Update: Thanks to “wotunw5o” who found this full episode. Apparently the secret to finding it online was cutting and pasting the actual cyrillic.
Further update: Alert commenter Amelik has provided us with a translation of the theme song (thanks to our obsessed pal Bill for the heads up):
In a science institute, there’s an experiment,
They’re testing the effect of movie reels on people.
How will consciousness be affected by a movie.
Of questionable quality and made long ago
A nice guy, Stephen is in need of some money
He got a job as a test subject, threw caution to the wind
He didn’t know that the process is supervised by
Professor Zamishlavkin, a bad guy [something]
Stephen watches movies, he’s now imprisoned
If it’s wasn’t for his friends, he’d be miserable
Mutants, saboteurs: a dog and a penguin
Rescue his psychie and watch along with him
:::Fidel::: [penguin’s name]
:::Ketchup::: [dog’s name]
:::the greatest achievement of national defense!:::
When the friends are all together, they don’t fear the bad guy
They make comments on everything, so that it’s more fun
In the face of scientific theories,
They giggle and laugh, as they watch Project Popcorn
) to help our users cope with "trolls" and other commenters whom they find annoying. Go to our
I can’t take this place anymore.
The back-and-forth has been removed.
Everybody has a right to their opinion, and everybody has a right to disagree with your opinion, and we can debate the validity of our opinions cordially without attacking the holder of the opinion you disagree with.
Those who repeatedly fail to do this will find themselves banned from the comments thread.
Also, in “Goboi,” there was a bit where “Stepa” rocked out with Ronnie James Dio “devil hands” to one of the classical bits. That was pretty funny as well.
Anyone else things the guy looks way too much like Randal from “Clerks” ?
Any one know where I can get a translation of what the characters are saying? Other than the whole clarinet sputtering, I have no clue what’s going on.
I’m the guy responsible for the video posted by #24. Wow! I made this thing years ago. It truly is an honor to get recognition for it by the community though. Thanks, guys.
I love the intro!!! I haven’t laughed this hard in weeks! Thanks, Russia! Shout!, PLEASE get the rights to one episode, subtitle it, and put it on a future MST3K release!
sorry, LMD, guess i should have specified all of the “other countries” that mst would NOT work in–like russia!
Folks, I think we have our “Sputnik Moment”.
“Laura” is obviously a FBI agent who is trying to
get us to reveal the people behind this controversy.
His day job is convincing 45 year old men that he’s a 14 year old and inviting them over to her home to be interviewed by someone from CNBC.
You know I’m joking…don’t you?
I am sorry.
That was over the top.
and off the topic.
Very Incredible Movie Theater 4.
@106: Wait… You made the parody YEARS ago? How long has this show been in Russia without us finding out? I wonder if it’s still playing or if it was canceled.
A perfect country for an MST3K remake: Chile. I lived there several years ago and that nation has a great appreciation for quick thinking, verbal wordplay, satire, and parody. It’s the perfect MST3K audience.
Hey, more power to them, as long as as give credit where credit is due. I may have to learn some Russian to appreciate this. I wonder how they would handle Invasion USA?
On an added note, have you noticed how much hotter Russian women are since they dumped communism?
“A perfect country for an MST3K remake: Chile. I lived there several years ago and that nation has a great appreciation for quick thinking, verbal wordplay, satire, and parody. It’s the perfect MST3K audience.”
I think it’s interesting that Jim Mallon didn’t franchise the format/concept to other countries as a thought of seeing MST3K being re-invented for those markets too, much in the way we may have seen it done with game shows and Sesame Street. The basic format is simply a guy stuck in space being fed movies from a crazy scientist while having a couple robot pals to keep him company with. It would certainly be different characters but much the same thing, and many countries probably have a good arsenal of stinky films to fill the void on such a show.
The most vile, disgusting, disturbing, creepy, scary, movies and videogames have never given me a single nightmare. This however, just might do it…
i just got here myself, its weid, love it.gotta see it
This is officially the greatest thing I’ve seen all year. (Okay, more impressively, in the last twelve months.)
I have no idea what they’re saying, but the extended Godfather riff was still hilarious.
I’ve already got this burned to a DVD and will be making a Rhino-style DVD case soon. I need a subtitle track – STAT!
