"He'll Have to Sit and Watch Them All and We'll Monitor His Mind"

And now we come to the final installment in the MST3K season 4 overview. 

Invariably during every season there are episodes which can mostly pass without comment -- "good" but not "great".  In the midst of these episodes though there may be a terrific host segment or a short film which outshines the feature film it is paired with.

So this post is where I highlight those things.

First up:

'The Rainy Day Holo-Clowns':  This one actually starts in the third host segment of episode 405 -- Being From Another Planet.  The gang would continue it in the opening to the following episode Attack of the Giant Leeches.  The second half -- in which it turns out the 'holo-clowns' have been up on the hexfield viewscreen for three weeks -- is the funnier bit as Joel frantically tries to finally shut the system down and the holo-clowns start to have their own nervous breakdowns.  And yes, that's Mike Nelson as one of the clowns -- the other is Paul Chaplin, a writer on the show.  This was Chaplin's first on-screen appearance.

Next: 'The bots try to convince Joel he's crazy' from episode 409 The Indestructible Man.  The movie and the short are a unremarkable and unmemorable but this opening host segment is a hoot.  It wasn't too often that the bots tried playing tricks on Joel but when the gang brought one out it was usually a good one.  On top of that, this segment does beg the question -- was Kevin Murphy pupeteering Crow instead of his usual Tom Servo?  And was Trace Beaulieu handling Tom Servo instead of Crow?

This next one is a short instead of a host segment.  Apparently a tourism film to promote the Canadian National Exposition or something Johnny at the Fair chronicles the exploits of young Johnny (who else?) as he runs around the expo meeting famous people and getting free rides and free food while his parents search for him frantically... well, as frantic as you can get in a 1950's film designed to convince people to come to the expo.  Wait...  was 'come to the expo and lose your kid and then have a lousy time while you freak out looking for him and imagining the worst' really the message they wanted to send?  Anyway, as you can imagine, Joel and the bots have an excellent time making fun of little Johnny's adventures and the riffing for this short is a lot more fun than the movie it's paired with -- episode 419's The Rebel Set.

We're back to host segments for 'Grumpy Hugh Beaumont'.  Back in season 2 the gang tackled the snoozer film The Lost Continent and the host segments for that one were livened up by a visit from Leave it to Beaver's dad Hugh Beaumont (Mike Nelson)... as one of the horsemen of the apocalypse.  Well, in season 4 Hugh returns courtesy of episode 420 -- The Human Duplicators.  Hugh may no longer be a horseman of the apocalypse but he's decidedly older and grumpier... much to Joel and the bots' dismay and much to the delight of the viewer...  Sadly, I can't find an embeddable copy of this video so just check out the third host segment for the episode -- you'll be glad you did.

And here we have another short which was far funnier than the film it was paired with...  Circus on Ice is... well, I'm honestly still trying to figure out WHY this short film was created in the first place.  It doesn't seem to fill any tourism function and it's not really educational and it's past the days of the old newsreels when they would splat just about any odd thing onto film but no matter it's original purpose here it becomes comedy gold.  Joel and the bots indulge in quite a bit of dark humor and some risque riffing but it's hysterically funny -- far more funny than the weird and nearly incomprehensible Monster A-Go-Go it's paired with.

Finally, we come to kind of a tough one for me.  You see the short Hired! -- obviously a training film created by Chevrolet pre-WW II to train it's sales managers -- actually originally came in two parts and the riffing team did use both parts.  Part one was paired with episode 423 Bride of the Monster and part two was paired with the next movie in line -- Manos, The Hands of Fate.  The riffing on the first half of Hired! is pretty good really but the riffing on the second half is superior in my opinion.  Still, I almost included the first half of the short here as well if for no other reason than the second half makes slightly more sense in context when you've seen the first half.  Also, because one of the host segments for episode 423 also makes more sense when you've seen the first half of Hired!  In the end, I'll leave it up to you if you want to seek out Hired! part one or not.  It's pretty good stuff but the real gem here is actually the host segment...

