Mystery Science Theater 3000: C/D, S/D.

So gloriously fucking classic it hurts, period, etc. To explain why -- I always loved really bad movies, they're great. Seeing bad movies trashed by people who obviously had brains but weren't afraid of cheap shots either seemed like perfection, and the fact that the perpetrators were seemingly calm Minnesotans who had a clear and total loathing for bullshit of all sorts -- societal, cultural, political, philosophical - - made it all the more fun. Still my favorite ever TV show.

Search -- um, everything. Some episodes you don't need to see as many times, though, and sometimes ones that weren't as great initially become great with time. My Top Ten List At Present:

Manos, The Hands of Fate -- "Honey, I'm scared." "Of WHAT?"

The Starfighters -- "Bob Dornan, wild at heart."

Mitchell -- "She was going to smell like beer sooner or later."

Teenage Strangler -- "I didn't steal no bike neither!"

Overdrawn at the Memory Bank -- "My nuts?"

Red Zone Cuba -- "You and your swank restaurant and your chichi frog's legs!"

Agent From H.A.R.M. -- "There's the windup...and there's the smarm!"

Werewolf -- "C'mon, dead people know what's going to happen next!"

The Starfighters -- "I like coffee."

Pod People -- "Trumpy! You can do MAGIC things!"

Subject to change, but that's a good starter pack right there, along with Eegah!, Jack Frost, Parts: The Clonus Horror, Monster a Go-Go, The Girl in Gold Boots...

Search

Favorite Episode Available on Rihno: I Accuse My Parents or Catalina Caper. Favorite Episode Overall: Alien From L.A.. Favorite Short: The Days of Our Years. Favorite Riff Sequences: The Beau Brummels at the Whiskey-A-Go-Go in Village of the Giants and Fat Linda Rondstadt in The Incredible Melting Man. Favorite Riff: The Albert Goldman/Greil Marcus ref in The Pod People and the "...Massapequa, Massapequa Park, Amityville, Copaigue, Lindenhurst and Babylon. Change at Jamaica for..." line in The Beatniks.

Destroy

The fifteen-minute promo they did for Nintendo; the "sandwich" sketch at the end of The Undead; the long string of lesbian jokes in Racket Girls; and, ultimately, the movie, which while v. good, probably should never have been made; and finally, the various asinine copyright issues that pretty much will ensure its limited availability in non-bootleg form to future generations.

Herein a mystery -- what is this? Given that they're such gaming addicts I'm not surprised they did it...

But if I'm being honest, I love nearly every one. The only one I think I would destroy is Hamlet, because the adaptation was so static and dull it was hard to make jokes from.

I brought the subject up because I think it's high time we discussed it at length. A lot of Americans on ILx are pretty vocal about their MST3K-love, but for obvious reasons, much of the UK posse have never even seen the show. Those who have only know the Sci-Fi era shows (and can't get Rhino tapes, either), so they're only getting part of the fun.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a Comedy-Central purist at all. The primary reason I got slowly peeved at the AOL NY MST3K contingent was because they were by and large vehemently Anti-Mike, going on and on about how the show was a bunch of boring crap now and how cute and sexy Joel was. I just couldn't see it. Admittedly, though, by the time MST3K left CC, the show's early, woozy charm had long faded away -- but it was replaced by something else that, while slick, was still awfully entertaining. (Charm isn't everything.) At the other end of the history spectrum, the KTMAs aren't bad at all, but all woozy charm and few laffs. Still, that won't matter if you're already a fan.

The worst movie they ever did was, easily, Monster A Go-Go. Scroungily overamped "What'd I Say"-rip at the beginning, but looooong stretches of black & white nothingness punctuated by perhaps the most infuriating cinematic anticlimax ever. Next in line is Manos: The Hands of Fate. It's my impression that MST3K almost single-handedly velcroed this flick onto the Canon of Bad Movies, and that's a good thing, because it's a startling artifact with a great story behind it.

Favorite Sci-Fi-era Episode: Jack Frost. Indeed, every episode involving a children's movie is sterling.

