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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Unfortunatly I didn’t start watching MST3K until it was already on Sci Fi, and I wasn’t old enough to have actually seen any of the movies except maybe Delta Knights before they were on the show. But I can say that Starz for some reason showed Squirm one evening and our local PBS (the hell?) showed, of all movies, Santa Clause Conquers the Martians.
Same here… too young to have seen most of them before MST. I did catch the original version of Space Mutiny once, and I was pretty intrigued to see a bunch of scenes that were cut from the mst episode. Also, my dad said he saw 12 To the Moon when he was a little boy…
when i was like…6 or something, i saw ‘Gorgo’ on TV at my grandmother’s house that summer. i knew it wasn’t Godzilla and had no clue what was going on. now, i still know it’s not Godzilla and still don’t really know what’s going on. But MST3k made it more fun, so that’s good in my book.
I saw The Girl in Lover’s Lane long before the MST episode, and couldn’t wait to find out how they handled it. In the MST episode, they cut the scene of Jesse’s actual attack and murder of Carrie. The Brains did a decent job with the riffing, and there are some truly funny moments. But knowing about the original, even darker tone of the movie, and remembering the part they cut, kind of ruin this one for me. I find it harder to enjoy it.
I also saw Attack of the Eye Creatures when I was a kid. Blech! Every single thing MST did, every riff, every host segment, was a huge improvement.
No personal experience, but I do have a friend (who I need to get on these boards) who deliberately rented Quest of the Delta Knights when it came out. Granted, he worked in a video store, and had lots of free time, but…
I actually saw Laserblast in the theatre long before I saw it on MST3k. Yes, I actually *paid* to see that turkey. It was totally incoherent even with all the scenes in it, much less cut down for MST3k. I was ecstatic to see it was the movie being riffed when it came on that week, as it’s the only movie I had seen previous to being riffed.
We had Godzilla Vs. Megalon for a movie night on campus (in the 80’s) and we gave it the MST treatment before MST3K. It’s one of the reasons I sought out the show when I heard about it. I figured if we had a good time doing it, it would make a good show.
When I was growing up in Houston, the neighborhood theater showed horror movie marathons every Wednesday during summer vacation. The movies ranged from the 1930s (including a film about Humphrey Bogart joining the KKK) to late 1950s and early 1960s. Among the future MST3K fare I saw were Teenage Caveman, Earth Versus the Spider, Devil Doll, She Creature, and Horror of Party Beach. My father took me to see Gorgo and The Sword and the Dragon. The first movie was a shocker, because I never saw a film where the monster wins at the end and the second one put me to sleep (not enough dragon).
As a kid, I watched a considerable amount TV growing up in the 1970s, and recall seeing several of the 1950s/60s movies on WNEW and WPIX out of New York, including “The Amazing Colossal Man,” “Revenge of the Creature,” and “I Was A Teenage Werewolf.” Around Christmas “Santa Claus Conquers The Martians” received heavy airplay on the New York channels for most of the 70s. My wife had seen “Time Chasers” on TV in Massachusetts in the late 90s, and recalls having “no problem with it’s B-movieness,” and found it quite enjoyable (she has since “joined us” and has become a serious Mystie!).
I recall as a 11 year old my dad coming home from work, shaking his head, telling the family about a movie someone he worked with had seen that featured walking catfish, and he just thought it was the most ridiculous thing he had ever heard! Many years later, when I saw “Blood Waters of Dr. Z” for the first time on MST in 1999, I realized that THIS was the film whose concept my dad had been poo-poohing all those years ago!
I remember the short “Danger: Keep Out” from elementary school long before Rifftrax gave it the riffing treatment. I was super-excited to realize it was the same one.
Godzilla & Gamera were the only ones. In the early 80’s, a local UHF station showed giant monster movies every afternoon just after school (I remember having to run home so I wouldn’t miss even a moment). It’s possible they might have shown other movies that were MST3k’d, but I don’t remember them. All I cared about was my childhood hero, Godzilla.
I grew up in the same era and same area. I mainly remember watching the Gamera movies on WABC-TV, Channel 7’s “4:30 Movie”. And a few others would occasionaly show up on “Chiller Theater” on Channel 11, or one of the UHF stations out of Philadelphia.
I share the same memory as Susan of TfOS. I was so scared by the skeleton gun as a kid and had a different reaction as an adult. Of course, then, I was watching it on
MST3K . . . I also saw the Creature movie and Colossal Man pre-MST3K. Oh, This Island Earth, I saw that as part of some Classic Science Fiction thing on T.V. or maybe even at a movie theater back in college.