Joel and the bots take the events and characters from the short and turn them into a really great parody song medley.  'Hired! The Musical' is one of the best parody musical bits the gang has done in a good while as far as I'm concerned.  Mike Nelson outdid himself on the songs and Joel Hodgson manages to pretty well control his often wayward voice to turn in an acceptable singing performance.  Kevin Murphy's tenor is, of course, the scene stealer.  The gang manages to do a perfect parody/satire of a musical in less than four minutes -- that takes serious talent!

So, that's season 4 wrapped.  Onward from here!

"But His Bosses Didn't Like Him So They Shot Him Into Space"

That's right, I'm back with more MST3K! I know, I know, I've been slacking on the blog but... stuff. It happens.

Anyway, we're going to do this way the same way as my previous MST3K post(s) -- this post will cover my overview of season 4 and the two subsequent posts will cover my favorite episodes from the season and why and my favorite host segments.

So... on with Season 4!

Really, I don't know where to begin... mostly because the creative team had reached a kind of plateau. The cast and crew were mostly stable (we'll get to the "mostly" in a minute) and they had been working together for such a long time that they operated like a well-oiled machine. They churned out 24 episodes which filled a two-hour programming block without a visible hitch and while not every episode might be a laugh riot there wasn't a clunker in the bunch this season and at their weakest they were still entertaining. They had reached a point of consistency that few shows could boast.

One area where improvement could be seen was with some of the tougher movies. The gang tackled some of the arguably worst bad movies. You see, bad movies can basically be broken down into two categories -- ones which are so ridiculously bad they are actually entertaining in their badness and ones which are so bad they are boring and/or incomprehensible. In season 4 the writing and riffing team handled some real snooze-fest films. Titles like Fire Maidens of Outer Space, Monster A-Go-Go, and the infamous Manos, the Hands of Fate just to name a few. In season 3 the gang had struggled with the more boring and/or incomprehensible films like Castle of Fu Manchu (where they used crying and complaining to try to cover the fact that they just failed to come up with some witty one-liners) and the two Master Ninja movies (using that word loosely) but in season 4 the worst of the worst are considered by many to be some of their best, most inspired, riffing jobs. Not only that but Manos had a strong showing despite coming at the end of the grueling season when the team had to have been feeling the burn-out.

One thing which probably helped defeat the burn-out was the addition of two regular writers for the series. Colleen Henjum and Mary Jo Pehl were added to the writing staff -- hence why I say the cast and crew were "mostly" stable.

There was only one departure this season -- that of Production Manager Alexandra "Alex" Carr. While Carr worked behind the scenes apparently she also had one role in front of the cameras... sort of...that of the uncredited "Magic Voice" -- the dulcet tones of the Satellite of Love's computer A.I... or something -- it was never properly explained WHAT Magic Voice was. Either way, with Carr's departure there was a change in Magic Voice's... uh... voice and fans of the show will recognize that Mary Jo Pehl took over the role -- still uncredited.

There wasn't a lot of innovation this season but we do see the gang say goodbye to the movie serial installments. For the first three seasons on cable the gang had often padded out their episode run times by pairing a shorter movie with either a film short or else an episode from a movie serial. With this season they did a couple of movie serials and experimented with a couple of episodes of a soap opera (General Hospital) to fill out episodes before finally and fully settling on the shorts from here on when they needed to pad out a run time.

While your actual miles may vary I found that the gang did seem to take a while to find their feet in season 4. While, as I said, none of the episodes are bad, the first three were just not extremely funny to me and it took until the fourth episode in before I felt like they really started getting inspired. Once they got past that point, though, they turned in some really terrific episodes.

The gang also had a really nice variety in their film choices this season. They balanced traditional sci-fi with some fantasy/myth movies and peppered in some wanna-be noir pieces, 'dangerous youth' films, and even a 'post-apocalyptic' style flick. It was a cornucopia of styles of bad filmmaking and it gave the season a nice diversity to keep the riffing fresh and different.

