Give me a fond or strange or in some way memorable memory about watching an MST3K episode.
I’ll give you mine, for “Manos: The Hands of Fate.” I immediately think of the MSTieween gathering, footage of which was later shown on Turkey Day 1993. We were all sitting around in Debbie Tobin’s basement waiting for the shooting to start. Somebody put that episode in, and as we started watching “Hired, Pt.2,” people handed out paper napkins. For a moment I didn’t understand why, but then the crazy old grandpa put the handkerchief on his head, and everybody put them on.
There I was, in a basement with about 35 adults, all sitting on the floor with napkins on their heads. MSTies are weird.
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Memory One: In late 1991, I had abdominal surgery (an illeostomy, to be precise). I got through it with no trouble, but there was an interesting side-effect in the early post-surgery days: it actually hurt when I laughed.
So, in December, there I was watching “The Unearthly” for the first time. I remember sitting there, laughing hard at “Posture Pals” and “Appreciating Our Parents”, while pressing a pillow against my incision scar and wincing. Is there such a term as “hilarious agony”?
Memory Two: I’d seen “Rocketship X-M” in reruns and been utterly confused by Mike’s appearance on the proto-Hexfield. Who was he supposed to be? Why was he talking that way?
Flash forward to ConventioCon I. Early Saturday morning, I went to the main ballroom at the Radisson for an early showing of “Robot Holocaust”. Watching Valeria in that train wreck, it suddenly clicked. I nearly stood up in my seat and shouted, “Now I get it!”
Memory Three: The first time I was able to watch “Manos” all the way through was in a showing at the aforementioned ConventioCon I. I remember having a great time, with my fellow MSTies to get through the pain. I also remember seeing Frank walking down the hall outside and someone asking if wanted to come in and watch “Manos” with us. Frank declined; he had to get ready for the live show.
There are others, but I’ll stop here.
This may not sound like much, but now that my step-daughter is grown with five children of her own (yipes) my most memorable moment is watching the Mexican wrestling MST3K (uh, something about Samson and Vampires?) with her and my wife on a Saturday morning over pancakes.
She *loves* MST3K, and is as sharp and clever as Mike and the bots, and it was always a huge pleasure to watch a new episode with her on those Saturday pancake mornings as we ate and laughed and made our own comments. Now that she is 3000 miles away and I am unlikely to ever spend that kind of quality time with her again it is a memory I treasure very very much.
That’s crazy. When I read the title of this post I immediately thought about a Thanksgiving Day gathering and watching MST3K with extended family. Don’t remember what year it was – just that it was my first time.
My all time favorite MST memory took place during the ’97 Thanksgiving Day marathon on Sci-Fi. I was over at my relatives house were we had just finished eating our meal. All of the adults were upstairs watching “the game” while my cousins and I retreated to the basement for a heaping helping of The Giant Spider Invasion.
At first, it was just us kids who were down there laughing our butts off. Then, my dad came downstairs to see what we were up to, then aunt, then my uncle, until my entire family was together in the warm glow of Mike and the ‘bots (laughing hysterically, of course ;-)
As is often the case with MST, I began to drift off to sleep. When I woke up from my napping, every single member of my family was passed out in front of the TV. There was just something so cozy and warm about that moment that has always made it my favorite MST3K memory.
My most memorable MST3K watching moment was in (I can remember the exact day) was July 12, 1997. I was pregnant with my second child. It was very hot, the (then) seven year old was playing outside all day. I was in labor, but I kept it from everyone, because it wasn’t sure it wasn’t false labor. I slept most of the day (I couldn’t help it for some reason) but got up to watch MST3K “Jack Frost” at five o’clock. It was a wonderful day. And about eight o’clock I went into real labor. Had my second child that night about one o’clock in the morning. Couldn’t have been a better day.
I have so many MST-related events but the first one that popped into my mind was the ‘Tough Love Seat” incident. The whole family had been commanded to attend Thanksgiving dinner at my MIL’s that year and I agreed once I knew they had Comedy Channel because I just was NOT gonna miss the marathon.
My mother-in-law is a commanding presence and loves to find new ways to keep all her kids in line. Problem is, none of them have any major issues or behavioral problems. It frustrates her. Then she found Tough Love’ and she was crazy to use it. Again, none of us needed it. It was a rough time for her (and us).
