So, just started watching MST3K for the first time.

So I just started watching episodes of mystery science theater 3,000 today. I know, late to the party much. I've obviously heard of the show before, but never actually watched any episodes before today. I saw that Netflix had some and I streamed the first gamera episode. Then the final sacrifice episode, then laser blast, now I'm watching the second gamera movie right now.

Honestly, I like it. There's some very funny stuff, and there's something strangely cool about terrible movies.

My first reaction to the way the shows episodes began when I watched my first episode was that I thought It was a kids show. Or something like peewees playhouse or something. The tone seemed like something I would see in the 90s as a kids show, if that makes sense. A lot of it I think was the intro song and the puppet characters. Naturally as they went in and first started watching the movie, I learned it really wasn't something aimed at kids. Bit that was just the first impression I got never seeing the characters before or knowing what the show looked like. I'm curious if this is maybe a common feeling of first time viewers?

anyway, another thing I'm finding is that it seems like the ones I watched from the early seasons (I guess called the Joel era) don't seem super funny to me. A lot of what I saw seemed like goofy jokes or pretty basic observation humor if the movie. I laughed a lot more on one of the Mike episodes. (Final sacrifice)

Are the early Joel episodes more basic or not too laugh out loud funny? Obviously I've just started watching and can't give a very educated opinion, I'm just wondering what those who have watched a lot of it think.

Some notable Mst3k's worth watching is Space Mutiny, Prince of Space, Puma man and Final Sacrifice. So you hut one of the gold ones with Final Sacrifice.

Space mutiny is notable as it uses a lot of the old 70s Battlestar Galactica sets and models....also...it just so bad. I end up watching that one the most. Also much the same story without Cylons.

Prince of Space is one wild Japanese movie trip.

Puma man is like theeeee worst idea for a super hero. Puma man is just your average guy untill he gets an ancient aztec belt that give him the power of a puma! he can do everything like a puma! run fast! thinks faster! and flies! thats right......just like a puma...you just wait untill you see him fly....JUST like a puma!

Some of my top MSTs:

- Manos, the Hands of Fate

- Gamera vs. Guiron

- The Mole People

- Overdrawn at the Memory Bank

I know it's not a popular opinion, but I tend to, on average, prefer Mike over Joel, as well. Doctor Forrester over what's her bucket, too. I think it takes about 3 seasons for the whole thing to click, and I doubt you're alone in thinking season 1 might be a bit below average.

@peezmachine: none of them seem to be in episodic order on Netflix/amazonprimeinstant. So it's hard for me to tell which episodes are what season. Are the gamera episodes season 1 or 3?

Manos, the hands of fate and Overdrawn at the memory bank are also MST3K tent posts.

I too also always enjoyed Mike more than Joel. I came on Mike and I stay with Mike, I really don't understand the staunch "MST3K sucked once Joel left."

Overdrawn at the Memory Bank has Raúl Juliá!

It's not really a kid's show but it's generally suitable for kids at the same time. The robots came about mostly because Joel was a prop comedian and liked building things. It's also why the Joel episodes had the Invention Exchange bits but they dropped them not long after he left the show.

For the most part, I find the Mike episodes funnier, although there are some really good Joel episodes as well. The chemistry seemed better during the Mike era and he seemed more comfortable in front of the camera than Joel did. Joel was always a bit awkward and fumbled his lines quite a bit.

Space Mutiny is definitely a must-see. I'd also suggest Mitchell, Final Justice, Werewolf, Soultaker, and Future War. Mitchell and Final Justice are both really bad Joe Don Baker movies and Mitchell is the episode where Mike took over for Joel. Werewolf and Soultaker are low quality horror movies which both star Martin Sheen's brother. Future War is good too if you like seeing a fake Jean Claude Van Dam fighting dinosaur action figures.

Just wait until Mike comes. I think he is way better personally.

Watch Space Mutiny and The Final Sacrifice.

Also Gamera a friend to all children.

@raven_sword: When it comes to pairing up films with episodes or seasons, I'm afraid I'm not much help. To Wikipedia!

@mechanical_ape: Future War. Dear lord. Dear, dear, lord.

