“It’s
all based on this simple idea,” explains show creator Joel Hodgson. “That
people say shit when they’re watching movies.” That simple idea led, 25 years
ago, to one of the most endearing and enduring cult favorites on TV: Mystery
Science Theater 3000.
Prop
comic Joel Hodgson had bailed out of Hollywood by the late 1980s, and returned
to his native Minnesota. Finding a home for both his hot-glue gun wielding
gizmo construction skills and his concept of a show where people talk back to
movies, Mystery Science Theater 3000 debuted Thanksgiving Day 1988 on KTMA, an
ultra-low budget Minneapolis TV station. The premise: two mad scientists send a
regular guy into space, the focus of an evil experiment to gauge a lone human’s
capacity to withstand an endless barrage of bad movies. Stranded aboard the
“Satellite of Love,” Joel maintains his sanity by building a couple of
wisecracking robot pals, and together they mercilessly heckle the movies that
are screened before them.
At
first ad-libbed, then carefully scripted, Hodgson, along with a growing stable
of writers, perfected the art of real-time verbal abuse of bad movies. Called
“riffing,” the jokes (somewhere around 700 per episode) can range from crude
bathroom humor to obscure cultural references, anything from Jiffy Pop to
Pinter plays. All delivered in silhouette superimposed on the bottom of the
screen. In between movie segments are “host segments,” a platform for various skits
(sometimes movie-related, sometimes not) musical production numbers, as well as
a glimpse at life onboard the ship, and the curious relationship between the
castaways and their Earthbound overlords.
The
show’s local popularity led to a shot the following year on the fledgling
Comedy Channel, which was to later become Comedy Central. It was a hit there
too, and the cable outlet, hungry for programming, quickly made MST3K its
centerpiece. Thus began an impressive 10 year run that encompassed nearly 200
episodes (at 2 hours apiece), an unceremonious cancellation followed by a
full-blown resurrection thanks to The Sci-Fi Channel, and a complete turnover
of on-screen talent, including Hodgson’s own exit halfway through the show’s
run, replaced by head writer Mike Nelson. Despite many changes and challenges,
the show never once jumped the shark. For 10 glorious seasons, Mystery Science
Theater 3000 was never not funny.
And
once new episodes were gone for good, it quickly became apparent that the
show’s rabid fan base wasn’t going anywhere. A vibrant tape-trading community
gave way to a fiercely dedicated online presence -- there are countless MST3K
fan sites, offering meticulously detailed episode guides and deep background on
the most obscure minutia, and pretty much every episode resides copyright
challenge-free on YouTube.
I
write for one of those fan sites, by the way. Annotated MST is slowly but
surely isolating and defining each and every cultural reference made in the
show’s 10 year run, one episode at a time. Here’s one of the episodes I annotated.
The
MST3K alumni have branched off into two rivalry-free factions: Rifftrax and
Cinematic Titanic, both of which continue the riffing tradition in slightly
different formats. Both groups have performed live (Cinematic Titanic recently
retired) and both noticed a key demographic in their audiences: people far too
young to have been original fans. Yep, turns out MST3K is a family tradition,
handed down from generation to generation.
And
this year, in the glow of MST3K’s 25th Anniversary, Joel Hodgson
announced he’s exploring the possibility of re-booting the series. Stay tuned.
So
– with that hopeful thought in mind and in honor of the 25th
Anniversary, I humbly present 25 MST3K episode suggestions. These pretty much
cover the arc of the show’s evolution, and the full range of fare that MST3K
dug into over the years, from rubber monsters and plastic ray guns, to 1950s
teensploitation movies and pre-Apollo trips to the moon, to 1970s made-for-TV
stink-bombs.
Hi-Keeba!
Joel
Era
Episode
104: Women of the Prehistoric Planet
This
episode features the final appearance of one of MST3K’s founding Mad Scientists,
Josh “J. Elvis” Weinstein, as well as head writer and future host Mike Nelson’s
first speaking role (the voice of a killer satellite), and the origin of the
MST3K uber-catchphrase “Hi-Keeba!” The 1966 movie is a deeply racist space
opera wherein deeply white Earthlings lord it over the backward savages of a
distant planet. Spoiler alert: turns out the planet is actually Earth! Damn you
all to hell!