Come Thanksgiving and I have settled down in the living room to watch the MSTies while she was behind me in the kitchen but she could see through a window that connected the rooms. The invention exchange comes on and the Mads are proudly showing off their Tough Love Seat and I am in stitches AND horrified that my MIL might notice (both the love seat and the hysterical laughing). I snatched up my small son and made him laugh for cover.
I couldn’t wait to get home and watch the copy to see what I missed.
All my “memories” are extremely recent due to my less-than-a-year-ago induction into MSTiedom, but that nevertheless makes them very fond for me…
Memory One: In January, showing MST3K: The Movie to a group of fifteen that consisted of fif/six/seven/eighteen-year-olds during a friend’s party. And they all loved it. My heart was very joyful.
Memory Two: Super Bowl Sunday of this year, me and my dad were forced into the basement ’cause my mom had her knitter’s guild over. Since my dad didn’t care about the game, I decided to pop in “The Giant Spider Invasion” for the Packers jokes. Him being a native Wisconsin boy, he absolutely loved it. Then he proceeded to tell me stories about college and Jim Mallon and the Pail and Shovel party and my mind = blown.
Memory Three: Just a couple weeks ago – May 9th – when me and three MSTie friends were in a hotel room during a convention. The day was over for us but it was still a bit early so I, armed with my laptop and free wi-fi, set up my computer on one bed as we all piled onto the other to watch “Last of the Wild Horses”. One of my friends went to the bathroom and came back right at the beginning of the theater portion, and when he saw Frank and Forrester’s silhouttes, he just stood there, stunned, going “What?! What?! Something – something’s wrong here!” It was priceless.
Some time after my friend Ryan and I were subjected to the cinematic terrors of Salo: The 120 Days of Sodom, we created a movie festival called the Evil 13. Held on a Friday the 13th, it would be a countdown of the 12 worst movies we could find, all leading up to Salo as the finale. The first time (and best time) had some wonderful selections: Darren’s Dance Grooves, Up the Academy, Fantasy Mission Force, Goremet: Zombie Chef from Hell (truely a force to reckoned with. Someone NEEDS to riff that thing.)…and it all kicked off with a viewing of Manos. We put it on just as it became Friday (ya know, on Thursday night) and it wasn’t before long that the whole damn room was asleep. I was pretty disappointed…things didn’t bode well for people making it through this marathon. Soon I noticed that one of my friends, Daniel, hadn’t fallen asleep and we ended up having a great time watching it. That viewing would set the standard for the weekend: Daniel and I still up and laughing while other people faded in and out. It was good times.
(Also, we never ended up watching Salo during that marathon. When we finally got to it everyone was so broken and insane that we threw in Fantasia 2000 and went to sleep.)
The most vivid memory I have was my introduction to MST3K. I didn’t have Comedy Central until the late 1990’s, so I never got to watch the show in its early years. I had heard of it, though, and I thought it was the dumbest idea for I show I’ve ever heard.
1996: I was looking for a VHS copy of “The Amazing Colossal Man” (one of my all time favorite bad sci-fi movies), and much to my irritation, the only way I could find it in my local video store was as an episode of MST3K. I reluctantly bought the tape, brought it home, watched it, and was an instant convert.
The following year (1997) my local cable company started offering the Sci-Fi Channel, so I was able to enjoy MST3K in real time, as it were.
I still think it’s a dumb idea for a show; it could easily have been a disaster. It’s thanks to the collective creative genius of the Brains that the show was a good as it was for as long as it was.
In college, circa 1997, a group of us would gather and watch Mitchell on a weekly basis. Just about every Saturday for a year we would watch Austin Powers and Mitchell. We all the lines. After everyone graduated and moved to different parts of the country, we watched Mitchell at the same time and called each other. It was great. Still watch MSTies every time we get together.
My most memorable episode watching memory is the first time my wife watched an entire episode with me. It was “The Day the Earth Froze”. She’d only watched bits of episodes before, not understanding what was so funny at first but gradually something would catch her attention and make her chuckle.
