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| Art Gallery |
| BBI Studio Tour 08/07/98 |
| Electric Bugaloo |
| Gateway 2000 |
| Kevin Murphy Interview |
| MST3K Collection, Vol. 6 |
| MST3K, The End |
| Sound Directory |
Mystery Science Theater 3000 to shoot final episode.Satellite of Love to come home after 10 years!
After producing its 10th season of episodes, Best Brains, Inc., of Eden Prairie, Minnesota will close the curtain on its Peabody Award winning series, Mystery Science Theater 3000, as the Sci-Fi Channel will not be ordering any new programs.
"Ten years is a great run for any series. We've had a tremendous ride and it's time for Mike Nelson and the 'Bots to come down to Earth," Executive Producer and Best Brain's President Jim Mallon said today.
"We'd like to thank our families, friends and our tremendous fans for all of their support over the years. We'd also like to thank the Sci-Fi Channel for a great run which brought us to our 10th year."
Best Brains is currently in production of the final 13 shows of its tenth season. The program features a marooned astronaut (Mike Nelson) and two robotic companions who are forced to watch and comment on the terrible movies.
MST3K was started by Joel Hodgson and Mallon on Minneapolis UHF station KTMA in 1988. The series came to network cable in 1989 and over 200 episodes have been made. In its ten years the series garnered a Peabody Award, two Emmy Nominations, and over a dozen Cable Ace Award nominations.
The final season promises to be its best featuring a reunion show with series alumni Hodgson and Frank Conniff, and a host of wonderfully bad films, including a 1960's German production of Shakespeare's Hamlet.
MST3K episodes are available through Rhino Home Videos.
Source: Best Brains, Inc., Satellite News
Filmmakers finally get a break. After ten years of ribbing, roasting and skewering the worst films ever to grace celluloid, Mystery Science Theater 3000 celebrates its tenth and final season on The Sci-Fi Channel. Series creator Joel Hodgson ("Joel") and original cast member Frank Conniff ("TV's Frank") return for a special reunion show which will kick off the tenth season of this beloved series on Sunday, April 11 at 11:00 p.m. ET.Mystery Science Theater 3000, the little show that brought even Godzilla, The Werewolf and King Kong to their knees, began its decade of renegade film critique in 1988 on Minneapolis UHF station KTMA. In 1989, the show hit the big time basic cable. The series found a new home on The Sci-Fi Channel in 1997, and as the series ends its remarkable ten-year run, the network is proud to accompany Mystery Science Theater to this television milestone.
With an amazing ten year history, MST3K retires having outlasted such fellow TV classics as I Love Lucy (8 seasons), Laverne & Shirley (8 seasons) and even The Love Boat (9 seasons)! MST3K's place in television history is legendary and The Sci-Fi Channel wishes Best Brains the best bon voyage.
Mystery Science Theater 3000 features Mike Nelson (Michael J. Nelson) as the lone human lumbering through space aboard the Satellite of Love. Due to a dastardly experiment by the sinister Pearl Forrester (Mary Jo Pehl), Mike and his robot pals, Crow T. Robot (Bill Corbett) and Tom Servo (Kevin Murphy), are forced to watch the cheesiest films of all time.
Best Brains is currently in production on MST3K's final 13 shows. Jim Mallon is the show's Executive Producer. Michael J. Nelson is the head writer. Paul Chaplin, Bill Corbett, Mary Jo Pehl and Bridget Nelson also serve as writers on the series. Kevin Murphy is the Producer. Patrick Brantseg, the voice of the robot "Gypsy," doubles as the show's art director.
Source: Sci-Fi Channel
Hack filmmakers everywhere can breathe a huge sigh of relief. Producers of the cult TV show "Mystery Science Theatre 3000," the Twin Cities-based program that made heckling bad movies a fine art, announced Wednesday that next season will be the last."MST3K," which is entering its 10th year, has 13 episodes left in its contract with the Sci-Fi Channel, which opted not to order any new programs. This season will start April 11.
"I really have no regrets," said actor Kevin Murphy. "How many TV shows, except 'Gunsmoke,' get to stay on that long?"
Executive producer Jim Mallon said he saw the cancellation coming soon after Barry Diller took over the channel last year. "MST3K" has been on the chopping block before -- and lived to tell about it.
