"MST3K Reviews St. Helens" Talkback

[Peter Paltridge]

http://www.platypuscomix.net/hollywo...ksthelens.html

Yes, Chris, your moment has finally arrived. You want to know why it took so long? Because I'd remarked in the past that the movie you sent me would make a perfect MST3K movie, but as I was about to review it, I thought "why don't I actually have THEM do it?"

The problem with that was, I've been cable-less since 1990 and I've only recently seen a few MST3K episodes thanks to YouTube. I'm not exactly the biggest fanboy, not by choice but by circumstance. Fortunately, JB is, and he not only lent his Shadowrama overlay for this piece, but he proofread my stab at riffing before it went up, and adjusted a few lines to make sure they were in character.

This used to include a fourth-wall scene where the human shadow questioned whether he was Joel or Mike, and ended up finding out he was TV's Frank, but JB said such a gag was too different to fit the spirit of the show.

[J. B. Warner]

I gotta say, I quite enjoyed going over this one with you, as well as contributing the shadowrama. If you ever wanna do another movie review a la MST3K, let me know.

In retrospect, it occurs to me that it might have been a good idea to frame the article with an opening host segment, for which I would have willingly contributed the artwork and dialogue ("Your movie today, Joel, is a gripping historical stinkburger called St. Helens, and it stars America's favorite sewer worker, Art Carney. Push the button, Frank..."). I also think it might have been wise for me to draw a couple of variants on the shadowrama - draw the characters' heads at different angles, and so on - just to make the images a little less monotonous. But hey, there are other lousy movies out there, and even MST3K itself didn't have all the kinks ironed out at the beginning (and anyone who's seen an episode from the KTMA era will know what I mean).

Oh, and for the record, the closest the MST3K crew has ever come to doing a double feature was in Season 8 when Pearl made Mike and the bots watch The Giant Spider Invasion twice (although we, the audience, only saw them watch it once).

[takineko]

That was hilarious, good work guys. And man, Spider man 3 was so disappointing. But all Hollywood sees is the numbers it brought in on opening day. Same for X-Men 3....

[Dynamite XI]

Heh, the article reminded me of the "Caption This" feature of MST3K's Sci-Fi Channel page. "Caption This" pulled real-time screencaps from the channel itself, and forum users had the opportunity to riff on the individual screencaps within an alotted timeframe.

And I agree with JB, the article would have benefitted from the use of opening segments. And since you ended up using Joel here, it would have been interesting to see your version of the invention exchange.

[Chris]

Great stuff! I like how you worked the KATU broadcast of Mt. St. Helens in the FPO videos into the riffing. Now, do "Kingdom of the Spiders." It's not a local movie, but it's so bad that *someone* needs to riff it. And William Shatner is in it!

[The Nameless]

It was great! Especially the part about the crazy old man telling his dog to set the table