I actually had the trifecta on one film. While I was up very early morning, I was surprised (not in a dull way) to see Kathy Ireland in a sci-fi(ish) movie. Being familiar with her work on Necessary Roughness, I decided to watch the last 40 minutes (or so) of Alien from L.A.
It was not a good film but it was not truly jaw-dropping horrible, either. To make a determination if was truly that bad or not, I sojourned to our local giant video store and actually rented it (it was a 1.99 and a slow Thursday evening.) So I sW the entire thing. I determined that it was not good and possibly MST material but a higher grade movie vs. Manos or Castle of Fu Manchu or some other horrific dreck.) It hit every late 80’s check point as if they had the list. Plucky underdog, check. Don Michael Paul as the jerk boyfriend, check. Hip SoCal lingo, check. Innocuous pop rock soundtrack, check. Strange guesses on what alien technology would be, check.
Lastly, I saw the movie on MST3K and loved it. The Kirby Puckett reference and the late 80’s-early 90’s “chick flick” references during the credits always make laugh.
I saw TERROR FROM THE YEAR 5000 at least twice as a child (way back in the early 70s, as part of the deathless monster movie matinees that were always shown on television at the time), and believe it or not it scared the hell out of me, especially the monkey/cat-failed-experiment-thingy in the suitcase that Hedges finds in the “swimming hole.” I had seemingly endless nightmares about that. I was also pretty freaked out over the scene when the tight-suited, bespangled Terror (that is, Salome Jens) emerges from the time-machine (which is perhaps the one scene I find effective now — the way her hand comes out; it’s pretty cool).
I was incredibly and pleasantly surprised to realize that I had seen the movie the first time I watched it on MST3K. Perhaps needless to say, it is now Angelo who freaks me out the most. :)
My wife has fond memories of her (older) sister telling her about seeing THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN’T DIE at a drive-in (when she was like nine). Jan in the Pan utterly terrified her (and so did the strippers, probably).
Mike and Co. may not agree, but I saw This Island Earth on tv (true, first as a child)
and thought it was pretty good. Of course, to fit it into the ridiculous just over an hour
version, with also the skits, much of it made little sense if you hadn’t seen it uncut.
I am old as dirt so I must have seen about 70% of these flicks and some of the shorts as well prior to MST3K.
Hercules and Hercules Unchained were seen in the movies so the great cinematography of Mario Bava really stood out, of course lost on the small screen. Teenage Werewolf was another movie house show enjoyed on the big screen.
The Godzilla and Gamora movies were seen during my teen years and my brothers/friends would riff and point out crappy special effects. The Master and Gemini Man were TV were viewed on a 19 in B&W TV with a plastic sheet taped on the screen which was supposed to turn your TV to a “Color TV”. The top was tinted blue, middle red and bottom green. You cannot imagined what fun this added to the riffing. Space: 1999 was taken as a more serious sci-fi show.
The late night host Zachery introduced me to most of the 40s and some 50s era flicks like Mad Monster and many Lugosi flicks. Again, the presence of riffing was the reason for watching.
As you can see, MST3K hooked me immediately. I have seen of many these flicks and was an experienced riffer, not a good one I’m sure. I really enjoyed the Josh era shows because they were unscripted and reminded me of the days of youth and camaraderie I enjoyed.
Well, the Godzilla and Gamera stuff was on Saturdays all the time when I was a kid – staples on the independent TV station and later, cable networks like USA (miss ya Cap, and you too, Lefty).
My household was actually really early adopters of HBO, and their daytime programming in the eighties included several films that later made it to MST. The Last Chase and Alien From LA are distinct memories.
And, I may be a little embarrassed to admit this, but once upon a time, I was reading The Book of Lists and came across an entry for worst movies, and, well, it made me want to find and watch them. And that’s how I was first introduced to Robot Monster (and some other turkeys that MST passed on for one reason or another, like Terror of Tiny Town, and John Wayne as Ghengis Khan in The Conquerer).
I actually watched “Overdrawn at the Memory Bank” before I saw the MST3K version – even then I thought to myself “was this on PBS?”
I saw The Last Chase in a movie theater, and a few of them on HBO, like Alien from LA. I saw Revenge on the Creature when WPIX was doing a huge 3D glasses promotion to see it on TV in 3D. I saw Overdrawn at the Memory Bank on WNET (Channel 13) on some Sunday afternoon.