The program, which features a mix of robots and a human ripping jokes during an awful film, debuted in 1988 on a local UHF station. It was later picked up by Comedy Central, which dropped the show three years ago because of low ratings. The Sci-Fi Channel then picked it up. Mallon and Murphy wouldn't rule out the possibility of continuing the show if some outlet was interested.
Over the past decade, the show won a Peabody Award and received two Emmy nominations. Mallon said he hopes it helped put the Twin Cities on the map.
"I'm very proud that we had a national show made outside of the main production centers," he said.
Source: Neal Justin, Minneapolis Star Tribune
After 10 years of heckling the worst that Hollywood has to offer, "Mystery Science Theater 3000" is blasting off into the final frontier.Producers of the cult TV show announced on Wednesday that the Sci-Fi Channel has decided not to order any new programs and that the next season of "Mystery Science Theater 3000" will be its last.
"All great things eventually have to come back down from orbit," said Jim Mallon, the show's executive producer.
"Mystery Science Theater 3000," or "MST3K" to its fans, debuted on a Twin Cities UHF station in 1988. The show features a marooned astronaut and his robot pals making fun of bad movies.
Comedy Central had dropped the show three years ago because of low ratings, but it was picked up by the Sci-Fi Channel.
Mallon didn't know why the Sci-Fi Channel was not buying any more shows, but he suspected a change in programmers at the network. Telephone calls to the Sci-Fi Channel were not immediately returned.
"It's been a great run," Mallon said. "Getting 10 years in this business is quite remarkable, considering we started as nothing more than a cowtown puppet show."
Comedian Joel Hodgson created "Mystery Science Theater 3000" and was its first host until he left in 1993 for Los Angeles. Chief writer Michael J. Nelson took over as host.
In its 10 years the series won the Peabody Award for broadcast excellence and received two Emmy nominations and over a dozen CableAce Award nominations.
More than 200 episodes have been made. The new season's premiere, scheduled to air April 11, features a reunion show with Hodgson and former "MST3K" writer and performer Frank Conniff.
"It's been 10 years -- you can't complain," Nelson said. "Sit around and watch TV for 10 years and get paid for it? I'll take it."
Best Brains Inc., which produces the program in suburban Eden Prairie, is in the midst of making the final 13 shows of the 10th season. Among films to be skewered is a 1960s German production of Shakespeare's "Hamlet."
Mallon said there's always the possibility of a "MST3K" return.
"Blondie (the 1970s rock group) is back, so you know it's always possible," he said.
Source: Jeff Baenen, Associated Press
Time for MSTies to get misty-eyed.The object of their fan devotion--TV's Mystery Science Theater 3000--is going dark after 11 years of making fun of bad movies.
Sci-Fi Channel brought down the curtain Wednesday, announcing it wasn't ordering any more episodes of the Peabody Award-winning series, starring humanoid Mike Nelson and robot friends Gypsy, Tom Servo and Crow.
"We saw the handwriting on the wall," executive producer Jim Mallon told E! Online, noting that the show lost its network defenders in recent executive-suite shuffling.
The final MST3K season begins April 11 (featuring an extra-special guest appearance by original star Joel Hodgson). The finale, as-yet unproduced, is scheduled to air August 8.
But is the show really dead?
Mallon said there certainly will be "a bit of a pause." Sci-Fi Channel has dibs on the rights effectively through mid-2001. But after that? Any nibbles from other networks?
"We'll have to sit back and see," Mallon said.
One thing's certain, Team MST3K would be up for an 11th season.
"It's a really great gig," Mallon said. "...What we do is really fun."
For now, there will be 13 more original Sci-Fi Channel episodes. Thirteen more films to snicker by (including the German non-classic, Shakespeare's Hamlet). Thirteen more transmissions from the Satellite of Love.
It's no easy task to sum up Mystery Science Theater for the purposes of obituary. It was a comedy show, a sci-fi show, a movie-buff show, even a music show. To Time's Richard Corliss, it was "just about the smartest, funniest show TV has produced."
The premise was simple--and brilliant: A mad scientist (originally, Dr. Forrester) forces three space-bound guys (well, one guy and two robots) to gorge themselves on Hollywood turkeys. The boys' method of survival: Humor. It was the perfect release for anybody who'd ever sat dumbfounded in a darkened theater, wanting to talk back--and talk wise--to the screen.