Best Acting in a MST3K Episode: Beverly Garland reads the riot act to The Celery From Outer Space in It Conquered The World. Bela Lugosi tells a fellow scientist off in Bride of the Monster.

Crow vs. Crow: Trace-Crow is more neurotic, Bill-Crow is more snide, yet once Bill got in the groove, I seriously think they were in equal in goodness.

Joel vs. Mike:

Extraneous thought: if in some alternative universe Catalina Caper was a good, no, GREAT movie, the Avalanches' album would be its soundtrack. Perhaps we could kindly suggest to Tim Burton a remake...

I was going to throw in a link to the article with all the info, but dammit, it's expired! Your vision of a new Catalina Caper thrills and disturbs my soul.

i is brit and loving the mst3k. it can grate if you're not in the right mood, but fuck that for a game of toy soldiers. I also liked the film (riffing on This Island Earth -- fave bit is when the alien is explaining about the fate of his planet "a-huh, yeah, yup... got ya... a-huh"

Anyway, I adored the show. Was a staunch Mike defender in the Mike v. Joel days, now I'm not so sure. Favorite bit (of all time): "Are You Happy In Your Work?"

Colin -- yeah, I remember you were torgotback@aol.com, but the stalking? No, not that.

The boards also attracted a number of true mental cases, most unforgettably KeijiKJ. He was similar to Gondola Blob in that he indulged in casebook net.kook behavior: delusions of professionalism, snottily dismissive of any random thing, threw around the word "clique" a lot. I've even heard stories that he scared the bejesus out of BB members during the first con. I personally had a thoroughly pointless argument with him about the population of the cities in California.

Concerning Mike, I'll say this: there are quite a few times during the Sci-Fi-era when he seemed to be sending out his performance via Fed Ex. Sad, because it was clear after CC he was capable of much better. But you know, a lot of the Sci-Fi-era episodes that initially seemed kinda minor and kinda eh to me now strike me as being thoroughly solid.

I'm waiting on Mike's next collection of essays and novel myself. The Megacheese collection was a scream.

Stalking resulted from an unfortunate IRL encounter with a nice enough person. I thought it was a lovely afternoon, she thought it was TRUE LOVE FOREVER. Eek. The story resolved harmlessly enough -- she found TRUE LOVE FOREVER again with another MSTie, and this time it was returned.

MST3K was never that big a part of my life - I watched it sporadically, and I always seemed to be in the wrong state of mind to truly enjoy it. I'll side with the Joel phreex, though, just because bald is sexy. (I'm getting sexier by the minute.)

But wasn't Mike balder than Joel? I'm confused. No matter. I'm balder than both, and I agree with David.

I think that my slight preference for Joel has something to do with a sense that the guy's a bit . . . off, where Mike is merely charming and funny.

But yes, Mike has the angst in there somewhere. He just tempers it very beautifully -- thus his legendary turn as Morrissey.

To add to the book recommendations -- Mike N.'s general essay book Mind Over Matters is another fine read (the TV essay alone is some kinda genius, the mock 19th century novel even more so), while I very much liked Kevin Murphy's A Year at the Movies. Chris Piuma mentioned he felt it was fairly Joe Queenan-like and therefore not as distinct as it could be, but I think it was handled very well and worked as both microstudy of the moviegoing experience and general reflection. Certainly any of the ILF/film-going hounds on this board should consider reading/borrowing a copy, at least. Then there's Mike's new novel Death Rat, which I really need to order next month...

And praise to all the other castmembers doing things and the continual rolling out of more DVDs, though apparently Rhino says they've exhausted what they have the rights to right now and are looking into securing more, hopefully...

"Bad touch."
"Does this mean I like guys now?"
"I feel ill."
"Spanking time!"

http://www.mst3kinfo.com/satnews/catalog/Basement.htm
http://www.mst3kinfo.com/daddyo/images/mrb5.JPG

There was a bit in the extended comedians in cars w/ joel where jerry quotes a writer who described joel as ‘thinking cereal commercials were works handed down by gods’ and i think that’s the little difference between the OG joel/mike episodes and the new ones. The old episodes are very much from a singular (hosts’) point of view. The newer episodes seems like a bunch of writers trying to get as many shots off as possible. Different rhythms!

