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In the early days of cable, around 1988, there was a guy named Joel Hodgson. Weary of the L.A. comedy circuit, he returned to his hometown of Minneapolis, Minnesota to develop a comedy series concept he had for local station KMTA: a hapless janitor is shot into space by two mad scientists who experiment on his mind by forcing him to watch bad movies, and the janitor creates robot sidekicks to help him through it all. In an era when local television still produced its own programming, station manager Jim Mallon saw promise in the idea and thought it could be a showcase for their sizable catalog of B movies. Enlisting the aid of KTMA cameraman and comedian Kevin Murphy, along with local talents Trace Belieu and Josh Weinstein, a rough pilot was hammered out, earning the show a contract, and on Thanksgiving Day, 1988 Mystery Science Theater 3000 was born. With Joel hosting, Belieu and Weinstein doubling as his wisecracking robots Tom Servo and Crow T. Robot, and mad scientists Clayton Forester and Laurence Erhart, the show lasted for 21 episodes at KTMA before being canceled.
Those shows gave Hodgson and Mallon enough material to put together a pitch tape for fledgling cable network The Comedy Channel, which gave them their first national broadcast platform. A bigger budget allowed them to bring in more comedic talent like head writer Mike Nelson (who would later take over hosting duties from Joel), Mary Jo Pehl, and Frank Coniiff (affectionately known as TV’s Frank) who took over as Dr. Forester’s assistant after Weinstein’s departure, creating a comedy duo that continues on today. After two seasons, The Comedy Channel morphed into Comedy Central where MST3K became a cult phenomenon. After seven seasons, the show was canceled on Comedy Central, but demand was so strong that The Syfy Channel picked it up for three more. After spawning offshoots like Cinematic Titanic and Rifftrax, crowdfunding brought the show back from the dead for two more seasons at Netflix with new host Jonah Ray. It continues on with Hodgson’s guidance and new comedic talent via its own platform, Gizmoplex. There’s so much quality riffing here it’s nearly impossible to rank them all and every fan has their favorites, but these episodes from the Comedy Channel/Comedy Central era are at the heart of the show and its format throughout its many iterations.
10 “The Crawling Eye” (1958)
Season 1, Episode 1
The first national broadcast of the series, this episode sets up the format that will continue throughout the series’ run. Joel introduces the show’s premise and his robots, Tom Servo (Weinstein) and Crow T. Robot (Belieu), plus a new one named Gypsy (voiced by Jim Mallon). Mad scientists Clayton Forester (Belieu) and Lawrence Erhart (Weinstein) move into their lair called “Deep 13”, and Joel offers the first “invention exchange” (a running bit where Joel comes up with an absurd invention and the Mads come up with a comically evil one).
As for the movie, probably the less said the better. Forrest Tucker of F Troop fame takes on a giant, multi-tentacled eye that terrorizes an Alpine village. Top riff from Joel and the bots: “What’s a giant eye gonna do, pick you up and wink you to death? In the host segment, Joel demonstrates the Electric Bagpipes for his invention exchange while Dr. Forester injects Erhart with an antiperspirant developed from dogs that has some nasty side effects. Later, the bots find Forest Tucker much more terrifying than the giant eye, and Joel tries to explain why giant eyes are scary.
9 “Rocketship X-M” (1950)
Season 2, Episode 1
This is the first episode to feature Frank Coniff as the beloved TV’s Frank, and Kevin Murphy as the voice of Tom Servo. It also introduces a new set for the bridge of Joel’s ship, now known as the Satellite of Love (SOL for short). Frank is introduced as an assistant trainee after Erhardt’s disappearance leads to his picture on the back of a milk carton. Frank’s only skills are from his last job working a fast food drive-thru, so he takes Joel and the Bot’s food order and almost brings the Satellite of Love back to Earth, so they can “eat in” until Forester catches him and gives him a wedgie. Meanwhile, Joel is adjusting Tom Servo’s new voice as part of the invention exchange.
In the nearly plotless movie, Lloyd Bridges is part of an expedition to the moon that goes wrong and ends up on an atomic war-ravaged planet Mars. Top riff from Joel and the bots: “There’s a Mr. ‘Oh My God, My Hair Is On Fire’ on line one, sir”. In the last host segment, Frank learns how to “push the button”, a bit that will end each episode of the series throughout its Comedy Central run.
8 “The Amazing Colossal Man” (1957)
Season 3, Episode 9
This entry from the series’ first season on the newly formed Comedy Central is the first (in the Comedy Central era) to feature a film from a director who would become a favorite punching bag of the show — Bert I. Gordon. Stunningly, he had a decades-long career beginning in the 1950s, making the schlockiest films possible with titles like King Dinosaur, War of the Colossal Beast, Earth vs. The Spider, Village of the Giants, and Empire of the Ants. All told, MST3K would skewer seven more of his cheesiest masterpieces throughout its run.
