The first topic of discussion: How did you discover/find out about MST3K?
My story can only be told after telling you another story, which is this:
Back in the early ’80s I was just-out-college guy sharing an apartment in Philadelphia with several people, including the woman I would marry a few years later.
One evening four of us, two couples, were hanging out, drinking cheap wine and perhaps enjoying other festive substances (I do not recall for certain, your honor), and somehow or other the little black-and-white portable TV we rarely watched got turned on. Clicking around the channels, what should we encounter but a weird and hilarious movie called “Women of the Prehistoric Planet.” We started watching, and as we sat together on the couch, everybody started throwing out funny comments. It was clearly a you-had-to-be-there situation. We were all –ahem– relaxed and we were all good friends, very familiar with each other’s sense of humor, and we were all just exactly in the mood to be doing this. The result, at least in my memory, was an evening of genuine hilarity, a really golden evening with good friends.
I guess the reason the evening was such fun for me is that I love collaborative comedy. A great standup is fun, but the only thing I enjoy more than watching a group of funny people being funny together is being PART of that group.
Anyway, after that evening, that movie became my “white whale.” I wanted to see it again, to kind of re-live that wonderful evening. I scoured the TV Guide for another airing, to no avail. (This was back in the days before VCRs, when movies were, as James Lileks has observed, like comets with unknown trajectories. They would appear without warning, then go away for a while, then come back…)
Now, flash-forward to December of ’89. I’m living in a different apartment, in a different Philadelphia neighborhood. I had married that lady a few years ago and there was an 18-month-old baby napping in the back room (that baby is now a sophomore in college, who still likes the occasional nap). With the great new job I’d gotten I could afford cable TV (newly available in my neighborhood), and being a comedy buff, one of my favorite channels was “The Comedy Channel.”
One Saturday morning I turned on the TV and what should appear but “Women of the Prehistoric Planet!” I was beside myself. I called my wife in from the other room to show her my find. I reminded her of the golden evening. She sort of remembered, a little. Then she went back to what she was doing.
I settled in to watch and it was pretty much at that point that I began to notice something strange going on at the bottom of the screen. I watched on in gob-smacked amazement. These people were doing the SAME thing WE did with this movie! They were making fun of it! And they were making fun of it really, really well! I was hooked.
That’s my story. What’s yours?
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I credit my brother for getting me into MST3K. I remember a slow Thanksgiving Day back in 1991 where i was bored and went to the living room to see what the rest of my family was doing. My older brother had the TV that day, so i asked what he was watching. “It’s this funny show! This guys and his robots make fun of these old movies!”. Initially skeptical, i sat down and watched it. At first i was getting bored watching this old greasy movie called “Wild Rebels”, but then i saw that the little shadows moved and cracked jokes at the screen. Almost instantly i was hooked.
The best thing about it was that day was during a Turkey Day Marathon, so me and my brother proceeded to watch as many episodes as we could. And then a couple of weeks later, i caught “Cave Dwellers” and then i was a fan for life. I was at first shocked and dismayed at the loss of Joel, and hesitant towards Mike, but around “Alien from LA” was when Mike finally grew on me.
I was introduced to MST3K in the early 90’s at a friend’s house. He raved about the show and I decided to sample it. When the guy in the green lab coat and the guy in black donned their Tank Tops, blew up the target, and one announced to the other that he still saw some of the star and couldn’t give away the plush banana, I knew the show was for me.
A friend who was already into the show sat me down in front of “War of the Colossal Beast” – when was that, the 3rd season? – and the rest is history. This also means that the first thing I actually saw was “Mr. B Natural”. It was quite a surreal experience.
I was kind of a late comer to the MST3K thing. I was channel surfing while staying in a motel in Wisconsin and saw the episode with “Parts: The Clonus Horror” on Sci Fi. To this day I still have a soft spot for that episode, and I’m glad it’s on DVD now. :)
Flippin’ channels– a black and white movie… who’s talking… what is this?
An open discussion thread like this is a good idea. It seems to cement the X-E people.
When my sister’s cable company added Comedy Central I asked her to tape an episode for me to see if I would like it. That was The Giant Gila Monster and I was hooked! I rewatched it 2 or 3 times that week, and couldn’t wait for the next episode. I found out that the MST3K Hour was on at 1 AM Fridays on regular TV, so I taped that, too. (War of the Colossal Beast was the episode) Then I found some tape traders on the Net and started trying to get as many episodes as I could. Finally my cable company added CC, just in time for MST to be cancelled! But they also had the Sci Fi channel, where MST ended up. So I had a few years of brand new MST to enjoy. Maybe the hardest I ever laughed in my life was when I saw Mike Nelson play Torgo at the end of episode 424!