I've tried several times to watch the revival episodes and never last more than a few minutes. Frankly, I think they're awful, and I think "seems like a bunch of writers trying to get as many shots off as possible" nails why

It's definitely a different vibe in the revival years, yeah. I've happily watched them all but I don't think I've rewatched any of them, though the two Christmas ones they ended up doing in seasons 11 and 13 may yet be part of my larger seasonal rotation. That said the live shows I caught right before the pandemic (Joel's final turn as host there and the introduction of Emily and her 'team', as well as a 2021 holiday season show that was strictly Emily's crew) were all really great, probably because they weren't so locked-in and had to respond to audience energy directly. And yes, how the way TV-as-such is watched now is completely different from how it was, just, still watched in the late eighties absolutely changes things; I'm just old enough to remember TV pre-widespread cable through the very late seventies but it was already starting to retreat by the time the show got off the ground.

Anyway this bonus feature just happened to pop up on the MST3K YT channel

Not just this one -- the official channel has gone full on with a TON of the extras created for the various episode DVDs over the years now being rolled out, all kinds of interviews with people from the actual films, mini-features, etc. etc., not to mention the episodes themselves. There's been some talk about how the Gizmoplex model as mini-streaming channel basically seems kinda dead in the water so they're bringing everything over to where the people are, I figure. Not a bad idea at this stage, but I think it underscores that my doubt that any new seasons are going to happen now -- bit of a pity in that an all-Emily season woulda been great, but hey.

As for Kate's wider points -- Mike's been a little more open than that but he's been more circumspect lately, true (I get a sense that he's one of those people finding themselves embarrassed to have Trump as their party's mainstay, which, hey, that's on you, not the rest of us). My beloved It's Just a Show podcast, admittedly run by long time friends so there's my bias, has been pretty solid at consistently looking back with fresh eyes and when necessary applying 'so you went there, that was a choice' observations on jokes-that-aren't, whether during the Mike or Joel runs.

I've been getting into the earlier sleepy "not funny" episodes recently
watching these creaky old films with the creaky old jokes has been like a warm blanket for my soul

Mike was given an ultimatum by Bill several years ago to step down as a co-host or regular on a homophobic Christian podcast.

Mike was given an ultimatum by Bill several years ago to step down as a co-host or regular on a homophobic Christian podcast.

― The "W" and Odie Trail (Boring, Maryland)

yeah that's the other thing, i don't know bill or kevin's politics at all but whatever he believes privately, he at least has some idea of where his bread is buttered. any personal discomfort i have with mike nelson is just that - personal. he works hard, he's a professional, and he behaves professionally, and i respect that about him.

i do find that i like the old "not funny" episodes more myself. including the ones that were actual UHF television, the KTMA episodes. it's a sense of pacing, maybe. when i was young, part of the appeal to MST3K was that it seemed tremendously fast-paced, something new coming every second. it didn't matter that a lot of the jokes didn't land - it was a fast-paced comedy barrage. the world's just gotten a lot faster since then.

one of the early comedy channel shows time's forgotten is "the higgins boys and gruber". there's one complete episode on, i don't know, the internet archive or something. again, i like the _vibe_ of this. it's kinda redolent of the 90s, just kinda sitting around with your buddies, smoking weed, and watching old "clutch cargo" cartoons on tv for lack of anything better to do.

these days, there's _always_ something better for me to do, and i kinda hate that.

Mm, I feel this last point. I admit there's also something about wanting to make sure I am engaging with new things that catch my attention and/or expand my horizons -- not constantly, that's setting myself up to fail. But a show that has over 200 episodes that are each at least an hour and a half long, nearly all of which I know by heart, there's a real feeling of "Hmm, well..." My closest itch being scratched that way these days is via Frank and Trace's Mads are Back work, though that has cut back to every few months now -- still, a great little body of work in its own right now too, and the off-the-cuff feeling suits. Relatedly, Mary Jo and Chris, the guy behind the little effort hosting the Mads, doing unknown-to-them TV movies from the seventies once a month has been a fun delight; that totally is the in-the-moment reaction effort and it's low-key and easy-going in the best way.

xpost When I saw Cinematic Titanic live, Gruber was the opening act.