In this one, Lt. Colonel Glenn Manning is exposed to a plutonium bomb blast that causes him to grow exponentially in size. The military tries to contain him so that they can somehow reverse the process but fail spectacularly as he grows to 50 feet, loses his mind, and runs around Las Vegas in what looks like a make-shift diaper, terrorizing the city until he finally falls off a cliff to his death. The episode also features an early on-camera appearance by head writer Mike Nelson, who would later go on to host the series. He plays the colossal Glenn Manning, who visits the Satellite of Love to explain to Joel and the Bots what it’s like to be 50 feet tall. Top riff: “Who else but a clown would have an expandable sarong like this?”
7 “I Accuse My Parents” (1945)
Season 5, Episode 7
Joel Hodgson has named this his favorite episode, and he certainly is in top form as he and the Bots take on this over-wrought and didactic cautionary tale from the 1940s in which Jimmy, a none-too-bright yet easily corrupted young man who stands trial for manslaughter and blames it on his alcoholic parents. The film follows Jimmy’s rise and fall from high school, when Jimmy rushes home to show his parents his award-winning essay only to find them amid drunken revelry with their friends, through his increasingly absurd lies about his home life meant to impress a woman he loves who in turn gets him entangled with a mob boss, and finally hitting bottom when he attempts the armed robbery of a kindly diner owner who offers him a “hamburger sammich” and tries to rehabilitate him. Top riffs: “He’s taken to selling his essays cheap on the street” and “I accuse you, Joel! Now, carefully hand over the hamburger sammich”.
The episode also includes a short film, the first on this list to do so. Short subjects were a staple of the series, starting with 1940s serials and then moving to dreary, poorly acted, and absurdly written educational shorts spanning the 40s through the 70s. Their riffs were sometimes even better than the main feature. This one is The Truck Farmer from Encyclopedia Britannica Films, not one of the more memorable shorts but amusing all the same. Top riff: “I wonder if they sold this film door-to-door”.
6 “War of the Colossal Beast” (1958)
Season 3, Episode 19
Bert I. Gordon strikes again, and so does Glenn Manning! In this Gordon-verse sequel, it seems he survived the fall from the Hoover Dam he took in Amazing Colossal Man and somehow ends up in Mexico as a 50-foot, disfigured, diaper-wearing beast hiding out in the desert. It’s typical of Gordon’s work, which strikes the right balance for MST3K. He’s a passable filmmaker whose movies are just bad enough for comedy but not so bad they dissolve in a puddle of plotless unwatchability.
But what makes this episode truly memorable isn’t the main feature — it’s the short. A true MST3K legend and eternal fan favorite, Mr. B Natural began the venerable tradition of shorts featuring weird supernatural beings endowed with the ability to alter reality in some way just to teach you a lesson. Buzz Turner is a miserable child who is despised at school and spends a lot of time sulking in his room. Suddenly the androgynous Mr. B Natural appears in his room one night claiming to have known his father and promising to teach him “the joys of music”. What follows is an insane trip through a bizarro world where Mr. B Natural dances and minces about making everyone weirdly uncomfortable while trying to teach Buzz to play the trumpet. Turns out Mr. B is just an instrument salesman hawking products from the now-defunct C.G. Conn Instrument Company. Top riff: “That hurt, I’m all messed up inside; if only an androgynous man would come visit me.”
5 “Bride of the Monster” (1955)
Season 4, Episode 23
And now we come to the patron saint of bad movie-making, director Ed Wood. Oddly enough, his most infamous film Plan 9 From Outer Space, considered by many to be the worst movie ever made, was never featured on MST3K. But Bride of the Monster was the film he made just before it, and it has just as much goofball dialogue, weirdo characters, and tacky special effects as Plan 9, but has the heroin-addicted presence of the legendary Bela Lugosi and giant galoot Tor Johnson as his assistant. Lugosi is a mad scientist, Dr. Erik Varnoff, who is conducting experiments on people to give them the strength of 20 men. Of course, things go horribly off the rails and Varnoff is turned into a superpowered atomic mutant (played by an entirely different actor when Lugosi took off to get into rehab). Top riff: after Varnoff becomes the superpowered mutant, Crow quips: “Oh no, now he has the strength of 20 heroin addicts”.
This episode also included part one of the short “Hired!”, a Chevrolet sales training film in which a sales manager seeks advice from his father on how to deal with his incompetent sales staff. It turned out to be one of the better shorts of the series, but is surpassed by part two of the short which would become part of an MST3K legend.
4 “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians” (1964)
Season 3, Episode 21
This was the first (and arguably the best) of many Christmas-themed episodes throughout the series’ run, and it has become a holiday classic in its own right. Martians wearing ridiculous-looking headgear have seen Santa on their intergalactic television sets and just don’t get the whole “Christmas thing”. So, they decide to kidnap Santa from the North Pole and bring him to Mars to get some answers. Santa knows he needs to get back to Earth before Christmas is canceled forever, so he teams up with Dropo (“the laziest man on Mars”) and two children to break him out.
