MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000
Saturday Matinee in the mall used to be the only place in Wilmington where you could ever find MST3K videotapes. When Rhino started putting them out, I tried to build up a collection. Every time I went in, the same guy was working there and he always commented on my purchases. Once he said something like, "Now, I'll tell you what's ingenious about that show. Everybody's sat around and made comments while they watched movies. They had the idea of making money at it."

Although I didn't say it then because I'm (believe it or not) not an argumentative kind of guy, he missed the mark entirely. Maybe you have commented on the movies you've watched. Who hasn't? Were you incredibly witty while you did so? Did you find a way to pour all of your creative energies into doing a good job of it?

Probably not, and it goes to another level as well. When most of us start throwing our attitudes at the screen it's an act of rebellion. Maybe we're being forced to watch something, maybe we hate what we're seeing. That sensibility undoubtedly exists on MST3K, but that's only part of the appeal. People who didn't love film passionately could not possibly have made a show that pays such humble tribute to the way movies exist in our lives, even the bad ones. Joel Hodgson, Michael J. Nelson and company were making this point about six years before Tim Burton would get around to it.

The gifted people making this show were not content to think of it as a minor gig. They made it a passion, an art; every inventive urge they had, they worked into this series to make it good, painstakingly revising and rewriting scripts, working incredibly hard for roughly ten years to produce a cable-TV puppet show. Even with the low budget, it's clear watching today that everyone involved had their heart in the series.

I think also that, in a sort of precursor to Mike Judge's "Beavis & Butt-Head," the MST3K writers found a special, heretofore undiscovered niche in the possibilities of televised humor (besides the audacity they had to do a two-hour comedy show). The comedy is intrinsically tied to its context of origin, and because the origin was right there in front of the characters, you could do a parody of the "magic things" sequence in "Pod People" -- it would have no value outside of the show, and that's what made it special. It could be the funniest thing ever and you could never explain in a million years to somebody who didn't see it.

Equally remarkable was the show's understanding of everything the movies it satirized didn't. Working within one's means is the chief concern in creating great entertainment on a budget, and I'd argue always. Limitations of any kind are rarely a bad thing, because they are what exhibits creativity and allows our base impulses to come out and play. Impulse had everything to do with MST3K, and the show rarely -- if ever -- gets ahead of its audience, or falls behind. In many ways, the audience is part of the show. Thus, with cheap video effects and cameras and flimsy sets made out of gadgets from crew members' garages, these people made something more entertaining than "Buffy, the Vampire Slayer" will ever be. This is not a first in television -- Jay Ward's "Rocky & Bullwinkle" was forced to compensate for horrible animation with outstanding scripts -- but it is an increasing rarity.

Incredibly enough, the show even has *characters*, and moreover, their personalities come into perspective not only in the endlessly delightful host segments (which I think could be a show on their own) but in the theater bits; often a comment Tom Servo makes is something Crow would never, ever say. The writing is that intricate, that engaging, and most impressively, all this gives the show a rewatchability most narrative television never approaches. To say the least, it's not an embarrassment to the creators of these films that their work ended up on MST3K. It's an honor, because something wonderful has been created from someone else's faulty, failed, or unsuccessful vision.

Throughout its run, like so many great television programs, MST3K suffered at the hands of program executives who had no understanding whatsoever of the show. The peak came when a theatrical film was produced for Universal/Gramercy and one fight after another came with various studio bigwigs. The nightmare was documented in the segments of one episode, providing the most devastating and brilliant lambasting of the "Entertainment Tonight" culture I've yet to come across. Needless to say, the show was canned. And canned. And canned. By three different channels. Somehow or another the show managed to get about 150 episodes made over the course of ten seasons. Most shows have noticable peaks and valleys in quality, but although there were a few failed episodes -- primarily due to the choice of material -- and despite a number of cast changes comparable to "Dynasty," the show never faltered considerably, and by the end of its run on the Sci-Fi Channel was still churning out appallingly, wrenchingly funny classics.

If there is a prize for the most unique show ever to grace the airwaves, this probably gets it, but that's irrelevant. There's more to this than mere comedy, and the creators of MST3K have left behind a great, beloved legacy of entertainment that was vivid, involving, intelligent, and criminally hilarious.

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My personal top 10, for right this second:
1. Pod People
2. Manos: The Hands of Fate
3. Mitchell
4. The Beast of Yucca Flats
5. Hobgoblins
6. The Sidehackers
7. Time of the Apes
8. The Skydivers
9. Jack Frost
10. Red Zone Cuba (or maybe Giant Spider Invasion)


Quite a few great episodes of "Mystery Science Theater 3000" are out from Rhino Entertainment, and you can buy them through the MST3K Info Club (which can be joined for free). Here's the the mailing address:

P.O. Box 5325
Hopkins, MN 55343

There's an avid tape trading community online, and this standby of the analog age has moved to the future. Sites like this one offer fine DVD transfers of episodes for a nominal service fee, with Rhino-distributed episodes of course excluded, and all customers encouraged to support the guiding lights of the show by picking up the Rhino discs and tapes.

From Best Brains directly, there are quite a few special programs such as blooper reels, documentaries, and shorts compilations. Again, you can get in touch with them for more info.

The AMAZING COLOSSAL EPISODE GUIDE is a great read, and for more of the same, visit this site.

Episode reviews of this show aren't really a good idea, for obvious reasons, but in the future I plan to add... uh... something. Probably. Check back in... 2025.

MST3K ON DVD
I Accuse My Parents
MST3K Collection Vol. 2
MST3K Collection Vol. 6
MST3K Collection Vol. 9
MST3K Collection Vol. 10

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