My town didn’t have Comedy Central until MST left that channel. But the first time I saw it, it was the movie San Fransico International at my sister’s place in Denver. I thought it was the coolest concept I had ever seen and still do. As soon as it moved to SCI-Fi, I watched regularly. It wasn’t until years later I heard of Joel, at a meeting on Msties Anonomus of Colorado.
Oops, I forgot to say that my sister taped that first episode in 95.
Like many others, my cable system didn’t put Comedy Central on until the early to mid 90’s.
We had it for about a year when I was surfing through the channels one Saturday afternoon and landed on, what I now know, was MST3k’s Godzilla vs. Megalon.
I watched for a couple minutes and switched back to the ballgame I had been watching. I knew of the show, having rewad about it, so I just tucked it away in my head somewhere and forgot about it.
Fast forward to 1998, I was camping with friends, and upon returning we stopped at one guys house and sat down for a beer. He had a tape on of King Dinosaur, which I laughed my ass off at.
I asked if he had more tapes, and he had just one, sent to him from a friend in Maine. It was a vhs with three eps—Mitchell, Wild Rebels, and City Limits.
I took it home and savored it, watching it constantly for a week…..and I was hooked.
I called all the blockbuster video stores in my area and tracked down all the different episodes at like 10 different locations, and the next day drove to everyone of them and rented them all.
From there, I started taping every sci-fi episode and here I am now having seen every episode and jonesing for all the new material I can get. I have them all on dvd now, and I still watch at least one or two a week. I’m watching Megalon & King Dinosaur tonite in memory of it, in fact.
That snake bugs meeeeeee! (He really bugs me!)
I was visiting the Orlando area and forced to stay with my Brother-in-Law’s parents, where the television was ALWAYS on. Anyway, while my nephew was going through the odd daily ritual of beating on his father (don’t ask, long story), I wandered into the family room and did a bit of channel-surfing. It was Christmas time, and Comedy Central was running holiday-themed programming–in this case, the MST-ing of SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS, a film I had last seen when I was a little kid and didn’t have the common sense to dislike. I spent the next two hours laughing helplessly, and when CC was offered as part of a special add-on package by my cable company a few months later, I snapped it up and became quickly addicted (this was during the glory years when the MST Hour was on at eight, and full episodes were shown at midnight).
I’m afraid I owe it all to Michhttps://www.mst3kinfo.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_razz.gif
:razz:ael Medved. One day in the mid-70’s I started hearing about these movies that were so bad they were good. My local library had a copy of The Golden Turkey Awards, and a local station played classics like They Saved Hitler’s Brain, The Green Slime, Attack of the Mushroom People, and, of course, Plan 9. I went away to college and studied Great Literature and went to Important Foreign Films, but I still pigged out with joy when the real stinkers appeared. Ah, Demi Moore: my generation’s answer to Mamie Van Doren. And Patrick Swayze: where would we be without you?
It’s been downhill from there. And then in the early ’90’s, when I had cable and this mostly pointless channel called Comedy Central was showing an oddly named show at 10 pm, but they were showing *Sandy Frank* films. I had to see; from the first moment, I was hooked. And I’ve worn out three VCRs and abased myself before Trace (damn, but he is one *good-looking* guy in RL) and tried to infect everyone I can.
“Gamera is really neat! He is full of turtle meat!”
I was about eleven years old in 1990 or so, and my mom and dad were out for the evening. I was staying with my grandma who lived (and still lives) next door to my parents. After she finished watching “The Capital Gang” or something on CNN, I was flipping around the channels and came across this weird movie with a lot of auto racing, which I later found out was “Wild Rebels.”
Even at that young age I was impressed with the humor on that show. The first line I remember really making me laugh was Crow saying, “For those of you at home, we have no idea what the hell is going on.” It was good to know I was not alone! I didn’t really get what was going on with the host segments at the time, but still…I was hooked.
From then on MST3K became the regular Saturday evening ritual for me and my entire family. My Mom and Dad didn’t have Comedy Central, we would always watch the show at my grandma’s house, who had a satellite dish. I don’t think she ever got the jokes, but she still enjoyed having us over. I still look back on those days with great fondness. Plus, one of the highlights of my high school years was making it out to the first ConventioConExpoFest-a-Rama in 1994.