It has everything: robots, Martians, Santa, a guy in a cheesy polar bear suit, and even a young Pia Zadora. The host segments are some of the best in the series. The Mads’ invention exchange, the “Wish Squisher”, takes a cool toy any kid would want for Christmas and turns it into something lame like a pair of socks from your Aunt, while Joel and the Bots salute Rankin-Bass’ Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer with their own misfit toys, like Mr. Mashed Potato Head. The infinitely riffable movie Road House takes a beating, first with Joel’s board game adaptation of it and then Crow’s hilariously violent Christmas carol ode “(Let’s Have) A Patrick Swayze Christmas”. Top riff: “And now a Deep 13-holiday presentation: Pia Zadora in Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. Shield your eyes, Frank.”
3 “The Brain That Wouldn’t Die” (1962)
Season 5, Episode 13
The impressive riffing debut of Mike Nelson, this episode would set the stage for the rest of the series run and beyond. After a horrible car accident that decapitates his fiancée, Nurse Jan, Dr. Bill Cortner grabs the head and takes it to his secret lab where he reanimates it on a tray. He then searches for the perfect body to attach it to, while “Jan in the Pan” berates him and begs for her death. It’s one of MST3K’s creepiest and most gruesome experiments, but the upbeat, Mid-west farmboy, charm of Mike Nelson provides a welcome contrast. Top riff: “Hi, I’m Casey Casem. This one goes out to a heart-sick love with a severed head.”
In the host segments, the Bots train Mike in the fine art of bad movie riffing and later aid Mike in an attempt to gain control of the ship and return to Earth with disastrous results. They try making various hats for “Jan in the Pan,” and after the movie “Jan in the Pan,” shows up (played by the hilarious Mary Jo Pehl, the future Pearl Forester) on the Satellite of Love to reassure them she’s found a new lease on life, a loving husband, and a job as a doorstop.
2 “Mitchell” (1975)
Season 5, Episode 12
This is the classic episode where both bid a fond farewell to Joel as show host and introduce hapless temp Mike Nelson as the Mads’ next victim. The movie stars Joe Don Baker (who reportedly was so angry about the skewering he and the movie got that he threatened to beat up MST3K cast and crew if he ever met them) as Mitchell, a drunken, sweaty, bloated mess of a cop who screams at children on skateboards for no apparent reason and sleeps with prostitutes before arresting them. Somehow, he’s tapped to try to bring down a successful businessman suspected of drug smuggling. Top riff is just one word, echoed as a callback throughout the rest of the series: “Mitchell!”
Of course, the real story here is Joel Robinson’s departure. In the most elaborate plot, the host segments ever had in the Comedy Central era (the SyFy era would see more host segment storylines), The Mads hired a temp by the name of Mike to help them prepare for an audit by the Fraternal Order of Mad Scientists. Gypsy on the Satellite of Love becomes convinced that they are plotting to murder Joel. Desperate to find a way to get Joel off the SOL before they kill him, she turns to Mike, who tricks Frank into giving him the keys to a hidden escape pod he’s found and gives them to Gypsy. After the movie, an unsuspecting Joel is whisked into the escape pod and launched back to Earth while quoting from the movie The Circus of Doctor Lau. It’s a sad and sweet farewell, and Joel’s departure would completely change the tone and personality of the show forever.
1 “Manos: Hands of Fate” (1966)
Season 4, Episode 24
Arguably the most famous episode of MST3K, it was voted number one by fans in Shout! Factory‘s recent fan voting for the top 100 episodes. Manos, Hands of Fate is virtually synonymous with the series, mainly because few people had ever heard of the film until they dug it out of obscurity. Exposure on the show gave it a status of infamy, rivaling and possibly surpassing Plan 9 From Outer Space as the worst movie ever made. The brainchild of Texas fertilizer salesman Harold P. Warren (who made the film on a bet), he cast himself as the father of a family who takes a wrong turn and ends up at a seedy dump run by a stumbling satyr named Torgo (John Reynolds), a servant to a cult leader known as “The Master” (Tom Neyman). It starts with an interminably long opening driving sequence and just lumbers on from there.
The film is so bad that even Dr. Forester and TV’s Frank think they may have gone too far, and its pace is so plodding that Joel yells at the screen ‘DO SOMETHING!” It’s preceded by a short, the even more hilarious part two of Hired! The riffers are at their best here, and Mike Nelson makes a cameo, stumbling onto the Deep 13 as Torgo delivers a very late pizza to the Mads. Top riff: “Every frame of this film looks like someone’s last known photograph”. It’s certainly deserving to be at the top of any MST3K fans’ list.
This article was originally published on collider.com