Episode
201: Rocketship X-M
A
new season begins with the introduction of writer Frank Conniff as Mad
Scientist Dr. Forrester’s new assistant “TV’s Frank”, and writer Kevin Murphy
as the new voice of robot Tom Servo. The movie is a 1950 standard issue sci-fi
adventure that plays fast and loose with astrophysics and plenty of stock
footage to tell the story of a bunch of guys and a pretty gal who embark on an
expedition to the moon (eXpediton Moon, get it?) but wind up on Mars
instead. Whoops. They spend a night camping, clash with the locals, then
scamper back home to Earth, where their rocketship crashes and everybody dies.
Lloyd Bridges rounds out the cast.
Episode
207: Wild Rebels
This
1967 low-budget biker movie attempts to cash in on both the (then current)
popular fear of motorcycle gangs, and the 60’s cinematic love of anti-heroes. Real
life failed crooner Steve Alaimo stars as failed stock-car driver Rod Tillman,
who stumbles into the employ of a bank robbing biker gang and reluctantly turns
police informant. He fails miserably in both endeavors, ultimately
accomplishing nothing and learning nothing. Heck of a job, Rod!
Episode
210: King Dinosaur
This
1955 quickie is one of eight films in the MST3K canon directed by “Mr. BIG”
Bert I. Gordon, famous for his prolific production of B-grade giant-bug and
balding high-schooler movies. Relying heavily on footage borrowed from other
films, it tells the story of a group of white American astronauts who discover
an Earth-like planet populated by giant reptiles. They respond in the classic
fifties American fashion: they blow the place up with an atomic bomb.
Episode
211: First Spaceship on Venus
A
1960 East German/Polish space opera based on the novel The Astronauts by Stanislaw Lem, who also gave us Solaris, this one features a
multi-racial/national and mixed gender crew who arrive on the planet Venus only
to discover it has been pre-nuked for their convenience. After some of the crew
die horribly, the others return to Earth to continue their dogmatic, poorly
dubbed anti-nuclear diatribes.
Episode
302: Gamera
From
1965, this is the first of the Japanese Gamera
movie series; Gamera being a giant, flying, fire-breathing turtle who is
“friend to all children.” Gamera also happens to occasionally destroy large
tracts of Tokyo, presumably killing thousands of people, including, presumably,
children.
Episode
315: Teenage Caveman
A
1958 Roger Corman effort that clearly came in under budget, this one features
future Man from U.N.C.L.E. star
Robert Vaughn as a rebellious teenage caveman who defiantly questions caveman
law, perhaps because he’s in his mid-thirties.
Episode
319: War of the Colossal Beast
This
episode features, hands down, the most popular short in MST3K history: Mr. B Natural, wherein a prancing, Peter
Pan-ish “man” with boobs and great legs appears in the bedroom of a preteen boy
and convinces him to take up playing coronet in the school band. Hello,
therapy. The 1958 movie, another Bert I. Gordon epic, is a sequel to Episode
309: The Amazing Colossal Man, and
features a diapered 60-foot tall Glen Manning, who, it turns out, was not
killed in the first movie, but has nonetheless begun to decompose. He’s also
developed a mighty hankering for baked goods.
Episode
320: The Unearthly
This
episode begins with a pair of MST3K’s most beloved shorts: Posture Pals, wherein a trio of status hungry grade schoolers
achieve social dominance through improved posture, and Appreciating Our Parents, wherein a young lad gets a mildly
hallucinogenic awakening to the value of helping out around the house. What are
Mom and Dad doing downstairs after dinner is long over? The dishes, that’s
what! Wake up, Tommy! The 1957 movie stars John Carradine as a mad scientist
who cures depression by turning his afflicted patients into deformed zombies. But still, the co-pay was only 15 bucks. Also
featured is the hulking Tor Johnson, uttering the immortal line “Time for go to
bed!”