I was in junior high, doing my homework one Sunday night (at least, I think it was a Sunday night. It’s been a while since I was in junior high.) And I was flipping through the UHF stations and saw some old movie on channel 23. And the weird thing was, there was this row of theater seats at the bottom, and guys were sitting in them making fun of the movie!
Needless to say, I thought this was brilliant.
I watched the next few episodes, thought they got funnier every week, and then tragedy struck…they moved the show to cable, which my father did not believe in as a philosophical concept. MST3K was gone from my life forever.
Or so it seemed…four years later, my dad came home from school (he was a teacher) with a video tape, telling me that one of his students had given it to him to watch. Said it’d be right up his alley. And it was ‘Teenagers From Outer Space’. “That’s not Skippy! Skippy had skin!” It was like meeting an old friend.
I’d like to say, “And this convinced my dad to get cable, and we’ve watched the show ever since,” but if you think that, you don’t know my dad. :) Instead, my sister got her own apartment, and she did believe in cable, and she let me spend every Thanksgiving at her place taping the entire marathon, which I would savor over the following year. Luckily, by the time the show moved to Sci-Fi, I had friends I could tape it off of and watch it every week, and of course now I can just buy the DVDs. And I look forward to every new set, both the old favorites I love and the new ones I have yet to watch.
Man I was about 13 i think, I was at my friend mikes house. He had invited over another one of his friends, zech, who i didnt know very well. when zech came over he brought a whole bunch of videos. I think we watched Doc Hollywood or somthing and then he poped in a show he had recorded off tv. It was episode 403, city limits, a misty. i didnt have any kind of tv at my house so i had missed allot of stuff for years. i had never heard of mst3k, but that show deffinetly got my attention. They were doing the same thing I always did to my moms amazingly bad mormonesque family movies. I loved it. When I became zechs friend i found he had quite a few recorded. i watched all of the ones he had and havnt stopped watching them yet.
I was curious about the show because people I knew and respected were fans, but I never had cable and never wanted it. The first time I ever got to see it, I was visiting my nephew in the hospital. He was watching The Creeping Terror. One of the first lines I heard was the movie talking about something giant moving about and the riff was “Boog Powell”. Now I’m pretty sure most of you don’t know that he was an oversized first baseman for the Orioles and later the Indians, but I absolutely loved the fact that they were willing to throw something so obscure out there like that. I was an instant convert to the show but not to the extent of actually getting cable. From then on I would watch an occasional episode with my brother whenever I could, a point of bonding for us both. Another chance for bonding came when another nephew came to live with me and we would watch episodes through the cable that he installed in my apartment. Okay, now comes the addiction part. Establishing a family calls for sacrifices, and although I would often see the Rhino releases at the stores, I could never afford them. When a better job finally came along in 2005 I made my first tentative purchase of The Essential MST3K. The rest is a kind of blur, buying almost all of the Rhino catalog, Rifftrax, Cinematic Titanic and Film Crew releases I can find. I am up late at night watching old episodes on youtube and am a daily visitor to your wonderful website. Thank you, and god bless.
I remember distinctly the first time I ran across MST3k. It was about ’92 or so, and MTV had a special weekend where they were showcasing Comedy Central shows. Well, I was flipping through the channels and came across this weird movie (which turned out to be “Alien From LA”). What really hooked me was when they are in that stupid buggy in the caves, and Tom quoted Tom Waits’ “Underground”. I rarely laughed so hard.
Fast forward a few years, since our cable company still didn’t have Comedy Central. But I ran across late one Saturday night the local FOX affiliate running the syndicated Mystery Science Hour. After that, I faithfully watched it every week. I had a friend in Idaho record the Comedy Central finale and send to me, and I wound up having to get the entire 8th season recorded for me by friends, since the local cable company didn’t have Sci-Fi either. But, by that time, I was hopelessly hooked. The tapes got regular play as do the DVDs now.
I’d heard about it in early 1991, but didn’t have cable at the time. When I eventually got cable, I watched a few episodes (“Godzilla vs. Megalon,” “Untamed Women”) and found it hilarious. However, I felt at the time really guilty about enjoying it, because it seemed to me that I was having laughs at someone else’s expense, and that the jokes were too easy to do anyway.
That changed later, when I gave in and watched “Warriors of the Lost World.” (Yes, it was a long time before I got over that strange guilt!) Something about Robert Ginty growling “All right, you got a deal” and Joel responding with “And I’m on fire” hooked me once and for all. I became a solid fan from there on in.
