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Mystery Science Theater Turns 20

Posted by timothy on from the snark-embodied dept.

RimmerExperience writes "Hard to believe that Mystery Science Theater 3000 is 20 years old. This NY Times article provides a brief synopsis from the humble but inspired beginnings in a Midwest TV studio, to the making of MST3K: The Movie, to what the creators are up to today. It's interesting that the original creators are still involved in MST3K-style riffing in some way. So if you are looking for your traditional Turkey Day fix, plug in your old VHS, tune into BitTorrent or check out their current projects — Riff Trax (Mike Nelson) or Cinematic Titanic (Joel & Trace). Keep circulating the tapes, er, MPEGs."

7 of 165 comments (clear)

  1. The facilities! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Many of us working in the new music tech company in the old MST3K sound stage are nerd-fans. Crow statuettes abound!

  2. Re:My Two Favorites by NeuroManson · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Actually the movie in question was The Crawling Eye. And it was the first movie watched by J&TB when MST3K made its way into Cable TV.

    Attack of The The Eye Creatures (not a typo, look at the movie title card) was in the latter half of season 4, MST3K's heyday.

    I still miss Turkey Day to this date, I didn't have cable TV (back in the late 80s/early 90s, it was difficult to get new service if you didn't own your home, and even if you DID have cable, there was only a 20% chance they carried The Comedy Channel/Comedy Central), so I was only able to watch an episode of it while visiting a friends house. Being able to download everything helped immensely.

    --
    Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
  3. Butch Deadlift! by FourthAge · · Score: 2, Interesting

    We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese.

    --
    The tao of democracy: the government you can vote for is not the real government.
  4. Re:Commemorative Box Set by Knara · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Yeah, some of the SciFi channel eps I consider to be the pinnacle of Best Brains production, mostly because once Joel was out the way, the jokes got edgier and the skits finally strayed from the (classic, but wearing at the edges) Deep 13 stuff. (though the latter was more due to moving to SciFi I guess).

    In any event, the tone of the humor on SciFi was much more to my liking than the frequently relatively "safer" humor of the Comedy Central days. I often explain it as being: Joel was a father figure to the bots, having created them. Mike is "one of the guys".

  5. Mod me down, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Mod me down for saying this, but I dislike MST3K. I won't go into whether it's funny - that's for everyone to find out for themselves -, but the show's made it MUCH more difficult to find copies of certain movies if you do NOT want someone else commenting on them.

    MST3K can be fun, but sometimes, I want to make fun of bad movies on my own, too...

  6. Re:Commemorative Box Set by iluvcapra · · Score: 5, Interesting

    True stories:

    • Kieth Bilderbeck, the composer of Wereworlf (or Arizona Werewolf as it was called in production) is a friend of mine and is quite proud of his contribution.
    • I have worked on a few shows with Steve Kempster, who, before becoming Trevor Rabin's recording engineer among other more notable credits, recorded the end credit song for Space Mutiny. I once asked him about it and he nearly demanded that I never mention it again.
    • A few editors I worked with recently on High School Musical 3 had credits as assistants on Alien from LA. At the time they knew it was kindof goofy, but they really appreciated the director's vision and thought it was very Terry Gilliam-esque.

    I love this town! It's easy to ridicule these films, and I love MST, but the really interesting stories are from how these films get made in the first place, and the fact that people often pour their hearts into the work, and they themselves may be very talented but other factors simply doom the thing.

    Not to defend Golan-Globus of course. The last few Rhino box sets had interviews with actual cast and crew from some of the films on the DVD, and I really treasure these, as it gives me some perspective on my job. It's like a hacker reading about the Tech Model Railroad Club.

    Sorry it's OT, just thought I'd share.

    --
    Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
  7. Re:My Two Favorites by Creepy · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Funny thing is, MST3K's first day on KTMA is probably one of the most memorable days of my life, but not because of MST3K. I was sick with the worst case of strep throat I've ever had along with a high fever, and I couldn't go to the doctor because it was turkey day (plus my parents had company over). Between bouts of sleep (that never lasted long because of the pain) I was flipping through the channels on the TV in my room and I came across the show. I missed about the first 10 minutes and wasn't sure what was going on with the people in front. The jokes weren't funny or didn't make much sense to me for about the next 20-30 minutes before I realized they were trying to be funny (and I remember that joke was funny).

        The jokes really were hit-and-miss early on. I think I missed episode 2 and maybe 3 (I thought it was a one-off and didn't realize it was a series), but I remember the second one I saw was better than the first and it generally improved from there.