MST3K
I’m an enormous fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000, a television show that ran for about ten years and was canceled several years ago. I have a few dozen episodes from the so-called Sci-Fi Channel era stored on my computer. MST3K showed very bad movies, mostly science fiction and horror, with its heroes in this period being Mike (human), Crow T. Robot (robot) and Tom Servo (robot) adding commentary while the movie runs. It’s hard to explain the show to someone who’s not already a fan. Mike and the ‘bots are masters of word play, pop culture (TV, movies, music, etc.), literature (everything you’ve forgotten from your high school English classes), and general snarkiness. It’s a marvelous combination of total stupidity and flights of comedy genius.
I was recently watching the MSTied version of Space Mutiny, a 1980s space adventure based on the sets, special effects, and backstory of the original Battlestar Galactica. Here’s an example of the range of humor involved, from bathroom jokes to literary references: There’s a bad guy who walks around with a cane, doing his dirty work. Watching him hobble away in one scene, Crow inserts the line,
Stay together, cheeks. Stay together!
and in a following scene, again watching him hobble across the screen, Crow gives us,
A horse! My kingdom for a horse!
Something for everyone. Try renting MST3K: The Movie–highly recommended.