Future War, Final Sacrifice, Werewolf, Soul Taker. All essential, in my opinion.

I plant my feet pretty firmly in the Mike Nelson camp, Rowsdower.

ROWSDOWER!

Yeah, i think mike seasons are better than the joel ones.

The big difference your seeing between early and late episodes is that in the early seasons it was done with little to no scripting and was way more off the cuff while with Mike in the later seasons it was highly scripted and timed. Basically in the early episodes if the movie didn't give them anything to work with there was a lot more kind of dead time which made what jokes they amde all the better while in the later seasons you essentially get a joke of some kind every 14 seconds. Personally I like Mike better but that is very much a matter of opinion. If you want a good cross section just pick an episode a season to see how the show differs over the years.

The other big thing you'll notice as a difference between the two hosts is that Joel was a prop comic and a lot of his comedy sketches come from that while Mike was much more of a stand up/ sketch comedian.

As for best ofs...

Space Mutiny (Hell half my MMO characters are named after Blast Hard Cheese himself)

Soul Taker

Escape 2000

It conquered the World

Monster A Go-Go

Night of the Blood Beast

Just note that Manos the Hands of Fate is unarguably great but holy shit is it a hard sit if you aren't prepared the same goes for the Castle of Fu Manchu (which could arguably be worse than Manos depending on the crowd).

Most of these I can quote from beginning to end without fail and I'll be damned if I could tell you that I don't still watch them over and over at least once a year.

"You know maybe we should leave the Bronx"

"I'm Peter Graves and I'd like to enroll at the University of Minnesota"

Oh shit I forgot about Puma Man. Watch that too. He flies like a moron.

It's good to know that I'm maybe not crazy for not liking the Joel ones as much. But again, I've inky watched four episodes so far of the whole series, so I guess I can't judge yet. I thought maybe I just missed the boat and you had to watch it during the time to get this show. But honestly, I really like it. Even if all the jokes don't land for me sometimes, it's at least a enjoyable way to watch these movies that would otherwise probably be unbearable to watch.

@raven_sword: I'd definitely stay away from the KTMA episodes though. I'm not sure there's anyone that really likes those. They're really rough but they did lead to better things at least.

If you do like the show, you might want to look into RiffTrax as well. It's basically just MST3k without the host segments. It's Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy (Tom Servo from season 2 on), and Bill Corbett (Crow for most of Mike's run). They do old movies, new movies, and shorts, although for the new movies you have to supply your own copy of the movie since they don't have distribution rights.

@raven_sword: If you want to watch new horrible movies like The Room or Troll 2 there is also Rifftrax. It is what Mike and the robots are doing these days. Joel also does something called Cinematic Titanic.

I would say that the Mike era is far easier to get into than the Joel era stuff, but I will always prefer Joel. It's probably because I discovered the show as a kid when Joel was still on. I just remember my brother and I discovering it in the middle of the night and just having my mind blown out. Personally there is no such thing as bad MST3K, except for maybe the public access stuff but that's because it was so loose and improvised.

My personal choices:

• Manos: the Hands of Fate is the most obvious answer. If you don't watch Manos you're doing it wrong.
• I like Monster a-Go Go but your mileage may vary. It is a fucking brutal movie to sit through, even MSTified. It also has the biggest fuck you for an ending of any movie.
• Mitchell and/or Final Justice. Watching them tear into Joe Don Baker is the best.
• Parts: The Clonus Horror for more classic Peter Graves ribbing. BIOGRAPHY!

Keep circulating the tapes, duder.

This Island Earth is a classic.

Ah, MST3K. The gift that keeps on giving.

@haruko: Space Mutiny, oh man. I loved that one.

Big McLargeHuge is such a great name, but I do like Blast Hardcheese a lot.

I need to start watching these again.

Shit, I forgot about The Incredible Melting Man!

@mooseymcman

@capum15:

Ok, so just got done watching space mutiny.

Oh my good Jesus Christ. That movie man,

I think my favorite part was when they show the lady who worked on the bridge in the very next scene AFTER SHE WAS SHOT AND KILLED. like, what?