I came across MST3K about 3-4 years ago. It was a Saturday morning and i was channel surfing when i came across the Sky Movie Channels. One channel said “Coming up next, Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie”, i had heard of the show from somewhere (i knew it was a about a guy and his robot buddies riffing on movies). I thought “what the hell, i’ll watch it” within seconds of This Island Earth starting i started laughing (my dad said that he had never seen me laugh so much in ages). When the movie ended i knew i had found something special, i went online straight away, found Satellite News :smile: and that there were dvd’s available! I ordered straight The Hellcats and The Crawling Hand there and then. I’ve now managed to get nearly all the episodes and have converted several people into fans. Sunday Night is now MST night for us :cool:
I went to live with my mom and stepdad down in Florida in 89. My stepdad was in the Air Forc at the time and we lived on Homestead Air Force Base up untill Hurricane Andrew wiped it out and we moved back to Las Vegas. Anyways, we didnt have Comedy Channel but eventually we got Ha! (Anyone remember the promo commercials? “We’ve got to strengthen our knees! Strengthen our knees for comedy!”) But I was in junior high at the time and used to stay at a friends house on the weekends off base. Already being a fan of b-movies and cheesy stuff like that, I would always end up on channels like USA, watching stuff like Up All Night or Night Tracks or whatever. (And Commander USA during the day. Anyone remember that guy?) I came across what I’m pretty sure was The Corpse Vanishes on my very first encounter. I remmeber stopping at the movie while surfing a few times and seeing the weird characters at the bottom but never caught any dialog. It most likely seemed boring and was already well into the movie so I watched something else. The next time I came across it, I stopped on it long enough to see a man and woman kissing and the little character at the bottom right mutters “Mmmm…tastes like Juicy Fruit..” (Untamed Youth) Laughed my ass off and of course that’s all it took. I never wanted to watch anything else and it was always a sad thing when the show would end. The show was perfectly up my alley in every way.
Also, after I was well a fan with a couple episodes under my belt, I tune in one night and notice Servo’s got a new voice (What I thought was a really bad imitation at first. At the time anyways.) and the puppeteering is even different. :( I loved all the characters but I remember being pretty fascinated with Servo cause of his voice and the fact that I had seen Josh’s hand during a theater segment pretty early on. So I was always watching Servo for that stuff in the beginning. I got over the Voice change pretty much in the same episode though. It took only a few jokes good jokes out of the new Servo, but I can imagine what it would have been like for those who came to the show earlier.
SooooOo Long ago.
I have to say my story brings back many emotions… I first found MST3k when I was around 12 years old….(29 now) I was at my grandfathers house flipping through the channels. I believe it was a Sat morning. Summertime around 1992(my parents did not have comedy channel) My first episode I saw was Time of the Apes… I was mesmerized and instantly fell in love with it. Although I have to mention I was a bit confused about why there was robots, etc. But I quickly learned all I could about the zanny show.
I know my Grandfather did not really understand it much, but he let me watch it cause he knew how happy it made me, after a few months of constantly going over to grandpa’s house and watching MST3k, I finally convinced my parents to get the comedy channel.
I will always have fond memories of my grandpa laughing at Joel and the gang, even when sometimes I knew he did not understand it.
My grandpa passed away several years ago from Cancer, but I will always have those wonderful memories of the great Saturday’s of MST3k’s with my Grandfather…… his favorite Episode was Alien from L.A. he never said why, but just that he like that one…………..
Thank you MSt3k… for bringing family and friends together…. yeah it was based around watching the show… but I think mst was always
about getting people together for a night of MST3k and having fun.
In case anyone is interested I have several good photos of the Titans in action at the Feb 12th Ct show here …..
http://www.myspace.com/drewsolo79
On holiday in the US at Thanksgiving in… hmm, 1997, I think. At a friends house, they had this odd puppet show on the TV. Three guesses.
I got into it early…VERY early. After seeing the glowing reviews in early 1990 of MST3K that the Minneapolis Star Tribune (which its competitor in St. Paul then, the St. Paul Pioneer Press-Dispatch called “The Newspaper That Ate The Twin Cities,”) I kept my fingers crossed for the day that Hastings CableTV would add The Comedy Channel. This, after failing miserably to see any of the KTMA episodes.