Episode
322: Master Ninja
This
“movie” is actually two jammed together episodes of the failed 1984 TV series The Master, which starred Lee Van Cleef
as “the only Occidental American to ever become a ninja,” and, as his young
disciple, a nearly incoherent Timothy Van Patton. Van Cleef’s distinctly
un-ninjalike gut soon becomes hard to ignore, as does Van Patton’s unsettling
predilection for flat-chested extra-petite damsels in distress.
Episode
323: The Castle of Fu Manchu
The
MST3K writers have declared this one the most difficult film they ever tackled:
“we NEVER knew what was going on.” From 1969, it features a decidedly Occidental
Christopher Lee in his final appearance as the decidedly Asian supervillain Fu
Manchu, in a decidedly convoluted plot to dominate civilization. Something
about opium crystals and/or a machine that freezes Earth’s oceans. And there’s
a DIY heart transplant surgery performed with everyday items found around the
house. It’s fun!
Episode
402: The Giant Gila Monster
This
episode features a loving tribute to that golden era when public intoxication
was funny, celebrating such “funny drunks” as Crazy Guggenheim, Dean Martin,
Foster Brooks, and Otis from The Andy
Griffith Show. The 1959 movie features teenagers, hot rods that look like
bathtubs on wheels, sock hops, a forced perspective giant reptile,
nitroglycerine, and of course, funny drunks, one of whom is a “famous disc
jockey.” Freshen that up for you?
Episode
403: City Limits
This
episode features Joel’s deft use of an umbrella in silhouette to hide a bit of
brief nudity on the screen. The movie is a 1985 low budget post-apocalypse saga
wherein teenagers, synthesizers, motorcycles and mullets converge upon the
aligned low points in the careers of James Earl Jones, Robbie Benson, and Kim
Cattrall, to whom Crow T. Robot sings an ardent ode of love.
Episode
404: Teenagers from Outer Space
This
1959 movie is one of eight riffed by MST3K that use Bronson Canyon, in the Los
Angeles Griffith Park area, as a location. It’s the story of a group of
middle-aged teenagers, sporting v-neck/turtleneck hybrid sweaters enhanced with
masking tape and wielding dime-store toy ray guns, who’ve been sent to Earth to
scout for grazing land for their “Gargon herds.” Gargons, it turns out, look a
lot like lobsters. Just regular old lobsters, too, they didn’t even glue fake
wings on them or anything.
Episode
424: Manos: The Hands of Fate
Thanks
to MST3K pulling it out of obscurity, Manos:
The Hands of Fate now ranks high on any newly forged list of the worst
movies ever made. It’s the 1966 work of Texas fertilizer salesman Harold P.
Warren, who literally made the movie on a bet, using his own money ($19,000)
and however many friends and volunteers he could scare up. Manos is currently enjoying an afterlife most movies of its kind
could never hope for. A pristine work print was found – it’s being restored
frame-by-frame, thanks to a successful Kickstarter campaign, to be released on
Blu-ray. At comic-cons around the country, people dress up as characters from
the film, and there’s Manos: The Hands of
Felt, a live puppet show interpretation. Manos has become the Gold Standard for bad movies, and MST3K saw it
first. Well, except for a handful of people in Texas in 1966.
Mike
Era
Episode
512: Mitchell
A
pivotal episode that had fans on the edge of their seats: not because of the
movie, but because this was the episode where Joel escaped from the Satellite
of Love, and was replaced by new host Mike Nelson. All went well, and a new era
began. In the 1975 movie, Joe Don Baker is
Mitchell, a bloated beer-soaked police detective who plays by his own sloppy
baby-oil slathered rules. Rumors circulated that Joe Don Baker was angered by
his treatment at the hands of MST3K, and vowed revenge, just as soon as he
sobered up.
Episode
515: Alien from L.A.
To
fill time during the movie’s lengthy end credits, Mike and Crow engage in a
fierce battle to determine who is more into totally femmy movies, such as Fried Green Tomatoes or Beaches. It was a draw. The 1988 white
South African movie demonstrates that, as an actress, supermodel Kathy Ireland
makes a great supermodel. A halfhearted attempt to 80s up Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth, the
story involves an underground totalitarian society, which looks very industrial
warehouse-y and seems to be populated with a lot of white South Africans.