Former stand-up comic Joel Hodgson and Mallon launched MST3K on Minneapolis UHF station KTMA-TV in 1988 for what's known as "Season Zero." Its TV life didn't really begin until its 1989 debut on cable's Comedy Central. (Hodgson left in 1993--a departure which, to some fans' tastes, took the zing out of the show.)
The show's first real brush with death came in December 1995, when Comedy Central pulled the plug. But the Sci-Fi Channel stepped in and revived the franchise with all-new episodes, starting in February 1997.
In all, the show spoofed more than 200 movies--from Teenagers From Outer Space to Gamera Vs. Zigra. "Many directors now fear that their films might receive MST treatment," the Sci-Fi Channel said in a statement.
The show even spawned its own movie--1996's Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie (natch). The big-screen version was little different than the little-screen version, with Nelson and the 'bots joking their way through a screening of This Island Earth.
MSTies--the Trekker-style nickname for the show's faithful--are taking news of the series' demise about as well as can be expected.
"Thanks," one fan on the MST3K newsgroup wrote. "You've meant a lot in my life...Thanks for the memories guys. It'll always mean a lot to me."
Source: Joal Ryan, E! Online News
The Satellite of Love will soon be grounded and the world's most famous wise-cracking robots will fall silent as "Mystery Science Theater 3000" announced this week that it will end production this year.The Sci-Fi Channel, which picked up the series when Comedy Central dropped it in 1995, decided that it will not be ordering any new episodes of the show, making the series' next season its last.
"It always felt like we got invited to a party we never should have been invited to," MST3K's executive producer and co-creator Jim Mallon told MTV News of the show's ten-year run.
The Sci-Fi Channel will air 13 more episodes of the show before pulling the plug, 10 of which have already taped and three more that will begin production in April. The final season of MST3K will begin airing in mid-April.
The high-concept, low-fi show, which featured a marooned space traveler and his robot friends offering a running commentary during truly awful films, got its start on Minneapolis' UHF station KTMA in 1988, and later found a home on Comedy Central and finally the Sci-Fi Channel. If all of MST3K's more than 200 episodes were rolled out back-to-back, Mallon estimates they would fill 33 days of viewing (and given the show's rabid fan base, there's a very good chance that folks would tune into every moment of it).
During its run, the show has seen a number of cast changes. Original protagonist Joel Hodgson (who created the show with Mallon in '88) left the show in 1993, and Frank Conniff (who played TV's Frank) left in 1995. Mallon said that both will return for appearances in the first MST3K episode of the show's final season. Beyond that, Mallon said that the fate of the show's current characters (protagonist Mike Nelson, and his robot pals Crow and Tom Servo) as the show approaches its end has yet to be determined.
"Maybe the show will end with Mike back in Wisconsin watching Packers games," Mallon said. "Maybe Tom and Crow could become VJs. That would be a good job for them" As for the robots themselves, they may wind up going to the highest bidder. Mallon said that Best Brains Inc., the production company behind MST3K, is considering auctioning off the show's props on the Internet.
Meanwhile, the people behind the puppets and one-liners have yet to plan where they will wind up as Mallon said that the MST3K team has yet to line up its next project. "We've been doing the same thing for ten years, maybe we'll take a month off now," Mallon said.
Source: MTV News
Mystery Science Theater 3000, in which a man and two robots mock bad movies on their "Satellite of Love," will not be renewed by the Sci-Fi Channel after this year's 10th season."We'll be powering down the Satellite of Love around mid-April, after our last shoot," executive producer Jim Mallon said Thursday from the show's Best Brains production facilities outside Minneapolis, Minn.
MST3K, as fans call it, was drawing up to a million viewers a week, Mallon said, but fell victim to management changes at Sci-Fi.
In a statement, Sci-Fi officials said the show's "place in television history is forever cemented" and said Sci-Fi "wishes Best Brains the best."
Now in reruns, MST3K airs at 10 a.m. Saturdays and 10 p.m. Sundays. Its final season, offering 13 episodes, begins April 11 and ends Aug. 8.
The "cow-town puppet show," as Mallon fondly calls it, "has been a good gig, but maybe it's time to rest it for a while."
