Celebrate five years of Mile High Sci-Fi with Queen Of Outer Space

Mile High Sc-Fi has been talking back to bad movies for half a decade now, honing the fine art of movie riffing in front of a live audience to a razor’s edge while building a loyal following of fans. On the eve of the five-year anniversary show—a return to the ’50s B-movie schlockfest that started it all, Queen Of Outer Space, with Zsa Zsa Gabor—we talked to Matt Vogl (half of MHSF, along with Harrison Rains) about the best and worse moments of the show’s five-year run.

On returning to where it all began:

“We’d been talking about doing it for a while. The original idea to do reruns was that those would be months off, but we discovered that doesn’t happen—we can’t help ourselves, we end up writing new shows anyway. And since this was the first thing we did, we didn’t have the stuff we have now technically, the soundboards and stuff. And it was seen by 25 people originally, so now maybe it will be seen by 35. Plus Zsa Zsa Gabor is about to lose a leg, and she lost about $10 million to Bernie Madoff, so we wanted to do something for her. She’ll get a residual check for about $12.”

Favorite movie they’ve done:

“Probably Poltergeist. For whatever reason, that was one we remembered being terrified of [as kids], and it was so not scary. It was really fun to be able to go back to your childhood and screw with one of your childhood memories.”

Worst movie they’ve done:

“Far and away, the worst was Battlefield Earth. I didn’t actually perform it with the guys. I watched it 12 times to prepare for the performance, but then my dad died. Going to my father’s funeral was less painful than watching that movie another time would have been.”

Best audience moments

“There’s a few. One was when The Onion ad guy—we’d been hounding him to send us new Onion videos [to show before the film], and he didn’t. We’d been burning videos off YouTube, and they changed the encryption so we couldn’t do it anymore. So we just put up his cell phone number on screen and told everyone to text him to tell him what they thought of him for not getting us the videos. He was at dinner and his phone just blew up. Then we did it again the next night.

“In Planet Of The Apes, we told the crowd they had to hang around until after the credits, because there was a bit at the end that was the funniest thing we’d ever done. During the credits, we started playing the Dora The Explorer song “I’m The Map”—it’s just this incredibly annoying song where they repeat, “I’m the map” over and over again. We looped it and then during the credits we just left, so after they sat listening to the song for three and half minutes, there was nothing. We were upstairs having a beer. We got a lot of ‘assholes’ and ‘fuck yous’ for that one. We try to involve the audience, but we also like to goof on them.”

Highlights

“Doing the show at Red Rocks was definitely the highlight, just doing it in front of that many people. The other highlight was this weekend, going to the new theater. The new theater is just amazing. When we moved from the old [Starz] FilmCenter to Cinebarre, we got the nice new theater, but it changed the character of the show, being in a strip mall in Thornton, next to a WalMart. We’re more urban, gritty. Now we’ve got both, the nice theater and the urban setting, and we’re psyched about that.”

Lowlights

“The lowlights in a lot of ways are the highlights, too. When we were at the Oriental doing Reefer Madness, we had Harrison’s brother come in dressed as a stripper cop. The lights came up and he said, ‘You’re under arrest,’ and we’re like, ‘For what?’ and he says, ‘For being too sexy,’ and he rips off his shirt and dances to some disco for a minute, then ran off stage, but he tripped over a monitor and broke his arm.”

“My favorite was when we were doing Poltergeist for the first time: We thought it would be funny to have the emergency exit bust open, and have smoke and a strobe light come on, and my son come out in a Carol Anne wig and say, ‘They’re heeere,’ and run up the aisle. It’s exploiting my son, but hey. The smoke machine was supposed to be fire-alarm safe, but Harrison thought we should test it out. So he goes and sets it up, and I get to the theater about 6 p.m., and there’s fire trucks and about a hundred people outside, and I walk up to him and say, ‘Please tell me we didn’t have anything to do with this,’ and he says, ‘We had everything to do with this.’  It’s a Friday night, there’s like three movies opening, and we set off the fire alarm in a crowded theater. And when they get to the fire exit, what do they see? Smoke! We could have killed a bunch of people, but we didn’t, so it was hilarious. That’s the highest lowlight.”

On what to expect tonight from Queen Of Outer Space

“We’ve got some really good stuff tonight. We got a carburetor we’re giving away each night. The first round of beer is on us—we’re buying everyone’s first beer. We’re going to have Zsa Zsa’s leg; we’ve got 500 ping-pong balls; we’ve got a splash zone—everyone in the splash zone will get a poncho to wear, that’s all I will say about that. We’re pulling out all the stops on this one.”

Mile High Sci-Fi presents Queen Of Outer Space shows tonight and tomorrow at 8 p.m. at the Denver FilmCenter/Colfax (2510 E. Colfax, 303-595-3456). Tickets are $12. For more info, visit www.milehighscifi.com.