As I said in the A entry, there were a lot of crappy sci-fi movies made on the cheap that were easy to obtain for MST3K and later Rifftrax. In the A entry we dealt with aliens coming to Earth but there were also plenty that remained in, wait for it, outer space.
Oblivion & Oblivion: Backlash: These were made in the mid-90s in Eastern Europe on the cheap. They were a sci-fi Western that would be like Firefly if it all took place on one planet and were pretty bad. The first one involves a lizard alien coming to the world of Oblivion to kill the sheriff and the sheriff's son then avenging his murder.
The town looks like your average Wild West ghost town dressed up with a lot of outdoor ceiling fans for some reason. Maybe they're supposed to be wind turbines? In the town there's Miss Kitty--played by Julie Newmar, of course--who runs the bar/whorehouse and likes to act like a cat. There's also a doctor/inventor played by George Takei who spouts bad Star Trek puns and rambles drunkenly through most of the first movie. And an attractive widow who runs the general store and becomes a target for the sheriff's son's affections.
The most interesting character is the town mortician played by that really tall guy who was Lurch in the Addams Family movies and Lawxana Troi's servant on Star Trek The Next Generation. Every time he comes out of his shop people run in terror because he only appears when someone is going to die, though he can't sense exactly who. Still, it's best not to be around him. Unlike those other things, in this the guy actually gets some lines other than grunting and growling, so that must have been a nice change of pace for him.
The bad guy in the first movie had a henchwoman called Backlash who carried a whip and dressed in a lot of black leather. In the second movie she obtains the rights for a mine that has something valuable that could make her a lot of money, but other people want it. The sheriff and a shapeshifting bounty hunter go after her and Miss Kitty, who holds some secret to the mine.
In a way the second one is better as Julie Newmar tones down the cat act and Backlash does more than just attempt to titillate. But there's still George Takei spouting annoying puns so it's not that much better. It's one of those that looks a lot older than it actually is because of the lame effects.
Space Mutiny: This MST3K episode was referenced in at least one Rifftrax episode so when I saw I could rent it on Amazon I decided to watch it. I think I'd seen it a couple years earlier on Netflix or Hulu when they still had MST3K. Anyway, it's a 1988 movie that looks much older because it uses IBM PC computers and old footage from Battlestar Galactica-the original series, obviously. I'm not sure if they just ripped off the footage of the show or if they bought the models or what but the fighters and main ship are exactly the same. The plot involves a mutiny of the security forces called "Enforcers" who go about it in the most half-assed way possible because apparently there are no other combat people on the ship except one burly fighter pilot who falls in love with the captain's daughter. The captain is played by Cameron Mitchell in a bad fake beard. While the outside of the ship looks like the Galactica, the inside has all sorts of pipes and conduits like a factory. And they drive around in these pathetic little bumper cars that look more like what janitors use to wax floors. Meanwhile the bridge uses TVs, IBM PCs, and graphics that look like they're from an Atari 2600. But the funniest part is a bridge crewwoman is murdered but in the next scene you see her sitting at her station on the bridge! Either she has an identical twin or she came back to life. It's even worse than the headlight coming back in Mitchell!
In the intermission skits the evil Pearl Forrester and her henchmen have to escape from ancient Rome. There's some irony when they coerce Mike to help them and he struggles to seduce a Roman woman played by his real-life wife. Another irony is that while this has never aired on Pluto TV they used to use a few seconds of footage during promos advertising which MST3K episode was on currently and coming up next.
In 2018 there was a Rifftrax Live showing of Space Mutiny that was added to Amazon about a year later. Unlike the MST3K version the Rifftrax Live one is unedited except for a part that shows boobs; they have a digital "gorilla gram" covering the naughty bits. Even complete the story still makes little sense. Perhaps the most hilarious part though is at the beginning when Kevin Murphy comes out dressed in a silver robe like Cameron Mitchell's in the movie.