The one thing I didn't like and was quite happy to see go was the General Hospital experiment. The show's focus had always been on the "movie experience" so throwing in episodes of a TV series just felt wrong to me. In addition, it seemed like it was a little unfair picking on a soap opera. Movies tend to have long gestation periods and layers of people involved where one would think that someone, somewhere along the chain might say "You know what? This isn't very good" and fix the things that were going wrong -- doctor the script, get a new director, get new actors... something! A soap opera on the other hand, had to be written quickly and shot even faster since it went out on the air five days a week. Also, the very nature of soap operas are built on ideas of very little character development and mostly an illusion of change without there being much actual change. Soap operas also are completely built on the kind of overblown plots that the guys tended to make fun of in movies. And on top of all of that... I just didn't find the riffing that funny. It felt like the guys were always kind of struggling for inspiration with them and there were only a few gems of humor in the installments so I was glad to see them go.

So, in the final summation -- season 4 merely continued the same good work the gang had already been doing. Plenty of funny work and a relaxed ease that really shone through on camera. There are several points in the host segments where you can see things happen which were more than likely accidents or ad-libs but the gang has reached such a level of competency that they often take it and run with it -- incorporating the accident into the episode seamlessly.

Next up -- some of my favorite episodes... and why.

"He Did a Good Job Cleaning Up the Place..."

And now for the final part of my season 3 overview... some of my favorite host segments.

As I said in the first part of my overview, season 3 produced a lot of good host segments but there are a few I keep coming back to again and again.

One of these is Servo's ballad to Tibby -- which I linked to in the second part of my overview.

From that same episode -- Gamera -- comes Crow and Servo making an impromptu voodoo doll to express their dislike of the little boy from the movie...



From Gamera vs. Barugon comes the 5000 piece fightin' men and monster set...



Both of these episodes also come highly recommended to watch the whole of and not just the host segments.

The same can not be said of ep. 305 -- Stranded in Space. Even with the riffing the movie is dull as dishwater. The third host segment (which unfortunately I can't link to directly) is a delight if you grew up with TV detective characters of the 1970's and early 1980's (and I did). Joel plays a crime kingpin with the bots as his hench...er... bots and orders the execution of a number of famous TV detectives. The bots are a little confused, though, by Joel's use of slang for 'killing'. Go seek it out, it's funny.

Another one from a movie I found dull and also another host segment I can't link to directly is the second host segment from ep. 307 -- Daddy-O. The bots recreate a drag racing scene from the movie in their own inimitable style.

And another one I can't link to directly -- the opening from ep. 309 -- The Amazing Colossal Man. the bots build a cardboard fort in which they hide out and from which they mock Joel.

Then there's "Old Joel Robinson Had a Farm" -- from ep. 310 -- Fugitive Alien.



"Joel Robinson is DEAD!!!".... or maybe not. From ep. 314 Mighty Jack.



Also from the same episode one of my favorite songs... "Slow the Plot Down".



Ep. 315 -- Teenage Caveman is another rather dull flick but the host segments -- pretty much all of them -- are terrific as they feature a running battle between Frank and Dr. Clayton Forrester. Especially great is where they do a parody of the music from the Star Trek original series episode "Amok Time".



And in another one I can't link to directly, ep. 318 -- Star Force: Fugitive Alien II's first host segment has Servo blowing a gasket due to the horrible nature of the movie. Joel rushes to revive him while Crow channel William Shatner from Rescue 911.

Finally there is ep. 323 -- The Castle of Fu Manchu. This episode has a reputation of being bad. As in the film is so bad even the riffing team can barely make it enjoyable. The film has been accused by fans of being incomprehensible, plotless, and having nothing happen.

Now, I disagree with pretty much all of this. The film *does* have a plot... but it's a needlessly convoluted one. And stuff *does* happen it's just that it happens intermittently. Really Castle of Fu Manchu's biggest sin is that it's *boring*. The action sequences are few and far between and when they do show up we don't care about the characters so we don't care about any threats to them. Christopher Lee phones in his performance as Fu... long distance... on a bad connection. Seriously, a man who made a sub-career out of playing villains couldn't intimidate a water bug here. And in the meantime viewers are stuck with characters who repeat information that we've already been told or shown.

As such, the film really isn't the worst one the team has ever had to tackle BUT it is dull and the riffing just isn't fast or funny enough to cover that fact. The guys really probably shouldn't have done this tough of a movie this late in the season when they were likely starting to burn out.

