MST3K
Netlfix Instant Watcher has several episodes of "Mystery Science Theater 3000" available to watch. I viewed a couple last night as I was relaxing after a grueling day of report-writing.
The premise of MST3K is that a guy named Joel (or later on, Mike) is orbiting the Earth in the "Satellite of Love" and being forced to watch some awful movies for the purposes of (mad) science. To keep his sanity, Joel builds some robot friends who can watch with him and make jokes about how awful the movies are. The show's theme song reminds you not to take things too seriously; the setup is there to give the characters an excuse to make fun of some of the worst films ever made.
MST3K first started airing in the late 1980s, when TV was a lot less sophisticated than it is today. I remember spending some of my Saturday afternoons watching horrible movies on local TV channels. When we had cable, we also used to spend our summer weekday mornings watching the monster movie marathons on the USA network. Today, you'd do that for the kitsch value. In those days, the bad movies were cheaper to run, so they'd be promoted as if they were as good as anything else. This is how I got exposed to movies like "The American Ninja," "Kingdom of the Spiders" and "The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension." My brothers and I would sit there and watch these films with some amount of irony; between those movies and the Dr. Who reruns on PBS, I think our sensibilities were warped pretty badly.
I didn't catch MST3K until I was in junior high school, but it quickly became a favorite show. The creators of the show had a tendency to pick really awful sci-fi films from the 50s and 60s that time had forgotten, and watching Joel, Crow and Tom Servo's silhouettes bouncing around in front of the films made them much easier to watch. The jokes were delivered rapid-fire, and they avoided criticizing the films the way most of us would, though the occasional jibe about bad directing, editing or acting would surface every now and then. Still, these comments were always cheerful; "I liked this movie better when it was Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom," one of the robots intoned once during a particularly bad Hercules film.
As much as MST3K is remembered for lampooning awful movies, there's a sense that the creators cherished these films as well. (You'd have to for MST3K to run for 198 episodes over 11 years.) Some films seemed to be sacred; the show never lampooned Ed Wood, Jr's masterpiece of suck, Plan 9 From Outer Space, though they did go through his almost-as-bad Bride of the Monster. MST3K did help bring Manos: Hand of Fate back into cult classic status, and it's a good thing, because Manos is a cautionary tale about how not to make a movie.
In a way, I miss the era in which a show like MST3K could be on the air and be funny. Part of the reason the show existed was because it was a cheap and amusing way to re-air awful films. In today's world, where they actually show good and popular movies on TV, MST3K would feel a little out of place. (That's probably one reason why the various creators have gone off to do RiffTrax and Cinematic Titanic.) Who would sit for 2 hours and watch a horrendously bad movie when they can flip to one of dozens of other channels and watch something, well, good?
When MST3K was on cable, it aired on Comedy Central, back in the days when Penn Jillette was still the announcer, and before South Park really helped to legitimize the network as being something more than just a bunch of comedy re-runs. I remember watching "Candid Gamera" one weekend, an event where they aired all of the MST3K episodes dealing with Gamera, the Japanese turtle who fights monsters and loves children. I remember another weekend when Comedy Central aired, "Play MST for me," an event where they showed viewers' favorite episodes. Both weekends, I watched a lot more TV than usual.
I'm a little nostaglic for the simpler times when I could find bad movies on TV instead of having to seek them out for myself, I guess. But it's all right. You can get most MST3K films through Netflix, and I'm definitely going to make sure my own children see them down the road. I'd hate to think of a world where such an experience could be long-forgotten.
The premise of MST3K is that a guy named Joel (or later on, Mike) is orbiting the Earth in the "Satellite of Love" and being forced to watch some awful movies for the purposes of (mad) science. To keep his sanity, Joel builds some robot friends who can watch with him and make jokes about how awful the movies are. The show's theme song reminds you not to take things too seriously; the setup is there to give the characters an excuse to make fun of some of the worst films ever made.
MST3K first started airing in the late 1980s, when TV was a lot less sophisticated than it is today. I remember spending some of my Saturday afternoons watching horrible movies on local TV channels. When we had cable, we also used to spend our summer weekday mornings watching the monster movie marathons on the USA network. Today, you'd do that for the kitsch value. In those days, the bad movies were cheaper to run, so they'd be promoted as if they were as good as anything else. This is how I got exposed to movies like "The American Ninja," "Kingdom of the Spiders" and "The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension." My brothers and I would sit there and watch these films with some amount of irony; between those movies and the Dr. Who reruns on PBS, I think our sensibilities were warped pretty badly.
I didn't catch MST3K until I was in junior high school, but it quickly became a favorite show. The creators of the show had a tendency to pick really awful sci-fi films from the 50s and 60s that time had forgotten, and watching Joel, Crow and Tom Servo's silhouettes bouncing around in front of the films made them much easier to watch. The jokes were delivered rapid-fire, and they avoided criticizing the films the way most of us would, though the occasional jibe about bad directing, editing or acting would surface every now and then. Still, these comments were always cheerful; "I liked this movie better when it was Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom," one of the robots intoned once during a particularly bad Hercules film.
As much as MST3K is remembered for lampooning awful movies, there's a sense that the creators cherished these films as well. (You'd have to for MST3K to run for 198 episodes over 11 years.) Some films seemed to be sacred; the show never lampooned Ed Wood, Jr's masterpiece of suck, Plan 9 From Outer Space, though they did go through his almost-as-bad Bride of the Monster. MST3K did help bring Manos: Hand of Fate back into cult classic status, and it's a good thing, because Manos is a cautionary tale about how not to make a movie.
In a way, I miss the era in which a show like MST3K could be on the air and be funny. Part of the reason the show existed was because it was a cheap and amusing way to re-air awful films. In today's world, where they actually show good and popular movies on TV, MST3K would feel a little out of place. (That's probably one reason why the various creators have gone off to do RiffTrax and Cinematic Titanic.) Who would sit for 2 hours and watch a horrendously bad movie when they can flip to one of dozens of other channels and watch something, well, good?
When MST3K was on cable, it aired on Comedy Central, back in the days when Penn Jillette was still the announcer, and before South Park really helped to legitimize the network as being something more than just a bunch of comedy re-runs. I remember watching "Candid Gamera" one weekend, an event where they aired all of the MST3K episodes dealing with Gamera, the Japanese turtle who fights monsters and loves children. I remember another weekend when Comedy Central aired, "Play MST for me," an event where they showed viewers' favorite episodes. Both weekends, I watched a lot more TV than usual.
I'm a little nostaglic for the simpler times when I could find bad movies on TV instead of having to seek them out for myself, I guess. But it's all right. You can get most MST3K films through Netflix, and I'm definitely going to make sure my own children see them down the road. I'd hate to think of a world where such an experience could be long-forgotten.