Another suggestion: MST’ed movies you saw **before** they were riffing fodder, and what you thought of them.
My contribution would be memories of a very wimpy child. I saw “The Mole People” and “Teenagers from Outer Space” on the old 1960s Saturday afternoon b&w TV horror movie wastelands. TfOS scared the *** out of me with that skeletonizing ray gun! When I saw the movie again decades later on MST3K, I’d completely forgotten about it and was shocked to see scenes that I remember as being frightening looking so cheesy now. But, hey, I was just a little girl.
I’ve loved cheesy giant bug movies since I was a kid, and as a little boy “Beginning of the End” RIVETED me. I also remember “Kitten with a Whip” seeming VERY sexy to me! :)
Do you have any memories?
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I remember from my childhood that one channel my grandparents got on cable (I have the distinct impression it was CITY-TV from Toronto, at the time an independent station with rather more style and success than I’ve always gathered KTMA as having) showed “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians” in more than one holiday season, but I also remember it being the sort of thing I glanced at with mild interest.
However, there did happen to be a book in my local library called “The Fifty Worst Films of All Time,” which just happened to include “SCCtM,” “Eegah,” and “Robot Monster,” and I’d read some slightly more respectful books about science fiction movies that made “Rocketship XM” sound a little interesting. When years later I started hearing about an odd show on cable (that had already crossed from “the Joel years” into “the Mike years”), that previous knowledge definitely helped build my interest in whatever small fraction of it was in reach on videotape (along, of course, with the fan works called MSTings).
I’ve seen several as a child, including KTMA era episode “Phase IV”, “This Island Earth”, “The Brain That Wouldn’t Die”, “Blood Waters of Dr. Z” (as “Hydra”).
I hadn’t really seen MSTed movies before I discovered the show in ’91 (not long before which I was warming up to the idea of watching B movies). I’d seen a clip of Santa Claus vs. the Martians when Pia Zadora was a guest on early Late Night with David Letterman. Even before that, I’d seen serialized clips from Plan 9 (later Rifftrax-riffed, in this case) on even earlier Late Night.
The one exception, if you include the shorts, is the Gumby short. That was a clear memory from watching Gumby shorts as a kid. That was one that really stood out from back in the day. That (in my opinion) it ended up being Mike’s Mr. B Natural was icing on the cake!
We were Navy brats, and admission at the base theaters was a dime, up to a quarter for a blockbuster like Ben Hur. The movies were changed every other night. They included many, many bizarre offerings from the distributors’ basements like “The Main Attraction” with Pat Boone as…if I told you, you wouldn’t believe me. And “Play It Cool,” which one guy, somewhere far away, seeds once or twice a week (two words: Billy Fury). We lived at that theater, fifteen or twenty movies a month.
So this EXTREMELY cool topic-EXTREMELY COOL, SAMPO!-blew me away when I realized I hadn’t seen ANY of the 1950’s or 1960’s movies at the base theater. Inconceivable.
Except Gorgo. Gorgo, to us, was the Forbidden Planet of monster movies. It KICKED ***. I didn’t see it on its one showing, and finally caught up with it thru Cheepnis. It still blew me away, except for the coming of Mom. I clearly recalled it being cut so that when the Scientist rolls out the graphic of Gorgo, and then dramatically reveals what a full-grown Gorgosaurus looks like, he says, “It’s just a baby,” and THE VERY NEXT SHOT is where Mom comes roaring up from the deeps, making the whole theater jump.
Sadly, no. Bill Travers was pretty cool, though.
Lots of the cheesy 80’s horror/adventure flicks (Laserblast, Squirm, Deathstalker III, etc.) made it onto the local UHF station as part of the Fright Night Theater lineup.
