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

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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

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....

cishet white dude edgelord comedy

I mean, yes, and I hope that remains out of fashion forever

in a better world ricky gervais would be up on stage smashing pumpkins into small piles of putrid debris

the only thing that kept cishet edgelord white dude comics remotely relevant was dick jokes, and trans women have _way_ better dick jokes than any of them do

I've really tried with the reboot, but every time I sit down to watch it, I don't last five minutes.

Where have all the edgelords gone
long time passing
Where have all the edgelords gone
long time ago
Where have all the edgelords gone
gone to Netflix every one

i love the show but in the years since its return i've been kind of shocked at how much money and creative energy seems to go into the non-riffing elements. i get how that stuff is more in his creative wheelhouse than movie riffing itself, and that it was obviously an extremely fun part of making the show in the 1990s. but if the difference between doing it and not doing it is raising a big budget to pay for a cast of all these different side characters and a big workshop for robot designs and sets and all this other stuff, ffs get out of your own way dude. if someone asks me what mst3k is i dont start describing the story of a space janitor who got kidnapped from the gizmonic institute, i talk about movie riffing. he doesnt need to do it alone in his basement on twitch, but there certainly is a middle way where it doesnt have to cost half a mil per episode.

One of many reasons I'm not into the nu MST3K

It's with that stuff where the scope creep becomes a problem. Too many "oh! what if we..." ideas.

At least the guard rails are firmer with the riffing portion of the show.

I will say this: I've gone to all the nu-MST3K live shows in my area and enjoyed them. They also were kind of loose and fun and definitely less tryhard. The woman who plays Mega Synthia hosted one and she is genuinely funny.

yeah all that hamminess works much better in a live setting with an audience

the live show was fantastic, I went to one in....2021, i think?

Can we as a culture please just let something be a pleasant memory instead of trying to make it exist forever.

― deep wubs and tribral rhythms (Boring, Maryland), Sunday, November 26, 2023 6:53 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Yeah the last live go-round was end of 2021 and that was a damn treat, with the Emily-led crew and Megasynthia. (The just pre-COVID tour that was Joel's bowing-out from live touring also pretty sharp.)

I remember this show being a thing but had never actually seen it until I watched the dreary German Hamlet episode a couple of months ago and laughed my ass off.

The last time I felt that ol' mistie magic was the Cinematic Titanic live shows. Really felt like "a night out" and everyone was enthusiastic and present.

Cinematic Titanic was great, I even traveled to go to their shows. Now there’s apparently bad blood between Joel and Trace/Frank so that’s unrepeatable.

I'm glad they were still on speaking terms when I caught Cinematic Titanic roughly a decade ago

Thought there was rumor that issues between them had been resolved at some point within recent years

"I'd shoot Donald Regan to prove my love for Lisa Foster.”

Cave Dwellers is top notch still.

https://defector.com/mitchell-is-part-of-joe-don-bakers-legacy-for-better-or-worse

Walking Tall is remembered, but not a classic; in a cursory survey of my friends the remake with The Rock is better known. But they all knew Mitchell. The MST3K episode works because the jokes are funny, but they also work because Joe Don Baker plays his sad-sack cop so well that he becomes an object to be laughed at. Baker didn’t know it at the time, but he'd made a classic comedy—a movie that would endure in ways that no one involved likely intended, but which is very real all the same.

Mitchell > Walking Tall

scram, kid!

Buzz off, to be more precise!

i sit (in my parked car) corrected

https://preview.redd.it/what-is-mitchells-full-name-v0-o8vnm2bu3o9c1.jpeg?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=96fa4b03533d0929ef48af8c56635b08936006c4

“*Forget* the heroin!”

“That’s for dessert!”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dx71gymM8xw

Mitchell…Heart Pounding!
Mitchell…Veins Clogging!

Thbp-thbp-THBPPPPPPPPPPPPPPppppp…

I haven't really watched a lot of the MST3K bonus features because... honestly I just don't think it's aged well. I know a lot of younger people who kind of roll their eyes when one of us Gen X folks will show a short... and looking at it through the eyes of younger people, I kind of feel that. It's just the way humor is. For me it was a gateway to a lot of weird and interesting niche cinema. It got me into films like Phase IV, and they did, I think, a lot of the riffing was done with love for these weird films. There was also this crate-digging aspect to it, movies like Manos and Hobgoblins. Mostly I value it for getting me into the Prelinger shorts, the sponsored films. I think those are the things that hold up the best.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7ptSb9qPzg

And even though I don't watch the show itself these days... I do think Joel is an interesting guy, and the Joel-Mike contrast is interesting as well. I don't know much about Mike and I also know where he comes from, politically, and there's a real interesting contrast between him and Joel in the sense that whenever you hear Joel talk, he's very much what we'd call "woke", talking about wanting not wanting MST3K to be... I think he says something like a "doughy Midwestern white guy" like him always hosting. And I think that's evident with the revival stuff, which, again, I haven't much seen, though I did see a couple of the MST3K live shows. And of course one wants to be diplomatic when there are these big epic fights online. I appreciate... as far as I know, at least, Mike isn't out there going Scott Adams, he keeps his beliefs quiet. That doesn't mean that I don't have some, I don't know, discomfort about Mike that I don't have about Joel.

Joel, him I see someone who saw an opportunity and took it. Someone who was a prop comic and turned that into something and, just... the opportunities one can have creatively is limited. Just a smart, thoughtful guy. Seeing him talk about things I was surprised at just how thoughtful and intellectual he is about things.

I mean I guess I'm aging. The MST3K folks, the ones from the initial run, they're all aging too, and with the humor also aging... it just makes me think about things.

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.

It is definitely meant for people who grew up in the age of 3 or 4 tv channels and being forced to watch whatever was on.

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