If you are a frequent visitor, you may have noticed the serious lack of updating that has been going on here in recent months. This is mostly due to two things, my addiction to playing HALF-LIFE (particularly the FIREARMS Mod and the VAMPIRE HUNTERS Mod so come on and take a shot at the videomonkey if you can), and to the fact that now I have to look after the little VideoMonkeys myself in the evenings.

Now as much as Chim loves his little VideoMonkeys, there are certain drawbacks besides having to make sure they don't eat eat each other and such. One such drawback is that, if my kids live to be 105 years old and never see SALO:120 Days of Sodom, that would be just fine with me, so I have to limit what I can watch while the little basterds are running around tearing up the place. I was considering regular TV, but after seeing the crap that is on it, it certainly has no business being shown to children. I mean I could actually feel myself becoming stupider watching what they pass as cartoons these days. Whatever happened to the Toxic Crusaders!! Now that was a cartoon!

Fortunately I've found the perfect substitute to fill the void:

MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000





Now many people ask me after I've just gotten my mitt's on some flick I consider a classic,

"CHIM why would would you ever watch that movie? It's so fuckin stupid! It's crappy and cheap and badly acted and dumb! Hollywood has multimillion dollar big shiny movies for us to watch! What are you doing man?"

Now these people have never obviously seen MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000 or MST3K as it is known to its fans. MST3K embodies the fun of crappy movies, it is what crappy movies are all about...

So what is it?

Well basically it is a TV show that started way back in 1988 on a TV station in Minneapols-St. Paul, Minnesota. It was aquired by the Comedy Central which ran episodes until it was taken by the Sci-Fi Channel. So basically what this means is that unless you live in the USA, MST3K is only availible through TRADING (with the exception of a few commercially availible tapes from RHINO VIDEO and the MST3K INFO CLUB).

The premise of the show depends on which time period the episode you are watching came from. The following comes from Usenet's THE OFFICIAL MST3K FAQ and does a pretty good job of explaining the show:

" Although the details of its premise have changed radically over its 11-year history, Mystery Science Theater 3000 was always about one thing: making fun of bad movies.
In its earliest form on local UHF station KTMA, and in its first season on national TV on The Comedy Channel, the main character was Joel Robinson, a janitor at a top-secret research facility, Gizmonic Institute, who had been marooned on a space ship called the Satellite of Love (hereafter abbreviated as SOL) by two evil scientists, Dr. Clayton Forrester (hereafter abbreviated as Dr. F.) and Dr. Laurence Erhardt. At first operating from within Gizmonic Institute itself, and later from a cave-like hideout called Deep 13, Forrester and Erhardt had an evil plan: They would force Robinson to watch one bad movie after another, in order to study how he would cope with such torture. Joel's only companions on the spaceship were four robots (often referred to collectively as "the bots") he'd built himself: Crow, Tom Servo, Gypsy; and a camera robot named Cambot, through whose mechanical eye we see the proceedings. While Gypsy attended to the details of running the SOL, Crow and Tom's functions were to join Joel in the Mystery Science Theater as he watched the movies.
Over time, there were numerous personnel changes, and alterations in the premise. In the CC-era episodes, Dr. Erhardt departed and Dr. F.'s sidekick was his goofy lab assitant, TV's Frank. In the fifth season on CC, Joel escaped the SOL and was replaced, as Dr. F.'s guinea pig, by unsuspecting temp Mike Nelson. In the final season on CC, Frank had departed and Pearl Forrester, Dr. F.'s domineering mother, moved into Deep 13.
When the series moved to The Sci-Fi Channel, Dr. F. had departed and now Pearl was in charge, continuing to send Mike bad movies. Pearl acquired two sidekicks: a refugee from The Planet of the Apes named Professor Bobo and an omniscient superbeing (whose brain resides outside his skull in a small dish) known as Observer (but who was often called Brain Guy). (By this time, the entire cast of the series when it first debuted had been replaced with new performers.) During that season, the SOL left Earth orbit and Mike and the bots visited a series of planets, with Pearl and her crew in a small space ship chasing them through space--and, later, time. For the final two seasons of the series, Pearl and her crew made their way back to present-day Earth, and settled at Pearl's ancestral home, Castle Forrester, while Mike and the bots again orbited overhead.



But despite the many changes in the series, essentially the same thing happens in each episode: After some brief preliminaries, Dr. F./Pearl sends Joel/Mike the movie and in response Joel/Mike and the bots yell "Movie Sign!" and then rush to their places in the theater as we, the viewers, see Cambot's path through several strange hatchways to his place in the back of the theater. There, Cambot watches as Joel/Mike and the bots take their seats and the movie begins. We can see their silhouettes, sitting in theater seats at the bottom of our TV screens, and as they watch the movie, the three offer riotously funny commentary, satire and general heckling.
The comments from Joel/Mike and the bots, about 700 per episode, are the real heart and point of the show. The comments vary a great deal, from scatological silliness and sarcastic needling one moment, to complex wordplay and obscure references the next. The show runs two hours, enough time to show an entire horrible movie, and sometimes a terrible one-reeler, as well. And three times (about once every half hour) during the movie, Joel/Mike and the bots come out of the theater to the SOL's bridge for short comedy bits known as host segments -- tomfoolery which may or may not have some connection to the film they are watching."