The first episode that I saw was “The Slime People,” and I was hooked right away. Like many of you, I’ve had many a good time watching bad sci-fi/horror/exploitation movies, either on TV (“Sir Graves Ghastly Presents The Big Show” on Saturday afternoons in Detroitwhen I was a kid), in groups at Not Quite Midnight Showings of cult classics by my college’s film society, and at home (including on USA Network’s late, great “Night Flight” from ’83-’88).
Early in 1990, thanks to a rare moment of good sense by The Comedy Channel–who I’ll never forgive for letting The Higgins Boys & Gruber cut up “Supercar”–there was a marathon of the Season One episodes set for the next weekend. Actually, that may have been two marathons, as I caught up on the other Season One episodes (& taped them on Minnesota-made Scotch videocassettes), plus I also taped Season One for an old college friend who lived back East & whose cable company didn’t carry TCC. He called back as soon as he got the set–which included films that he’d seen as a kid on “Chilly Billy” Cardillie’s “Chiller Theatre” out of Pittsburgh many years ago….and he and I riffed over the phone about Joel & The Bots’ riffing. I taped MST3K for him for a bunch of years…that was when TCC/CTV: The Comedy Network/Comedy Central had Saturday morning/evening feeds of MST3K that I could work my day around.
BTW: I’d use the automated weekend weather broadcasts (National Weather Service Transcribed Aviation Weather Broadcasts on KTCI (then the Twin Cities’ second-tier PBS station) as filler between each MST3K episode, and to fill out the end of each tape. There was nothing so fascinatingly boring on local Minneapolis-St. Paul TV back then as that…especially when watching one of those TWBs on the tapes during the summer when it was in the 90s outside, recorded when the weather outside was sub-zero or there was a foot of snow falling!
That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.
Now, go do something constructive…like reading a book. (I recommend “The Amazing Colossal Episode Guide.”)
while attending a pricey art college in San Francisco- which I am still paying for- I could only afford cable sporadically. during one of the times I could, being a science fiction fan, I watched the Sci-Fi Channel, and was unimpressed until I clicked on to a movie- ‘First Spaceship To Venus’- featuring those little silhouettes, and big, steaming piles of FUNNY. I was hooked for life…I remember signing out the school’s video camera [the ‘Sony V5000’] in order to set it up to ‘shoot’ MST3K- I had no VCR. if only I’d found such creative and laugh-loving entities at art college! MST3K, along with clean water, air and sunlight- necessities for survival on the surface of this third planet from the sun.
addendum: I forgot to mention that during my art school years, I worked in the basement school store, selling art supplies among giant vats of leaky solvents of all kinds. I ascribe getting the name of my first episode wrong to my many hours of inhaled turpentine fumes…it was ‘First Spaceship ON Venus,’ of course. [duh!] I rather identify with Omega- the strange Twiki-esque robot of that episode- because I am like him: cute but stout, full of ridiculous factoids. but unlike Omega- I am often wrong!
Back in the early 90s, my house only got thirty channels on cable, and none were Comedy Central. It wasn’t until one summer day in ’92 or ’93 when my family went on vacation, and stayed in a house with a much expanded line-up. One afternoon, bored, I flipped around the TV channels until I came across this weird movie: a bunch of medieval fighters were going at it in a forest (I think in retrospect it was Cave Dwellers, but I’ve never been sure), and at the bottom of the screen was this row of silhouetted theater seats, with some sort of bubble thing, a human, and a talking monkey throwing out jokes about what was going on. Amusing as it was, I remember at the time being more mystified about what I was watching; I had never heard about the show before.
It was the summer of ’91, and my sister and I were enthralled by the Comedy Channel, a cable station we only got from 6 pm to 6 am (I have no idea why). One night we were lucky enough to catch the show with the robots. It was ‘Mad Monster’, and to this day Joel’s comments about the little girl’s resemblance to Shirley Temple amuse me no end.
I’m 15 now, so I never actually saw it when it was new. But when I was 11 or 12, my dad got MST: The Movie from the library.
I thought it would be the worst thing ever, but now I’ve seen The Movie about 10 times and got a bunch of other episodes off line. I <3 MST!!!
I was up late one night in the mid 90’s in a cheap hotel (that shall remain nameless) after having just done the deed with a hooker (who was lousy, btw – guess $20 didn’t go as far back then as I thought). Being that methamphetamines were still coursing through my veins, making it impossible to sleep, I decided to turn the TV on and see what I could find to watch. Lo and behold, I happened across Comedy Central, which was featuring the movie “Manos: The Hands of Fate”.