He said Sci-Fi owns an exclusive air rights on the show extending for two years past the broadcast of its final original episode.
With that in mind, "we're not actively trying to shop it around," Mallon said. However, he said it's possible another network could negotiate a release from Sci-Fi's exclusivity and pick up the show.
Best Brains also has considered making new shows for release directly to video, using its fan database of more than 100,000 persons to recruit video "subscribers."
"Who knows?" Mallon said. "It may come back to life in some form."
But if nothing materializes soon, he said the cast and crew will disperse and Best Brains' facilities will be vacated.
"We'll have to have a garage sale," Mallon said. "We can't keep an operation like this going on fumes."
"The handwriting's been on the wall, so everybody's been looking around. Mike Nelson (host and head writer) is going to look up his contacts at the last place he worked, TGI Fridays. He thinks he can get me a job, and we can be shaving broccoli heads together."
MST3K has been axed before. It was born on a shoe-string budget at a Minneapolis UHF station, then ran on Comedy Central through seven seasons before being canceled, then picked up by Sci-Fi.
About a dozen episodes from its Comedy Central run are available from Rhino Home Video, which plans to release 25 in all.
Source: Bruce Westbrook, Houston Chronicle
After a decade of deadpan one-liners, the cult television hit Mystery Science Theatre 3000 is fading to credits."We made it 10 years," said show producer Kevin Murphy. "That was nine more than anyone expected."
Best Brains, the show's production company, announced the cancellation Wednesday after receiving word that the Sci-Fi Channel, MST3K's latest broadcaster, had decided not to buy any more episodes.
Fans around the world followed MST3K as the show shuffled between networks like a poor relative, increasingly landing in oddball time slots. After a modest beginning on a Minnesota station, it landed a prime slot in the Comedy Central lineup. After wearing out its welcome there, MST3K was relegated to post-Saturday Night Live oblivion on NBC. Finally, the program found a home on Sunday night on the Sci-Fi channel, on USA Networks.
The program's concept has changed over the years, too. The basic premise: An evil scientist shoots a factory worker into outer space, then plays awful B-movies to see which of them will help him accomplish his goal of ruling the world.
But our hero responds by building himself some robot friends to help pass the time. Crow and Tom Servo, essentially built out of a bowling pin, a hockey mask, and a gum-ball machine, help our hero watch the movies, pitching in with sarcastic comments while the B-grade schlock rolls.
MST3K was the brainchild of its executive producer, Jeff Mallon, and Joel Hodgson, who played a starring role. It debuted on a local Minneapolis station in 1988 before moving to cable a year later; more than 200 episodes have been made since. In 10 years, the series earned a Peabody award, two Emmy nominations, and over a dozen Cable Ace award nominations.
In 1995, after getting canned by Comedy Central, the crew at Best Brains in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, went into overdrive on the MST3K feature movie.
The film was released to rave reviews, including two thumbs up from Siskel and Ebert and miserable box office sales, although thousands of MST3K fans saw the movie time after time.
Murphy blamed the poor box office on Gramercy Pictures, the flick's studio, for showering more attention on Barb Wire, Pamela Anderson Lee's debut.
The crew has no plans of going down with the Satellite of Love, the show's space ship. Best Brains has big plans.
"I've been dry-clicking a revolver in my office with the door closed," Murphy said.
Star Mike Nelson could not immediately be reached for comment, but Murphy said Nelson had big plans, too.
"I speculate Mike is out to see if he can reclaim his job at Fridays. We figured they'd take him back at least as a line cook, but we're hoping for more since he's had 10 years experience working with puppets."
Fellow Brain Mary Jo Pehl isn't quite so despondent, planning a move into documentary filmmaking.
The big question on the minds of rabid fans is what will happen to the show's bizarre set, robot puppets, props, and so forth. Best Brains isn't telling. All Murphy would say is that they've got "something big planned."
The only prop whose fate is certain is Pehl's souped-up Volkswagen bus that she uses to traverse the universe. "I know where the bus will be," Pehl said. "I'll be living in it."
There are 13 episodes remaining, three of which are still in production, Pehl said. The Sci-Fi channel will begin airing those epsiodes on 11 April.
Despondent fans who think television just won't be the same after July would do well to remember the words of the MST3K theme song:
If you're wondering how he eats and breathes and other science facts (la-la-la), Just repeat to yourself, "It's just a show, I should really just relax..." for Mystery Science Theater 3000!