The Mary Jo watch-alongs are a delight, yes.

Kate, I don’t know about Kevin’s politics but Bill Corbett is very lefty, he’s even been on Chapo for what it’s worth.

I love Frank Conniff dearly but his Bluesky feed is pretty standard corny resistance lib.

I appreciate his enthusiasm at least.

Relatedly, Mary Jo and Chris, the guy behind the little effort hosting the Mads, doing unknown-to-them TV movies from the seventies once a month has been a fun delight; that totally is the in-the-moment reaction effort and it's low-key and easy-going in the best way.

― Ned Raggett

i wonder if they'll get around to watching "The Grass Is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank"!

anyway this is what i love about... i mean to me a lot of the heritage of MST3K is in these boutique labels. it's not about putting down a film, it's about film being more than just the Good Films. people don't get why i spend so much time watching stuff that nobody else really cares about, and a lot of it is MST3K, the idea that someone would go out and purposely watch a movie like Sidehackers or The Dead Talk Back. It's something that I don't have to take too seriously (well, in the _edited for broadcast versions_... I do run into the same problem that Best Brains ran into with Sidehackers when watching these films, except compounded since most of us have various forms of severe trauma...)

where mst3k doesn't hold up for me most of all is that even if i put down joe don baker, call him a lunk, anything like that, i genuinely have no personal animus towards the man. that's something... i mean, maybe i'm a softie, but i see joe don baker, just like mike nelson, as a professional doing professional work. now, sometimes that work is fucking awful. looking this greasy, repulsive 70s film baker did, these days i'm less inclined to draw any conclusion that he personally is greasy and repulsive. i kinda do feel bad for the guy, and if he did hate the MST3K crew, i mean, i don't think it was unjustified. that's _far_ from all mst3k was about, and there's also a lot of love. this idea of someone who thinks 'cereal commercials were works handed down by gods'. i'm that way myself, but only, like, 1970s cereal commercials. quisp. sir grapefellow.

Even when I originally watched it back in the 90s a lot of humor in it was a bit dated--cultural references that people older than me would catch.

― Iza Duffus Hardy (President Keyes)

yeah, i was just re-watching "cosmic princess" this afternoon and they're making references to the banana splits and land of the lost, as long as "sing along with mitch". this was stuff for and by kids who grew up in the 70s, kids who had a thingmaker. to me a thingmaker was a mysterious ancient artifact. that's probably one of the reasons mst3k clicks with me as much as it does... i have this weird cultural obsession with the 70s. it's very very hard for me to have nostalgia for my own childhood. it's more comfortable for me to have nostalgia for things i missed out on. i'm tremendously nostalgic, for instance, for 1970s AM pop radio, dan ingram on WABC. that's the stuff that gives me warm, cozy feelings. i'm not at all nostalgic for '80s stuff the way so many people seem to be.

what i like is that the internet is a place where all kinds of people can do that kind of thing. honestly i think of mst3k as kind of an antecedent of twitch. i got friends who are fans of josh strife, who's a guy who streams on twitch and just says, like... talks about his ideas about how to be an emotionally healthy person. there are so many opportunities to hang out in a room with so many different kinds of people, and for some reason a lot of those people are shitty grifters, and at the same time lots of them are just fun people to hang out with. i don't stream on twitch because i can't be arsed to comply with copyright laws, but with friends, i'm trying to do that. i'll get on my streaming server, like i did last night, and say "hey i'm gonna stream My Name Called Bruce", and a couple of us will just have fun talking shit in the chat. it doesn't _have_ to be good or funny. it can just be, like in "cosmic princess", they just make a bunch of references to dairy queen. that _doesn't_ work as comedy on the same level that, i don't know, _community_ does, but it does mean i'm open to unexpected fun moments:

TITLE ON SCREEN: COSMIC PRINCESS
CROW: I've been called that before.
SERVO: You asked for it, though.