I loved to watch terrible movies on TV growing up, which meant that I had the pleasure of seeing The Amazing Colossal Man, I Was a Teenage Werewolf, and Gorgo long before I would see them again on MST3K.
I didn’t remember much about them before I would see the SOL crew tear them to pieces, so it was like seeing them all over again for the first time. My reaction was more of a “hey, they’re doing THAT movie!” thing.
I never saw This Island Earth in its entirety before I caught MST3K: The Movie, but I did remembering seeing that brief clip of This Island Earth in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Too bad that E.T. wasn’t an intergalactic riffer!
The first one that comes to mind for me is “Godzilla vs. The Sea Monster”. The Godzilla movies were played fairly regularly on Super Scary Saturday, a creature-feature show on TBS hosted by Al “Grandpa” Lewis. We taped “Sea Monster” at some point in the early 90s, and we nearly wore out the tape over the next few years. So I’ve seen it many times un-MSTed, enough to notice all the little cuts that Best Brains made to the movie.
I didn’t actually watch them all the way through, but I remember when SyFy showed She-Creature, Soultaker and Teenage Werewolf before they were riffed for MST3K. My mom watched General Hospital when it was in black and white, before they used it for shorts for MST3K. She also remembers Teenage Werewolf and watched it when she was young. Who knew they were about to be used for torture for the captains on the SOL?
:shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock:
do also remember watching ‘Godzilla v. Megalon’ on NBC primetime of all things. they had a intro with some actor in a Godzilla suit. i’ve heard it was either MacLane Stevens or Belushi. just another one of those childhood scars from the ’70s.
There’s only ONE episode of MST3K where I saw the film itself before seeing it get the MST treatment and that is CAVE DWELLERS. I rented it when it was called something else. “The Mighty Blade” or something of that nature. Don’t remember exactly other than it originally was not called CAVE DWELLERS. It’s part 2 of a trilogy and saw the first one in the theater, ATOR! I’ve still never seen the third. I think the whole trilogy should get the Rifftrax treatment. “Join me and Wong on the Idaho River fishing for trout”.
The only one that I can think of is Squirm. As a kid it really did scare me, but years later when I watched the MST3K riffed version I can remember thinking “wow, what a load of crap this movie is.”
When I was a kid, actually saw “Santa Claus” in the theater. The monitoring lips and eyes and what not freaked me out. Still do today.
In High School watched “Laserblast” at the theater. Still trying to get my money back.
Only two: “Revenge of the Creature” and “The Deadly Mantis” both found their way to my VCR before they showed up on “MST3K.” If you were fortunate enough to live near a non-Blockbuster video rental place in the early 90s, there was no telling what kind of “treasures” you would come upon. I had no idea there was a sequel (or two, rather) to “The Creature from the Black Lagoon” and had my adolescent hopes crushed when I realized “Revenge of the Creature” was a joke, and the one after that was somehow even worse.
But “The Deadly Mantis” was actually kind of entertaining. I liked it for what it was (big bug B movie), and it’s still one of my favorite movies Mike & The Bots ever took on.
I saw Marooned when I was about 8 or 9 when it was shown on TV, back when there were 5 TV stations, no cable (and we liked it, we loved it!). I was excited because it was a movie about space, and I was obsessed with NASA and space travel. I think I fell asleep about halfway through the movie.
Many of the Godzilla & Gamera films, of course, as they were a part of my formative years. But the one that immediately jumps out is Cosmic Princess, the “Space:1999” extract. I loved that show as a pre-teen when it originally aired, all the scientific implausibilities not withstanding (I said to myself: I should really just relax…). Loved the effects; loved Maya (Catherine Schell) even more.
I had not known they’d done a S1999 ep in the KTMA era until recently and was able to watch it online. Yes, it made me realize how bad the show really was. But Maya is still awesome… ;)
If I did ever see any of those movies before I saw them on MST3K, I have no recollection of it. However, when I first played the premiere episode of MST3K, my dad recognized The Crawling Eye almost instantly.
I remember Million Dollar Movie on Channel 9. They showed the same movie every day for a week, with repeat showings immediately after the one just aired. “The Crawling Eye” was one of those. My sister, brother and assorted cousins were really scared of a giant eyeball with long tentacles. It still scares me (a little bit anyway). I also remember seeing “Amazing Colossal Man” and the sequel on Chiller Theater. His mangled face and gouged out eye socket are still icky to me. Guess I’m afraid of eyes for some reason.
I was raised at a theater and drive-in in a small town. It was my aunt and uncle’s. I saw everything.
The only MST3K film I did not see, thankfully, was Manos.