Anyway, it was the first full episode she ever watched, and we both thoroughly enjoyed it. She because she finally got it, me because finally she was sharing in the laughs with me. Several times I had to pause the tape because she was laughing so hard, which of course only made me laugh harder. Her favorite bit was when Leminkinen was floating down the rapids and I believe it was Tom who blurted out “The Adventures of Fjord Fairlane!” That and when the big moosehead boat catches fire and Crow speaks like Bullwinkle: “Could someone please put me out, I seem to be on FIRE!”
My second favorite was watching Hobgoblins with my then-eight year old son. He giggled hysterically whenever those cheesy Hobgoblin puppets appeared.
So my favorite episode watching memories are turning my family into fans of the show.
I think for me it was my “I get it” moment. I did not have CC or SciFi in my town, but had this weird preview channel that would show different cable channels’ shows in an edited and somewhat random format. I had caught bits of the Mystery Science Theater Hour, typically the last 15 minutes of a film followed by Mike doing his Jack Perkins. Pretty funny stuff, but I wasn’t getting the Jack Perkins stuff. I thought it was supposed to be funny, but wasn’t sure. Then, finally, I caught the beginning of the show, and I decided to give it one last go, and they kicked it off with Mr. B Natural. The light switched clicked and I’ve been lost to MST ever since.
Got two memories to share. For whatever reason, the week my grandpa had his fatal heart attack, Red Zone Cuba was on CC roughly a dozen times. I remember a few nights of my mom leaving to visit the hospital and the only company/distraction I had came from Coleman Francis and the Brains. Still a favorite ep of mine (I had to be about 12 then).
On a happier side, I was the only one in my family who stayed to get autographs from the other celebs at the second Con. I got them just in time to meet the rest of my clan and watch Last of the Wild Horses (a first viewing for all of us). Few things in life are more enjoyable than watching an ep with 60 or so other people, when you can hardly hear it over the steady stream of guffaws.
I don’t know if it happened during other shows, but during the reel change at LotWH the entire room sang the Mentos theme, being the only song we were all guaranteed to know. Whoever was running the video was kind/smart enough to wait for our little ditty to end before continuing the show.
I have to agree with most of the previous posts: my favorite memories are sharing the show with family and friends.
My aunt and her son first tipped me off to the show in 1989 or 1990 when we were at my grandfather’s house in Houston during the holidays. The episode was The Crawling Hand. I was a convert from then on.
During the years that I was in college my roommate and I would watch the show when we came home after going out and laugh at the show while drinking beer. The Home Economics Story was especially hilarious for me the first time I saw it because my mom was a home ec major in the 1960’s and the short really mirrored her college days, so I was glad to be able to show it to her on tape later. At first, she and my father were not sure about the show, but they laughed out loud more than I had ever seen them do for a show. Dad and I would watch the show from then on whenever I had tapes. He went with me last year to see Cinematic Titanic; I’ll always treasure that evening and think of him when I watch Wasp Woman. Mom still really likes watching the shorts, particularly Cheating since she is a teacher of high school English.
My wife has been a more reluctant viewer at times. Most episodes she tells me that it is the worst one she has yet seen. We really liked Pod People, though, because she saw it in the movie theaters as a double feature with Beaches back when she was in college. Actually, she did not watch much of Pod People in the theatre because she and her friend left before it even ended. The first time we watched the Pod People DVD together was with our kids, who were four and two at the time. The girls loved Trumpy and the spinning spaghetti ball bumpers made quite an impression on the two year old; whenever she saw a space scene in the movies from a few years after that, she asked if it was Pod People and called MST3K that for some time.
I’d have to agree with many posts here that my favorite memories are either sharing my love of MST3K with family and friends, or finally ‘getting’ a joke.
I was looking through an entertainment magazine when I saw a picture of Leon Russel. And for those of you who know the riff from “Merlin’s Shop” – they compare him to Leon Russel. And boy, were they right. I laughed out loud sharply, drawing strange looks from the family that night.
Another epiphany came while I was getting ready for a night out. I had “Ring of Terror” on the TV in the other room. I had never seen it. I heard the cemetery guy say ‘Puma’ about 10,000 times and I literally ran to the TV and called for my brother. We stood there laughing in a moment of ‘so-thats-where-it-came-from”. We had heard the guys say ‘puma?’ in other episodes, but appreciating its birth was a special thing.
