Mystery Science Theater 3000

I have to admit that on the nerd-dom scoring for just how geeky I am, I’m not on the upper tier of those who speak Klingon, I’m not dressing up and LARP’ing in a park, but I am absolutely addicted to Mystery Science Theater 3000 (aka MST3K). When I want a guaranteed laugh, my sense of humor takes me to a few staples; any George Carlin standup, “Big Bang Theory,” “MST3K,” and because not all my humor is intellectually based, I also adore “America’s Funniest Videos” to see stupid saps dancing on tables while drunk.

This cult favorite TV series ran from 1988 to 1999. Eventually, they got in trouble for showing a movie and putting themselves on top of it and reselling it with the movie content in it, so now they do “RiffTrax” that can be downloaded from online and played on your IPOD along with the movie. The one for “Twilight” is to die for! This has given them the opportunity to not just do B-movies any longer, but to ridicule pop movies, as well. It’s sometimes hard to line up the RiffTrax, but it’s worth the effort.

If you’ve never seen it, however, you’ll want to see the loads of episodes they made during their 11-year run. The premise is a guy and two robots trapped in a space station by a mad scientist who forces them to watch horrible B-movies. While stuck watching them in the theater, the three make fun of and mock the movie throughout. If it doesn’t have you laughing until you’re crying, I’d be really surprised.

Some of my favorites are:
“Time Chasers”
“Werewolf”
“Tormented”
“The Touch of Satan”
“Legend of Boggy Creek II”

In fact, my son and I are such MST3K freaks that we call each other “Rowsdower” (an insider line from one of the episodes, “The Final Sacrifice” above--a movie that repeated that name over and over and over again). We sometimes put on awful movies and do our own MST3K dialogue.

Bad movies happen, but when they do, I think of them as happy blessings. They give us lots of material for future satirical practice!