Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Rifftrax

[The Mass Shooter Ron Soye]

Hot take: The Joel era was better.
Nuclear take: The KTMA era was peak.

 

[XYZpdq Jr.]

Hot take: The Joel era was better.
Nuclear take: The KTMA era was peak.

I was really surprised at how good Revenge Of The Mysterons From Mars turned out.
Didn't hurt that Captain Scarlet is pretty cool too.

But yeah, I didn't see the KTMAs until the online DAP era, after watching as it aired from S1 onward, like around 04 or 05.

Definitely interesting to go back to their earliest stuff, like the early RHCP when they just sounded more like a funk band instead of The RHCP Song they had nailed down by Blood Sugar Sex Magic.

KTMA has some really odd movies that work well, like Phase IV and Humanoid Woman.

 

[Level99Manchild]

It seems like every Turkey Marathon keeps getting worse because this one felt more soulless and half-assed than the others. Both the Shout and MST3K channels took a page from Darksyde Phil and Disney by setting the stream chat for subs/members only, and it was more or less an echo chamber. Anyone who said something that wasn't woke or wasn't sucking up to Jonah/Felicia/Patton got banned or removed from the chat. Shout didn't even have that many commercials from their end, and the robots weren't even in any segments I've seen. It was just Jonah and Mary Jo talking about MST3k with woke celebritities like Mark Hamill and Felicia Day (They got a lot of shit for using Mark Hamill for the Turkey Day Marathon, and they deleted comments exposing Mark on the MST3K channel if not both channels). They only played one Jonah movie because the rest were the typical meme movies you've seen a thousand times (Hobgoblins, Space Mutiny, Manos, etc.).

Hot take: The Joel era was better.
Nuclear take: The KTMA era was peak.

Robot Holocaust was pretty good.

 

[Mr. Racewar1488]

They got a lot of shit for using Mark Hamill for the Turkey Day Marathon, and they deleted comments exposing Mark on the MST3K channel if not both channels

Please tell me someone wished Mark Hamill's granddaughter a happy Thanksgiving.

 

[Level99Manchild]

Please tell me someone wished Mark Hamill's granddaughter a happy Thanksgiving.

Pretty hard to do when it's an echo chamber (Only one guy was able to troll the lefties on the stream before he got banned). The stream was also crashing a couple of times, and the chat lied to themselves that the MST3K marathons always had issues (it was never the case). You can tell Joel and wokeness ruined MST.

I didn't know there was a campaign for season 14, but I'm glad it failed (Not sorry. Fuck Joel and most of the cast). $5-10 million+ to make shitty episodes, lol. The Jonah movie they played on the marathon was a Gamera riff, and it was painful to watch (No wonder the campaign failed).

 

[grapeshark77]

That campaign was wild - my main memory was how everyone thought it was too much money, the "hardcore" fans told them to shut up, then Joel randomly lowered the goal out of desperation. There's a small but weird group of fans out there that try to shut down any critique (it seems like most of the audience posts memes from the original series and ignores them).

I think they locked the chat down because they play the new episodes next to the classics and it makes them look even worse. I liked some isolated riffing bits in Jonah's Netflix run but you put that up with a Joel/Mike show and it's nothing. They didn't even show an Emily episode this year which was amusing.

 

[XYZpdq Jr.]

Robot Holocaust was pretty good.

reboot ate my response so I'll redo it

Robot Holocaust is def one of my favs, Been a top pick of mine since I started watching with the first cable season. The season 1 riffing style works well with the goofy breezy nature of the movie, like it's a DnD game that got reworked into a movie.
There's a gag that didn't really make it into the DAP and early digital copies where Joel impersonates a turtle during the credits.

 

[Level99Manchild]

I think they locked the chat down because they play the new episodes next to the classics and it makes them look even worse. I liked some isolated riffing bits in Jonah's Netflix run but you put that up with a Joel/Mike show and it's nothing. They didn't even show an Emily episode this year which was amusing.