The thing about this one, though, is that it has some of the most fun host segments as they all build upon one another and tell a kind of 'story arc' as Joel and the bots slowly start to fall apart. Could it be that the Mads might actually.....*gasp*.... WIN?! Skip the film segments, watch all the host segments and find out.

And that's all from me for now. Have a Happy Thanksgiving (if you celebrate it).

"...Just Another Face in a Red Jumpsuit..."

As promised my list of things from Mystery Science Theater 3000's third season that you shouldn't skip.

I say "things" because, and here's where season 3 is a little different, this was really the first season where there were a number of host segments which were better than the movie riffing and several shorts where the short combined with the riffing to blow the feature film it was paired with out of the water.

First -- whole episodes...

Ep. 301 -- Cave Dwellers: The season opener gets off like a pistol shot. It's fast and hilariously funny and it is obvious everyone is on their game. The host segments are silly and satirical at the same time and the theatre riffing is top notch. You'll be laughing till you cry by the end of it. The film is a real "winner" as well (and by that I mean 'loser') -- a fantasy 'epic' that is more like epic fail. Bad acting, plot holes you could drive a truck through, and characters who are just ridiculous. My favorite character is actually Thong, the hero Ator's wordless sidekick. Why do I love Thong so much? Because he's an utter jerk. Seriously. At one point Thong is told flat out that Ator is walking into a trap. Does Thong even *try* to warn Ator before the trap is sprung? No. When Ator is first captured does Thong try to rescue him? No. When Ator and a bunch of villagers are taken to a place of sacrifice to be sacrificed to a giant snake (puppet) Thong waits until every single one of the villagers is sacrificed before he acts to save Ator. In short, Thong is a butthat. Oh, and the "cave dwellers" of the title? Yeah, they only appear at the beginning and middle of the film and probably have a screen time of about five minutes total.

The Gamera Run: I couldn't pick just one of the Gamera movies -- the riffing on all of them is just too good. Sure, some are stronger than others and some of the host segments are a mixed bag of merely amusing to outright hilarious but the five Gamera movies represents something unprecedented in the history of the show. Never before and never again would the team do a run of direct sequels like this. In fact, as a sign of the Gamera movies' place in the show's history this past summer all five were released on DVD in the show's first ever themed box set. You can find them as MST3K vol. XXI, MST3K vs. Gamera. And the DVD box set is pretty nice. I have to admit I didn't have much interest in many of the extras offered but just having the five riffed movies in nice, clear, sharp quality was worth it. Another reason these hold a special place for me is more personal -- I was one of those kids who grew up watching the Gamera movies on Saturday morning from a local, independent TV station. I met Gamera before I ever met Godzilla and my love of goofy, rubber suited monster movies was cemented. I love Gamera in spite of the cheesiness and also because of the cheesiness. The excellent riffing by Hodgson, Murphy and Beaulieu is just icing on the cake of my childhood memories. Sweet, satiric icing.

As an incentive here's the justifiably beloved "Tibby" song from Ep. 302 -- Gamera:



Ep. 321 -- Santa Claus Conquers the Martians: It was the gang's first attempt at doing a 'Christmas' episode and they hit a home run on their first time at bat. There is almost an insane balancing act done here of making fun of the movie and spoofing some Christmas social conventions but without ever turning nasty or mean spirited about it and the team makes it look effortless. And the riffing for this weird little movie is a laugh riot. If you're someone who gets the holiday blues or whose family gets you down then seek out this gem to lift your spirits. The movie itself is the ultimate in cashing in on the cheap. I can only imagine the writers sitting down over a three martini (or more) lunch and coming up with this plot: The children of Mars are depressed. They see TV programs from Earth and want to have fun and play like the Earth children do. So the leaders of Mars get together, go to Earth, and kidnap Santa Claus to bring toys and Christmas to the Martian children. One of the Martians, though, has a grudge against Santa and is determined to see the jolly old fellow dead. Hilarity ensues.... unintentional hilarity. The movie was obviously trying to capitalize on the "space" craze with the Martian plot and it tried to do so as cheaply as it could with lousy costumes and cheap sets filmed entirely on a soundstage somewhere. On several occasions one actor completely steps on another actor's line and they don't bother to reshoot the scene. At one point "Santa" also seems to lose the plot or the script one or the other (or maybe both) and, again, the scene isn't reshot. I also, must confess, that I actually *did* see this film once when I was little on that aforementioned independent, local TV station. I don't remember most of it and it turns out there's a good reason for that. Still, this is a perfect movie for the guys to riff and by the time they're done with it Santa Claus Conquers the Martians is nothing more than a smoking crater.

