Best Of The Worst Need Some Turkey With That Turkey? “Mst 3000” Can Help

Even a glutton for bad movies should be stuffed by the end of this year’s Turkey Day marathon of “Mystery Science Theater 3000” on Comedy Central.

For an appetizer, there’s a rarely screened episode from the cult TV program’s first season, when creator Joel Hodgson and his wisecracking robots were perfecting the art of mocking cheesy movies.

That’s followed by helpings of such “Mystery Science Theater 3000” classics as “Manos the Hands of Fate” and “Mitchell,” topped off by the premiere of a new episode, “Night of the Blood Beast,” for dessert.

“When Roger Whittaker releases an album and calls it ‘All My Best,’ that’s what I like to think of this, as ‘Mystery Science Theater - All Our Best,”’ said head writer Michael J. Nelson.

After taking time out to write and produce their own movie (a big-screen savaging of the 1954 science-fiction epic “This Island Earth”), the quick wits behind “MST3K” are back for a seventh season.

The show started on a Twin Cities UHF station in 1988 and later found a national audience on cable. Hodgson, a comedian and toymaker, left the show in 1993 and Nelson took over as host.

“It’s still fun this season. I thought it wouldn’t be, actually, but it is,” Nelson said. He plays Mike, a marooned-in-space temp forced to watch bad movies as part of a mad scientist’s fiendish experiment.

He copes by making fun of the movies’ visible strings and rubber-suited monsters, so “MST3K” viewers get to see the movies and hear Nelson and his sidekicks quipping nonstop.

For the new season, Nelson, 31, and robot pals Tom Servo and Crow will suffer through such bottom-of-the-barrel films as:

“Brute Man” (1946)

The film stars Rondo Hatton, a once-handsome man whose face became grotesquely enlarged by the disease acromegaly.

Hatton didn’t need makeup to play monstrous roles, said puppeteer Kevin Murphy, the voice of Tom Servo, “so they exploited him until he died.”

“At first you feel sort of funny making any light of a man who has this disease,” Nelson said. “But then you realize it’s the whole point of the movie - he’s a guy with a big ugly face.”

“And he is a terribly bad actor,” Murphy added.

“Night of the Blood Beast” (1958)

A male astronaut returns from outer space, apparently dead, then wakes up and finds the Blood Beast has impregnated him with shrimp-like alien embryos.

The Blood Beast looks like “a parrot in a space suit,” Murphy said. Somehow the beast eats a scientist and assumes his voice, but sounds like Humphrey Bogart when he speaks.

“The Incredible Melting Man” (1978)

Another tale of a space mission gone horribly wrong. “The plot is - and I’m not kidding here - the plot is, a guy is melting. That’s the plot,” Nelson said.

Instead of the 24 two-hour episodes the “MST3K” cast was cranking out each of the last four seasons, Murphy said, the new season will concentrate on six “quality, select, hand-picked” shows.

“We’ve been able to sink our teeth into these and just have as much fun as possible. We’ve gotten pretty good at it after all this time,” he said.

The fifth annual Turkey Day marathon (9 a.m.-midnight today) opens with “The Crawling Hand” from the first season of “MST3K,” then follows with six back-to-back episodes, one from each season.

As gravy, the 15-hour anthology will feature a sneak peek at “Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie” (planned for April release by Gramercy Pictures) and show outtakes that are sent to fan club members.

Viewers also will be introduced to a new character who will replace the departed TV’s Frank, the stooge to mad scientist Dr. Clayton Forrester. It will be Forrester’s mom, who is visiting for Thanksgiving.

Forrester wants to take over the world by the time dinner comes around, Murphy said, “so he’s whipped up his absolute, most fiendish experiments and is showing those on Turkey Day.”

Comedy Central shows “MST3K” reruns at midnight Monday through Thursday, at 5 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. Sunday. The other five new episodes will debut at 5 p.m. on Saturdays starting Feb. 3.

“MST3K” also is reaching new fans in syndication to commercial stations. “It’s my dream that we will someday outperform ‘Baywatch Nights,”’ Nelson said.

“Dream big,” Murphy shot back. “Dream REAL big, Mike.”