I found it weird that such a bleak movie would be found on a comedy channel and was getting ready to change the station when the scene switched to the painting of the master. Upon hearing Tom’s remark that the master looked like Frank Zappa, I knew I was hooked. It got so bad that I would invite hookers up just for the company, most of whom chose to just go back to working the street instead of getting paid to watch a hilarious show.
“One of the first lines I heard was the movie talking about something giant moving about and the riff was “Boog Powell”. Now I’m pretty sure most of you don’t know that he was an oversized first baseman for the Orioles and later the Indians, but I absolutely loved the fact that they were willing to throw something so obscure out there like that.”
Boog Powell is no more obscure than Willie Stargell.
I remember it like it was…almost 20 years ago! I was between apartments and gigs and had returned home to the bosom of my family in a suburb of St Paul, MN. Flipping through the channels I came upon TV23 and this strange program, puppets in the corner of the screen smarting off to what appeared to be a VERY low budget movie. I hadn’t gotten through the entire “movie-watching” segment or even fully gathered what was going when my father came in and spoke those magic words, “It’s MY TV and we watch what I want to watch, Hee-Haw’s on.” Yet another way he’s been helpful in my life.
I watched part of one more episode. The one with the monster that has a gorilla suit for a body and a goofy space-helmet. Shortly thereafter I got a gig and moved out of the area. I didn’t see the show again until a friend sent me a tape of “Fire Maidens”.
I remember seeing snippets of MST3K on Comedy Central, but the first time I really watched the show was in the winter of 98. At that time, they were showing MST3K on Saturdays from 5 to 7 p.m. on SciFi. I was a senior in high school and getting ready for a date with my future husband (we finally married two years ago), and as I was getting ready I stopped to watch the show. I wish I could remember which episode was on (it may have been “Parts: The Clonus Horror”–I still love those “Biography” riffs!), but I do remember that the moment I started watching, I was completely hooked. I’d never seen anything like it! I didn’t want to leave the house for my date until the episode was over.
After that, I mentioned the show to my husband and found out that he was a fan, too. I was so happy that I’d found another MiSTie–I loved that we shared the same unique sense of humor! After that, many of our dates consisted of watching MST3K on TV, renting episodes (that’s where I was introduced to Joel-era eps–the first one I saw was “Pod People”), and watching “MST3K: The Movie” countless times on DVD. To this day, MST3K lives on in our home–our DVD drawer is overflowing with MST3K boxed sets and taped episodes on VHS, we’re constantly quoting lines from our favorite episodes, and we’ve spent many an evening watching episodes with our friends who “get it”, too. We love this show!!
I stumbled across “Santa Claus Conquers The Martians” in rerun, just before season five, watching from the surreal Patrick Swayze Christmas song through the end. I believe I thought Crow really was supposed to be a reindeer, owing to his red nose in what I thought was a weird, one-off Xmas Special.
I didn’t realize it was a series until a few weeks later, at which time I watched my first full episode, which I think was “Rocketship X-M.” By this time, of course, my lungs were aching for air. Then I started taping after “Viking Women” and all the waffle hilarity.
I’d heard of MST3k from a friend at work, who loved it, but we didn’t have cable at the time (my son would tell you he had a terrible, deprived childhood). Fortunately, however, one of our local stations showed the Mystery Science Theater 3000 Hour, so we were able to see several episodes. The first one we watched, in 1994 I think, was “Cave Dwellers,” and I remember my son, who was in the fourth grade at the time, laughing hysterically at the line “Ator!” and the response, “Gesundheit!” I think it actually helped him develop his pretty impressive sense of humor. Since then, we’ve gotten cable (and running water), and have watched every episode we could find. Thanks, guys!
I’d seen MST3K in bits and pieces when it first landed on Comedy Central, but I never could catch more than a few minutes. All that I saw had me in hysterics, but alas, at that time, I hadn’t developed a MiSTie problem like I have today.
One weekend, my dad and I are flipping stations and hear the words “Days Inn Courtesy Van” and just laughed our asses off. I was introduced to the Kim Catrall song, Robby Benson looking alone, confused, and without a supporting cast, and the surprise appearance of James Earl Jones in a categorically LOUSY, plot-free film.
Then and there, CITY LIMITS made me a believer that, yes, bad films can and do happen to even the best in the business!
Keep circulating the tapes!