The only movie (besides Hamlet) I was legitimately surprised to see added to the MST3K lineup was Overdrawn at the Memory Bank, which I recalled seeing late at nigh on PBS and actually liking at the time. (Mind you, I’ve watched a lot of Doctor Who, so my tolerance for low budget sci-fi with horribly dated video effects has always been pretty high) It’s still one of the few experiments I feel a twinge of guilt laughing at, but not enough to want to track down an un-MSTied version to watch again.
I distinctly remember seeing San Francisco International as a kid, one Sunday on TV at my grandmother’s. I remember the kid in the airplane having to be talked down. It seemed like an OK TV movie at the time.
I also saw Overdrawn at the Memory Bank on PBS when I was in college. It was an episode of a science fiction anthology series which was generally pretty good, and the original story was a decent one from a writer I like, so I was psyched for it at the time. The actual episode was shockingly bad, and diverged far from the original story, which had nothing to do with Casablanca or any other “cinemas.” Nor did the resolution hinge on “reversing the password–he’d never expect me to try that!”
Growing up, my local vhs rental dive had the Deathstalker and Ator movies, besides the Godzilla episodes, those were it. My father-in-law, however, remembers going to the theater to see Mitchel. Lucky him.
I remember as a kid WLVI TV56 showed “Creature Double Feature” every Saturday. They screened most of the Universal monster/horror movies like “The Deadly Mantis,” “The Thing that Couldn’t Die,” and “The Mole People,” as well as Godzilla and Gamera movies, and Roger Corman stuff. I loved “It Conquered the World,” “The She Creature,” and “The Unearthly” long before MST3K made them even more fun.
I remember seeing a TV airing of “Parts: The Clonus Horror” way back when. The ending was so depressing it stayed with me for a long long time. Thanks MST for helping me past that trauma!!!
Jumping into this topic with a slight twist:
Phase IV is a MSTed movie I know I have seen unMSTed, yet still have yet to see the MST treatment of. (Because KTMA)
I remember watching Squirm with my sister late one night. I think it was not too long before the episode aired. I also had missed The Deadly Mantis episode in its original run, so I actually saw the Svengoolie version before the MST version.
Being born in 1970, I never saw some of the great monster movies of the 50’s-60’s that I now love so much. I DID see “Laserblast” at the drive-in with my parents as a child. It was on a double feature with “Star Wars”. “Laserblast” was the “late” movie so I think I fell asleep at some point during it. I also saw part of “Alien from L.A.” and remembered thinking how awful Kathy Ireland was as an actress. That’s all I’ve seen.
Born in 1966. So I had lots of crazy choices. THE one that most of all makes me remember staying up late at night for the scary movies was Creeping Terror. Seeing it as an adult for the first time since the 70s on MST3K in the 90s was almost indescribable. I was elated. But at about 9 years old I told my mother those movies on late scared me. She said I should watch them anyway, they’re not that scary and would like them. I vividly remember being scared to death by Wolfman, Creature from BL and Mole People and eventually the Creeping Terror, which was more of a weirdo experience. I think what scared me most was that kid’s dad “making his own gravy”. And just the suspense waiting for people to get sucked up in that thing.
Being from GA I remember seeing the poster for Squirm, and much later on the VHS tape box in the store, and thinking it must be the most disturbing movie error. :D Saw it for the first time on MST3K and could not have been happier.
I saw She-Creature at my grandmas house near Stone Mtn GA in the mid 70s on her little TV set. LOVED it.
I remember seeing something scary that involved a stuffed monkey like the one in Merlin’s… but it may have been something different, not sure. There was a show similar to Merlin called The Dark Room. I remember being so disappointed when that show was canceled.
I saw a few Amicus flicks back in the day too. Probably saw Deadly Bees late one night.
I remember seeing many clips from the films on “It Came from Hollywood” with Gilda Radner, Dan Akryoid, John Candy, Cheech & Chong… that’s a film I’d love to finally make it to DVD or blu ray. Maybe Shout! Factory could get that done. Many of the clips are from movies featured on MST3K.