So what kind of bad movies do they show? Actually quite a few of them have all ready been reviewed in WORST OF THE WORST reviews. Sometimes I can actually predict what Joel or Mike and the bots will make fun of, cause I made fun of it myself the first time I saw the movie.

And the little Videomonkeys, they love it too! There is enough musical numbers and stuff to keep them interested, even if the movie is so bad it doesn't and it gives them a break from their spoon-fed Disney crappola...besides the theme from GAMERA is so much more catchy than any celebrity Disney song.

The cool thing is that there are many many MST3K Traders out there all struggling to keep the episodes alive and many also have them on VCD which is CHIM's perfered mode of trade these days...the bad news is that there is about 200 episodes to collect!!!

So here is where I stand so far. I have these episodes:

KTMA-TV Episodes
K04- GAMERA vs BARUGON
K05- GAMERA
K06- GAMERA vs GAOS
K07- GAMERA VS. ZIGRA K08- GAMERA vs GUIRON
K09- PHASE IV
K10- COSMIC PRINCESS
K11- HUMANOID WOMAN
K12- FUGITIVE ALIEN
K13- SST DEATH FLIGHT
K14- MIGHTY JACK
K15- SUPERDOME
K16- CITY ON FIRE
K17- IN THE TIME OF APES
K18- MILLION EYES OF SUMURU
K19- HANGER 18
K20- THE LAST CHASE
K21- LEGEND OF THE DINOSAUR

101- THE CRAWLING EYE
102- ROBOT vs THE AZTEC MUMMY with short: COMMANDO CODY AND THE RADAR MEN FROM THE MOON PT 1
103- MAD MONSTER with short: COMMANDO CODY PT 2
104- WOMEN OF THE PREHISTORIC PLANET
105- THE CORPSE VANISHES with short: COMMANDO CODY PT 3
106- THE CRAWLING HAND
107- ROBOT MONSTER with shorts: COMMANDO CODY PTS 4 and 5
108- THE SLIME PEOPLE with short: COMMANDO CODY PT 6
109- PROJECT MOONBASE with shorts: COMMANDO CODY PTS 7 and 8
110- ROBOT HOLOCAUST with short: COMMANDO CODY PT 9 (partial) 111- MOON ZERO TWO
112- UNTAMED YOUTH
113- THE BLACK SCORPION

201- ROCKET SHIP X-M
203- JUNGLE GODDESS with short: THE PHANTOM CREEPS PT 1
204- CATALINA CAPER
205- ROCKET ATTACK USA with short: THE PHANTOM CREEPS PT 2
206- RING OF TERROR with short: THE PHANTOM CREEPS PT 3
207- WILD REBELS
208- LOST CONTINENT
209- THE HELLCATS
210- KING DINOSAUR with short: X MARKS THE SPOT
211- FIRST SPACESHIP ON VENUS
212- GODZILLA VS. MEGALON
213- GODZILLA VS. THE SEA MONSTER

302- GAMERA
304- GAMERA VS. BARUGON
305- STRANDED IN SPACE
306- TIME OF THE APES
307- DADDY-O with short: ALPHABET ANTICS
308- GAMERA VS. GAOS
311- IT CONQUERED THE WORLD with short: SNOW THRILLS
312- GAMERA VS. GUIRON
313- EARTH VS. THE SPIDER with short: USING YOUR VOICE
314- MIGHTY JACK
315- TEENAGE CAVEMAN with shorts: AQUATIC WIZARDS and CATCHING TROUBLE
316- GAMERA VS. ZIGRA
317- THE VIKING WOMEN vs THE SEA SERPENT
319- WAR OF THE COLOSSAL BEAST with short: MR. B. NATURAL
321- SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS
322- MASTER NINJA I
323- THE CASTLE OF FU-MANCHU
324- MASTER NINJA II

402- THE GIANT GILA MONSTER
403- CITY LIMITS
404- TEENAGERS FROM OUTER SPACE
405- BEING FROM ANOTHER PLANET
406- ATTACK OF THE GIANT LEECHES with short: UNDERSEA KINGDOM PT 1
407- THE KILLER SHREWS with short: JUNIOR RODEO DAREDEVILS
408- HERCULES UNCHAINED
409- THE INDESTRUCTIBLE MAN with short: UNDERSEA KINGDOM PT 2
410- HERCULES AGAINST THE MOON MEN
411- THE MAGIC SWORD
412- HERCULES AND THE CAPTIVE WOMEN
413- MANHUNT IN SPACE with short: GENERAL HOSPITAL PT 1
414- TORMENTED
415- THE BEATNIKS with short: GENERAL HOSPITAL PT 2
416- FIRE MAIDENS OF OUTER SPACE
417- CRASH OF THE MOONS with short: GENERAL HOSPITAL PT 3
418- ATTACK OF THE THE EYE CREATURES
419- THE REBEL SET with short: JOHNNY AT THE FAIR
420- THE HUMAN DUPLICATORS
421- MONSTER A GO GO with short: CIRCUS ON ICE
423- BRIDE OF THE MONSTER with short: HIRED! PT 1
424- "MANOS": THE HANDS OF FATE with short: HIRED! PT 2