First one I saw was Robot Monster. :lol: :!:
How can you not love the show after that :!: I wish I would have taped the early ones though, my only regret. :sad:
As I was channel surfing in Feburary of 1994, I came across this show with these…people(?) in shadow at the bottom of the screen. Now, I had seen commercials with these little silhouettes during reruns of old “Monty Python” and “Whose Line is it Anyway?” episodes, and was a bit curious as to what they were doing down there. So decided to stop and watch for a bit.
The episode was “Gamera vs. Guiron”. By the time they got to the joke about the General Cinemas feature presentation trailer, the deal was sealed. The Brains have since had another loyal fan for the past 14 years.
I was a freshman in college in the fall of 1995 and I was at home Saturday night. Saturday Night Live had just got over and I was still awake. So after flipping channels (the 12 we got out in the middle of nowhere Minnesota at the time) and ended up back on the NBC affiliate KARE 11 and I saw this black and white movie and this weird shadow of movie seats and I thought “What the—” and I heard them making fun of the movie. I was laughing the whole time at the jokes and I wondered what this was. Finally, at the end, this older guy who seemed to hosting the show announced it to be the Mystery Science Theater Hour. I’ve been hooked since. And now I know, the host was Mike Nelson, the show was a syndicated version of MST3K. and I only wish we had Comedy Central at the time. This first episode I saw? The Amazing Colossal Man. Every Saturday after that, I tried very hard, sometimes in vain, to stay awake and watch it or tape it, but it didn’t always pan out. I am glad that several other episodes I saw then are on DVD, (Cave Dwellers, Pod People, Santa Claus Conquers The Martians, Teenagers From Outer Space, Hercules Unchained, Hercules Against The Moon Men) but I still wish the other ones I saw would make it (Viking Women, War Of The Colossal Beast, The Magic Sword). The only time I ever got to see any episodes when they first aired wasn’t until 1999. My brother got the Sci Fi channel and I was over there every week with to see the final season as it premiered. Now I’m left with DVDs, VHS tapes and torrents to see old episodes. It has been my favorite show for over 10 years now.
I had just gotten off work at a large Video Chain(the blue one) It was about 1:30 am. My friend & co-worker Matt came over to the house to hang out. I was surfing through the Channels and stopped at Comedy Central when I noticed a show with shadows in the corner making fun of an old B&W film. Matt asked if I’d seen this show before, No, I say what is it? It’s called MST3k and you’ll love it. He was right and I did and still do I laughed myself silly. That episode was “Ring of Terror” and it is still one of my favorites.”Did you touch it?” and the bit where Joel is talking when Prof. Rayburn is on the Phone still kill me. I joined the fan club soon after and was one of the first 1100 people to do so, Yeah me!!! I’m so glad for “The Film Crew” and “Cinematic Titanic” to fill the need for riffed on movies it keeps me living.
FRED
as a young boy of lets say 6 i remember going to my friends house and his big brother was watching a creature from the black lagoon movie. i was a big fan of the creature and stared watching cause i probably had only really seen pictures and never the real movie. then the movie stopped and there was a bit with some robots that i didnt understnad and i went to go play with my friend. maybe a year later my father introduced me to mst3k officially with the undead which i thought was hilarious and ive been hooked since.
My first exposure to the show was in 1994 or 1995. I was living in San Diego at the time and my local cable company was upgrading, but the area I was living in was one of the last ones to get the upgrade. Meantime, one of the local stations was showing the MST Hour and one of the first ones I saw was Hercules Against The Moon Men. This had my favorite all time riff; where someone was being attacked by a bunch of Roman-like soldiers and Joel and the ‘bots kept saying ‘Pizza! Pizza!’ It actually faded from memory until I got the DVD of the episode. In ’96, I finally got the upgrade, which included Comedy Central, but by this time, the show had been cancelled. I did manage to tape as many episodes as I can(these are now being transferred to DVD’s), and even voted on the CC website for ones I wanted to see(I managed to get to the computers at my local library). Luckily, the upgrade included the Sci-Fi Channel, so I could continue taping. I also bought the movie and the ACEG at my local Tower Records. I read and re-read it until the pages fell out. I moved back to my home area the next year and kept taping, then buying DVD’s and, in the past year or so, getting ep’s off Google or You Tube, so now I have all but a handful of KTMAs. I also managed to buy a second ACEG, and now the pages are falling out of that one, too.
YAY! Willie Stargell!
Woo Hoo!
Chicken on the Hill with Will!!
