Intro, Concept & Crew

It’s hard to mingle in cult circles and avoid any mentions or conversations about Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K). It’s also hard to avoid “The Rash” that will be spread by merely being in close quarters with such folk.

To the uninitiated, it sounds like a scary converted opera house where unsuspecting friends are taken and brainwashed into loving the sorts of movies we crow (heh) about. But once you take two seconds to explain — “It’s pretty much a show where some guys make fun of bad movies while they watch them” — a light bulb goes on and there’s an instant connection. MST3K is something we all have been doing for years. It’s a coping mechanism. Despite what we think, however, we’re nowhere near as clever or funny as the crew of the Satellite of Love, and it’s really in our best interests to leave it to the professionals.

Over the decade that MRFH has been chugging along, we’ve repeatedly shown great MST3K love and pride. Was it coincidence that MST3K: The Movie came out about the time when MRFH got started? Of course it was.

But MST3K has impacted our site and many of our readers’ lives with the shared bad movie experiences that we’ve all had. “To MST3K” something is an accepted verb meaning to riff on a stinker of a movie — our Mutant Viewings are more or less our attempts to MST3K some of these offenders. MST3K entered our lexicon by bringing to our attention many notorious bad films that were previously on the fringe (such as Manos: The Hands of Fate), making pop culture icons out of robots Crow and Tom Servo, and infecting our vocabulary with nonsensical words and quotes like “HI-KEEBA!”.

It’s probably far past time that we offered up a tribute to this terrific show, from one cult geek to another. If you’re unfamiliar with the show, consider this the first free dose to get you addicted — the rest of your hits are gonna cost you.

MST3K: The Concept

Mystery Science Theater 3000 was a television show that ran for 10 seasons on various networks, including Comedy Central and the SciFi channel. It was basically a forum for a group of comedy writers to mock some of the worst, lamest and goofiest films ever made (like the movies we like). The basic premise is this: a human (first Joel, who was later replaced by Mike) was kidnapped and put on the Satellite of Love (SoL) orbiting earth. The SoL had three sections: a living section where the human would play and live, a connecting corridor, and a large movie theater at the other end. Joel and Mike found themselves at the mercy of the Mad Scientists ("The Mads") to watch said atrocious films to see what would happen (which is why the shows are called "experiments").

To keep his sanity, Joel built four robots to keep him company. Gypsy runs the ship, Cambot videotapes all the action, and Tom and Crow join the human in the screening room to riff on films. The parts he used for these ‘bots caused him to lose other functions of the Satellite of Love, such as controlling when the film would begin or end (they were at the mercy of large sirens that would send them scrambling back to the theater).

We, the audience, view the black silhouettes of Joel/Mike, Tom (the short, bulbous robot) and Crow (the bird-looking one) sitting in their movie seats, in front of a large screen where the movie plays. And that's basically it. The crew makes around 700 jokes per movie, which have included everything from horror to scifi to PSA films (“shorts”).

The first time viewer might find the show’s production values — which were minimal and done on a stage in Minnesota — almost laughable. Once you “got it”, that the makers of MST3K were intentionally doing a hokey show with dumb acting and sets, the whole ball of cheese got to be far more enjoyable. Between the movie segments, the crew of the SoL would engage in inventions, games, contests, skits and songs relating to the film itself. Some of these were dumb and boring, some brilliant and part of the MST3K lore.

As the show progressed from a local cable channel to Comedy Central, a grassroots movement of MST3K fans called Misties spread the joy of Tom and Crow through word-of-mouth.

One of the unique challenges to the show growth was the movies it used. Since Comedy Central and SciFi would have to pay royalties for each movie shown, each time it broadcasted (since they never owned most of those films), the movies selected had to be more out-of-the-way oldies, and some of the more expensive movies caused certain episodes to be shown only once in a great while. As a counter to that, MST3K itself urged fans to videotape the show and share the tapes amongst friends. To this day, there are several DVDs of MST3K shows, but no complete seasons available.

It really was a tremendous show, and there’s a good reason fans are so, well, fanatical about it.

MST3K: The Cast

One of the things we most love about MST3K is that this is as far from a Hollywood production as you could get. Instead, it really was a show made by fairly normal people who were mostly friends, in a fairly ordinary place in Minnesota. As time went by, various cast and crew members left and joined the show, which resulted in an eventual 100% turnover by the show’s end (none of the original cast made it all 10+ years, although Kevin Murphy sure came close). This also meant that many people had double or triple duties: writing, acting and voicing the robots. So let’s meet the cast of the SoL and the Mads!

Cambot: The fourth, and almost-never seen robot. Cambot is the lens through which we view the show, including external views of the SoL. The only time Cambot is really seen is during the opening credits, when Cambot films itself through a mirror for the roll call.

Magic Voice: The magical (sort of) voice that announces various things in the SoL, such as commercial time.