And how would the folks on the podcast Mike Nelson stepped down from take _that_ exchange, you know? I don't know. I do know that my display name on that server is now "Kate, Cosmic Princess".

---

and yeah honestly? i do love frank's corny resistance lib thing, just because it goes so well with the rest of his personality. he's a corny older dude! of course his politics are gonna be corny!

Kate I think l you’d really like the Mary Jo Pehl Show, especially the monthly episode where she watches some early-70s TV (without watching it first) and she’s just delightful at riffing off the cuff and it’s very not snarky but warm and kind of affectionate. Try watching her riff on “Bad Ronald” a movie worthy of having been a classic MST episode: https://dumb-industries.com/the-mary-jo-pehl-show-clubhouse-plus/v/movie-jo-night-bad-ronald

def agree about being an 80s kid for whom the 70s will always be this fascinating world just beyond the last visible hill, even though it left all these visible marks on the world i actually inhabited. MST may reflect a similar thing - Gen X kids who grew up in a world when the 50s and even 60s were in endless rerun rotation, and yet profoundly odd and alien, both appealing and unsettling, etc.

like, Joel was born in 60, Mike in 64. their prime monoculture breakfast cereal years were The Long 1970s, if you will. MST's most fertile decades are the 50s and 60s - stuff they probably saw on late night TV but not as "new" pop culture. and part of the special sauce was that they didn't (only) make fun of the lol lame old corny stuff, they also appreciated it. maybe one reason the Joe Don Baker stuff lands differently is they actually did know him as a present-day name headlining bad movies while they were old enough to tell the difference... idk

Once again I tried to watch nu-MST, and once again I was unable to tolerate it for more than five minutes. It's just so deeply, almost painfully unfunny.

Like the "mother crabber" rapping sequence I just watched, to cite one example, is just embarrassing on multiple levels

I hate to say it but Rifftrax have much more of a grasp on what people liked about the show than Joel, even if I prefer his MST episodes
speaking of Rifftrax I've really come to like the Bridget & Mary Jo stuff, just good vibe times

Bridget and Mary Jo are a delight and it’s sweet when they sometimes reveal a little something about their lives.

Did my annual watch of “Fun in Balloonland” with my wife (who doesn’t really like movie riffing but appreciates the drunk Philly narrator).

Turkey Day Marathon has started, they finally got the rights to stream the Netflix seasons so those are all being shown over the next three days

Joel has sold MST3K to Radial Entertainment "the entertainment company formed from the merger of Shout! Studios and FilmRise. Radial’s purchase includes all brand assets and intellectual property and follows nearly two decades of Shout!’s multichannel distribution of “MST3K” content. The amount of the final buyout was undisclosed."
https://www.byteseu.com/1717645/

And perhaps following on from that!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rifftrax/rifftrax-makes-mst3k

It got fully funded in five minutes and nearly tripled that amount in ten.

lmao as soon as Joel relinquishes control they are straight back in there! sure why not.

Excited for the prospect of some new MST3K that feels a bit more "handmade" again perhaps, along with the original calmer pacing and lack of youtuber/cartoon voice acting which was something I found distracting in the reboot. Overall the reboot had a sort of more juvenile lean to it imo for reasons like that amongst others.

I suspect something was already in the wind in terms of prep, as it's not clear when all those new props etc were being developed. As someone who was a fan of Emily and her crew in particular, I'm a little bummed, but Mary Jo continues to straddle all worlds here at least.

Kevin & Bill riffing while working the puppets, handmade sets, made in Minnesota - ok I'm on board.

Not even an hour and already up to $350K; RiffTrax absolutely knows how to do Kickstarters, that's for sure. (As a friend noted elsewhere, the failed Alternaversal attempt to gin up a season 14 was definitely a factor too.)