501- WARRIOR OF THE LOST WORLD
503- SWAMP DIAMONDS with short: WHAT TO DO ON A DATE
505- MAGIC VOYAGE OF SINBAD
507- I ACCUSE MY PARENTS with short: THE TRUCK FARMER
508- OPERATION DOUBLE 007
509- THE GIRL IN LOVES LANE
510- THE PAINTED HILLS with short: BODY CARE AND GROOMING
511- GUNSLINGER
512- MITCHELL
514- TEEN-AGE STRANGLER with short: IS THIS LOVE?
516- ALIEN FROM L.A.
517- THE BEGINNING OF THE END
520- RADAR SECRET SERVICE with short: LAST CLEAR CHANCE
521- SANTA CLAUS
522- TEEN-AGE CRIME WAVE
523- VILLAGE OF THE GIANTS

601- GIRLS TOWN
602- INVASION U.S.A. with short: A DATE WITH YOUR FAMILY
603- THE DEAD TALK BACK with short: THE SELLING WIZARD
604- ZOMBIE NIGHTMARE
610- THE VIOLENT YEARS
611- LAST OF THE WILD HORSES
612- THE STARFIGHTERS
613- THE SINISTER URGE with short: KEEPING CLEAN AND NEAT
614- SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL
615- KITTEN WITH A WHIP
616- RACKET GIRLS with short: ARE YOU READY FOR MARRIAGE?
617- THE SWORD AND THE DRAGON
618- HIGH SCHOOL BIG SHOT with short: OUT OF THIS WORLD
619- RED ZONE CUBA with short: SPEECH
620- DANGER! DEATH RAY
621- THE BEAST OF YUCCA FLATS with shorts: MONEY TALKS! and PROGRESS ISLAND, U.S.A.
623- THE AMAZING TRANSPARENT MAN with short: THE DAYS OF OUR LIVES
624- SAMSON VS. THE VAMPIRE WOMEN

701- NIGHT OF THE BLOOD BEAST with short: ONCE UPON A HONEYMOON
702- THE BRUTE MAN with short: THE CHICKEN OF TOMORROW
703- DEATHSTALKER AND THE WARRIORS FROM HELL
704- THE INCREDIBLE MELTING MAN
705- ESCAPE 2000
706- LASERBLAST

801- REVENGE OF THE CREATURE
802- THE LEECH WOMAN
803- THE MOLE PEOPLE
804- THE DEADLY MANTIS
805- THE THING THAT COULDN'T DIE
806- THE UNDEAD
807- TERROR FROM THE YEAR 5000
808- THE SHE CREATURE
809- I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF
811- PARTS: THE CLONUS HORROR
812- THE INCREDIBLY STRANGE CREATURES WHO STOPPED LIVING AND BECAME MIXED-UP ZOMBIES
813- JACK FROST
814- RIDING WITH DEATH
815- AGENT FOR H.A.R.M.
816- PRINCE OF SPACE
817- HORROR OF PARTY BEACH
818- DEVIL DOLL
819- INVASION OF THE NEPTUNE MEN
820- SPACE MUTINY
822- OVERDRAWN AT THE MEMORY BANK

902- THE PHANTOM PLANET
903- PUMA MAN
904- WEREWOLF
905- THE DEADLY BEES
906- SPACE CHILDREN with short: CENTURY 21 CALLING
907- HOBGOBLINS
908- THE TOUCH OF SATAN
909- GORGO
910- THE FINAL SACRIFICE
911- DEVIL FISH
912- THE SCREAMING SKULL
913- QUEST OF THE DELTA KNIGHTS

1001- SOULTAKER
1002- THE GIRL IN GOLD BOOTS
1003- MERLIN'S SHOP OF MYSTICAL WONDERS
1004- FUTURE WAR
1005- BLOOD WATERS OF DR. Z
1006- BOGGY CREEK II
1007- TRACK OF THE MOON BEAST
1008- FINAL JUSTICE
1010- IT LIVES BY NIGHT
1011- HORROR OF SPIDER ISLAND
1012- SQUIRM with short: A CASE OF SPRING FEVER
1013 DIABOLIK (the last episode aired)

Plus I have these specials:
-Host segment dress rehersals outakes
-Making of MST3k
-This is MST3K
-Behind the scenes of MST3K


An episode listing can be found here and as you can see, I have a few to go before I'm even close to having a complete MST3K collection. Episodes I particularly would like to get my mitts on are K00- THE GREEN SLIME (pilot, never shown and I'd eat a bug to get it) and the first three KTMA-TV episodes, I've heard they did the Thunderbirds in one of them!

Amazon has a few MST3K DVDs to offer, but they need to release more: