Greetings, Copycats!

Anyone who’s a geek should at least be familiar with the bacon-wrapped awesome that is Mystery Science Theater 3000.   Created by comedian Joel Hodgson, MST3K (what the cool kids call it) started off as a small, local cable show in Minnesota.  With a practically non-existent budget, MST3K was simply a group of funny guys putting together cheap sets and purchasing old films on the cheap so that they could make fun of them on camera for viewers tuning in to KTMA-TV.

The result was nothing short of a phenomenon (doot do da doo doot!).  The show ended up catching the attention of the right people and soon Mystery Science Theater 3000 was picked up for syndication on then fledgling cable network The Comedy Channel.

MST3K ended up doing seven seasons total between The Comedy Channel and its later incarnation of Comedy Central.  CC eventually gave it the boot, at which time SyFy the Sci Fi Channel was kind enough to give it a home for another three.  The show even got its own feature film!  Unfortunately, even that wasn’t enough to keep the show on the air, and after 10 seasons MST3K was done.

But…

You can’t keep the MSTies down.  Over the past several years, MST3K is still as popular as ever, as evidenced by the impressive sales of each DVD set that comes out.  And the creative minds involved with Mystery Science Theater 3000 have also remained active.  Over the past few years, several of the former cast members of MST3K have continued MSTing movies for the amusement of fans everywhere with new stuff like Riff Trax, The Film Crew and Cinematic Titanic.  While two of them continue the grand tradition of riffing on old b-movie stinkers, one of them has gone outside the box a bit to allow fans the chance to see what riffing would be like with the mainstream movies they love or love to hate.

I’ll give you a hint – I’ve been dropped a variation of their name a couple of times in the last sentence.

Riff Trax was created by Mike Nelson, the guy who replaced Joel Hodgson part way though the show during the Comedy Central days.  As I said before, Riff Trax steps outside the box (office) a bit by not being a show where you watch a couple of guys peanut-gallery a bad movie.  No – instead what you get is an audio file of a couple of guys making fun of a movie you may already own or be renting.  Mike (and whoever decides to riff with him that day) watch mainstream movies like The Matrix or Daredevil and record their riffing into an audio file that you can play while you watch the same movie in the privacy of your own home.  This not only gets around the issue of having to pay movie rights, but it also allows fans to see what MST3K could have been like if they could do popular films.

Do you know where I was going with all this?  Ha – neither do I.  Okay, yes I do.  My whole point to this installment was to share my excitement over the fact that Mike Nelson is doing Riff Trax live in Tennessee on August 20^th.  The movie?  Plan 9 From Outer Space.  Accompanied by his fellow MSTies Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy, this installment of Riff Trax will be broadcast to theaters all over the country.  If you are a fan of any of the above-mentioned shows, you’ll want to check this out.  Tickets are already available here (http://www.ncm.com/Fathom/Comedy/RiffTrax.aspx).

I plan on going to the local showing in my area.  Hopefully it won’t involve being shot into space.

If you’re wondering how the Don eats and breathes, and other science facts – it’s all CG.

Stumble it!

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 23rd, 2009 at 1:38 pm and is filed under Comedy, Donnie Sturges, Fandom, Internet, Television, events, geek love, movies. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.