I think Joel’s reboot was a noble failure with some talented people, but Rifftrax have a much higher hit rate of being consistently funny

I was talking with my brother about this just now and we both came to the conclusion that nobody watched mystery science Theatre 3000 wondering “I like this show but I’d like it even more if the robots could fly”

"I'd like it to be even more difficult than before to convince people that this isn't (necessarily) a show specifically for children"

Hit a million in under ten hours, a mere 5000% of the origin goal. I will be interested to see what/where exactly all the raised money goes; if the idea was that they were going to make these four episodes anyway (given Shout!/Radial holds the rights, Rifftrax are essentially hired guns in this scenario), what are the further plans? Anyway, forty one days for this to run so I guess we'll find out more as it goes.

a 70s Corman disaster shot by Gary Graver starring David Carradine and Richard Lynch? seems almost tailor-made for MST

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGr5sWVzo64

Definitely a good choice!

carradine in a loincloth

I know
I know
It's serious

Mads back for the 4th episode, which will also be co-written with Trace and Frank.

oh my god that's amazing, huge fan of trace and frank

joel is an awesome guy with some great ideas, and, well... much as it feels weird to say this about the puppets, handmade sets, etc... what i appreciate about mike is that he's a _professional_.

Kate have you seen any of The Mads Are Back? https://dumb-industries.com/themadsareback

Yeah pretty much our crew at Megaphonic (ie friend Chris's network that started with their It's Just A Show overview podcast of the whole series) have long concluded that Joel being an ideas guy but not a business sort showed more and more over the past ten years.

The Mads Are Back episodes were a fantastic run -- I can see why they wanted to take a break but four years of delving into public domain trash that all would have been prime stuff for the classic run of the show was a sweet balm, and boy did I appreciate them starting that up as a response to lockdown.

also loved the guests and the glimpses into their lives (and cat sightings) in The Mads

Yeah that turned out to be a fun little feature, and a lot of those Q&As were treats.

Kate I can't believe I'm asking the ilxor notorious (lovingly) for huge posts to elaborate but here we are

Not speaking for Kate but the Mike and the Rifftrax crew have built a successful business based on movie riffing for 20 years now. Also, they have been using Kickstarter for 15 of those years and have always come through with the premiums and followed through on the promised project. The Rifftrax humor also solidly consistently delivers because they keep the writing team small with longtime trusted young writers (although Conor et al are probably in their 40s now).
Joel by contrast bungled the crowdfunding for nu-MST and the new episodes were VERY uneven.

I'm still unsure what the actual overall consensus is on the nu-MST3k, I just knew how I felt about it (again uncomfortable with the joke pacing and cartoony delivery, also not a fan of the set design, but enjoyed some of it overall despite that)

^^^i think that is the consensus. for my part, though I got less excited about each successive season due to (what i felt was) the extremely uneven quality. didn’t give a shit about the attempt to create some sort pf storyline or “lore” around it (still have no idea what the boneheads were supposed to be but don’t care enough to know*). Liked the humans in front of the camera though, they did their best.

*questionable decision to have accused sex pest Har Mar Superstar in there. My brother joked the makeup was for him to hide from his victims.

yeah the scope of it was just way too big, a "more of everything" ethos that crept into both the production and the writing/delivery itself. i understand how that can be a temptation on the creator side, especially for a restless idea guy like Joel, to come up with new ways to make it fresh and challenging to produce. but none of it made the show any funnier.

they hit upon the perfect show & perfect format & have a very dedicated fanbase that is happy to have more of exactly that, forever. just have three people riffing a movie with brief cheap-looking sketch interludes and have the writing be really sharp. there is no need for that to cost millions & millions of dollars per episode.

Part of that, I want to say, was filming in LA with a more professional setup for the Netflix stretch -- a union shoot too, I gather. I bring this up because season 13 was filmed in post-COVID/lockdown circumstances obviously, and I believe out of Philadelphia, where Joel is now, and along the way it was mentioned it was a NON-union shoot. Which is unfortunate. (This current setup, I don't know, but my sense is -- especially if they keep it to the four episodes -- everyone will be paid appropriately; certainly that's been mentioned more than once. This also said, a friend noted that in ways this almost seems less like a Kickstarter and almost more like preorders?)

Kickstarter 1.8 million with more than 30 days to go

announcement today that Trace will be the art director for all new episodes

second film, looks more fun than any of the modern SW films tbh and I dig the alien face makeup & stop motion

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQ07FcOFNGo