15 – you got that right! It’s truly amazing how many comments just go right past me until somehow I randomly discover what the Sam Scratch the joke really meant. I did not see Wild Rebels until it’s release from Rhino, but I’d heard Joel make the “That square bugs me! He really bugs me!” crack many many times, and I’m still not sure how I found it so darn funny before I ever knew where it came from.
My two favorite moments involved revealing the wacky world of MST to my nephew and my sister. My then 12 year old nephew watched “Werewolf” (sorry, that’s “Wurwilf”). He loved the many accents, hairstyles and ludicrous wolf masks.
My sister is a bit snobish about TV shows and when I popped in the MST3K Volume 2 Shorts she had a cow. 5 minutes later she was laughing as hard as everyone else in the room. She especially loved the Union Pacific short were the older brother isn’t watching the road and Tom Servo as the younger brother yelling, “Can I have your room!?!”.
So many other priceless moments but the ones you share with uninitiated viewers are the best.
1996, Labor Day Weekend, Conventio-Con 2: Electric Bugaloo.
Several episodes were being shown 24/7, and I wandered into It Conquered the World.
It was standing room only, with some people laying on the floor with pillows. The episode was nearing the end, and Peter Graves started his famous speech, “He learned too late that man was a FEELING creature….” Much to my delight and surprise, everyone in the room gave the speech, word for word. They also repeated it during the Mads segment, and then Joel and the Bots.
It was magical.
I’ve got a few watching memories, but I’ll share this one…
Many years ago I was flipping through the TV looking for something, anything, to watch. Over the previous few weeks I had seen this show with these silhouettes talking back to a movie, but never stopped to watch. This time I thought I would check it out for a few minutes. I was hooked. My memory of that first viewing of MST3K is so clear that I remember things from that episode even though I have NEVER seen that episode again in almost 20 years.
For the record it was Project Moonbase,and I’ll never forget my first exposure to MST3k.
I just remember going to my Grandma’s house every weekend and watching Cartoon Planet, Space Ghost Coast to Coast, and MST3K all three in a row. My Grandma had this really big jar, and I would pour two cans of Mountain dew in it.
I don’t have anything like the heartwarming stories posted above, but I do have good memories of watching the show in college with friends.
It seemed for a while that every new episode (this was during the Sci-Fi years) had a joke that was very similar to an in-joke that we already had in our group. We about died laughing at Crow confusing “Satan” with “Stan” in TOUCH OF SATAN because one of us had made that exact same typographical mistake a few months earlier…
One of the Universal films (I forget which) started with a riff: “Universal! (Except for *you*, Ron.)” At which point all of us turned to the guy in the room named Ron and laughed.
My first memories of MST came in 1992 when my uncle sent my family a bunch of episodes he taped with a note saying “Check these out. They’re pretty funny.” At first I was like “What is this? Who are these guys talking at the movie?” As I watched more I was “Hey! This is kind of fun!” Soon I was “Send more. More! MORE!” :grin:
My memory of watching “Manos” for the first time was that I felt itchy. Really, the movie gave me hives or something because I couldn’t stop scratching my skin. Did anyone else have an allergic reaction to “Manos”? :???:
Oh dear, I can’t believe I didn’t think of this. Since my college didn’t have “good” cable, I didn’t get to see MSTies while in college but my Dad would tape them and mail them to me. I still have most of the tapes he sent (although some aren’t in good shape), at one point I have over 48 hours worth of Msties on vhs.
While attending art college in the early 90’s, I came across an intriguing mixture of bad monster movie and three little beings commenting on the movie. The episode was ‘The Crawling Hand’. I mentioned the program to a young gal I was working with at the school art supply store, and she said ‘Oh, I love that show!’ I was broke during art college, so I couldn’t record the show on the second hand VCR my parents had given me. I asked my friend if she would record the show for me, handing her about five blank tapes [all I could afford at the time.] She recorded the show dutifully for me, and I still have those precious early tapes.