I remember seeing Skydivers at the drive-in. Skydivers became the dog turd by which I measured all other films.
Just because I like looking at data and trends, it would be cool to see poll results of which movie was seen most before it was riffed.
I’ve seen
Marooned (Space Travelers) liked back in the day desperate for ANYTHING Sci-fi. Similar movie is Countdown with James Caan.
Godzilla vs. Megalon, loved as a kid, the fight scenes anyway
The Deadly Mantis
The Green Slime, I watch this one at least once a year, un-mstied of course.
Being from Another Planet (Timewalker), in the theater! actually thought it would be cool from the trailer.
The Mole People, I actually like this movie. Still find it creepy.
Before they were riffed, no, but since I discovered MST3K late there are a couple I saw before I knew they were riffed on the show.
When the 1998 Godzilla came out it seemed that everyone wanted to cash in on it, so Godzilla stuff was everywhere. I took advantage of it, got into a bit of a Godzilla frenzy and discovered some of the Showa era movies. One of them was Godzilla vs. The Sea Monster, and I wasn’t real impressed. The big green lizard barely showed up. I think if you want really good Godzilla of the Showa era you almost have to go for anything directed by Ishiro Honda. Just watch out for Godzilla’s Revenge, AKA All Monsters Attack.
I also at one point picked up a dollar bin DVD that had The Giant Gila Monster on it. I stand by my original thoughts on that one; the effects on the Gila monster were not that bad.
There were others that I didn’t see but was familiar with because I had seen them in dollar bins and stuff, most notably The Brain that Wouldn’t Die and Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. Finding out they were done on the show was one of my main draws to MST3K, actually.
Following up on my comment above, after a quick spin through the ep list in detail:
* Gamera vs. Barugon
* Gamera
* Gamera vs.Guiron
* Cosmic Princess
* Rocketship X-M
* Godzilla vs. Megalon
* Revenge of the Creature
* The Deadly Mantis
* I Was a Teenage Werewolf
Wow, that is a lot fewer than I thought, though I left off some I might have/probably did see but I’m not 100% certain of. A lot of the Japanese films especially all sort of run together in my mind.
I was a big consumer of the weekend monster/sci-fi “creature feature”, “far out flicks” movie shows, the afternoon shows and the midnight horror films my brother and I would get out of bed to watch. Probably one reason I have such an affinity MST3K so much; it hilariously skewers a genre I loved so well.
Before David Letterman had The Late Show on CBS, they used to show late night movies. One of them was a terrible film called Invasion of the Spider Creatures, which was MSTed as The Giant Spider Invasion. Neither the appearance of the Skipper from Gilligan’s Island or Della Street from Perry Mason could help hide the blatant fact that this was a truly dreadful film. Packers! Woooo!
The only movie I saw before it was on MST3K was “This Island Earth.” While I liked it well enough, I was certainly not upset with the treatment given to it. I remember my dad had copies of “Hercules” and “Hercules Unchained” lying around, since he taught Greek Mythology at a university, but I don’t remember ever looking at them…thankfully!
WOW I had mever considered this topic before..I think I have seen virtually all of classic and not so classic horror films of the 1950s and 1960s including all the mistied Corman, Mr BIG, Arkoff and Nicholson films on tv as a kid in the 1970s. In Dayton Ohio as a kid we had a horror movie host called Dr. Creep on uhf channel 22. Similar to todays Svengoolie on ME TV. but Dr.Creeps Shock Theater began in 1971 predating Svengoolie by about 8 years. He was quite a bit more bawdy and risque than Svengoolie more similar to Ivonna Cadaver on Macabre Theater.So it became the tradition to watch these old movies with Dr. Creep every Saturday night as kid.There are some clips of Dr. Creep and Shock Theater on Youtube if anyone is interested. Yes I was born a bad movie nerd and at 52 much to my wifes chagrin I havent changed much. So sad
The only one for me was Santa Claus. Back around Christmastime of 1964 (could have been ’63 or ’65 and possibly two Christmases in a row) I remember my Mom taking me and my little brother to see it. I don’t remember if I liked it or not, and the memories gradually faded over the years. Occasionally I would have vague recollections of dancing devils, giant horrifying lips on a wall, and a falling flower, but I did not remember where those flashes came from. Hey, I was about 4 years old or so at the time I saw it. All that changed the day the episode premiered and I sat down to watch it. I started getting a little deja vu when I first saw Pitch, but as soon as the Pleasure Mouth appeared I was back in that dark theater seeing those lips in all their giant-sized glory. I was having 60s flashbacks for different reasons than most people have them. :shock: I still can’t remember much about the movie except for those images, but that was apparently enough to traumatize me for decades. My brother doesn’t remember it at all, and neither did my Mom. In another twist, about five or six years before she passed away we were looking through her old cedar chest and came across a local newspaper she had saved from the Kennedy assassination. While paging through it I came across an ad for a long since closed local theater showing that movie. I don’t think ’63 was when she took us to see it since I have no memories of the assassination being only a little over 3 at the time and my brother was just under a year, but it could have been. I have the impression it came around year after year so that’s why I think ’64 is more likely. I scanned the ad but my editing skills are pretty lacking. You can click on my name to see the image. It’s sideways but it was the best I could do. Looking back that copy in the ad is laughable now, and a little frightening. :devil:
I saw The Thing that Couldn’t Die on the Sci-fi channel maybe three or four years before it was an episode. They showed movies in the afternoon and called it the Moonlight Matinee Theater. I like that one on it’s own and it’s also a great ep. There are a few Rifftraxes I’ve seen before they riffed them (Hideous Sun Demon, Brainiac, etc…) but that’s the only MST ep I can think of.
