I am of course talking about Mystery Science Theater 3000. What made me sad was the fact that we had cable, and Comedy Central was only on satellite dish services. About two years passed, and we were channel flipping, and we went passed the Sci-Fi network. Now it's called SyFy, which I hate, but anyway. So, I saw the shadows and the robots and human, and I remember freaking out because I was so happy that I was able to see this show again.
Since that day until the show was canceled, it would come on Saturday afternoons, or late on Sundays, and I recorded as many episodes as I could on to VHS tapes. Thankfully it turned out to be popular enough for their company to start producing VHS tapes. Now there are so many episodes on DVD, and there are a ton of episodes on Netflix. It even got a reboot two years ago.
There was a kickstarter by the creator. He just sent out a YouTube video saying if they raised so much money they could release a number of episodes. He said they could do a whole season for $200,000, which sounded like a lot, and I was thinking we might get ten new episodes or so, but not a full season. They ended up raising over $700,000. So, there is a season and a half of new episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000 with new voices for the robot characters and a new human.
If you don't know anything about Mystery Science Theater 3000, here is a clip from the original series back in the 90s.
It's so funny and original, and yes, the movie and educational shorts they make fun of are real movies and filmstrips produced. I will save the story about why there are so many horrible movies between the 50s through the 70s, and even still continues today. The movies are super low budget and mostly contain unknown actors. The good actors were making good movies at the the time and didn't work for probably rent money like the unknown actors would. The robots and the human make fun of the whole movie and they are hysterical. The only downside to, I'm just going to abbreviate Mystery Science Theater 3000 as MST3K like everything is listed on YouTube as. The downside to the show, is if you are younger than 35 years old, you may not get a lot of references that are made in jokes. There were even some jokes that I had no idea what they were talking about, but those jokes are far and few in between.
The new episodes on Netflix actually have more relevant jokes, and just about everyone that is 13 and older will most likely get.
So, there were a few cast changes with the robot voices and human that happened. My favorites are the later seasons with Michael J. Nelson as the human. Bill Corbet was Crow T. Robot, and Kevin Murphy was Tom Servo, the robot. Before Netflix picked up the reboot of MST3K, the line-up I just mentioned started a website called Rifftrax. At first, what you would do is go to their site, www.rifftrax.com , and there are MP3s to download. What you would do is, let's say you wanted to watch The Matrix with jokes that the actors were making, you would purchase an MP3 track for three bucks, and then you would start the MP3, they would tell you to pause the MP3 and then start the MP3 when something like the logo from the movie studio faded to black. As long as you unpaused the MP3 at the right moment it told you, then your MP3 would be synced up to the movie, and it was just like MST3K, but with famous movies.
Also, they do sell DVDs of MST3K on the Rifftrax website as well.
Over the years, they actually started to let you purchase the movie with the jokes added to it already, and even though they still offer the MP3s, they have branched out to creating videos instead. They have tons of hysterical educational short films that are so ridiculous that you would swear that they were made terribly on purpose, but they are real.
They do other movies too, just like MST3K used to do. Old B-Movies. They have some amazing stuff, but I will tell you what the best part of Rifftrax is, at least to me, They use the money made from their MP3s and videos to pay for movies that are copyrighted, and they get permission to have events where you actually go to a movie theater and watch the movie with the guys making fun of the movie live. It's part of those Fathom Events you might see small commercials about in front of movie trailers when you go to the movies. They do things like shows from the Met in New York City, like Ballet or Operas, but they actually have a lot of different things that they show. The tickets are a couple more dollars than seeing a movie on a weekend evening, so around $12 to $13. But you go to the movie theater and watch it with a bunch of other people who are also there. It's actually really fun to be in a theater with over 100 people all laughing and loving the show just as much as you. Although a lot of the people that love MST3K and Rifftrax fans are super nerdy and usually have bad hygiene, which I will own the Nerdy part, but my personal hygiene in public is very good. We won't talk about days I stay home, he he he, huh, I hope I covered that well...along with my smell.....I'm just kidding, Anywho.......
Here is the Rifftrax website....
My mom and I love going to the live events, and what inspired me to write about and share Rifftrax is we just went to the Rifftrax Halloween event. They made fun of a movie called Jack-O. It was horribly hilarious. My mom and I were laughing so hard that our stomachs and chest hurt from laughing so much. Here is a clip....
They also made fun of an educational short from 1985 that talks about Halloween Safety that is narrated by an animated Jack-o-lantern that likes to window peep on his neighbors. I will link it because it is so funny and worth the watch....
Anyway, the Jack-O clip and the Halloween Safety videos are funny on their own, but know that extremely hilarious jokes were being made about them as we watched them. The Rifftrax website also sells DVDs of the live event shows they do, but they are usually a year behind, so the Jack-O Rifftrax Show probably won't be on DVD on their site until next October. Sometimes they come out at around nine months after, but usually it's a year. There are lots on the website, and they do two or three live shows a year, and they've been doing them for a while now. I have been to most of them live, but there are a couple I had to miss for whatever reasons I had to miss them, and the price is usually the same price of one ticket to get into see the live event at the theater. So, when my mom and I pay $13 to get in, so $26, we could just buy the DVD for $13, lol, but the theater experience is so much freaking fun that they are hard to pass up when they come around.
Usually around this time of year, I go to the Organ Loft in South Salt Lake City. They show silent films from the silent era, and a man comes out and plays a 1000 piece pipe organ while the movie plays, just like they used to when film was a brand new medium, and they didn't have recorded sound. The films would come around, and people played music for them, and the Organ Loft is an amazing experience, but with COVID-19 still rampant in our society, they decided not to do the silent movies like they usually do. They always show the 1925 Phantom of the Opera film with Lon Chaney for Halloween, and has become a tradition for me. I go every year, so I'm sad that I couldn't go this year, but the Rifftrax event made up for it.
Anyway, I hope that you are all being safe and wearing your masks out. I went into a grocery store the other day and forgot to put mine on, and was turned away at the door. I felt like an idiot. Anyway, Be happy, safe and be nice to everyone, even if you have to be reminded to put on a mask. I hope you are all well, and I will catch you on the next one!
Uncky Nate!
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