Since my first episode was The Crawling Hand, I chose my MSTie name from the ep, it being of course a morbid reference to the deceased Mrs. Hodgekiss by one of the ambulance guys: ‘Dames like her always have beer around.’ I thought it was such a callous and awful- and funny- remark that I appropriated it.
My favorite memories are when I first was made aware of the show (I didn’t have cable for a long, long time) and “The Mystery Science Theater Hour” had just gone into syndication. I was without a place to live and I was staying in the basement of the Copy Shop I worked at – one of my regular customers said he’d discovered a show that I just had to see (said something about how it “has your sense of humor…”) – I had a tiny little black&white TV and I saw the beginning hour of “The Amazing Colossal Man” and the end of “The Giant Gila Monster.” I was and remain to this day, sooooooo hooked.
I guess my only memory of MST was when I taped my first episode, Giant Gila Monster, when it was shown at 3 AM on a local station as a MST Hour. I had heard about the show, but my cable company didn’t carry Comedy Central, so when I saw it on a local station I decided to see what the deal was. I re-watched that tape 5 more times before the second half was shown the next week, and canvassed all my relatives to see if anyone had Comedy Central, finally forcing my sister to tape it for me. Then I started tape trading, and my cable company started carrying MST and all was well in the universe…
I might have told this story before, but…during one of the Turkey Day marathons, I went over to my sister’s apartment to tape a bunch of episodes (my parents didn’t believe in cable.) After watching “Manos” for the first time, I then proceeded to start taping the next episode…and when I saw the title, “The Day the Earth Froze”, I sprinted to the phone and called my parents to tell them it was on.
Because we’d heard for decades about how, when my parents were first dating, they decided to go out and see a movie, and saw a marquee advertising what they thought was a revival of “The Day the Earth Stood Still”. They didn’t notice the slight difference in titles until they got into the theater, by which time it was far, far too late. So the movie “The Day the Earth Froze” had passed into family lore as legendarily bad, and I finally got to see it for the first time thanks to MST3K.
The most specific memory was the first time I saw The Skydivers. When the first skydivers are strapping on helmets, my friend John says, “So why are they wearing helmets; in case they fall on their heads?” And 5 seconds later, Crow makes the same joke. Good times.
I assume “MST3K:The Movie” can be included.
When the movie was in theaters I took my 13 year old nephew and one of his friends to see it at The Bourse on 4th Street in Philly. This was a multi-screen “Art-House” As we waited for the feature to start,we were treated an endless slide show of nature scenes instead of the usual barrage of trailers. The three of us began to talk to some of our fellow movie-goers and then we started to riff on the slide show. I can remember two of mine that got some chuckles:
[Two male deer butting antlers]
“Hold on Larry I think we’re stuck together.”
[An Arab caravan]
“And welcome dear friends to the wonderful world of snails and adventure as we board The Golden Hein!”
This lasted almost ten minutes with more voices adding to the chorus. When the movie started we stood and cheered
It was so great to enjoy the movie with fellow misties.
We didn’t have Comedy Central on the local cable, so when I heard Joel was leaving the show, my wife and I made motel reservations at the nearest place we could find that did…180 miles away…just to watch “Mitchell” in its original airing.
I also remember seeing MST3K: The Movie at the local art house. It played for just a couple of nights, and maybe 50 people showed up. But those of us who showed up had lots of laughs, and it’s the only experience I have watching MST3K with a large group of people.
We had one on the original broadcast of werewolf. Two people were playing a game and one drawing. As soon as the “Ahhh” came up everyone stopped what they were doing and started doing it with them trying to do it at the same time. When the rerun popped up hours later that night we did it all over again and it has since then sort of stayed that everytime that happens everyone stops and “Ahhhs” along with mike and the bots.
I didn’t get into MST3K until the SciFi era. At the time it aired at 9 in the morning on Saturdays, which is when I watched it – except that, thanks to the fact that we got SciFi via sattelite, we got it at 9am Eastern instead of our local Pacific time. For years, I’d get up every Saturday morning at 6am, earlier than I’d get up for school, earlier than my parents or the automatic heater, to curl up in blankets and watch MST3K through a sleepy haze.
Even now, some movies can only be watched through a just such a haze – Phantom Planet springs to mind. If you try to watch that movie in a state of full wakefulness, it will shut you down.
