December 6th 2011 saw the release of “The Simpsons Season 14” on DVD (YAY!) and the “Mystery Science Theater Volume XXII” DVD Box set. It was like Christmas came 19 days early.
Apparently “The Simpsons” will be returning next year (YAY!) for their 25th and final (BOO!) season, so I can procrastinate writing about them for a while.
I’m really surprised how often I mention Mystery Science Theater 3000 to someone and they have never heard of it. Fans of the show have heard the basics 100 times, but I can’t resist chewing this well gnawed cabbage yet again.
Joel Hodgson was such a great prop comic that it’s not even an insult to refer to him as a prop comic. He made several appearances doing his stand up routines on “Late Night with David Letterman” and “Saturday Night Live”. Disappointed at how quickly national television exposure eats up material, he returned home to his native Minnesota
In 1988 he found KTMA-TV VHF. (There were still VHF stations in 1988 !?) The station had next to no money, but had a library of terrible movies they could broadcast for free. Joel hit on the sci-fi concept of a man shot into outer space and forced by mad scientists to watch the world’s worst movies as torture disguised as an experiment.
Joel had been making robot sculptures built from various odds and ends found at thrift shops, and had been selling them at a local store. He was a fan of the Bruce Dern movie “Silent Runnings”, about a lonely astronaut who builds a pair of robots to keep him company. Hodgson built a pair of wise cracking robot puppets, Crow T. Robot and Tom Servo, to help defend him in the assault of awfulness from the films. They would mercilessly heckle the films to perserve Joel's sanity.
Inspired by an illustration from Elton John’s “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” album, Joel got the idea of having Joel, the ‘bots, and a row of theater seats appear as silhouettes in front of the movie screen. (Also reminiscent of gags in old Bugs Bunny cartoons.)
The show quickly established a tradition that almost all of the show’s characters were played by the show’s writers. (A few remaining characters were played by members of the technical crew.) Joel played Joel Robinson, referring to the space family Robinson of “Lost In Space”. Trace Beaulieu (every speller’s worst nightmare, and co-designer of the show’s elaborate and stylish sets) played the duel roles of Dr. Clayton Forester and Crow. Josh Weinstein played Dr. Larry Erhardt and the original voice of Servo. A third robot, the sweet and girly Gypsy was voiced in falsetto by various men, most notably producer Jim Malon.
The show was picked up by Comedy Central in 1989. To their credit, the creators refused to leave Hopkins Minnesota
The show’s most controversial change occurred in 1994, when Joel quit and was replaced by Mike Nelson. While Joel was sleepy-voiced and rather laconic, Nelson had a cheerier personality, and looked like a more conventional, wholesome, handsome TV show host. What many fans did not realize at the time was that Nelson was the show’s long – time head writer, and had been virtually unrecognizable playing dozens of parts in the shows skits through the years. Towards the end of the show’s Comedy Central run, Frank Conniff quit. Clayton’s comic foil was now his mother Pearl
In 1996, around the time the show was cancelled by Comedy Central, the shows’ creators, collectively known as Best Brains, got a deal with Universal Pictures for a feature film deal. The movie arose at an odd time in the show’s history, when Mike had not satisfactorily established himself as the show’s host, and Clayton had no comic partner to play off of. The movie did not expand the TV show’s parameters and was actually shorter than any of the TV episodes.
In 1997, The Sci-Fi channel picked up MST3K (as it was relatively conveniently abbreviated). Personally, I think it was in the Sci-Fi Channel years that the show really hit its stride. Of course, Joel was the show’s mastermind—he created all the show’s tissue thin, yet somehow mysterious and believable “reality”, and came up with all the show’s ingenious concepts. There would never have been an MST3K without his creative genius. Kevin Murphy is right, however, when he says, “Mike Nelson is one of the six or seven funniest people in the world”. Also, I believe the show was at it’s funniest at the end, at least partly because they had done it for so long, they were now extreme pros at producing its style of humor. Trace Beaulieu had left the show, and Pearl
The final produced show “Diabolik” made its broadcast debut August 08, 1999. “Merlyn’s Shop of Mystic Wonders”, produced earlier, became the last aired episode debuting September12, 1999. Its debut was delayed due to delays in clearing the rights to the film.
AND THE REST… Two other important writer / performers on MST3K were Bridgette Jones (real – life wife of Mike Nelson) and Paul Chaplin, both of whom played several characters on the show, but somehow, never ended up in major recurring roles.
Since the show’s cancellation, Hodgson, Beaulieu, Conniff, Pehl & Weinstein tour as Cinematic Titanic, screening movies and riffing on them live. Nelson, Murphy and Corbett created a series of DVDs under the name “The Film Crew”, which includes a riffed movie and wrap around skits that, oddly enough, are parodies of “Ask This Old House”. They also created something called “Riff Trax” which allows them to sync up their riffing with movies they could never get the rights to (ie; Star Wars)
TOP 20 FAVORITES EPISODES
1) Diabolik That rare thing – the only movie they’ve done that I would enjoy watching without the MST3K treatment. It’s ultra groovy! – Never released on home video, but now it’s just a slide and a click away!
2) Manos (the Hand of Fate) The Essentials 2 DVD Set
3) Santa Clause Conquers the Martians The Essentials 2 DVD Set
4) Pod People MST3K Collection Volume 2
5) Sidehackers MST3K Collection Volume 3
6) Overdrawn at the Memory Bank MST3K Collection Volume 4
7) Space Mutiny MST3K Collection Volume 4
8) Boggy Creek II; and the Legend Continues MST3K Collection Volume 5
9) Merlin’s Shop of Mystical Wonders MST3K Collection Volume 5
10) Time Chasers MST3K Collection Volume 5
11) The Touch of Satan MST3K Collection Volume 5
12) Hobgoblins MST3K Collection Volume 8
13) The Giant Spider Invasion MST3K Collection Volume 10
14) Ring of Terror MST3K Collection Volume 11
15) Parts: The Clonus Horror MST3K Collection Volume 12
16) Future Wars 20th Anniversary Collection
17) Werewolf 20th Anniversary Collection
18) Soultaker MST3K Collection Volume XIV
19) Warrior from the Lost World MST3K Collection Volume XVI
20) Crash of the Moons MST3K Collection Volume XVIII
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