Part the Second.... The Shorts:

Ever since the first season the MST3K-ers had used serial installments and short films to to pad out the time when a feature film ran too short to fill an episode. Season 3, however, featured some of the finest (and by "finest" I mean bizarre, out-of-date, and unintentionally hilarious) examples of the genre. There are three, though, that I truly loved...

Catching Trouble (second short for ep. 315 Teenage Caveman) While the riffing on this one is pretty good it's the short itself that if funny in that 'appalling' way. Viewers watch tracker "Ross" in the Florida Everglades as he hunts down and captures animals for zoos in obviously stages scenarios. Even if you're not a backer of PETA you'll probably find this one shocking thanks to the passage of time. Catching Trouble, however, would not be complete if it were not watched with the following host segment -- "Catching Ross". The guys get something of an unholy glee out of 'capturing' a doll meant to represent Ross. It's definitely more entertaining than the slow Teenage Caveman where even Joel, Kevin, and Trace seem to struggle to make the movie funny.

The Home Economics Story (short with ep. 317 The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent. Yeah, that's an obscenely long title) This one would be funny enough on it's own but being as I am the female of the species this short's casual sexism and perpetuation of "suitable" jobs for women in the 1950's is a scream. Viewers are treated to what is essentially one big commercial for the University of Iowa's Home Economics program -- which teaches girls how to be fashion designers, design home appliances, work in school and hospital cafeterias, run restaurants, and be interior designers... at least until they get their M-R-S when they'll be expected to apply their knowledge to creating a comfy home for their family. Add to that Joel and the bots sitting in front of the screen making fun of the 'college experience' and the short's sexist attitudes and it is, in short (heh) awesome. It also definitely beats out the feature film -- one of Roger Corman's early efforts. One of my favorite lines (and don't ask me why)... Servo: "Would she smoke thin, black cigarettes and reject the Triune God?"

Mr. B Natural (short with ep. 319 War of the Colossal Beast) This one is pure, 100% cheese. Like The Home Economics Story this one was created as one long commercial (for Conn band instruments). In this outing a "Spirit of Music" named Mr. B Natural (played by a woman, of course) works to convince a boy that he can be the hit of the school that he longs to be if he learns how to play an instrument. The riffing that Joel and the bots do onscreen for this one is through the roof. Indications that the little boy is hallucinating, castigation of "Mr. B Natural", and popping the bubble on popularity are just some of the directions the jokes take. The writing team was clearly inspired here. For an added benefit watch the follow up host segment where Crow and Servo do a hilarious debate on whether Mr. B Natural was a woman or a man.

And, as I realize this post is getting a little long I'm going to leave it here for now. Tomorrow I will finish up season 3 by covering a few of my favorite host segments which can (and in some cases should) be watched independently of the movies they are paired with.

"He Worked at Gizmonic Institute...."

Season 3 over, finally! Okay, actually, I finished it up a while back but it took some time for me to put my notes in order. Anyway... the overview....

Season 3 might be best summed up as... 'Forward, into the past!'... and I'll explain that in a minute.

With season 3, though, the creative team started out the year with a certain amount of stability. There were no more cast changes nor would there be until mid-season 5, the sets were pretty well... uh... set and the same could be said of the robot puppets as well. Also, after a whole season of working together, the cast had settled into familiarity.

Stability, however, does not mean that the show was static. MST3K broke new ground as they increased their episode production from 13 episodes per season to 24 -- even more than they had done at KTMA in their initial run! They also decided to tackle their first Christmas themed episode and they experimented with riffing bad films and their equally bad sequels.