I saw Squirm on TV, and I probably saw the Space 1999 episodes that made up Cosmic Princess, although I don’t remember exactly. But the big one for me, as I’ve mentioned under another posting name, was Blood Waters of Dr. Z (or Zaat, as it was officially called). I saw it in the theater when it first came out in the early ’70s. I know it has an “official” release date in the early ’80s, but it was definitely being shown in theaters long before then, especially in my part of the country. The reason I saw it was that it was shot very close to where I grew up, and the mother of a friend of mine was actually IN the film (she played the reporter in the “mod pantsuit”). As an eight-year-old, I found it confusing and weird, and my opinion really hasn’t changed. But they have revivals of it occasionally, and I picked up a blu-ray copy at one of them. Hi-definition really doesn’t help this film, as you might expect.
This right here. Growing up there was a Blockbuster around, but I mostly went to places like Movie Gallery and Hastings. Both of them had the kinds of cheesy dollar bin and PD stuff in the 90s that I recognized when I found out MST3K did them.
Hangar 18 is the only one that I had seen before MST3K, that I can recall. I remember seeing at the theater.
@40 – In my (pre-Star Wars) day, whippersnappers, there wasn’t much in theaters to take kids to during the Mid-70’s Godfather Golden Age, so locally-owned theaters had to hire their own Saturday kiddie matinees, usually cheap public-domain ones. Which means at Christmas, you were pretty well guaranteed to find at least one theater showing Santa Claus Conquers the Martians and one theater showing Santa vs. Pitch, and charging us two dollars for the privilege. As it happens, saw both on the bigscreen, but I never did get around to “Magic Christmas Tree”….May have dodged a bullet on that one. (I remember first watching the MST3K El-Santa and thinking, “Wait, they cut out all the scenes with Merlin!”)
I remember my dad taking me to see every classic 50’s sci-fi at the local revival house, which included the “great” This Island Earth, I remember how “cool” Hangar 18 was going to be in the theaters from the ads, Amazing Colossal Man and that same hypodermic needle was playing every other freakin’ Saturday on local UHF stations, and I remember coming across Time of the Apes in the cheap Sandy Frank-dub area of the local VHS rental before seeing it on Commander USA’s Groovie Movies. (And then MST3K.)
I saw a lot of the movies MST3K would later riff on local TV in St Louis. KPLR 11 had weekend movie marathons that played the old 50s sci-fis and a late night chiller theater.
I saw Gorgo and Hercules as a kid, and also caught Track of the Moon Beast on one of those Saturday afternoon sci/fi shows.
I’m pretty much anyone, MSTie or not, who was a kid in the U.S. between 1966 and 1980 probably saw “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians” on TV during the Holiday season.
I guess I’m younger than most of you, cuz the only MSTed movie I had seen before MST3K was Bride Of The Monster. And that was after it had been featured on MST3K, but I didn’t get to see the episode until long after my fascination with Ed Wood began.
Though it’s possible I may have seen some of Delta Knights on SciFi before it was featured on MST3K. I’ll watch anything with David Warner (A dangerous attitude, I know.), and Brigid Brannagh is certain to catch my attention while channel flipping.
Like a lot of people, I saw a few before MST3K. But “The Magic Sword” left the biggest impression, mainly because it’s a really good movie for preteens (and, I would say, in general).