Source: Polly Sprenger, Wired News
The Sci-Fi Channel's cancellation this week of the campy bad-movie revue "Mystery Science Theater 3000" came as no surprise to star and head writer Mike Nelson.Since the night he first met the new management of USA Networks (which owns Sci-Fi) at a network function, he knew he and his show were not exactly favored sons.
"I was introduced to Stephen Chao," Nelson said, referring to the recently appointed USA Networks programming and marketing president, "and his head was down in some sesame noodles or chicken wings or something, and he didn't even look up.
"The person introducing me said that I was Mike Nelson, from 'Mystery Science Theater' and he said, 'Uh-huh,' and that was pretty much the extent of it. Not a good sign."
The show's final season on Sci-Fi, and 10th season overall since original host Joel Hodgson and company launched it on a Minneapolis UHF station in 1988, begins April 11, with a reunion show featuring Hodgson and fellow original cast member Frank Conniff. Two days before that show airs, Nelson and company will be officially released by Sci-Fi Channel.
"We're fired -- I like to take the dim view of things, and say fired -- as of April 9," Nelson explained. Currently, he and his colleagues are working on the 11th of the final 13 shows, meaning they will be mounting a finale of sorts, probably built around the 1967 Italian-French spy spoof "Danger: Diabolik," starring John Phillip Law of "Barbarella" fame.
"As far as the last show, we haven't talked about it much," Nelson said -- although they "had a good laugh" proposing that Crow the robot would mount a "harmless little puppet show," after which Mike "comes in and cruelly cancels it."
Asked whether the "MST3K" group would disband, Nelson said, "I think there's a small nut of us, a small pit at the middle of this cherry, that wishes to remain together. That remains to be seen, though.
"I plan to almost immediately go back to T.G.I. Fridays -- working the fryer."
Source: David Bianculli, New York Daily News
It's official -- "Mystery Science Theater 3000" is ringing down the curtain.After 10 years of lampooning cheesy movies in outer space, "MST3K" is closing shop on its unique combination of science fiction and satire. April 11 marks the beginning of the end for the obscure cable show with its 10ht -- and final -- season on the Sci-Fi Channel.
Best Brains Inc., which has produced the show from Eden Prairie, Minn., since its inception in 1988, has yet to pen the last episode of the Peabody Award-winning series, which will air Aug. 8.
"It's as if all these characters are turning back into pumpkins and mice," quipped Jim Mallon, executive producer and Best Brains president. "But we haven't written the final episode yet, so all those juicy cliffhangers are just conjecture. Maybe it all turned out to be a dream in Bob Newhart's bedroom."
In a statement issued by the Sci-Fi Channel, the cable network says "a 10-year run is an amazing feat for any series, and now the Sci-Fi Channel feels that the time has come to bring the Satellite of Love back to Earth."
"MST3K" features a marooned astronaut (Mike Nelson) trapped on the Satellite of Love starship with Crow and Tom Servo, two smart-aleck robots made of bowling pins and gumball machines. The glib trio is forced to watch -- and wax witty on - truly tasteless movies that would make even Joe Bob Briggs cringe in his lawn chair.
According to Brian Henry, co-founder of the official "MST3K" information Web site (www.mst3kinfo.com) with Net partner Chris Cornell, the breakup is a peaceful parting.
"At least it's a very amicable part," says Henry, who attended the taping for the first episode of the final season. "As far as I know there's no rancor between the two groups. Those Sci-Fi people who couldn't be there were calling in to see how it was going. Everyone got along great."
While filmmakers can now breathe a sigh of relief (lest their next magnum opus get vilified or "MST-ed"), fans are already mourning "MST3K"'s swan song.
"It would be wonderful to hear that someone like TNT or TBS would approach them," Cornell says, "but I get the feeling that that's a long shot. Ten years is a nice round number to go out on."
Expect MST3K to go out with a bang.
The final season's film fodder includes a 1960s German production of Shakespeare's "Hamlet," as well as "Soul Taker" with Joe Estevez (Charlie Sheen's other brother) and "The Girl in Gold Boots," a harbinger of the sexcapade romp that was "Showgirls."