All of this security seemed to put the gang into a reflective mood, though, as they looked back only three short years ago to how they had begun on the little, local, independent TV station of KTMA. As a result the original team members decided they wanted another crack at some of the movies they had riffed at KTMA to do a better job at it now that they had more experience under their belts. As a result, out of the 24 new episodes this season 9 of them were recycled from KTMA -- Gamera, Gamera vs. Barugon, Gamera vs. Gaos, Gamera vs. Guiron, Gamera vs. Zigra (sensing a theme here?), Time of the Apes, Fugitive Alien and Starforce: Fugitive Alien II. The result of all of this was some of the show's fan favorite episodes, host segments and songs -- stuff that is still quoted and laughed over today.

Season 3 would also end up having some of the best-known riffed shorts with the likes of Mr. B Natural and Appreciating Our Parents among others. As for the films well, season 3 wasn't as genre diverse as others seasons were or would be. The slate came down heavily on 'science-gone-wrong', Cold War analogy sci-fi, and (thanks to the KTMA do-overs) badly dubbed and worse edited Japanese imports. This was okay, though, since, in my opinion, the gang really did some of their best work within the sci-fi genre. There's something about extra large humans, arachnids, traffic cones and/or turtles that seems to inspire the riffing.

One of the most noticeable things was how much tighter the writing became on the skits. The host segments for season 3 produced far fewer clunkers and even for the less amusing installments at least the skits tended to have a beginning, middle and end rather than meandering around before finally just coming to an end.

If there is one complaint to be had it is that the end of the season is noticeably weaker than the the beginning. The last feature -- Master Ninja II-- goes out with much more of a whimper than a bang in my opinion. This is understandable though since tackling 24 bad movies in one season was quite an undertaking. Still, they hopefully learned from the experience and paced themselves a little better when season 4 rolled around.

Usually I finish up with a few episodes that were the highlights of the season for me. This time I'm putting those in a separate post since I have a *lot* to say. You've been warned.....

Tune in tomorrow for Stressfactor's list of "Things You Can't Miss" from season 3 of Mystery Science Theatre 3000
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Cinematic Titanic: Let's Go on With the Show....

With this being an October show the Cinematic Titanic troupe gave this performance the appropriate atmosphere by choosing two films featuring those old horror standbys -- Dr. Frankenstein and vampires. Or, to be more specific, Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks and Blood of the Vampires. The first film is a 1974 Italian production while the second one dates from the 1960's and was shot in the Philippines with a Filipino cast.... despite supposedly being set in 1800's Mexico. Oh, yeah, and some members of the cast play servants... in blackface. Soooo not even kidding on that. So yeah, you know these films are bad and well deserving of whatever hilarious heck the Cinematic Titans choose to put them through.



The gang doesn't jump into the movies right away; oh no. First comes the "talent show" portion of the evening. Each member of the group is given five minutes or so on stage to do whatever they want to with whatever particular talents they have. In addition, they are joined in this portion of the show by Dave "Gruber" Allen -- an old friend of many of the members, a fellow stand-up comedian, and kind of quasi-MC/roadie for Cinematic Titanic.



Each of the performers played to their strengths or else displayed hidden or new talents. J. Elvis Weinstein helped out considerably by providing background vocals and/or bass guitar for a couple of his cohorts and his solo in the spotlight featured a live rendition of the Mystery Science Theatre 3000 theme song (which the audience enthusiastically joined in on the "La-la-la's"), Frank Conniff did a more traditional stand-up routine but with his own skewed spin on things, Mary jo Pehl provided an introduction for Gruber with her own dry, witty style, Trace Beaulieu read two poems from his own book of children's poetry -- Silly Rhymes for Belligerent Children, and Joel Hodgson went back to his roots with a magic trick and a little comedic audience banter.



With the opening out of the way it was time to start carving up the movie. The gang took their places on stage and things got off to a roaring start. Both the movies were, of course, horrible. Really, really, horrible -- which the audience had expected -- but the riffing was truly awesome. The Cinematic Titans were focused on the job at hand but it was also obvious that there were aware of the audience and they fed the energy from the room into the delivery of their jokes.