Despite repeatedly explaining the show to various family members, there’s no one I can really enjoy it with. My uncle who recently retired from teaching claimed to hate it because he felt it inspired every jackass in his classes to talk over any film strip he showed. Also, between the fact that he married a woman from the South, they run a delivery truck/van service, and fer’ cryin’ out loud, he even used to race stock cars…well, let’s just say that I don’t want to risk the existence of Riding With Death ever coming up in conversation.
But one Thanksgiving (2004 I believe), we were talking about favorite ’50s TV shows, and he mentioned that Commando Cody rivaled “Captain Video and his Video Rangers” for the place of his favorite action/adventure (I use the term loosely) show. I’d only seen the 2 parts before Robot Monster, but that gave us enough to talk about that when I got “The Essentials” that Christmas, I talked us all into watching Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. That turned out to be perfect for my aunt, uncle, and parents, because it wasn’t so bad they couldn’t sit through it, but bad enough that it indesputably deserved every second of the Brains’ treatment. So while the appearance of Torg the robot clearly sent my uncle back to his youth, more significant is the fact that he and my mom grew up near Detroit: this meant that the #1 TV influence on their childhood was the original Soupy Sales Show from before he went national, and the frequent drunkenness of the talent gave the the whole affair a fun, free-form local feel. So the polar bear attack, punctuated by, “No! Back White-Fang” “Ruh a-rooh a-rooh a-rooh a-rooh a-rooh!”, just sent everyone through the roof. That was probably the best Soupy joke they ever did since my mom claims the bear’s paws looked exactly like White-Fang’s, and that was the only time everyone on her side of the family laughed in unison at a MST3K ep.
I know that’ll never happen again, so it’s an especially fond memory.
I also remember the precise moment in Hobgoblins which irreperably scarred each respective group of people I showed it to, but that’s not as heartwarming, so I’ll just save it for next year’s episode guide…
Yeah Hayley, I remember those airings vividly. I had DirecTV so I had to wake up a little before 6 AM to record the episodes. I had no trust in my VCR’s timer.
I remember when we first got Comedy Central in December 1994, I had seen the show once before (Alien From LA on MTV), but man, it just clicked instantly this time. I was home from school because I had an unavoidable dental appointment, and the MST3k Hour version of Attack Of The The Eye Creatures was on. The funny thing is that I was only excited about getting CC for the Kids In The Hall reruns. I remember wondering what the hell was wrong with the old guy presenting the show. Eventually I had most of my family watching the show, whether they wanted too or not.
Manos at the second convention was a pretty cool viewing experience. I think some guy was getting a little to vocal with his own quips and everybody shouted him down and made him shut up.
New Years eve one year I think they had an event on Comedy CEntral. I was 8 or so and didn’t get the jokes but I loved the idea of making fun of TV/movies, so I watched, all but the most basic jokes escaping me. I keep watching and enjoy it, sitting long into a dark night in our den watching MST3K.
Fast forward to college, 12 or so years later: my buddies are at Borders and we see MST3K – ON DVD! So we buy Manos and we wore the DVD out – no kidding, we had played it so many times the label got worn off and I had to rebuy it.
I’ve now got most of MST3K available to me, via DVD or tapes, but it brings a lot of joy still. This monday I got my Master’s Degree, living in a little hole-in-the-wall in Manhattan.
And I sat and watched Master Ninja II, Bride of the Monster and Sinbad, and laughed the whole night away, in the dark, just like when I was a kid.
One of my memories was when I had hernia surgery a couple of years ago Vol. 12 was coming out and I hadn’t seen “Starfighters” before so I was looking forward to it arriving in the mail. I wasn’t allowed to do anything except sit and heal for three weeks. I set a goal of trying to walk down the stairs to the big screen when the volume arrived in the mail. I carefully made my way down the stairs Vol. 12 in tow making sure not to do anything to open up my stitches. I started watching “Starfighters” and everything was going great until the jet flies over and drops the bomb that bounces so high in the air and careens along and crow makes some comment about a goofy bomb. I laughed so hard I almost blew out the stitches. I was in so much pain I thought I was gonna have to go back to the surgeons office. I had to stop watching and wait about a week before I could put it back in and be sure I wouldn’t do myself any permanent damage. :wink:
I have so many great MST memories…one that stands out:
My soon-to-be wife and I had just moved to El Paso, TX in 1993 after I had recently went on active duty in the Army (stationed at Fort Bliss). We were staying in a hotel waiting for our household goods, and flipping thru channels I ran across a new MST episode (Atomic Brain I’m pretty sure). This was my wife’s first introduction to MST, and she was instantly hooked. I hadn’t seen the show in a while, and I remember being surprised at no Joel, and at how much I enjoyed Mike. Later we enjoyed making the connection of Rim Road (I think that’s its name) and Manos (early part of the show, overlooking the city).