Long, long ago …
On a portable TV …
The Late Show on a local TV station …
(IN CHICAGO!!! …)
On a school night …
“Beginning of the End” …
p r i c e l e s s …
I remember seeing Rocketship X-M as a kid on local TV station in NYC. Maybe in 1963 or 1964 and being amazed that the crew all died. I was shocked but also appreciated the unusual ending. Now I’m shocked and amazed I watched that whole film without Joel and bots commentary.
ALL OF THEM!
Well, that’s a lie, but if it was a cheesy American International or Bert I. Gordon black and white movie it played on “Project Terror – Where the Scientific and the Terrifying Emerge” on Friday nights after the late news. Actually, come to think of it, all of the shows on our 17 inch Zenith were black and white. Heck, until I was in high school I thought the Yellow Brick Road was gray!
There are tons of MSTed movies I had seen before they were on the show, I’ve loved monster movies since I was a kid and I grew up in the 60s and 70s when they were a staple of UHF programming. Here’s a list off the top of my head:
Amazing Colossal Man
War Of The Colossal Beast
Beginning Of The End
The Creeping Terror
Deadly Mantis
Mole People
Attack Of The Giant Leeches
Stranded In Space
Gorgo
Revenge Of The Creature
Leech Woman
Marooned (Space Travelers)
Gamera (assorted movies, not sure which ones, they all look the same, even to a kid they are so goofy)
Master Ninja I and II (I watched The Master when it was new because I’m Lee Van Cleef fan)
Sword And The Dragon (bought that one on VHS before it was on the show)
Indestructible Man (bought that one on VHS before it was on the show)
WCSH out of Portland, Maine used to show sci-fi movies on Sunday afternoons back in the late Seventies and early-to-mid Eighties. I vividly remember watching The Deadly Mantis and Gorgo on it and enjoying them both.
My brother and I saw Hangar 18 at the movie theater. I’m not ashamed.
And being a fan of Eighties cheese like Automan, Street Hawk, Misfits of Science, and others, I watched every episode of The Master while it was on the air.
I saw quite a few of them on television before they were riffed, and even a few in the theater. Off the top of my head:
Green Slime
Hangar 18 (saw it in the theater)
Phase IV
The Black Scorpion
Gamara (several of these)
The Amazing Colossal Man
Santa Claus Conquers the Martians
Attack of the Giant Leeches
The Killer Shrews
The Brain That Wouldn’t Die
The Mole People
The Deadly Mantis
The Giant Spider Invasion (Saw at the drive in)
I Was A Teenage Werewolf
The Phantom Planet
Gorgo
The Screaming Skull (never made it through this one-always fell asleep)
Squirm (part of a triple feature at the drive in along with Giant Spider Invasion)
I always liked any kind of monster movie when I was a kid and we had TJ (Television Jockey) and the ANT (All Night Theater) growing up in Green Bay and he would show a lot of the movies later riffed on MST3k. Joel has often cited this show as a source of some of his early inspiration for MST3k. After TJ went off the air we had Ned the Dead which I blame for exposing me to Gamara movies. I never have liked any of these, even as mst3k episodes I find them a bore.
Seeing Squirm at the drive in terrified me when I was a kid. I must have been about 6 and it really creeped me out. Giant Spider Invasion on the other hand was good fun. When I saw a lot of these as a kid, I really did not have any reference to good or bad movies, so it wasn’t until I saw them much later that I realized how awful they really were. I love the mst3k treatment on all of them (excepting Gamara movies), and they are among my favorite episodes.
One that stands out the most is Deathstalker 3. We rented that one on VHS, because my friend had enjoyed the first two. Didn’t care for the third one so much. So I had that fun experience of seeing “they riffed that movie?” then getting to see the MST version. Lots of stuff cut from that movie on MST.
Also caught Time of the Apes on USA before MST. I thought it was part of the Planet if the Apes canon, so I rewatched all of those, and yet none reminded me of that strange movie. Enter MST, and bam, oh it was a Japanese rip-off…
I had a mild obsession with It Came From Hollywood (with it’s many clips) as a kid.