In addition to the energy the live format also made the performance unique. In the first movie Frank Conniff got tongue tied and missed a riff -- stuttering over the words until he finally just gave up. In response J. Elvis Weinstein casually looked over and said "Nice recovery though -- really." In the second movie Joel Hodgson missed two riffs -- which caused him to turn to the audience and remark on their somewhat lousy track record that night with a sum total of three missed riffs. At another point one of J. Elvis's riffs fell flat with the audience just not getting the joke. At the "dead air" he turned and said "No one gets it? Really?!" It really brought home the fact that every live performance would be a little different and that the gang could, at any time, choose to go a little off-script. Also, it brought the audience into the performance as well. We, sitting in the seats, may have been the audience but with our laughter and good-natured boos (usually researved for bad puns or deliberately lame jokes) we were also a part of the performance itself. Our reactions helped shape the experience both for the other audience members around us and for the riffers onstage.

If I had one complaint it was that the theatre's sound system didn't seem to be quite up to the task. While I could hear the riffers just fine there were a great many points where I couldn't hear the movie very well at all.

Still, did I have a good time? You bet your sweet bippy.

Did I laugh? Till tears came to my eyes.

Would I do it again? In a heartbeat.

You might think that the idea of live movie riffing seems strange -- or that it wouldn't work but I can attest that it does work and it works in a way that few might expect. The performance becomes a collaboration and there is nothing quite like getting to be a part of that collaboration.... But the idea of live movie riffing is a little bit strange.

All Hands on Deck.... for Cinematic Titanic!!

So things have been a bit quiet again at the house of Compound Geekery but there was a good reason for that. I, your humble hostess, was preparing for an epic quest. As my journey was to take me many miles I supplied myself with clothing



and rations;



and I loaded and prepared my trusty steed St. Andrew's Cross.



I handed care of Geek Dog to a kindly, older couple in the village until such time as I could return....

Uhhh, yeah... I would put a picture of Geek Dog in here except she's.... kinda still mad at me for leaving and not taking her with me....

And thus I set off into the wilds of the Midwest. I traversed the plains where miles passed without any signs of civilization; corn and wheat fields the only indication that people lived here and eked out an existence on the land. I crossed rivers wide and rivers narrow until at last, tired and worn I reached my destination... the city where five people of exceptional talent in humor and sarcasm were rumored to be plying their craft.... I came to see CINEMATIC TITANIC!

Okay, okay, I promise not to try to be funny anymore.

So some of you might be asking what the heck Cinematic Titanic is. I'll try to be brief...

In 1993 Joel Hodgson, creator of Mystery Science Theatre 3000 left the show. About a year and a half later at the end of the 6th season Frank Conniff left the show and in 1996 Trace Beaulieu bowed out. While the show would continue on these three spent the next several years kicking around Hollywood -- mostly behind the cameras as writers, producers and consultants for various movies, radio, and TV shows. The group all kept in touch,worked together fairly often and Hodgson and Beaulieu even renewed their friendship with Josh "J. Elvis" Weinstein thus bringing back together the three who had launched the show in the first place.

In 2007, with the Hollywood writers strike going on Joel Hodgson reached out to the gang with a chance to do it all again. Weinstein, Conniff, and Beaulieu signed on along with Mary Jo Pehl who had stayed with MST3K until the final end. Thus was Cinematic Titanic born.

Hodgson wanted to return to the roots of the original idea -- finding bad old movies that few people had heard of and exposing them to audiences with their own, unique, riffing style. This time around, though, there would be no TV station, no network and no executives; they were going to run everything themselves.

They arranged for filming space and started out with a handful of studio produced DVD's but Hodgson was already aiming at the next stage of development.... live shows. It wasn't as big of a step as it might seem -- back in the heady early days of MST3K the gang had done a couple of live shows where they riffed in character. Additionally, all five of them had begun their careers as stand-up comedians so they had experience with live performances.

Starting almost immediately, the troupe began performing live. Gradually, over the last couple of years they have phased out the studio DVD's in favor of producing DVD's of their live performances. They have a standing schedule in which they do a live performance once a month in a different city and each time they only stay a day or two at most.

So THIS... this was my chance... and I took it.....

TO BE CONTINUED.....