Mystery Science Theater 3000is one of the shows that created the Internet. Its warped sense of humor,love of obscure references, and celebration of good/bad movies as a concept were all a crucial piece of early Internet culture, and the show’s explicit endorsement of the bootleg life–“keep circulating the tapes”–has kept it alive and loved up until the present day.
Back in the ’90s, Comedy Central would run a lengthy marathon ofMST3Kevery Thanksgiving, calling it “Turkey Day.” It’s one of the few holidaytraditions that’s actually worth observing, and thanks to the wonders of the Internet, it’s easy to keep going. Many of the older “experiments” (episodes) from the first 10 seasons ofMST3Kare up for free on YouTube, uncut. Most of them look like multiple-generation VHS rips, because they are, but higher-quality official DVDs and streams of manyMST3Kepisodes can be purchased from Shout Factory.
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Shout Factory is also hosting an officially-endorsedMST3Kmarathon all day tomorrow starting at 6 AM PST, available via Twitch, YouTube, and many other streaming networks. It’s planned to include several classic experiments, includingI Accuse My Parents, Eegah, Final Justice,andHobgoblins,ending in a mystery “wildcard” episode.
On this Thanksgiving, fraught with social distancing as it is, it’s a perfect time to make a pizza, curl up on the couch, and let Joel, Mike, Jonah and the bots serve as an endless distraction. Queue up these episodes ofMST3Kfor a little homebrew presentation ofTurkey Day 2020: The Viral Menace.
Season 2:Pod People
“She’s Zestfully dead.”
Joel’s initial five-season run hits its first peak here, with what’s indisputably the best episode of the second season, the first really good episode of the show, and a solid contender for the funniest experiment in the “Joel era” ofMST3K.
The movie in question, a 1983 French/Spanish film, comes off like maybe six different short films that were hemstitched together in post into an incoherent whole. Reportedly, the behind-the-scenes story here is that it was meant to be a straightforward horror film, about a real dickhead of a pop singer who goes on a vacation to the back woods with his band and runs into a homicidal alien. Then its producers demanded major alterations to its script, in order to cash in on the box-office success of Steven Spielberg’sE.T.,which introduces an entire new plot about a lonely boy who finds and hatches an alien egg. The result is a complete tonal misfire, where the film cuts back and forth almost at random between backup singers getting murdered and an alien babyhaving low-budget telekinetic misadventures.
As raw material for anMST3Kepisode,Pod Peopleis almost perfect. It’sbad in a fascinating way, with plenty of slow spaces that can be filled with humor, and no single element of the film is less than spectacularly flawed. The soundtrack is atonal synthesizer droning, the continuity is a mess, the kills are haymaker swats from a stuntman in a fur suit, and even the English dub is pure ’80s cheese. It’s one of the best episodes to show a newcomer to illustrate whyMST3Kis so beloved.
Season 3:Cave Dwellers
“I don’t believe it. They were too cheap to hirevillainsin this movie.”
It would be entirely possible to run a show likeMST3Kforyearsentirely on the strength of poorly dubbed 1980sItalian action, horror, and fantasy movies. It’s a rich vein of low-budget nonsense that has yet to be fully exploited even today, because it took twenty minutes to film the average ’80s Italian schlock-‘em-up, any working director in the field could make thirty of them in six months, and everyone involved wouldclearlybe chemically altered the entire time.
Cave Dwellersis the second in a series of four fantasy films that starred Miles O’Keefe as Ator,the not-Conan-really barbarian heroin a poorly-defined ancient world. It was obscure untilMST3Kpicked it up, at which point both it and the experiment became instant cult classics. All the ingredients are here: it meanders for most of its running length, it has very little actual plot, and at one point, the Iron Age barbarian hero Ator somehow MacGyvers together hand grenades and amodern hang glider. It has to be seen to be believed.
This episode is another solid pick for introducing new fans toMST3K. An honorable mention has to go to its predecessor,Ator the Fighting Eagle,which eventually hitMST3Kin the Netflix era in season 12. While it lacksCave Dwellers’unhurried pace and sunny plotlessness, it’s been famous for years for starting with what’s either one of the great all-time translation errors or a scriptfueled entirely by cheap cocaine, where a young Ator is almost triumphantly wed to hissister. They only find out they aren’t biologically relatedaftershe accepts the marriage proposal. It can’t help but get less crazy from there, but it’s worth that first initial high point.