The lock was more because of politics/TDS and getting Mark Hamill for the marathon instead of funny robot skits. Mark must have been buzzed and drunk when he recorded his segment because he could barely go through his script/queue cards (funny how they had Mark introduce a Felicia Day episode). Gamera vs. Jiger was the only episode from Felicia they aired (the rest was meme shit like Space Mutiny and Hobgoblins). But yea, Jonah just isn't as good as Joel or Mike. I gave GvJ 5 minutes to make me laugh, and it was pretty bad.

Robot Holocaust is def one of my favs, Been a top pick of mine since I started watching with the first cable season. The season 1 riffing style works well with the goofy breezy nature of the movie, like it's a DnD game that got reworked into a movie.

I've been meaning to see Robot Holocaust without the riffs because while it's a shitty or mediocre Sci-Fi movie, it had a great soundtrack.

 

[Commander X]

Catching up on Riffs, binging a bit.

We had, recently, among others Xtro 3 - a low budget in name only sequel to the British cult flick Xtro. Ripe for riffing, in how it's an all too standard sci-fi/horror direct to video movie from the Nineties. Plenty of good riffs, especially on the how the alien antagonist has new powers revealed when convenient.

Little Lost Sea Serpent, from the makers of Rollergator and Baby Ghost. Another lousy kid's film featuring a terrible puppet and Joe Estevez.

The movie is set in a beach town where it’s somehow newsworthy when “some stuff washes up on the beach.” Among the debris is the titular sea serpent, or sea monster, or creature, depending on who’s speaking. A young boy and an older girl—who has an ill-advised crush on him—find the thing, and inexplicably decide to befriend it. The boy hopes the giggling, wet beast will somehow help his mom get back together with his estranged father, played by, you guessed it, the one and only Joe Estevez!

Meanwhile, the kids try to keep the bug-eyed reptile hidden from two cartoonishly goofy men who constantly pursue them but never manage to appear in the same scene. That's kind of impressive, in a way! Again, desperate for scraps of hope here!

The Fantastic Argoman. Admittedly, I sort of enjoy goofy Italo/Euro spy films from the 1960s, especially ones that tried to mix it up with science fiction or superhero stuff. Or rather supervillain stuff, as our lead character steals priceless treasures and replaces them with exact duplicates, aided by his superpowers, while getting it on with the lades. Plus, he loses the use of his powers for six hours after cotius with one of these femmes Not a great film by any stretch of the imagination, but it is pretty goofy in a way that makes it Riff-able.

 

[BetterFuckChuck]

didnt they sing uptown funk in the netflix seasons instead of actually riffing? and then they changed gypsy's name?

 

[Michael Wade]

And references like to Mary Jo Pehl's hometown, like that one in Eegah: "Circle Pines...after dark."

I actually lean a lot towards Joel. He had this older brother kind of vibe and i enjoy his time capsule humor. The stoner delivery of his lines made a lot of them funny even if I didn't get it.

 

[Commander X]

From what I have seen, NeoMST3K just got worse and worse. Part of the problem with the new show, besides how with that first season it seemed overproduced and half-assed at the same time was that the original show had a bunch of Midwest types, some of who had been in the regional comedy scene, who were people just making jokes about what they thought was funny, so you get jokes about Mark Rothko and Brian Eno. NeoMST3K is a bunch of LA career geek-comedy guys with the same set of cultural references as Ready Player One.

In the original show the roles of the Mad Scientists and so on were played by show writers who had no problems with being onscreen. In the spirit of the rest of the reboot the obvious choice was to get Patton Oswalt and Felicia Day because of Geek Culture or whatever.

 

[Commander X]

Watched one of the more recent Riffs, Fight to Win, another film featuring Cynthia Rothrock oh and Richard Norton, as well as Hong Kong superstar Andy Lau. It's one of those genre mashups you saw a lot of from Hong Kong film in the 80s and 90s, biting on Indiana Jones a bit, with some E.T. in the mix along with lots of "wacky" comedy and uneven moods. This potent mix, originally titled The Magic Crystal was retitled Fight to Win for it's theatrical release in the Philippines, and other imported films were released under variations of Fight to Win by Filipino distributors to make it look like they were sequels, including Fight to Win II which was the Corey Yeun and Yuen Baio film Righting Wrongs that also starred Rothrock. Another one was the JCVD flick Bloodsport (Fight to Win: New Chapter) and another was Low Blow (The Last Fight to Win) starring Leo Fong, which some may remember from seeing it featured on Best of the Worst.

