Celluloid Sow’s Ears ‘Mystery Science Theater 3000’ Makes Robust, If Not Silken, Hilarity From Awful Movies
“Mystery Science Theater 3000”
Time and channel: New episodes premiere at 7 p.m. Saturdays; encores at noon Mondays-Fridays, 8 a.m. Fridays, 8 p.m. Fridays, 10 a.m. Saturdays and 10 a.m. Sundays on Comedy Central cable network (channel 42 on Cox Cable).
Wednesday: Special Oscar preview show, with Tom Servo and Crow opining on nominees, based on short film clips.
‘Play MiSTie for me!”
Forget Clint Eastwood crazies. Instead, hearken to the hungry call of manic “MiSTies,” the addict-fans of the wonderfully twisted cable show “Mystery Science Theater 3000,” which ridicules really bad sci-fi and other kinds of films with really erudite wit.
Now in its sixth season, “Mystery Science Theater 3000,” a.k.a. “MST3K” or “MiSTie,” manages to turn the world’s worst movies into both a dastardly punishment and a sly-humored treat.
The punishee is “MST’s” hapless lab worker, Mike Nelson (Mike Nelson), imprisoned on the orbiting Satellite of Love with robot companions Tom Servo and Crow, all of whom are forced to watch bottomfeeder flicks as part of an experiment on the human brain by mad scientists Dr. Clayton Forrester (Trace Beaulieu) and TV’s Frank (Frank Conniff).
Those treated are “MST’s” viewers, who get a big scoop of laughably lousy acting and egregious editing from “The Killer Shrews” or “Teenage Caveman,” topped by hilariously hip and cranky heckling from Nelson and the ‘bots, seen at the bottom of the TV screen in silhouette.
“It’s not terribly complicated,” producer Jim Mallon said via telephone from the studio of Best Brains production company in Eden Prairie, Minn., outside Minneapolis.
Mallon crafted the concept of “MST3K” with its creator and original star, Joel Hodgson, who left the show in October 1993. Mallon also voices the robot Gypsy, who governs the key functions of the spaceship and is the “more compassionate” robot.
“We just get bad movies, watch them, and people get a kick out of it,” Mallon said.
This season, the hapless trio watched the truly terrible Canadian film “Zombie Nightmare,” featuring a muscle-shirted lug who clobbers two robbers and then gets flattened by a car.
Mike: “Do you think this speaks for a whole generation, like ‘Reality Bites’?”
Crow, singing: “There’s a dead hunk in the middle of the ro-oad.”
Tom Servo: “It takes a man to wear Farrah Fawcett hair.”
Well before “Zombie’s” midway mark, our spacy friends had made pun fodder of Eddie Van Halen, Valerie Bertinelli, Dom DeLuise, U.S. health care, Shalimar perfume, “Lisa Bonet on any given day,” political correctness, Toblerone chocolate, the Fonz, and Prego spaghetti sauce.
“We’re just doing what we’d do anyway,” Mallon said.
Yeah, right. Like the rest of us saps would really watch 2,500-3,000 movie dogs in 5 1/2 years if we didn’t have to.
Yet that’s just what Nelson, Mallon and crew have done.
“I guess our brains are full of a lot more junk (than the average person’s),” said Beaulieu, who also voices Crow and serves as set designer for “MST3K.”
Still, finding a film that’s just exactly bad enough isn’t easy.
First, HBO Downtown Productions, a programming supplier to Comedy Central, buys all the really lousy movies it can find from distributors of such and ships them to Best Brains.
“We use about one out of 10 tapes, because nine are either too good or too bad,” Beaulieu said. “We like to get at least some shred of plot, and it’s nice if you can see the scene.”
Next, Nelson, Mallon, Beaulieu, Conniff and technical director Kevin Murphy, who voices Tom Servo, pile into the Best Brains screening room, where they trash ‘n’ bash what they can barely bear to see.
“There’s no clear dynamic,” Mallon said. “We work kind of like a jazz band.”
On average, it takes the Brainers about eight hours to screen a single film, since someone shoots off his mouth about every two seconds, and the wisecrack is then typed into a computer.
“It gets pretty tedious about 2:30 in the afternoon,” Beaulieu said. “And every time we see a film, our head writer, Mike Nelson, always says, ‘This is the worst movie I’ve ever seen.’
“But actually our most-loved films tend to be the ones we’ve been most tortured by. One of our favorites is ‘Manos, The Hands of Fate,’ made by a fertilizer salesman in Texas. He didn’t have to go too far to put the fertilizer on the film.
“‘Monster-A-Go-Go’ is a fun one from the ‘50s. Nothing happens on that one. And there’s a trilogy of films by Coleman Francis, ‘Red Zone Cuba,’ ‘The Skydivers’ - and the third one is too horrible to mention.”
After Mallon et al finish a screening, other writers assign their one-liners to the three characters as needed, to fit individual personalities and the flow of the show.
Then Mallon and crew reassemble to tape their zingers while watching the movie - ugh - one more time.
“The robots tend to be a little bit more naive,” Beaulieu said. “That provides a certain caustic purity.
“The pain of our watching the movies is really worked into the comedy.”
But this pain has proved nothing but sweet for the Best Brainers.
They now have their own cult following of rabid fans, who attend national “MiSTie” conventions costumed like aliens or monsters or - in the ultimate inside joke - Trekkies.
And Mallon and Co. are working to consummate a deal for a theatrical version of “MiSTie,” which will savage a really bad movie whose identity is under wraps.
On Wednesday, “MST3K” takes on Hollywood’s proudest moment, when it boldly tackles the Oscars.
Tom Servo and Crow, who haven’t seen any of this year’s Oscarnominated films while lost in space, vocalize their opinions based purely on the one- and two-minute film clips in the electronic press kits they received.
Pretty insider for a bunch of Midwestern stay-at-homes.
“I’m sure living here does influence our humor,” Beaulieu said.
“Out here, we’re not jaded by getting taken to lunch every day by bigwig Hollywood producers. In fact, we’re not taken to lunch.
“In fact, there are no good places to eat lunch where we are, and I think that has a lot to do with our surliness.”