The Film Crew

infobox movie
name = The Film Crew


caption = Box Art for "Hollywood After Dark"
format = Film Commentary/Sketch Comedy
runtime = Approx. 90min.
distributor = Shout! Factory
writer = Michael J. Nelson
Kevin Murphy
Bill Corbett
starring = Michael J. Nelson
Kevin Murphy
Bill Corbett
language = English
country = USA
released = July 10, 2007 August 7, 2007 September 11, 2007 October 9, 2007
first_aired = 2007

The Film Crew were 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 maintained a website with humor columns and other content geared toward its fans.

On television

The Film Crew also occasionally hosted 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 "" and for the cult classics "The Rocky Horror Picture Show", "Reefer Madness", "Night of the Living Dead", "The Harder They Come", and "Pink Flamingos".

On DVD

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

Premise

The Film Crew, stuck in the confines of a basement at work, lay down commentary tracks to every obscure movie 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.

Segments

Each release contained a short 'Lunch Break' sketch.

Production

The episodes were produced in 2005 in association with Rhino Entertainment, who were to distribute the episodes on DVD. However, Rhino 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).Fact|date=August 2008 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).

Releases were NTSC but have no region encoding. Each released episode contains at least one 'extra' ('Ode to Lunch' in "Hollywood After Dark" and 'Did You Know...' on "Killers from Space").

End

During the delay when there was no distributor for the Film Crew DVDs, the sets were destroyed and the cast moved on to the similar project RiffTrax, complicating the issue of any possible future Film Crew episodes. [ [http://blog.rifftrax.com/2007/12/20/talk-to-me-people/#comment-936 "Talk to me, peoples"] - online chat with Bill Corbett on the RiffTrax blog] Kevin Murphy has indicated that "We haven’t gotten any new orders from Shout Factory - the new home of MST by the way - and since Rifftrax is becoming so much fun, I think you may have seen the last of the Film Crew." [ [http://blog.rifftrax.com/2008/02/20/i-got-yer-twenty-questions-right-here/#comment-4719 I Got Yer Twenty Questions, Right Here!] - online chat with Kevin Murphy on the Rifftrax blog]

As of July 13th, 2008, The Film Crew's former website, filmcrewonline.com, is no longer online.

References

External links

* [http://www.shoutfactory.com/browse/126/the_film_crew.aspx The Film Crew] at Shout! Factory
* [http://www.rifftrax.com/ RiffTrax]