Season 3:Godzilla vs. Megalon
“This is what it all boils down to: a little game of life that we call ‘character.'”
This one’s all about the final fight scene. 1973’sGodzilla vs. Megalonis famous among giant rubber monster fans as theGodzillamovie thatGodzilla is barely in at all. That’s because he wasn’t supposed to be there in the first place; Godzilla was hastily added late in production, to add much-needed star power to what was meant to be the debut of the brand-new robot superhero Jet Jaguar. It didn’t work, the result was a mess, and Jet Jaguar would’ve ended up as an obscure Japanese film-buff trivia question were it not forMST3K.
The final film is a mess right up until its end, when Jet Jaguar and Godzilla end up in a bizarre tag-team match against Megalon and Gigan. TheMST3Kcrew’s jokes immediately shift into treating it all like an old-time boxing match, especially when thestunts get too over-the-top to be believed.
One shot, of Godzilla delivering a dropkick that makes it look like he’s skating on his tail, was a prominent feature of theMST3Kopening credits for the rest of its run on Comedy Central. It’s glorious, and makes it one ofMST3K’s best forays intothe weird world of Japanese monster movies. It’s a little harder to find online than many of the other bigMST3Khits, perhaps owing to the fact that Godzilla has since become a much bigger deal in America, but it can be watched in full, complete with the original 1991 commercials, on archive.org.
Season 3:War of the Colossal Beast
“Uh, I gotta go finish my letter to Jodie Foster.”
Nobody remembers this episode for what’s ostensibly its feature, a 1958 black-and-white sci-fi bore by Bert I. Gordon. Instead, this is one of the most famous episodes ofMST3Kbecause of its lead-in short, “Mr. B Natural.”
It in turn is perhaps one of the first great runs on a trademarkMST3Kbit, where the players’ jokes all draw on the entirely believable assumption that there’sa deep mine of darknessbehind the G-rated antics onscreen. “Mr. B Natural” is a colorized 1957 short meant to sell a line of musical instruments, but their mascot, a Peter Pan knockoff played by veteran Broadway performer Betty Luster, would come off as a thin slice of hell even without the running commentary.
She’s a beaming, too-cheerful-by-200% pixie who is trying to get a kid interested in marching band, for reasons that donotseem benevolent. She casually admits to being as old as humanity, flits in and out of existence, and generally comes off like she’s poker buddies withthe Outsider fromDishonored. Every run through “Mr. B Natural” comes with the unspoken threat that at some point during one of these viewings, Mr. B is going to face the camera with a grin, pull out a knife, and step out of the screen like Sadako on uppers. It’s solid comedy/horror gold, and might be the best/worst short film thatMST3Kever lampooned.
Season 6:Zombie Nightmare
“You’re right, Mike. This is either America ten years ago or Canada today.”
Jon Mikl Thor is a weird dude. He’s a Canadian bodybuilder with a legitimately impressive career in his field, the vocalist for a metal band he named after himself, and someone who hasdefinitelyedited his own Wikipedia article. Whenever he appears in a film, it’s an obvious vanity project that’s alsoa guaranteed shot of pure 1980s cheese. Another Thor movie,Rock’n’Roll Nightmare,recently resurfaced on an episode of Red Letter Media’s “Best of the Worst,” and if there is mercy in this twisted universe, it will be used in a future Jonah-hostedMST3K.
Back in 1986, Thor played the villain and wrote the score for the Canadian horror filmZombie Nightmare,whichco-stars Adam West and a young Tia Carrere. When a street gang murders a young man on his way home from a baseball game, his grieving mother turns to a local voodoo priestess for revenge. Reanimated asa discount Jason Voorhees, and Jason himself was already pretty low-budget, the zombie tracks down his killers, despite token opposition from a couple of in-over-their-heads small-town cops.
There always needed to be more ’80s horror onMST3K,andZombie Nightmareis a handy showcase of why. It’s a fundamentally ridiculous genre that’s only gotten moreso with age, and the jokes in this episode get a lot of mileage out of the low budget, the Canadian setting (every so often,MST3Kgoes out of its way to remind the viewer that the cast and crewwere all in Minnesota), Thor’s obvious pride in his build, and of course, West’s time on theBatmanTV show. Added to the self-consciously over-the-top metal of Thor’s soundtrack, which sounds like the kind of metal that someone would make if they were trying to make fun of metal, and it’s one of the highlights (along withDanger! Death RayandAngels’ Revenge) of the show’s somewhat middling sixth season.
