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

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

Keep in mind that the fidelity on these files is sometimes suprisingly good considering the size, and sometimes fairly bad, but even the worst files usually have more than enough detail for a person to get what's going on.

I'm hoping the DVD is a Santa Claus vs. The Martians/Santa Claus double fun pak. It is going to come out late 2003, after all.

Later I may want to say something about MST3K in light of Mark's venting on Zappa, but right now I want to go to Central Park and maybe the Malevich exhibit before it starts raining (again).

goooch....goooch....

This show got me through middle school.

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

Anyway the Kickstarter closed earlier this week, $2.6 million. They announced the third episode earlier but the fourth one will be a surprise until it's released.

But meantime! Some separate amazing news!

So the first MST3K revival Kickstarter a decade back offered up as a bonus two of the three missing episodes from the very first version of the show on local Twin Cities TV prior to going nationwide on cable. (Literally the first two episodes; tapes from the fourth episode forward captured the rest of the season.) Those first two episode tapes apparently turned up during a scrounge of the archives when Jim Mallon sold things to Joel and Shout Factory, but there was no indication the third one was around. And then out of NOWHERE -- on Bluesky, Jodie Troutman shared the news that surfaced on Reddit an hour back that a tape of that episode, possibly even an official one like the first two, had turned up in a garage sale. The buyer digitized it and now we have it. Amazing!

https://www.reddit.com/r/MST3K/comments/1rz1w3a/found_at_last/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_Z4hnagGLE

ned, i knew you'd beat me to it :)

It's just the way.

did I ever write here about a college friend I had who introduced me to mystery science theater 3000? He actually had taped the very first episode ever—he was avoiding Thanksgiving with his parents, and a friend of his had a metal band that was on a “battle of the bands” on a public access channel and he was flipping around and managed to catch the very first ever Mystery Science Theatre 3000 episode nearly at the beginning, was intrigued by it and started taping it immediately, but he flipped between that and the battle of the bands and a few years later he showed it to me and it’s just hilarious how he flips between his friend’s band and history in the making.

Hahah okay that's amazing.

So the first MST3K revival Kickstarter a decade back offered up as a bonus two of the three missing episodes from the very first version of the show on local Twin Cities TV prior to going nationwide on cable. (Literally the first two episodes; tapes from the fourth episode forward captured the rest of the season.) Those first two episode tapes apparently turned up during a scrounge of the archives when Jim Mallon sold things to Joel and Shout Factory, but there was no indication the third one was around. And then out of NOWHERE -- on Bluesky, Jodie Troutman shared the news that surfaced on Reddit an hour back that a tape of that episode, possibly even an official one like the first two, had turned up in a garage sale. The buyer digitized it and now we have it. Amazing!

Amazing indeed! And boy does this make me nostalgic for the days before constant, incessant riffing, which is one of many reasons I find nu-MST unwatchable. I mean I randomly clicked in the middle of this video and there was what appeared to be at least 30 seconds of no riffing at all. Back then, every joke had to count!

Also you can download this directly from the Internet Archive now:

https://archive.org/details/0003-star-force