Fight to Win was also the title of an American martial arts film from 1987, that starred Rothrock, and Richard Norton and was directed by...Leo Fong.

Anyways, the film was directed by famous (some would say notorious) director/producer/screenwriter/sometimes actor Wong Jing, who plays Andy Lau's comedy relief sidekick. Wong Jing is notorious in some circles for how some of his films are wacky genre-mashups or just wacky, or crass, featuring sophomoric humor and such but he's also directed some crazy 1990s wuxia flicks like Holy Weapon

and Kung Fu Cult Master with Jet Li and Sammo Hung

the very, very, very loosely based on Street Fighter film Future Cops

and this 1991 take on Hong Kong "heroic bloodshed" films

really, his filmography is pretty wild.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

Time Chasers is online on that official MST3K YT channel.

BTW the channel is at: /channel/UCFzph9x-n9FR52BI94Zfgww

 

[King Dead]

Time Chasers is online on that official MST3K YT channel.

BTW the channel is at: /channel/UCFzph9x-n9FR52BI94Zfgww

A bit late on this, but perhaps even more surprisingly, The Final Sacrifice is also up now:

I guess the director finally got the stick out his ass about it and gave them permission. Rowsdower!

 

[Umaibae]

I regularly throw on the livestream when I have nothing better to do (like right now). Have discovered some gems — Escape 2000 the newest.

Mitchell is still the OG. My my my my Mitchell.

 

[The Decimator]

My brother got the Amazing Colossal Episode Guide for Christmas and it is well worth a read.

 

[Commander X]

Revisiting the ACEG, I had a copy that started falling apart, and since found another one crammed onto the shelf of a used bookstore. What stuck with me was the prologue, which is a bit tongue-in-cheek but it is stated this isn't going to be one of those episode guides, "by some no-talent stringer from In Style magazine looking to make a fast buck" and its not going to be one of those glorified coffee-table book episode guides, no "after-market quickie" consisting mostly of a few words per page and photos. I've come across a lot of those in places like used bookstores myself, both Official and Unofficial.

Some of the bits that stuck with me are the introductions to the seasons, like Kevin Murphy's for Season Two

After Season One ended, Josh took off for Hollywood to find his fortune. Meanwhile, the rest of us sat back here in Minnesota waiting for a contract for new shows. According to the many hundreds of lawyers involved, the new contract was “on the way.” Yeah. “On the way.” Well, this little “on the way” ploy worked through March, through April and through May, when it started to get a little tiresome. We all drew unemployment, except for Mike. For some reason, we kept the whiny little bastard on the payroll to keep him from bolting back to his job at T.G.I. Friday. (Actually, Mike’s invaluable talents as head writer would have been terrible to lose, and we kept him on to make him think he was somehow better than the rest of us. It worked. Oh, do I sound bitter? No, not me. Hell no. I have nothing but bonhomie for the festering little turd. Really.)

About three months later the mail started showing up for Season Two, due to the lag time between shooting and airing. Most of the mail was positive for Frank and me in our new roles, but I still fondly remember one particular piece of negative mail. Someone worked really hard to print out a huge banner, about ten feet long, which read in big block letters I HATE TOM SERVO’S NEW VOICE!!! Heh-heh-heh. It was really nice of someone to go through all that fuss just for me, in order to make me feel as bad as I possibly could. Too bad it didn’t work. I proudly hung it on the wall behind my desk and kept it there for over a year. And for the person who sent me the banner, I feel bad to know that their life is so bereft of joy and meaning that they are reduced to sending hate mail to a puppet.

Or Nelson's for Season Five:

Season Five was a happy one for all. It fell in the middle of what in television is a very long contract, and everyone was basking in the warm rays of financial security. Kevin bought his third Jaguar in one week, put a brick on the accelerator, and crashed this one into a pole too! “Just to see how big a fireball it makes,” he would say, and then laugh his hearty baritone laugh. Then he’d hand me a coffee mug—sized roll of thousands and order me to buy him a new one. “And make it gun-barrel blue this time, you little s—t!!’” he’d say, and then laugh that laugh again. Boy, that laugh is infectious, I tell you.