Oh, and there stupid little zambonie cars. That end fight with them was gold. Ha ha.

I think my favorite episodes so far are apace mutiny and the final sacrifice.

Sacrifice did have rowsdower, who I'm probably naming my next elder scrolls character. Lol.

NOBODY HAS MENTIONED MERLIN'S SHOP OF MYSTICAL WONDERS?????

If you're getting into MSt3k for the first time this website may be helpful to you. It'll give you an idea of the popularity of the episodes.

http://www.club-mst3k.com/

Haha, yep, I watched that immediately after I saw you post the full video, like, 3 times.

Good ol' Thick McRunFast.

I never really liked it. At the end of the day it was watching horrible movies with other people joking over them - something I rather actually be doing with my own friends than watching others do in front of me. Just not my thing I guess.

Another personal favorite that I don't think has been mentioned yet:

And people, it doesn't have to be an either/or thing. I love Joel and Mike equally. Joel was heavy with deadpan jokes and facinatingly obscure old hollywood references. Mike was great with goofier humor and great character interaction with him and the robots during the movies. Both differnt, but equally hilarious.

As others have said also, a lot of RiffTrax are great too. There's something that's just cool hearing them talk as much shit about these modern $200,000,000 budget movies as they did for those old $0 budget ones.

enjoy!

@joshwent: Oh holy christ the Harry Potter Rifftrax. Now I have to watch all of them.

"Old Tom Bombadil is a merry fellow, bright blue his jacket is, and his boots are murder."

While we're on the subject of Harry Potter getting the movie mischief treatment, may I suggest Wizard People, Dear Reader, in which Brad Neely (of Professor Brothers and that Washington video) replaces the soundtrack to Sorcerer's Stone with his own book-on-tape mangling. The first few minutes of the "second draft" edition (which is the one you'll want:

Hai.

My favorites are probably the 50s-era educational shorts that they show before some of the shorter films. Why Study Industrial Arts, Body Care and Grooming, etc.

Some of my favorite film-films that I haven't seen mentioned too much so far are probably Revenge of the Creature, Warrior of the Lost World, Touch of Satan, and anything involving Gamera.

The whole "Joel vs Mike" argument is way off base. T.V's Frank vs no T.V's Frank is where it's at.

Also, Jet Jag-ar.

I like to think of Giant Bomb as the MST3K of videogames.

I checked out a couple of Rifftrax a while back, think I watched Aeon Flux and The Room.

I'm way more of a Mike guy.

Somehow I never saw that one, and I love the original film. This is great!

@raven_sword:

A lot of people favor Joel, because he was the original and the creator of a lot of the show-concept. He's also the "parent" of the bots, if you're sentimental like me (although later he becomes kind of a deadbeat dad, which I was kind of resented about the character, plus he grew a dumb goatee just to make it worse... *grimace*). Anyway, digressing!

Back to my main thought-train: so there was a fair amount of audience resentment formed when Joel left due to creative differences with some of the other behind the scenes agents (like Mallon). I'm fond of both Joel and Mike about equally. A lot of my favorite movie-riffs were in the Mike period (both Comedy Central and Scifi portions), but the framing scenes and skits on the Satellite of Love and underground Gizmonic Institute tended to be best during the Joel period. As a prop comic, he created all the devices for the invention-exchange segments also which had a lot of charm. The framing device overall deteriorated a bit after Frank Conniff departed, then got REALLY bad in the Scifi era, when they were forced by the network to have some kind of ongoing storyline bs, which completely upended what had ever actually worked well in those segments in the CC run. I kind of just tune out the framing scenes in the Scifi episodes and just focus on the movies, which are still great entertainment.

If you're trying to form a better opinion on Joel, my absolute FAVORITE Joel episode is "Cave Dwellers", which I think is both a really entertaining feature and has good skits. Other ones I would recommend for an appraisal sample are "Gamera", the "Fugitive Alien" movies (I forget whether I or II was superior), and "Warrior of the Lost World". If you still feel like you like Mike a lot better after watching those, then I would just focus on the Mike episodes in your future play queue. Sometimes people really do just prefer one guy over the other, and there's no tragedy in that.