"MST3K" was created in 1988 by prop comedian Joel Hodgson and Mallon on UHF station KTMA in Minneapolis as a campy, late night movie show. A year later, Comedy Central picked up the quirky program, which riffed on such B-movie bombs as "Manos: The Hands of Fate," "Side-Hackers" and "The Killer Shrews," as well as a blitzkrieg of "Gamera" and "Hercules" movies.
In April 1996, "Mystery Science Theater 3000:The Movie" hit the big screen to generally favorable reviews. The cable show then warped over to the Sci-Fi Channel in February 1997, following the departures of Hodgson, Trace Beaulieu (Dr. Clayton Forrester and the voice of Crow robot) and Frank Conniff (Forester's henchman, TV's Frank).
Hodgson and Coniff will make guest appearances on the final season's first episode.
The Sci-Fi Channel holds exclusive rights to MST3K until 2001, which could warrant reruns into the new millennium. In the meantime, fans can still purchase classic "MST3K" episodes from Rhino Home Videos at most video stores.
Mallon says that while the "MST3K" concept is "pretty viable," he doesn't have any plans at this time to ship the Satellite of Love to another network galaxy.
Source: René A. Guzman, Express-News
"MST3K" will vaporize after next season, said the press release. If you think "MST3K" has anything to do with Y2K, you are not a connoisseur (konn-NOY-zee-er) of bad cinema. "Mystery Science Theater 3000" began in 1988 at a Minneapolis UHF station; it hit cable the following year and though cable fought back, the show persevered and triumphed. The premise, for you pitifuls who never saw it, was that Mike Nelson (played by Mike Nelson) was lost in space and, along with two robot pals, was forced to watch the cheesiest films of all time. Some facts:
-- The series' final 13 episodes will begin on the Sci-Fi Channel on April 11. Do not write to us. Do not e-mail us. We cannot help. (See next.)
-- After years on basic cable, the Sci-Fi Channel picked up "MST3K" from Comedy Central in 1997. It is the Sci-Fi Channel that did not renew it. So you know whom to blame: The Sci-Fi Channel. Not us. (See previous.)
-- According to the wire service, among its many "honors," the show once won "the" Peabody Award. We find this hard to believe. Surely this is obviously not "the" Peabody, but is instead a little-known and unrelated honor bestowed by Mr. Peabody and his boy Sherman. Of course we could be wrong. But we don't think so.
Source: Janine Dallas Steffan, Seattle Times
Now that Mystery Science Theater 3000 has just one season left, it's time to pay homage to the show's comic genius.I have a plan to bring peace to our great nation.
Monicagate is over, Ken Starr's expense reports are back into six figures, and we are left to sift through the smoking rubble of this long, sordid impeachment affair.
After all the partisan bickering in Congress, can we ever be whole again? I say yes.
My scheme is this: Round up several of the major players in Congress -- Henry Hyde, Dick Gephardt, Bob Barr, Trent Lott, Dianne Feinstein -- and even Bill Clinton himself and herd them into a darkened movie theater. Make them sit together, preferably close to the screen.
Then make them watch a double feature. Say, Attack of the Giant Leeches followed by The Amazing Colossal Man.
As their horror turns slowly to disgust, then to resentment, back to horror again and then to grim resignation, I think you will notice a strange transformation begin to occur. Before long (I predict by the middle of the first film), the former enemies will bond. They will band together to fight a common enemy. Coalesce or perish.
Turn down the lights, and let the healing begin.
There is something about a really bad movie that brings out the humanity in all of us. When faced with two hours of celluloid ineptitude, it is our nature to rear up and bear our canine teeth; to fight back in true American fashion; to look directly at the screen and shout, "Bite me, movie!"
That is why it is with great sadness that we in this space note the impending demise of Mystery Science Theater 3000, the cable television show that dared to feature a man and two robots in a theater who make fun of dreadful films.
Following a 10-year run on two cable networks, the show's creators are calling it quits. The Sci-Fi Channel, the program's current home, has announced that it will not order any new episodes following this summer's run of 13 new shows.
This comes as quite a blow to the show's legion of fans -- dubbed MiSTies -- who obsess over every nuance of the weekly sketch comedy/bad film cheesefest.
