They did it. The Mystery Science Theater 3000 fans did it. They raised enough Kickstarter money to fund another season of cult-favorite MST3K. And with that accomplishment, came the announcement of the first two films to open season 13: 1993’s Robot Wars and 2019’s Demon Squad. But for a show as famous for its format as it is for unearthing the best of the worst in film otherwise lost to time, why is MST3K programming a 2019 movie?
The path of Mystery Science Theater 3000 is mercurial with several cancellations, sudden cast departures, and its recent iteration as a crowdfunded revival. Begun by Joel Hodgson as a public access program in Minneapolis in 1988, the show’s unique approach engrained the show in the hearts of an audience that would stick with it for over twenty years and often left MST3K the odd program out within a broadcast network’s schedule reshuffling. MST3K is campy and off-beat but also incredibly accessible and that nature is what kept the fans coming back so hard they funded the Jonah Ray years of season 11, 12, and season 13 coming out in 2021.
Mystery Science Theater 3000, the show generally about an everyman and his robot pals forced to watch the worst movies of the earth by a mad scientist, has been around long enough to have three distinct phases. The Joel years (1988 to 1994), the Mike years (1994 to 1999) and now the Jonah years (2017 to current) can lead to heavy disagreements between fans on who the “best” MST3K host was (sort of its own Shatner vs. Picard vs. Janeway deal) but the core was the bad movies, the riffs, and the love.
While MST3K is known for jokes and bad movies, the development and goals of the show are much more nuanced, artistic, and honestly scientific. Hodgson’s goal in creating MST3K’s iconic overlay of the host and robots sitting silhouetted at the bottom of the screen while riffing was a sincere attempt to bring the audience viewing at home into the program. Or to have a “shared screen” (who knew back in 1988 how dystopian that concept would become in 2020?). In the writer’s room, no riff pitch is too outré, no reference too obscure, with the emphasis on nonjudgmental brainstorming first and a sweep for the funny after. And don’t be a jerk.
The idea is to be funny, to invite in the viewers at home, and to have fun. Not really at the expense of the movie, or industrial short, but in celebration of this weird gem that otherwise would have been completely lost. MST3K came around when finding obscure and bad films was more of an expedition via the odd VHS in the rental racks of a grocery store, a copy of a copy that a friend of a friend had, or one tiny reference in a magazine, finding the Best of the Bad of movies took effort and luck. MST3K did the work for the audience and created a social viewing experience decades before Live Streaming was a thing.
From the shared experience came a generation that bonded over bad movies, riffing, and creating their own acts of homage that laid the groundwork for cutting out the middle man and just writing a bad movie, such as Sharknado and its five sequels, or buying the rights to a film, such as Birdemic and its sequel, and then distributing it as a bad movie regardless that the director is 100% sincere. These are movies made and produced and distributed to be mocked, usually hosting their own riffing style events for fans in an attempt to be a sort of Rocky Horror Picture Show/MST3K live event crossover. MST3K took Bad Movies and made it a genre. The Bad Movie Movement is where melodrama and giant monster animals are king.
To be fair, MST3K hasn’t always riffed on films older than itself. Season 8 produced in 1997 had Time Chasers released in 1994, season 9 in 1998 featured Werewolf released in 1996, and 1999’s season 10 had Future War released in 1997. But this was still pretty early in the internet game and, while it was more likely for a small audience to have found these films, most people weren’t skilled in searching the wild west of the internet in pursuit. DVD’s entered mass-production in 1996 but wouldn’t become mainstream until around 2003 and, while most popular releases and eventually “cult” releases would be reissued to the new format, countless films released to VHS (or laserdisc, heavens) are disappearing entirely as old tech, like VHS players, go extinct. These lost films exist degrading in boxes in basements or as illegal DVD bootlegs at conventions. And these are the exact “Bad” movies MST3K should still be looking for.
Seasons 11, 12, and the upcoming 13th seasons were produced out of fan love and, out of respect for that love, the format is generally the same with host Jonah Ray as “Jonah Reston” with his robot pals and Felecia Day and Patton Oswalt as the Mads. But the announcement of 2019’s Demon Squad at the top of season 13 reveals there may need to be some changes or at least another evolution out of respect of the different era the show now exists within. MST3K’s audience in the 2000s does not only know where to find a current “bad” movie, they’re making them. What the audience wants to relive is that shared experience Joel brought to the viewer back in 1988. The shared experience of discovery, of good humor and deep cuts, and of a film that should have disappeared but now lives on.
Mystery Science Theater 3000 made it cool to love the bad and their fans made it a movement. But MST3K can’t be out of obscure films pre-2010… can they?