MST3K is far and away my favorite TV show ever, but I don’t get to watch it nearly enough. My dear husband is a sports fanatic, and while I can watch on the other TV, I resent having to while he gets the nice big plasma TV for watching apparently every sports ever invented, including bullriding ( which of course makes me think of old-timer Billy Slater from Junior Rodeo – when he kind of slings his cowboy hat and Crow goes “Mammy!” I just about die). Plus, I run two businesses and a household and …well, you see my issue. No freakin’ time.
SO – last year in March we had a monster snowstorm here in Ohio. It was a Saturday morning, I was deathly ill from the flu, and there was no way I was going to work. My hubby decided to help our little town in clearing the streets of snow, so there I was, left all alone for 12 whole hours. I was so ill I could have been declared legally dead, but I watched Manos, Mitchell, The Brain That Wouldn’t Die, I Accuse My Parents, The Giant Spider Invasion and – appropriately enough – The Day the Earth Froze. I laughed and laughed, coughing my lungs out, nose and eyes running, brain frying, while the snow piled up outside and the wind whistled.
That was a great day. :grin:
Home on leave from the Marine Corps in the early ’90’s, entering the house bleary-eyed after a looong bit of Friday night fun. Plopped in the living room, waiting for alcohol-soaked sleep to overtake me, I’d fire up the TV…and what do my wondering eyes did appear? Those three beautiful silhouettes.
I was hooked in none minutes flat. I filled a six-hour tape with bits and pieces of episodes as I could collect them, taking it back to my base in California to dissect and devour. I must have worn the tape out, because it is the only one my VCR ever managed to eat.
Fast-forward (pardon the pun) a decade-and-a-half ahead, and now I’m a crusty old Army guy (had enough of the Corps), getting ready to head over to the desert yet again. And you know who is going with me? A hard drive full of the saddest bunch of cinema being riffed on by the funniest bunch of folks I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing.
I love this show.
I’d seen the show as a kid, but was too young to understand all the jokes. I was about 15, waking up early from a night at my cousins, and happened to turn on Sci-Fi to catch Soultaker. Being an over-excited metal head, hearing “Hey guys, can’t we just rock?” absolutely killed me and made me dive back into the series. THANK GOD.
Runner-up goes to being wacked out on vicodin from getting my wisdom teeth out, watching a marathon of Rocketship X-M, Gamera, and Mitchell. I just laughed goofily and bled heavily for hours.
July 4th 2005. I had just started dating the girl who would eventually become my fiancée, and was too embarrassed to go for seconds at her parents’ house. So on the way home, I stopped off at a local Mexican restaurant. Two hours later I was groaning in agony from the food poisoning I had contracted.
I had a fever of about 103, and lost some time, during which I was (according to my lady) completely delusional. I apparently wept like a baby when she left to get some medicine, and when she came back and woke me I thought I was blind because I’d managed to move a pillow on to my face.
Now, it may have just been the upswing of a 24 hour bug, but the point at which I recall feeling beginning to feel better is when Amber put on the closest thing she could find to keep me company when she went home: the copy of Mitchell I had just rented the night before. I had never seen the episode, and had no idea it was Joel’s last. Despite how sad I was at the end, it was one of the best episodes I’d ever seen, and by the time it was over I could walk again. Well, crawl really…but still—kinda happy MST memory.
