It’s Thanksgiving again; one of my favorite times of the
year. The weather has cooled down, football is in full swing, and we can all
sit down as a family to stuff ourselves to a level of comedic absurdity. While
this is all well and good, Thanksgiving has only ever meant one thing to
me--Mystery Science Theater 3000. It was on that Turkey day every late November
that my family would travel to my grandparents’, a magical place with riches
unforetold at the Radford household, namely, cable. While the family would crowd around the
living room to eat, watch football, and enjoy each other’s company, a young
Kyle would hunker down in the back room and watch every single minute of
MST3K’s annual Turkey Day Marathon. It was the time every year where not only
was my sense of humor being formed, but also validated. Do I enjoy the comedy I
do because of MST3K or did that wonderful show speak to something already
inside of me? I’d like to think it was a little of both, but I’m sure Joel,
Mike, and the robots had a lot more influence than I’ll ever realize.
For the uninitiated, the show’s premise is a simple one
(beautifully laid out in the opening credits song); a man is marooned in space
on a ship, The Satellite of Love, and forced to watch terrible movies. To keep
his sanity the man (Joel Hodgson in the early seasons and after he left the
show, Mike Nelson) has built wise cracking robots that watch the movies with
him and help make jokes at the screen. Episodes lasted a glorious two hours,
with the movies being interrupted by periodic “host segments” where Mike/Joel
and the bots would leave the theater to perform skits of varying success.
This November marks the 25th anniversary of
Mystery Science Theater 3000 and to commemorate this the show’s creator, Joel
Hodgson, will be hosting a six episode Turkey Day marathon online at
MST2KTurkeyDay.com. This should go without saying, but I’ll be glued to my iPad
under the dinner table this year, and I would encourage everyone else to check
it out as well. For those of you who missed the nineties completely, this would
be a great opportunity to ignore your family and discover this national
treasure of a show. If you like what you see, Netflix has a small selection of
episodes streaming and fans of the show (MSTies) have uploaded tons of full
episodes on YouTube.
It’s in that spirit that I thought I’d share my favorite
10 MST3K episodes. These movies represent some of the funniest out there, most
of which highlight what I think are the great final few years.
10. Pod People, 1983
ET, eat your heart out.
Official
Description: A young boy discovers a lovable alien
creature in the woods, but the alien's mother is on the prowl.
9. This Island Earth,
1955 (MST3K: The Movie)
Don't stare at his forehead. Don't stare at his forehead.
Official
Description: Two mortals
trapped in outer space... challenging the unearthly furies of an outlaw planet
gone mad!
8. Soultaker, 1990
Don't adjust your sets, kids, that's Martin Sheen's brother, Joe Esteves.
Official
Description: Four teenagers
are killed in a car accident. Two of the teenagers refuse to go with "The
Grim Reaper" and a race between life and death ensues!
7. The Phantom Planet,
1961
Still looks better than the prequels.
Official Description: After an
invisible asteroid draws an astronaut and his ship to its surface, he is
miniaturized by the phantom planet's exotic atmosphere.
6. Merlin’s Shop of
Mystical Wonders, 1996
Not pictured: Ernest Borgnine who also stars in this "movie".
Official
Description: Two creepy
"horror" films joined together by Merlin's Shop which is, in turn,
introduced by a Grandpa telling the story.
5. Manos: The Hands
of Fate, 1966
Not a snuff film. I promise.
Official
Description: A family gets lost on the road and stumbles upon a
hidden, underground, devil-worshiping cult led by the fearsome Master and his
servant Torgo.
Truly one of the worst movies every made...I'd work my way up to watching Manos.
4. Werewolf, 1995
Yes, that's a werewolf driving a car.
Official
Description: Unscrupulous
archaeologists try to take advantage of an outbreak of lycanthropy prompted by
the discovery of a werewolf skeleton in the Arizona desert.
3. The Final
Sacrifice, 1990
That's our hero, folks. Canadian badass Zap Rowsdower.
Official Description:
Fleeing from the cult that
murdered his father, a teen is aided in his quest to find the lost city of the
fabled Ziox by a secretive drifter.
2. The Pumaman, 1980
The superhero is able to fly...like a real puma.
Official
Description: Professor Tony
Farms discovers that he is really Puma Man, a superhero who is descended from
the gods. Together with an Aztec priest, they try to thwart the plans of
Kobras, who is in possession of the sacred puma mask, and plans to hypnotize
government leaders with it and take over the world.
1. Space Mutiny, 1988
I could post a thousand pictures from this movie. Please watch it.
Official
Description: A pilot is the
only hope to stop the mutiny of a spacecraft by its security crew, who plot to
sell the crew of the ship into slavery.
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