Season 9:The Final Sacrifice
“I wonder if there’s beer on the sun.”
A lot of memes got started with this one, which pits Mike and the bots against a zero-budget adventure thriller. Unlikely hero Zap Rowsdower, a big ol’buttery slab of Canadian stereotypeswith either the greatest or worst name in cinematic history, goes up against a brown-robed cult alongside an awkward teenager, in a battle over who gets to discover a lost civilization’s city.
In a weird way, this might be the most successful student film ever made. Produced on a budget of about $1,500 Canadian, soabout six bucks in real money,The Final Sacrificegamely tries and mostly fails to make a bunch of car chases through backwoods Alberta exciting. It’s a misfire on just about every level, but it’s a likable misfire, and it’s got heart. There’s a reason why there are so many people on the Internet using “Zap Rowsdower” as a handle, and it’s onlymostlyironic.
While theMST3Kcrew’s jokes once again stray into takingtoo-easy shots at Canada, it’s one of the best-known episodes of Mike’s run. There’s a lot of fun to be had in mining the film’s student-film missteps, Rowsdower’s doofy name, and the low-budget antics of a newbie filmmaker trying to makeRaiders of the Lost Arkin his backyard with the money he found in his couch.The Final Sacrificewas recently pulled off of YouTube due to what appears to be the efforts of a copyright troll, but it’s still available on Dailymotion (which still exists!) and DVD. It could easily be the funniest episode ofMST3Kduring its run on the Sci-Fi Channel… if not for the next episode on this list.
Season 8:Space Mutiny
“I think it was very nice of you to give that dead woman another chance.”
This episode holds a lot of crowns. It’s one of Mike Nelson’s best shows as host, easily the stand-out experiment ofthe show’s Sci-Fi Channel run, and an endless font of quotable gold. The running gag where Mike and the bots keep assigning new heroic nicknames to the film’s protagonist Dave Ryder (Crunch Beefsteak! Blast Hardcheese! Big McLargehuge!) has been providing nerds with Internet handles for over 20 years now.
IfMST3Khadn’t picked upSpace Mutinywhen it did, the film was destined for a half-life in Internet film discussion circles, just as with other schlock classics likeSilent Night, Deadly Night 2. Its co-star Cisse Cameron has tried to claimit was a spoof, butSpace Mutinyplays its hand deadly straight; if itwasintended as a satire, no one involved was told until well after the fact.
Instead, it comes off as exactly what it appears to be: a low-budget South African space opera set aboard a generation ship, which embraces several cliches and makes up a few of its own. There’s a square-jawed blond hero, a designated love interest who appears to be twice his age, Cameron Mitchell slumming it up, a bunch of skinny women in jazzercise gearpretending to be alien prophets, space battle sequences that areblatantlystolen from the originalBattlestar Galactica, and one of the most blatant continuity errors ever committed to film. It’s a glorious mess, and it led to some of the bestMST3Kgags in the show’s entire run.
Season 11:Avalanche
“Even thefiresmells like gin.”
Arguably the most star-studded film to ever receive theMST3Ktreatment, as well as the best experiment in the two Netflix seasons, 1978’sAvalanchepurports to be a disaster movie. It’s actually a really weak love story fromMST3Kmainstay Roger Corman, which ends inboth figurative and literal disaster.
Rock Hudson and Mia Farrow co-star, as a resort owner trying to win back the hand of his estranged wife for about 70 minutes while hisski lodge slowly disintegrates around him. It’s one of those ’70s movies that isn’t so muchslowburn asnoburn. Farrow seems heavily sedated, Hudson has more chemistry with random pieces of scenery than he does with her, and the entire film looks like it was shot through gauze. The avalanche ends up feeling like a mercy kill for the entire dysfunctional situation.
WhileAvalanchestill has the characteristic pace of Jonah Ray’s episodes, where the jokes aren’t so much told as firehosed upon the audience, the film is just languorous enough that the overall pace evens out. The best running joke, abouthow long it’s taking the avalanche to show upin a film entitledAvalanche, is solid, deserved, and endlessly iterated upon. While the Netflix revival has a few other decent to good episodes, particularlyStar CrashandKiller Fish,Avalancheis easily as good as it gets.