I feel like a lot of people who dislike Mike don't realize that he was the head writer for most of Joel's run, and played a pretty big role in the actual joke-writing. I think that there's some charm in Joel's sleepy delivery, of course, but I think Mike is just as good in a different way.

@joshwent: Time Chasers is one of my favorites, too! I just forgot the name.

Sing along! HE TRIIIED TO KILL ME WITH A FORKLIFT!~

Hobgoblins!

You absolutely must watch Pod People.

@kaiserreich:

It's the eiiiiighties... Do a lot of coke, and vote for Ronald Reaagan! *dances around*

This far in, and no one has mentioned season 2's "The Sidehackers"? Instant classic (and the only episode where they cut a scene out of the movie, cause they didn't watch the whole thing through before starting to write their script).

All the Sandy Frank movies they do (especially the Gamera stuff) are worth watching. And of course classics like Manos: The Hands of Fate, Soultaker, or Puma Man are all must sees.

I have consumed a hefty amount of MST3K in my life. Probably thousands of hours, dozens of repeated viewings. I used "Caption This" on the Sci-Fi channel website. I remember the disappointment of both cancellations and that Merlin's Shop of Mystical Wonders was technically the last new episode to be aired because of some broadcasting goof-up. I have the PlayStation Underground disc where Mike and the bots riff on some bad video game trailers and intros. At one point I even started to build a Tom Servo replica. I'm not saying there aren't many others here like me, but I am deeply, pathetically, qualified to comment on this topic.

As far as the Joel/Mike debate goes, I think you're better off paying attention to how old an episode is rather than who the host is. My opinion is that seasons 1-2 on Comedy Central/The Comedy Channel as well as the earlier public broadcast episodes on KTMA are dull and unwatchable. I'm sure at the time there was more of an edge to it, but in retrospect the oldest episodes are noticeably underdeveloped. Conversely, I think the best seasons are 8-10, the Sci-Fi Channel seasons. There are many, many older episodes that are among the best MST3K has to offer (almost all the shorts are entertaining), but the show is more consistently funny towards the end of its run. Maybe I just prefer the later movie choices. Opinions vary widely on the show, which is fine.

I remember Mike once commenting on how a lot of fans were children who stopped watching after a certain age, which he found strange. Clearly the "kids show" trappings are there; I don't think MST3K was ever after that audience, though.

Rifftrax is hit or miss with me. As with MST3K, I think most of the Rifftrax shorts are worthwhile. Then there's the oft-ignored Cinematic Titanic, which has some quality stuff. There was also a short-lived riff project Mike, Kevin, and Bill did in the interim between MST3K and Rifftrax called The Film Crew, which is fun to watch. If nothing else, make sure you watch MST3K: The Movie.

@fattony12000: I just watched MST3K doing Gamera vs. Guiron. I got a couple chuckles out of it, but I still didn't like it much. I'm thinking MST3K just ain't for me. Especially those bits where they're not watching the movie. Just, completely unfunny.

Also, is Crow looking away from the screen most of the time? That's kinda what it looks like to me.

LMAO was watching one of the clips posted. "Is he a makeup less clown?" Ill have to remember that one.

This is too weird. I also just started watching MS3TK and watched Gamera first.

Oh man, Gamera.... you know what, I was thinking about that because of Godzilla's release there really should be a more larger showings of their Monster movies. It's probably the best way to experence it because everyone tends to find Original Anti-Nuke Godzilla propaganda film too boring and would rather jump into the campy silliness of Godzilla immediately.

I think they angled Crow mostly looking to the side so that his shape would be more identifiable as a black silhouette. Picture how he would look straight from the back, and it makes sense why they did it that way.

MST3K isn't for everyone (that's what makes it a cult show after all). You might try one of the really good later episodes, like "Puma Man", before giving up on it completely, but eh... I'm not very aggressive at pushing things I love on other people. So, just, do whatever, or something.

I love all lineups of MST3K. The only thing that bothered me at the time was when the robots would get new voices.

One of my favorites, Pod People!