RiffTrax Announce They’re Making More MST3K

WE HAVE MOVIE SIGN!

Yesterday, the official RiffTrax social media channels announced that they launched a Kickstarter to make four new episodes of the cult classic tv show Mystery Science Theater 3000 (aka MST3K).

Now, gather ‘round, youngins, and let me tell you a tale of a time when there were only three channels, four if you were lucky. And then there was the public access television station. Usually found on a frequency that was iffy at best, most public access channels hosted local shows and news. (If you’re a ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic fan, the cult classic movie UHF has him running such a channel.)

In Minnesota in 1988, a comedian named Joel Hodgson used his love of crafting and of old movies to create the original MST3K. The basic plot, for those who may have been living in a bunker for the past 40ish years, is that Joel (playing a character named ‘Joel Hodgson’) is a janitor who is sent into space and imprisoned by mad scientists who force him to watch bad movies. In order to keep his sanity, Joel (the character, that is) created ‘robots’ (aka puppets) to keep him sane. The three then mock the movie with jokes (called riffs) and take breaks to make fun of it. It works because the jokes are so fast and so many that if one gets past you, you barely notice.

Over the decades, the show changed and grew as all shows do. Joel eventually left the show and was replaced by Mike Nelson (playing a character called ‘Mike Nelson’). The show moved from the public access KMTA-TV to Comedy Central to the Sci-Fi Channel (as it was spelled at the time). As part of the switch, the team also got a feature film in 1996. That show ended in 1999 (with Mike successfully returning home, only to decide to sit down on the couch and watch a bad movie) and that seemed like that at the time.

Then, of course, the Internet became what most people think of when they think of the Internet, and the show had some spinoffs (most notably for this article, RiffTrax with Mike Nelson and two of the other actors from his era, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett), a brief revival on Netflix (with known celebrity geeks Patton Oswalt, Jonah Ray, and Felicia Day), and even had some live reunions of the cast.

Back in 2013, I had the chance to interview Mike Nelson for my podcast and for Annenberg Radio News. I’ve written a review of one of RiffTrax’s live shows (having attended a few of their live shows via streaming to theatres), and even wrote something when they launched their app to better sync their riffs. I was even on their press list for a while.

So, of course, when I saw the announcement yesterday that in connection with RiffTrax’s 20th anniversary they would be bringing back MST3K for four episodes, I knew I had to write something about it. (Full disclosure: I have backed the Kickstarter myself at the $250 level.)

In partnership with Shout! Studios (who owns the rights to the original show), the team at RiffTrax is getting the old gang back together for four new episodes. Per their Kickstarter, “Mike Nelson is returning as host, alongside Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett as his robot friends Tom Servo and Crow T. Robot. And Mary Jo Pehl will be reprising her role of Pearl Forrester!” They even have some of the old crew coming back.

Even better: they more than reached their goal of $20,000, getting over a million dollars in pledges from over 10,000 accounts within 24 hours. This is RiffTrax’s 13th Kickstarter, with all of them being successful.

As is typical with many of their Kickstarters, the movie titles haven’t been determined (they typically wait until they know how much they can throw at the copyright lawyers), but they do plan on live-streaming the first episode in theatres in partnership with Fathom Events.

You can pledge and learn more about the project on their Kickstarter page, and of course, learn more about RiffTrax on their official page.

Now, to quote their riff on This Island Earth, I bring you back to: “normal view, Normal View, NORMAL VIEW!!!!”

Author: Angie Fiedler Sutton

Angie Fiedler Sutton is a writer, podcaster, and all-round fangirl geek. She has been published in Den of Geek, Stage Directions, LA Weekly, The Mary Sue, and others. She also produces her own podcast, Contents May Vary, where she interviews geeky people about geeky things. You can see all her work (and social media channels) at angiefsutton.com.

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