Buckets of Awesome.
@109
I get it you’re joking. I just wish I could understand what the heck the characters were saying. And I wish the “robots” actually looked more like robots and not modified stuffed animals. Now I’m going to watch this video about 30 million more times. I just can’t look away!!!
I have been watching the episode that “wotunw5o” linked to, and I am fascinated by the apparent English words that come up occasionally in the theme song or the riffs. As noted earlier, the words “experiment” and “popcorn” are clearly heard in the theme song, and “project” and “filma” seem to be there too. In a riff at the 32:14 mark, Stepa clearly says “such a bad boy”. And in the letter segment at the end, when Fidel and Ketchup get into an argument, Stepa yells “Stop! Stop! Stop!” To anybody who knows Russian culture better than I do, are these words commonly used in Russia, or are they maybe copying dialogue they hear from US TV shows and movies? The cross-pollination of languages is really interesting.
Is Stephen voicing the puppets via ventriloquism?
#121: I don’t think so. There are credits for “Fidel” and “Ketchup” at the end.
Is there anyone who might be able to at least translate a few random riffs in there? Just for fun?
After watching the clip provided by #24 Cody, I have to admit that I’m intrigued with this. The riffing does seem to be much more fast-paced (although there were moments where I couldn’t tell who was talking, people in the movie or the riffers- I have next to no knowledge of the Russian language). I will say that these guys aren’t afraid of getting silly, as the repeated sounds of guys slurping their drinks and the continued hiccupping of one character would suggest. I found myself laughing at alot of the goofier stuff, mostly because the riffers seem to put alot of energy into their material. As much as I’d love to see Shout! do some bonus material on this, I wonder how difficult it would be to translate it; after all, you’d have to have two different sets of subtitles to get the full effect.
@112: Yeah, just under two years ago was when I made that parody video out of my own amusement. Clearly I had no idea what the names of the puppets were supposed to be, so I just took a wild guess. Guess I was half right, hahaha.
I have no idea how old the Project Popcorn is but I don’t think it was very long lasting, whenever that was. I love these ripoffs of a cultural phenomenon that other countries do all of the time. Russia at one time also had a Harry Potter ripoff series that was a lot more popular in that country than the official novels. That was the Tanya Grotter series, about a magical girl with a mole on her nose and flies on a bass guitar. You gotta love other countries and their blatant lack of respect for intellectual property. ^_^
In the rocket movie that @90 referenced, at time mark 19:07, Stepa and the Pets break out a Beatles riff – “It’s Been a Hard Day’s Night!” I’d love to know who these guys are.
@ 120
That’s what I’m talking about! I need someone like you to sit next to me and tell what they’re saying. I really want to get behind this, but it’s just that much more difficult when there is a HUGE language barrier. I know 0 foreign languages. Russian isn’t availiable where I live.
The movie riffed in @90’s link is called “Ziolkowski”, which apparently refers to Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, who, according to Wikipedia, was “an Imperial Russian and Soviet rocket scientist and pioneer of the astronautic theory. Along with the German Hermann Oberth and the American Robert H. Goddard, he is considered to be one of the founding fathers of rocketry and astronautics.” He was also apparently strange and eccentric even by scientist/engineer standards (I can say that, as I are one). The early part of the movie looks to be sort of a biography of his early years, but the last part appears to be all propaganda, as the Russian cosmonauts land on the moon first. Also, as Cyrillic letters are similar to Greek, there are some decipherable words on signs toward the end of the movie, such as “Biological Laboratory”.
Two other things I learned from watching this movie:
1 – Russian movies always seem to have great background music!
2 – Fart sounds and snoring are funny in any language!
The intro with the catchy theme song has scenes from riffed movies, a la MST3K. It appears that the two films we have Video Google links to, “Oboe” and “Ziolkowski”, are the only ones in the credit sequence. I wonder if these are the first two shows that they did, or if they are the ONLY two shows they ever did. They do list a website at the end of their show, http://www.project-popcorn.ru, but I’m not sure I want to venture that far out on the Internet.
I though this was pretty charming, really. The puppets being animals instead of robots somehow gives it even more of a “kid’s show” feel than MST3K had. And I have a hard time being offended by the “ripoff” when it seems to be done with such affection.
