Oct 25 2008
Mystery Science
I haven’t posted for a couple days… because, believe it or not, I really haven’t watched anything for a couple days. Mr. Hall has been working late again, and I’ve been reading, so the boob tube has been black. (We are definitely not going to get all those Hammer movies watched before Halloween).
There was one exception: last night, I popped in an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000.
I feel justified in talking about this on a movie blog because - although it was a 
TV show - it was movies as well. If you’re not familiar with MST3K, it’s a show done in the spirit of those old afternoon shows where a B-grade horror or Sci-Fi movie would be hosted by a goofy, pseudo-scary character, like Svengoolie here in Chicago, or Vampira. However, there’s a qualitative difference: where those shows simply introduce the movie and then have comical skits at the commercial breaks, MST3K actually takes the step of commenting throughout the entire film. You can see the dark outlines of the show’s heroes in the lower part of the screen during the movie: Mike (or Joel, earlier in the series) and two robots, Crow and Tom Servo, wisecrack about the horrible movie from start to finish. It does have the comical bumpers of its spiritual predecessors, in which Mike (or Joel) talks to the evil scientists who are keeping him up in space and forcing him to watch these bad movies.
I love MST3k. It’s like watching a bad movie with a group of friends, which (with the proper movie and proper friends) is a delightful experience. Unfortunately, MST3k was cancelled in 1999 (ironically, shortly after I started watching it) - but there are plenty of episodes out on DVD.
And, for those of us who just can’t let go, Mike and Joel have both launched MST3k-like projects with a few members of MST3k casts: Joel recently launched a direct-to-video project called Cinematic Titanic (they currently have about five movies available), while Mike has both The Film Crew (also about five movies available) and a website called Rifftrax, where you can download humorous movie commentaries to sync with your own copies of films.
By the way, I can offer my endorsement of all three of those ventures. I especially recommend Cinematic Titanic’s first offering, The Oozing Skull; The Film Crew’s Wild Women of Wongo; and Rifftrax’s riff on the deliciously obscure and horrible Star Wars Christmas Special.
The main complaint I’ve heard about MST3k is when an occassional person will go, “Oh, I’ve heard of that. Yeah, I saw a couple episodes - but I don’t like it when people talk over movies.” If that’s what you think; I’m sorry, but you’ve really, really missed the point. It’s not about watching the movies. The movies are terrible! Unless your brain just works really differently from mine, there’s no way you’re going to be watching these films in rapt silence. You’ll watch them with half your attention, listen to the humorous commentary with the other half, and then hopefully add a couple quips of your own.
It’s how bad movies were meant to be enjoyed.
I hadn’t heard of this until a few years ago. We had set up Bad Science Fiction Movie Night at the university, where the volume was kept low enough that we could talk and make fun of it as it went along. I think it was after the second showing that someone brought up MST3K so of course we had to show that too.
I never seem to notice shows until people get in an uproar about their being canceled. Opps!