My best memory? Three weeks ago, at an all-night MST3K marathon held at a movie theater here in London. 100 or so devotees gathering at midnight to chug Red Bull and coffee while watching MSTed movies on the big screen until 9 a.m. – so much fun! This one was actually the third one I’ve been to, but it was the best because I won a free Xbox 360 :)
Mine involves a good friend that would come over and watch them with us. If the joke or riff was funny enough, he would laugh so hard he would literally start squeaking from lack of air. Thus, we devised the “squeak test” – episodes were ranked based on the number of times he would squeak while watching him. One of the biggest came during “The Projected Man,” with the line “But you’re my sweet cookie pants!” He couldn’t catch a full breath for 5 minutes….
Amazing how pain can etch a memory into your brain. Winter of 07. A bad snowstorm and I was out shoveling a heap of the white stuff like I’d done for years and going way to aggressive at it when I felt the sharpest pain I’ve ever felt in my back. I could barely walk. I just about got inside. It was a struggle getting into bed. Getting up took a good 10 minutes of sweat inducing agony.
Fortunately I had an unwatched PHASE IV burned and ready to play from the night before. It was hard to laugh because any movement was painful but man did that episode help lighten my mood. A half bottle of Exedrin and a good nights rest and I was feeling great again. I use a snow blower now but I’ll forever associate PHASE IV with that back pain incident.
32 Haley – I’d forgotten that my situation was quite similar. 6AM Saturdays, whether I’d stayed up til 2am or not. Often times it meant simply dragging my butt out of bed and hitting record on the vcr with a fresh tape, other times hitting record over an episode because I was too lazy to label the tape the previous week :sad: . Sometimes, though, I’d manage to stay awake, make some coffee and watch. Except for the coffee, it was just like getting up to watch Superfriends or Thundarr back in the day. And since the thrill and excitement I had when I was young and watching those shows has only been matched by MST, I guess it makes good sense. I’d finish the show, make a nice big omelet and go back to bed to sleep, thoroughly contented.
I found MST first in my group of friends in ’93 when I was in high school. I figured they would like it too and I was the only one who had CC so I invited a couple over one day and they were showing a repeat of Manos. This was my first time to see it and I still remember how hard I laughed at the “that’s not how you wear your depends Torgo” line. I’d never heard anything so funny before. For quite a while after that me and my friends would use that line on each other and crack ourselves up all over again.
Then I moved away to go to college and my parents also moved to the same town as my stepdad found a better job there. They’re not real big fans of the show so I usually watched it by myself. I’ve always been one to talk to myself and I especially chat up a storm while watching the show. One day my Mom got my tape recorder and hid it behind the couch while I was watching it and then she played it back for me. We were laughing so hard, it was hilarious!!
My friends and I were big MST fans in high school, as the show was coming to it’s conclusion on CC. But my best memories are from grad school. My friends and I established a tradition where each week one friend would host a dinner, after which we would watch an episode. We were all working toward our doctoral degrees in various areas of biochemistry, and it was a stressful time for all of us. These weekly gatherings really helped us decompress. As budding researchers, we also loved mocking the “science” presented in the films.
By this time the show had run its course on television, and none of the episodes were new to me, but they were brand new to all of my friends. It’s great how seeing a familiar episode through new eyes brings it to life all over again.
I was exposed to MST3K by my parents, who loved bad sci-fi, so watching other people make fun of them was the highest echelon of their entertainment. I remember going to a friend’s house and spending almost two weeks there in the summer, watching the only two movies we had “Pod People” and “Cave Dwellers.” (The Riffed versions of course…
After converting my friend (I don’t even remember his name, that’s how important this story is to me…) he decided to introduce me to Family Guy and Space Ghost Coast To Coast. Lo and behold, JOEL freakin’ HODGSON was on Space Ghost… couldn’t believe the coincidence before our eyes. It was amazing.
But now, I’m much more into MST3K than I was growing up, seeing as I actually get the references now… with a 5% margin of error or so. I mean, what 11 year old kid knows Michael Franks or Frank Zappa (except Michael Franks and Frank Zappa at age 11, respectively…)
I have no real memories to share, but I have to thank Ted (and Sampo of course) for this topic, as this has been the most heartwarming “weekend discussion” on record. I’m just sitting here with a big smile on my face from the cool stories.
I do hope that someone from MST3K can stumble onto this topic and read about the joy that the show has brought to so many individuals and families.