I do wish there was less of a language barrier, though. I’d love to see at least a partial subtitle track.
I’m shocked, but strangely drawn.
Somebody translate a full episode, please. *grin*
@128
Already tried. It comes up with a “page not found” message.
@131
Darn it! I’m guessing these guys weren’t on the air very long. That’s too bad, they looked like they were doing a great job. I think the guy who is Stepa (whose name is all over the credits, by the way) is named Anton, but I can’t figure out his last name.
Actually, using Google Translate, Anton’s last name appears to translate as “Newmark”. I’m sure that’s not exactly right, but it’ll do for now.
@120, I can’t speak or understand Russian, although I can occasionally pick out a written word here or there because Cyrillic is awfully close to Greek. (I can’t speak Greek either, but since so many words in English have Greek roots, if you know what each letter sounds like, you can sort of figure out written Greek sometimes.) I’d love for someone who REALLY knows Russian language and culture to give us some insight here. What I found fun was watching the video, and out of the blue hearing an English word or phrase in amongst the obvious Russian. (By the way, toward the end of “Ziolkowski,” Stepa and the Pets throw in a “Sieg Heil” riff with perfect timing.)
I’m going to venture to say that the guys behind this are true fans of MST3K. They get it.
I’m surprised that so many people here never knew about this. It was talked about on the Cinematic Titanic forums almost two years ago, so I would have guessed that the word would have spread around by now. I’m sure that the CT forums must be where the Brains heard about it since RAD was always around on there reading and commenting on posts. Back then Google Video allowed you to download nice mp4 versions of the two episodes, and so I watched them both on my PS3 and enjoyed them quite a bit despite not knowing any Russian. These guys definitely have their timing, mannerisms and delivery worked out very well, so if their writing was good I imagine this would be pretty fun for any Russian speakers to watch.
And I am VERY VERY VERY much thinking that this is just a fan made production a’la Incognito Cinema Warriors XP, and NOT an actual TV series. Besides the fact that it just feels very no budget, fan made to me there is also the fact that the episodes are each such different lengths. One is 35 minutes and the other is 44. I doubt that even in Mother Russia they would have a TV series where the episode had such varying and random lengths. I also doubt that it was actually on TV or that there is any more of it out there other than the two episodes we know of simply because after almost two years now no more episodes have surfaced. I’d be delighted if more episodes surfaced and we found out it was a real TV series, but to me it just looks like some Russian MST fans got access to some puppets, a camera, and a bluescreen, and decided to make their own movie riffing show which they or someone else then put up online.
#135: The more I think about it, the more you seem correct. It’s a homemade Russian fan production. Still cool.
The production values on this really aren’t too bad either. Especially if it really is a fan production.
I think it’s great they have their own version of MST3K. I honestly don’t see any reason to sue and I doubt Best Brains, Rifftrax and CT will not lose money or royalties over this. I doubt any of the 3 shows are available in Russia anyway, and they are not likely to get a lot of the humor of the show (trust me I have Russian relatives, and no I don’t speak Russian)and likely we would not get their humor (I sure don’t)
The show seems to have that KTMA budget and quality level, but I say more power to them!!
@ 104
Nailed it.
#138: Heck, most Americans don’t get MST as it is.
I think it’s good that there’s a Russian MST3K. So much of MST3K’s humor came from the culture in which it was produced. It’s enough of a task for MSTies to learn about things they don’t know in order to get each riff.
Joel should sue! It’s so obviously a ripoff. But I still want to see a translated episode (grin).
Awesome awesome awesome !!
These guys have done a professional and fantastic job !!!! must be a Thue Fan Vid or hey whatever it is I am well surprised.
And the song HA HA HA HA))))
DA, Russia )
ENForces to start learning Rus Language he
MST3K will save the world.
Next: Muslim Science Theater 3K
Good Golly ! Laughed myself inside out during few spaceship moments/!! Wish I had a clever Russian girlfriend for a smarttranslate, cause i think any kind of subs or whatsoever just won’t work
How about somehow finding & contacting ’em (howto with no skills in Russian…?) and inviting to the blog? Those must be some sort of irregular Russians with SUCH an MST3K sense of humor living over there anyway !
Thumbs up folks !
Peace/