I saw Robot Monster and Bride of the Monster as a double feature on Joe Bob Briggs’ show prior to MST as well.
Love this topic!
I had seen (in Episode Order)
The Stranger (featured in Stranded In Space)
The Amazing Colossal Man
Earth vs. the Spider
War of the Colossal Beast
Marooned (featured in Space Travelers)
The Giant Gila Monster
The Brain That Wouldn’t Die
Beginning of the End
This Island Earth (featured in Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie)
Revenge of the Creature
The Deadly Mantis
Gorgo
The Screaming Skull
Wow. More than I thought. I must love bad movies.
@ #54: Having seen that episode of Night Gallery which Boone appeared in, I’ll believe you. So go ahead and tell us.
As a kid, I remember seeing Squirm on TV, and one summer, there were some efforts to promote 3-D broadcasts by sending you to Burger King for the red/green glasses. Revenge of the Creature was one of these (and probably the most heavily promoted). The Last Chase got a lot of play on HBO and Hangar 18 played at one of my local theaters before getting a lot of play on HBO. Monster Week on the ABC 4:30 movie ran every Godzilla and Gamera movie in existence (Guiron leaves a distinct memory for resembling a Sid and Marty Krofft show). I grant that I saw the episode first, but Merlin’s Shop made the rounds on Flix for a little while. I remember The Master (Ninja) as a show. No fanfare to any of that, I just started typing what I remember. Sorry for the mess.
@ 62, I was thinking about It Came From Hollywood too – John Candy’s tribute to Ed Wood was the first I knew of Wood. I saw it on YouTube not long ago, and after years away from it, I was surprised by how much Price of Space clips are featured in it.
The only movie I saw before mst3k was Earth vs the Spider. But since mst3k I’ve seen several on Turner Classic movies. Robot vs the Aztec Mummy, The Black Scorpion, and Tormented.
Let’s see what Wikipedia says about Pat Boone and The Main Attraction:
“The Main Attraction is a cute and romantic story, featuring the neat and wholesome Eddie (Pat Boone) who tries to transform himself into a cooler guy. Eddie works in an Italian café but is fired when he is caught hanging with some troublemakers. At the same time he meets Gina (Mai Zetterling) who is a ventriloquist in a visiting circus. Soon enough Eddie helps Gina out with her act and they become lovers. All is well until Eddie moves on to falling in love with another circus performer, Tessa (Nancy Kwan), which makes his life a lot more complicated.”
Well, Nancy Kwan was cute, although she seems more like a William Holden kind of girl.
Oh, and I get the feeling Pat must be related to fundamentalist farmer Uncle Jim (from the short Uncle Jim’s Dairy Farm). :laugh:
Yes indeed, I recall the WABC Channel 7 4:30 movie, as well as “Chiller Theater,” which had the cool claymation opening with the creepy hand emerging from and then sinking back into the swamp.
Saw “The Amazing Colossal Man” at Bob Burns Theater in Van Buren,Arkansas in the early 70’s…Think I saw “Attack of the Giant Leeches” and “It Conquered the World” on tv..Believe they were on Boo! Theater which was a local creature feature show here in Fort Smith in the 70’s..
I keep coming back to this topic (though this is slightly off…).
A lot of the movies MST3K riffed were movies I read about in the 70s in magazines like Starlog and Fangoria and especially Cinemagic– but many I never actually saw (hmmm… possible future discussion topic?).
Back then, for me at least, it was hard to get to movies, and there were of course no videos. But I was one of those kids enamored with doing my own film making, stop motion animation, special effects, etc, using 8mm and later Super 8. I was able to get a hold of some magazine subscriptions, and I still have that first issue of Cinemagic (stashed somewhere). I remember the cover story for that premier issue about remaking effects for Rocketship-XM… dealt mainly with foreground miniatures, as I recall.