The show's premise is this: A man and three homemade robots are marooned in space on the orbitting "Satellite of Love." The man and two robots are forced to watch awful films by the evil Pearl Forrester and her minions while another drives the ship.
A typical movie foisted on the crew might be Girls Town, in which a teen-age delinquent, played by Mamie Van Doren, is packed off to a Catholic minimum-security convent. This film also features Mel Torme as a kidnapper who is beaten up by nuns. Or it might be Red Zone Cuba, a stupefying Coleman Francis production, in which practically nothing happens. There is no identifiable plot in this movie, but there is a fake Fidel Castro, and John Carradine sings the haunting theme song, "Night Train to Mundo Fine."
And those are two of the better films.
But in the midst of all this cheesiness, comedy ensues when Mike and the 'bots begin supplementing the film's dialogue with that of their own. We see them as dark silhouettes seated in movie theater chairs along the bottom of the screen as they make snide comments, supply sound effects and generally wreak havoc on the film -- the same thing most of us did at the theater as kids.
Except that Mystery Science Theater 3000 is scripted. A team of several writers labor for a week to roast each film and in the process view the movie up to a dozen times. The result is a sort of clearinghouse for pop-culture references that has made the show a phenomenon with the young and middle-aged alike.
"Mystery Science Theater is based on the idea that we've all been subjected to badness," said Eric Snider, a writer in Provo, Utah who, along with his pal, BYU law student Mike Masse, maintains the Complete Mystery Science Theater 3000 Reference Guide, one of hundreds of Web sites devoted to the program.
"Badness and mediocrity surround us every day," Snider said. "This show is a way for people to fight back."
Said Masse: "What sets it apart from other shows is that it's very smart. You have to really be culturally literate to understand most of the humor."
Mystery Science Theater 3000 began as a local program on a UHF station in Minneapolis in 1988 and was picked up by Comedy Central a year later. When Comedy Central canceled the show in 1997, an aggressive letter-writing campaign by fans helped get it scooped up by the Sci-Fi Channel.
But the Sci-Fi Channel is canceling the program, although they have not explained why.
"Ten years is a great run for any show," said Jim Mallon, the show's executive producer andco-creator. "I think we did great considering the thing started as a little cow-town puppet show."
Through the years, performers and writers such as Trace Beaulieu, Frank Conniff, Josh Weinstein and co-creator Joel Hodgson have all left for greener pastures. Current inhabitants of the Satellite of Love include Mike Nelson (who is the show's head writer), Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett (as the robots Tom Servo and Crow) and Patrick Brantseg as the purple robot Gypsy (Jerry Falwell, beware!).
The crew's antagonists on earth are Pearl Forrester (Mary Jo Pehl), Professor Bobo (a personal-hygiene-challenged ape played by Murphy) and psychic-enhanced Observer (Corbett). Paul Chaplin and Bridgette Jones are writers and occasional performers on the show.
Even though MST3K, as fans call the show, is not considered mainstream television comedy, it has already lasted longer than such perennials as I Love Lucy (nine seasons) and Laverne and Shirley (eight). And even now, fans have begun to mobilize in an effort to scare up interest with another network (possibly USA) to pick up the show and continue the run.
But unlike 1997 when Sci-Fi saved the show, MST3K's performers now seem resigned to finally bringing the Satellite of Love back to earth.
"For one, I am anxious to return to my job as a fryer at TGI Friday's," said Nelson, who has been on board since MST3K's inception.
When it does touch down for the final time, Nelson & Co. will be closing the doors on a significant phenomenon. Among the program's many fans are Jerry Seinfeld, film critic Roger Ebert and Simpsons creator Matt Groening. (Look carefully at the television screen in Moe's bar, and occasionally you will see episodes of MST3K portrayed on the screen.)
Among the show's enemies is Joe Don Baker, the actor who portrayed a boozy cop in the 1970s shlock film Mitchell -- recently voted one of the top-five MST3K episodes of all time in a fan survey. As legend has it, Baker was infuriated by insults directed at his character when the MST3K crew skewered his film in a 1993 episode. According to some on the show, Baker threatened to "punch the lights out" of anyone connected to the show that he happened to meet. Or, as Murphy writes in the MST3K Episode Guide: "If Joe Don Baker met any one of us and knew who we were, he would probably take a swing, miss by a mile, spill his drink all over his rented arm-candy escort and fall backward into the hor d'oeuvre table. Well, bring him on, I say. We're ready for him."