(Always loved all the baseball player references throughout the years).
especially~
“Jose Cardenal looks on”–Angels Revenge
“Its my Oscar Gamble doll”–Horror of Party Beach
Roberto!”Clemente!”–Mighty Jack
I am ashamed to say that my young Johnny Come Lately self got into MST3K while flipping the channels during the season 7 era. My parents were big drive-in movie nerds, namely my dad, so between my odd sense of humor and having some sort of genetic attraction to these forgotten movies of eras past, I took a liking to the show.
Wow memories :)
I first saw MST3K in 1994 on MTV, they were having a comedy weekend, and it must hae been one of the only times MST3K aried on MTV, and the episode was “Alien from LA” I thought it was the greatest show ever from the begining, but my cable company didn’t have Comedy Central so it wouldn’t be until the next year I would be able to see it again.
In 1995 I moved around alot. First I caught an airing of “Girls Town”, then after moving to Portland, and lucked out that the motel I lived in for two months had Comedy Central :)
I never missed a daily midnight showing (god I miss MST3K being on every night at midnight), and it was then I met Joel, and saw most of seasons 2-5.
But at the time I didn’t have a working VCR, and by the end of 1995 I was living in SoCal and had a working VCR again (this time I paid extra for a HiFi Stereo VCR), and recorded every episode Comedy Central still aired by then (which they just stoped airing Sandy Franks movies so I missed out on taping alot of great episodes).
The rest is history, thats it.
Did anybody else I wonder catch MST3K first during that MTV comedy weekend? I remember it being in between arings of Beavis and Butthead, and The State LOL
Neil
P.S. Also when I saw “Manos” the first time I couldn’d sleep that night, that movie freaked me out man.
“fireballil” I too had two copies of ACEG because of pages falling out :)
Neil
“Watch out for Snakes”…the first episode I happened across was “Eegah!” when it first ran on a Saturday night. Out on a date with my future wife, we stopped by my parents home, and they were watching Arch Hall, and laughing…hard! I stopped to check it out, and was hooked. I began taping every episode immediately.
SEPTEMBER 1992 a month that would change my life forever by discovering this show on Comedy Central. I first watched this at my Aunt’s house in Fla. where me my Aunt, Mom, sister and Aunt’s goofy boyfriend were watching Hercules Unchained ( #408 ) which was a rerun ( Season 4 was well under way ). We were laughing non-stop and I was AMAZED on how long this show was at the time. I was 14 in the 9th grade and I never watched one show for 2 hours ( not counting movies ). I lived in Florida at the time and images that I’ll never forget was seeing the devestation of Hurricane Andrew a cat. 5 storm with winds of 165 + mph ( gusts were even higher! ). The storm didn’t hit my area ( Jax ) but it really hit the southern tip of Fla. My Aunt drove us down to see the aftermath. ( Sampo what up from Abington )
I was leading a workshop in Minneapolis in January 1990 when I got hit with the flu. I was huddled up in a Best Western with 102 degree fever, flipping through channels. I hit on what I thought at the time must have been a fever dream — a wonderfully cheesy, funny, weird little show with a slacker geek and two robot gremlins making fun of a terrible movie. At the time, I didn’t even know what the show was called, but a couple years later I found a slightly slicker version on cable and I have been a faithful addict ever since — spreading the MST3K bug to dozens of friends, family members, and colleagues.
Like so many, I did not have access to The Comedy Channel. One afternoon as part of a “Cable ACE” showcase on USA, they ran this strange show about silhouetted figures cracking wise on what I would later know as the movie “Cavedwellers”. The scene I came in on was Miles O’Keefe fighting some invisible enemies with some sort of cloak or cape. Suddenly I heard a bot say “Hey…pick on someone your own opacity!” I’ve been hooked ever since. Power to the MSTies!
I saw ads for MST on Comedy Central in the early days, thought it looked funny, then somehow never watched it. I came across it years later on the Sci-Fi Channel and watched most of an episode. It didn’t make a huge impression.
2 years ago, I was in a video store with friends looking for films to cheer up a mutual friend whose fiancee had left him. One friend heavily promoted the MST version of Red Zone Cuba, so we rented it. It was the highlight of the evening and led me to track down more and more of the series, buy the Episode Guide and Murphy’s Year at the Movies, then delve into Rifftrax…it was only a month ago that it I realized it: I am an MSTie – for life!
Almost forgot…that “Cable Ace” showcase would have been 1997 or 1998 I think it was. They showed that episode and “Sidehackers” as well.
CLASSIC!