I remember reading about other movies in these mags and thinking how awesome they must be; Laserblast is one that comes to mind. The Incredible Melting man was prominently featured, I think in Fangoria (Rick Baker was a GOD to us kids). Many others.
I really had no way of knowing at the time they were stinky cheese which would become fodder for Joel/Mike & the bots and bring me so much joy and laughter.
One other connection… Don Doher, an amateur filmmaker who initially published Cinemagic, was the target of Cinematic Titanic when they riffed his film “The Alien Factor”. This was a movie I’d read about; when I actually SAW it about a year back I nearly died. It ranks among the worst films I’ve ever seen (though to be fair there are one or two decent effects in it).
Sorry, I’m just reminiscing, but wondering if anyone else here had similar experience with some of these films? Think about it, won’t you? Thank you.
Yes, I used to watch Project Terror too, down Texas way! Though I don’t specifically remember which movies I saw that were later MSTied. No, wait: I KNOW I saw *The Screaming Skull,* which scared me to death on Project Terror but is one of my faves on MST3K.
I can confess to seeing Ator, which later became Cave Dwellers, *In The Theater.* Yes, really.
Good topic.
I never did, but, GF says she rented Hobgoblins with some friends in High School at a *video store*. They kinda all thought it was stupid then, funnier now with MT&B
@62, @69, @73 – It Came From Hollywood was originally supposed to be the bigscreen bestseller adaptation of the Medveds’ Golden Turkey Awards (until it drifted a bit off its premise when the 70’s-SNL cast started comparing notes on illegal substances with Cheech & Chong offstage), and so for most of us that was our first exposure to clips from the heavily Medved-riffed staples like Robot Monster and Plan Nine. Even watching MST’s The Violent Years, I still hear Dan Aykroyd’s Broderick Crawford riffs.
Post-Joel S5-6 just started picking well-known iconic names out of Medved (“Sinister Urge? Well, book says it’s one of Wood’s!”) so they both ended up going over the same well-traveled territory.
Yep, I remember those First Audience days right after Star Wars, when anyone past fourth grade ran out and grabbed Starlog to see what other sci-fi movies were on the horizon–Even though Laserblast and Melting were only playing the B-theaters and drive-ins that Amer. Int’l and Avco Embassy movies played, so they probably weren’t, y’know, that good for the whole ninety minutes onscreen, we thought, c’mon, how bad could they be with premises like those? :)
Squirm on video as a kid watching crappy horror movies, also the Progress Island short (in school).
Yes, you already bitched about that recently.
https://www.mst3kinfo.com/?p=19962
#82: You saw the Progress Island short in school?!? I am in awe, and that sounds like a WDT all on its own: Shorts given the MST3K treatment that we were subjected to in school. In fact, I don’t remember any myself, although growing up in the seventies (in California, no less), I DO remember seeing more than one short about the dangers of drugs (although in fact all they succeeded in doing was INTRODUCING all of us little kids to the names and types of drugs apparently available).
I can SO imagine coming up with the “then KISS came to town!” riff myself had I seen it back in the day. :)
off topic
but was thinking of the starfighters and thought of this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGj6deaINxM
In Main Attraction, Pat Boone plays a slim, black turtleneck wearing gigolo to Mai Zetterling’s aging circus ventriloquist, a notorious cougar. He boozes, smokes, and leers at both Big Mai and a smokin’ hot Nancy Kwan. He’s escaping the law, some nonsense about a murder he thought he committed but didn’t. Beyond belief.
The only “real” MST3K movie that I saw before watching the MST3K episode was Robot Monster (in this case, Rhino Video’s 3D release of the film on VHS), while the only short that I saw before watching it on MST3K was Robot Rumpus (back when Gumby reruns aired in syndication). That doesn’t mean I didn’t see bits and pieces of other films, as the first two that come to mind were Village of the Giants (as part of a “Family movie” block that TNT aired on Sundays in the 1990’s) and The Deadly Bees (which, ironically, I watched the tail end of while waiting for one of the Sci-Fi MST3K episodes).