Episode
610: The Violent Years
This
episode begins with another favorite short: Young
Man’s Fancy is a prime example of corporate America’s happy willingness in
the 1950s and 60s to bankroll thinly veiled commercials that were inserted into
high school curriculums coast to coast. It’s the story of teen girl Judy, who’s
able to contain her “squishy” hormones only with the help of modern kitchen
appliances, and is thus able to cook her way into the heart of the college boy
of her dreams. The 1956 movie presents the argument that if parents make the
mistake of having a life of their own, they risk driving even an innocent young
daughter into a life of violent juvenile delinquency. Point taken.
Episode
614: San Francisco International
The
pilot of a failed 1970 TV series, this “movie” rolls out an assembly line of
B-list made-for-TV movie actors grappling with just enough overlapping plot
points to prop the whole thing up between commercial breaks. Pernell “Adam
Cartwright from Bonanza” Roberts plays
a smug, strutting airport administrator who does “my job, my way.” When the
show went to (short lived) series, his job was filled by Lloyd Bridges, who
went on to parody the role in the 1980 comedy movie Airplane!
Episode
702: The Brute Man
This
episode continues to expand writer Mary Jo Pehl’s role as Dr. Forrester’s
domineering mother, Pearl. Dr. F’s reaction to seeing her go out on a date is a
classic: “Oh, well. He’s not the first oily man that’s taken Mom to the mat.” The
1946 movie is practically an autobiography of star Rondo Hatton. Once voted
“handsomest boy in high school,” Hatton was diagnosed with acromegaly, a
pituitary gland disorder that causes extreme disfigurement of the head, face,
and hands. After a bout of suicidal depression, Hatton was discovered by
Hollywood, and went on to play a series of roles as brutish thugs in B-movies. The Brute Man was his final film.
Episode
801: Revenge of the Creature
After
MST3K was rescued from cancellation by The Sci-Fi Channel, this episode brought
writer Bill Corbett into the role of Crow T. Robot, along with many other new
characters and concepts. The 1955 movie is a sequel to the much better Creature from the Black Lagoon, and
showcases the standard 1950s B-movie protocol for dealing with breakthroughs in
the field of zoology: capture it, enslave it, then shoot it.
Episode
812: The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who
Stopped Living and Became Mixed-up Zombies
This
one has it all: the work of grim and greasy low budget film auteur Ray Dennis
Steckler, who turns the camera on himself for quite a lot of this 1964 movie,
we get a doughy salesman lured to his death by carnies, lots of incomprehensible
dialogue, a roller coaster ride, more carnies, extremely overdressed hoochie-koo
dancers, and deformed zombies who may or may not have been carnies. A fatal
police shooting in a rustic Pacific coastal setting, and we’re done.
Episode
822: Overdrawn at the Memory Bank
This
one presented a challenge for the MST3K writers: the star of the movie was the
talented, respected, and recently deceased Raul Julia. They managed to riff
away, just the same. Shot on videotape (and it shows!) this 1983
made-for-Public TV movie was funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, and
was first broadcast over New York’s PBS affiliate, even though, thanks to never
actually being finished, there were gaping plot holes.
Episode
902: Phantom Planet
This
1961 movie is practically a blueprint for the low budget Americans-in-space
sci-fi epics of the 1950s and 60s. A hunky, thick-headed flyboy and his wormy,
philosophical sidekick find their way to a distant planet. The wormy guy dies
on impact. After a suitable interim of insulting local customs and wooing local
gals, hunky guy hightails it back home, leaving a trail of freedom, democracy,
and casualties in his wake. USA!
Episode
1013: Diabolik
In the final MST3K episode, the host segments clearly
overshadow the movie, which wasn’t particularly hard to do. It’s a 1968
Franco-Italian 007 wannabe, except the hero is an international super-thief,
complete with an underground lair and a girlfriend with an impressive
collection of wigs. After 10 seasons on basic cable, MST3K closed up shop with
Pearl and her minions finding work elsewhere (“Look, Nelson - move on. I am.”)
and Mike and the bots packing up and bracing for a crash-landing back on Earth.
Once on the ground, they move into a garden level apartment together and settle
in to…watch movies.