Mystery Science Theater 3000 experiment #706: Laserblast.
Original airdate: May 18, 1996.
Part of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 20th Anniversary Edition box set.
Laserblast is notable for two reasons: film critic Leonard Maltin gave it two-and-a-half stars, higher or equal to than several notable "good" movies, and of course, it was the last first-run MST3K episode aired on Comedy Central about a year before they moved over to the Sci-Fi Channel.
A loner teenager named Billy Duncan, played by Kim Milford, finds a lost alien ray gun while stumbling around in the desert one hot afternoon. Billy claims it as his own and uses it to get revenge on his enemies, but exposure to the weapon's radiation turns him into a violent lifeform who is eventually put out of his misery by the same aliens who left the weapon behind in the first place. Roddy McDowall and Keenan Wynn have small roles in this one. It wasn't one of their better performances.
In Deep 13, Dr. Forrester loses his funding, so he pulls the plug on his ongoing experiments, setting the Satellite of Love free. Before it can spiral out of control, Tom Servo manages to get the thrusters working, and the SOL drifts into deep space, encountering an annoying robot called Monad, a field of star babies (one needs changing), and a black hole that transforms Mike into something terrifying, but useful. After reaching the edge of the universe, Mike, Crow, Gypsy, and Tom become beings of pure energy, while back on Earth, Dr. F. is reborn, not unlike the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey, except that the monolith is a gigantic VHS tape.
A little more detail on the episode here.
I've actually never seen this episode before tonight, and it turned out to be a good one. Recommended!
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