• VHS Release Date: July 21, 1998
• Run Time: 92 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6305038619
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #141,235 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The MST3K shorts are the best part of the show!, August 13, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Mystery Science Theater 3000 - Shorts [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Three of the shorts on this video are absolute gems. "Body Care and Grooming," with its preachy, condescending 50s rules that anyone with half a brain should already know, makes us roar with laughter, especially how the heroine is alternately shamed like a cheap tramp and upheld as a pure white goddess of cleanliness . . . with robotic comments such as, "Grooming is between you and the Lord God." "A Date with Your Family" (also known as "The Woody Allen Story") is hysterical, the best part being when the family displays the behaviors that are to be avoided at the dinner table (Sister asks herself, "I wonder if I should have washed my hands after handling that dead woodchuck?") The "Cheating" short is also a laugh riot, as the high school boy, who appears to live all alone in a perpetually dark house ("It might help if Johnny had some parents!"), is sucked into a Kafka-esque web of cheating that eventually draws his poor friend Mary in, too (the robots urge, "Sweet Mary, nooooooo!") The other four shorts are funny, too, and definitely better than most any comedy you'll see on t.v. I highly recommend this and any other shorts tapes that may come out in the future.

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars * ... bringing the total to six stars, December 3, 2001

By 

Andrew S. Rogers (Stamford, Connecticut) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Mystery Science Theater 3000 - Shorts [VHS] (VHS Tape)

For sustained entertainment value, it's hard to beat the MST3K shorts, and some of the series' very best are on this video. If I could give it six stars, I would.

'The Home Economics Story' and 'Why Study Industrial Arts?' are propaganda for these underappreciated subjects, while 'A Date with Your Parents' encourages young people to make time for the folks who are paying your way through life, you little ingrates. 'The Chicken of Tomorrow' is an awe-inspiring look at advances in the world of poultry science, while 'Junior Rodeo Daredevils' shows us future poultry scientists risking their necks for prizes and acclaim. 'Cheating' and 'Body Care and Grooming' discuss, well, cheating and grooming (apparently the former is bad, the latter good).

The Best Brains (the folks behind MST3K) seem to have been able to pack as much comedy into a short as they sometimes did into an entire full-length film. This video highlights some of their best work, and features new host segments by Tom Servo. If you or the MSTie you love don't have this yet, get it right away!

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Seven classic MST3K shorts, August 23, 2002

By 

Daniel Jolley "darkgenius" (Shelby, North Carolina USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Mystery Science Theater 3000 - Shorts [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Many MSTies will agree with me when I say that the short films are often funnier and more enjoyable than the featured movies the Satellite of Love inhabitants are forced to watch. Among the seven shorts collected in this initial volume are some of the funniest ones produced by Best Brains. Of course, most of these productions are pretty funny to begin with, and one gains much insight into the America which produced these silly, seemingly unnecessary educational/informational videos. Body Care and Grooming, a true MST3K classic, immediately comes to mind. Did teenagers in the 1950s really have to be introduced to the concept of grooming and shown by way of video examples the steps involved in such a process? Apparently so, if this video is any indication. Of course, it also includes a subtle connotation that young people should all look and act a certain way, prompting the sagacious Crow to comment that "expressing individualism is just plain wrong" in reaction. A Date With Your Family (referred to on the SOL as The Woody Allen Story) is a similar, yet even weirder little short which the guys rip into gleefully. While it makes the case that a family should come together every night to enjoy each other's company over dinner, it essentially implies that a woman's place is in the home; the women, it declares, seem to feel as if they owe it to the men to look relaxed, rested, and attractive at dinnertime. With comments from the narrator such as "the boys greet Dad as if they are genuinely glad to see him" (necessarily implying that they are not), this short is hilarious in and of itself, but it is made even funnier by comments from the guys (such as Servo's classic line "A violent argument erupts about whose day was more pleasant"). The Home Economics Story is another endorsement of female domestication from the 50s which the guys do a great job of humorously criticizing. If the girls are supposed to dream no higher than home economics, the boys aren't offered the grandest of options, either, as Why Study Industrial Arts? reveals. Chicken of Tomorrow introduces us to the birth, life, and deaths of the nation's chickens, presented in purely economic terms. It is a rather involved process, prompting Mike to wonder why eggs don't cost about $100 apiece, but its purpose is unclear; after all, did men and women need to be sold on eating chicken and eggs? Junior Rodeo Daredevils is probably the funniest short on this tape. The only thing funnier than watching youngsters being thrown from horses and bulls in a rodeo is hearing the reactions from Joel and the Bots about the physical effects of such events. For me, though, the true gem here is Cheating. This video alone seems to have some merit, but the stiff acting and monotonous delivery of lines leaves this short wide open to hilarious assault by our more than able crew of cynics and jokesters. Breaking this video of 92 minutes down, we have two shorts with Joel and five with Mike; all of them are quite enjoyable no matter how many times you see them. Hosted by Tom Servo, this tape (and its two follow-up volumes) is a must-buy keeper for all MSTies.