Towards the end of the book, if you wanted to look up MSTies online, it is recommended you check out the MST3K presence on AOL, rec.arts.tv.mst3k.misc, rec.arts.tv.mst3k.announce, Prodigy and CompuServe.

It was published at an interesting time for the show, as we have a "Wither Season 7" from Mary Jo Pehl, where she mentions the upcoming season will have only six shows, dropping mentions of some of the films they hoped to get the rights for, like Laserblast, The Incredible Melting Man and (one day, future Rifftrax riff) Starship Invasions. This is followed by a truncated Season 7 guide on one page.

I do like they eventually put up a guide to that short season in the style of the ACEG online, to give the Comedy Central-era show a proper sendoff from Nelson, Pehl, Chaplin and Murphy in the Laserblast entry, which still strikes me as poignant.

The main thing I think about when I consider the end of the Comedy Central years is the departure of Trace Beaulieu. Trace is one of the most charming, generous, funny people I've ever known. When the last show was done, when our little endeavor seemed, in fact, to be all over, he gave me a postcard I still have on my fridge. It's a wonderful photo -- from maybe the 1920s -- of a race car driver in one of those old bullet-style cars. He's on an old dirt road, some sparse audience visible in the background; he's looking over to his left, his hair blown back in an image simultaneously of speed and comic surprise; and what he's seeing is his left rear tire, which has just left its axle and is bounding by him on the road.

It's a sublime moment of "Hey, what the --!!!" On the back, Trace wrote that it sure was nice working on the puppet show with me. And it was, too; from my end, doubly. Thank you, Trace.

Murphy's final words on Laserblast have an extra poignant resonance with me, even today:

So there we were, eating a cake shaped like the MST logo and drinking as much Summit Pale Ale and Sam Adams as we could put down. This was it. After seven seasons, one hundred twenty-eight shows (correct me if I'm wrong), two live shows, a convention, three agents, four network presidents, two entire network ownership shifts, two major cast changes, endless awards, accolades, press junkets, Penn Gillette, lawsuits, upheavals, pain, agony, joy, heartburn, cigars, alcohol and approximately seven hundred and fifty-three billion occasions for laughter, we were eating logo cake and emptying beer bottles.

It had been the best experience of my life. And I was determined not to tamp it down and head out to LA to become a development whore or sit in a room writing bad comedy for someone else. Living in Silver Lake, throwing pencils at the ceiling with a bunch of goateed Harvard losers and grinding away on the next episode of Monkeyshit Follies was my idea of Hell.

I had already decided to stay, because I have a soul, and souls don't grow "Out There," as William Goldman calls it. I got into television because I loved creating stuff for it, not because the money was good or I thought L.A. was "neat." I'd rather stay here and get a job scraping zebra mussels off the hulls of fishing boats.

So I had already made up my mind that I would remain. I would hold my days at MST among the best of my professional life, and look back fondly while moving forward and beyond. And we still had some work to do and a place to do it. It would be a long dry spell, for sure. But then one day we found out about a lovely man named Barry Schulman who lived in a cable network in midtown Manhattan...

 

[XYZpdq Jr.]

ACEG was very nice
afaik the House of XYZpdq is claim to two copies, one was the off-the-rack one my dad and me got later after we realized we should be careful with our first copy
that one was the one you got when you pre-ordered it at cover price from the Info Club
same price as the bookstores, but it was signed by... iirc Trace, Mike, Kevin, Mary Jo, Bill, and Brigette?

 

[Commander X]

Other signs of the time it was published include the mentions of the MST3K Hour syndicated show and how VHS tapes of the episodes aren't available yet (though bootlegs were available in the former Eastern Bloc, sold by Russian mobsters and all dubbed into a "kind of all-purpose Low Slavic" ), and a mention of the eventually cancelled MST3K CD-ROM as something that would be out "by the time you are reading this".

Also looking up the book, I had forgotten this was the last page, a kind of striking image.