The new season for MST3K begins April 16 with the film Soultaker, starring Martin Sheen's brother Joe Estevez. The MST3K episode features the highly anticipated return appearances of former cast regulars Hodgson and Conniff. Reruns of the Sci-Fi Channel shows should continue at least through 2002.
But whatever the show's status, Mystery Science Theater 3000 has reaffirmed and refined our inalienable right to watch a bad movie and make snide remarks at the screen. And isn't that what being an American is all about?
MST3K, we'll miss you. Or, as Crow T. Robot said near the conclusion of one recent TV adventure: "Oh, just bring me a Yoo-Hoo when it's all over."
Source: Rick Chandler, Impression Magazine
It's Been A Decade-Long Run For Locally Produced Cult TV Hit That Heckles The Worst B-Movies.After 10 years of heckling the worst that Hollywood has to offer, "Mystery Science Theater 3000" is blasting off into the final frontier.
Producers of the cult TV show announced on Wednesday that the Sci-Fi Channel has decided not to order any new programs and that the next season of "Mystery Science Theater 3000" will be its last.
"All great things eventually have to come back down from orbit," said Jim Mallon, the show's executive producer.
"Mystery Science Theater 3000," or "MST3K" to its fans, debuted on the UHF band here in the Twin Cities 1988. The show features a marooned astronaut and his robot pals making fun of bad movies.
Comedy Central had dropped the show three years ago because of low ratings, but it was picked up by the Sci-Fi Channel.
Mallon didn't know why the Sci-Fi Channel was not buying anymore shows, but he suspected a change in programmers at the network. Telephone calls to the Sci-Fi Channel were not immediately returned.
"It's been a great run," Mallon said. "Getting 10 years in this business is quite remarkable, considering we started as nothing more than a cowtown puppet show."
Comedian Joel Hodgson created "Mystery Science Theater 3000" and was its first host until he left in 1993 for Los Angeles. Chief writer Michael J. Nelson took over as host.
In its 10 years the series won the Peabody Award for broadcast excellence and received two Emmy nominations and over a dozen CableAce Award nominations.
More than 200 episodes have been made. The new season's premiere, scheduled to air April 11, features a reunion show with Hodgson and former "MST3K" writer and performer Frank Conniff.
"It's been 10 years -- you can't complain," Nelson said. "Sit around and watch TV for 10 years and get paid for it? I'll take it."
Best Brains Inc., which produces the program in suburban Eden Prairie, is in the midst of making the final 13 shows of the 10th season. Among films to be skewered is a 1960s German production of Shakespeare's "Hamlet."
Mallon said there's always the possibility of a "MST3K" return.
"Blondie (the 1970s rock group) is back, so you know it's always possible," he said.
Source: Channel 4000
| MSTAnon says: Journalists, being journalists, butcher the facts. See how many errors you can find. Oh, well. This is it, folks. As much as it pains me to say, the day of reckoning for MST3K is here. Sure, we all knew it would happen, the thought haunting us in the backs of our minds. In particular, I felt an eerie nervousness as I posted each new Season 10 title to the Experiments page. The perpetual nature of this wonderous show in years past hasn't made this any easier... Quite the contrary, we weren't ready to let it go when the word finally came down.
As I closely monitor the after-shock all across MSTie Net, I see MSTies in all stages of grief: denial, anxiety, depression, anger, guilt, and acceptance. No doubt many of you have felt as I do with a flood of emotions sweeping one's psyche at once, dealing with the fact that Mystery Science Theater 3000 will end on August 8th, 1999. This time, the end is real. Although the details surrounding the decision are still unclear, Season 10 seemed like the right time. That was the goal... After that, it was up in the air. But now, it may be for the best to let the show end with dignity. Enjoy the hell out of 1013 and 1003, then send the Brains a heartfelt thank-you for a job well done, finish up your MST tape library, and build that 'Bot you always wanted. MST3K won't be wiped from time and space. However, should the Brains call upon us MSTies to rally support for the continuation of the show on SFC or another network, you can bet your waffles I'll be right there on the front lines pulling for the greatest television show ever to grace the boob tube. And no, this site is not going to bite the dust... I'm still not satisfied with it. |