Manhunt in Space & Crash of the Moons: These are two old 50s sci-fi B movies on MST3K involving the adventures of Rocky Jones, a space ranger or whatever. He and his annoying sidekick fly around in a cheesy rocket ship on a string. Manhunt in Space features bad guys trying to steal some kind of ultimate weapon and Rocky having to track them down and stop them. It's a manhunt--in space. Get it?
In the sequel Crash of the Moons Rocky has to convince a bad lady from the first movie to evacuate her planet before it crashes into another planet and everyone is killed. She doesn't trust them and instead tries to kill them until they finally get her to see reason.
These both feature cheap effects, cheaper sets, poorly choreographed fights, wooden acting, and Neil deGrasse Tyson would have a fit over the lack of realism about space and space travel.
First Spaceship on Venus: This is also an old movie on MST3K about an international crew that receives a signal from Venus. So they hop in a spaceship and head out to Venus. But as Ackbar would say, it's a trap! The planet's population is dead but there are a lot of traps left active that kill a couple of members of the crew before they're able to escape. At the time this wasn't regarded as a terrible movie, but obviously the effects are bad and the knowledge of space pretty dated.
Missile to the Moon: One of the earliest Rifftrax on demand movies featured Michael J Nelson and comedian/actor Fred Willard riffing on this 50s movie where a scientist and a couple of petty criminals take a rocket to the moon. The criminals were taking refuge on the scientist's farm when he finds them and decides they'd make perfect astronauts. Basically the same night they blast off from a field to the moon, which I guess you could do back then. They have to escape some rock monsters and then find a whole bunch of hot blue women who mistake the scientist for some guy who had previously been there. In the end most of them escape back to the rocket and go home. I bet Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin wish they'd found a bunch of blue women--or maybe they did and the government covered it up. Anyway, a few years later they redid this with the traditional Rifftrax lineup too.
Star Force: Fugitive Alien II: Another repackaged Japanese turd from American producer Sandy Frank who brought over such MST3K favorites as the Gamera movies, Mighty Jack, and Time of the Apes. This is actually a sequel to, wait for it, Star Force: Fugitive Alien. Both of which were just repackaged from Japanese TV serials. Fortunately it's one of those where they recap the first movie early on so you don't have to worry about keeping up with the highly cerebral story line. It's basically a Star Wars ripoff with a group of Japanese people in a lame spaceship who go to some planet with a lot of desert and fight a bad guy in a samurai Darth Vader outfit. On IMDB it says this is from 1987 but the effects make it look like it's from the late 60s.
Moon Zero Two: This was a first season episode of MST3K so I don't watch it a lot but I do own it because it's part of the 25th Anniversary set. This 1969 Hammer Films/Warner Bros fiasco features cheesy animated credits, a jazz soundtrack, go-go dancing, and a lot of bad costumes as people on a lunar colony fight over an asteroid with sapphire in it or something. It's a lot more Adventures of Pluto Nash than 2001.
This Island Earth: This was the movie used for Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie. In a documentary on one DVD the cast talked about why they chose this movie. It was basically the movie studio wanted them to use a movie in their catalog and so they picked this old sci-fi movie where aliens come to Earth and recruit some guy who's like a prototype of young Sean Connery and a female doctor, but they're too late to save it. It was sort of like Forbidden Planet, only probably not as well known.
There was some controversy in that a lot of people regarded this as a classic and so didn't appreciate the riffing on it. And really like some others I've mentioned it's not terrible so much as it's just old. Like First Spaceship on Venus the effects are bad and the space knowledge is dated but it's from 1955 so what do you expect? Like one of the cast said they probably should have just redone Manos the Hands of Fate or something really bad like anything by Ed Wood.
The intermission segments featured upgraded production values and sets and showed us other parts of the Satellite of Love like Servo's quarters and the "basement" where Crow causes a hull breech trying to tunnel to freedom. Like the last season of the show preceding it it featured only Dr. Forrester as the villain. They even created a new door opening sequence before going into the theater; this sequence was not used in the Sci-Fi episodes so it's really the only time it was used.
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