Hey Eric, just a wee bit of advice.
JUST…..STOP….WATCHING…..THE…..POST……JOEL…….EPISODES!!!!!
There, now we don’t have to listen to you whine anymore! Problem solved.
I remember seeing Godzilla vs. Megalon, in 3-D no less, on our NBC affiliate in Maine in 1976 or so, hosted by some dude in a Godzilla costume. Good times.
Well, put me down for seeing Laserblast – in the theater no less. The early era of Star Wars ripoffs was a strange time my friends.
pretty sure I also saw The Giant Spider Invasion on tv once too.
I watched The Last Chase when it was on HBO – probably 20 times or more. I loved that movie. I loved it so much, I recorded the movie to audiocassette via my boombox because we didn’t have a VCR yet, and I wore that tape out.
Now, I live my life as “Franklyn Hart.” I even have a Formula 1 race car buried under the floor of my garage.
@84
Yeah in middle school I had a Spanish class, and since movies are easier than teaching we’d watch a lot of random things with connections to Spanish.
One of them was the agitprop short about why businesses should move to PR.
It couldn’t have been more than a couple of years before MST3k covered the short.
I “discovered” MST3K very recently – just 3 or 4 years ago – which doesn’t seem likely because I’ve always enjoyed watching exactly the type of schlocky, cheesy B movies that made such great riffing fodder during the course of the show. One of my favorites was The Horror of Party Beach, which I had downloaded off a torrent site. I must have deleted it or lost it because I remember going to youtube to watch it there. Finding only the MST3K version (“MST3K, what’s that?”) I decided to check it out. I’m so glad I did! Of course, when that episode was over I had to see more and was delighted to find mstied versions of some of my other old faves like It Conquered the World and The Amazing Colossal Man.
I saw Phase IV and Being From Another Planet(I knew it as Time Walker) when I was a little kid. Both movies scared me to no end. But when I realized they both had been given the MSTie treatment I was surprised. I mean, aren’t these some of the scariest movies ever?? Well I had no idea who Ben Murphy was when I was younger so my worries were allayed immediately. Although there is still a scene that freaks me out a little, I see why it is kind of a bad movie. And although Phase IV has some really intriguing ant footage, it is still another creature feature. And as a bonus I grew up watching Dinosaurus, which Rifftrax recently slaughtered. My innocent mind just didn’t realize how dumb it was.
My memory’s a bit fuzzy on the exact circumstances, but I watched “War of the Colossal Beast” un-MSTied either shortly before or shortly after I saw the J&tB version.
Jeez lots. Laserblast might be the only one I saw at a theater. I somehow talked my parents into taking me to a drive-in to see it. I think they have mostly forgiven me.
I liked Squirm when I saw it on TV in the 5th grade, particularly the “wormface” money shot that was edited out of the MST version.
Hmm. Grew up in NYC, so there was always a chance of Channel 9 showing something weird on Sundays.
Saw a couple of the Gamera and Godzilla movies, for sure.
I know I saw “Track of the Moon Beast”, and “Incredible Melting Man”, amazingly. And I’m not ashamed to admit that I watched all the episodes of the TV show that would become “Master Ninja I & II”, when they were originally broadcast.
I loved Godzilla movies as a kid, and I was totally thrilled to see Godzilla VS the Sea Monster and Godzilla VS Megalon show up on MST3K, not long after I’d bought those same movies on VHS.
There were 2 that I remember the most-The Magic Sword which I saw in a theater and thought was really cool & The Screaming Skull which I saw on TV. The scene where the ghostly wife is chasing the living wife at night sent chills up and down my spine. Loved them both and loved how MST3K handled them. :chic:
Quest of the Delta Knights, 7th grade. When I saw the episode the next year it took 30 minutes to fully set in that I had seen the movie before.