For Mystery Science Theater 3000, 2017 was, in a word, huge. In April, the movie-riffing show awoke from an 18-year hibernation, carving up 14 fresh cinematic turkeys for Netflix and opening up a whole new comedic universe of crab hats, talking chimps, and hyperlocal monster myths. That was followed by a North…
Here’s what’s up in the world of TV for Sunday, July 30. All times are Eastern.
There is nothing more galling to loyal fans, more creatively bankrupt, more wholly unnecessary than the “revamp”—taking a beloved property and giving it a splashy makeover that renders it nigh-unrecognizable, all in the patently desperate hope to appeal to a new audience and extend its lifespan. Except maybe,…
2017 continues to be the year of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Following the Netflix premiere of its 11th season this spring, series creator Joel Hodgson announced plans to tour with the ‘bots and fellow carbon-based cast members Felicia Day, Jonah Ray, Hampton Yount, and Rebecca Hanson. Now we’ve learned that the…
Following the successful launch of Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Return on Netflix, Joel Hodgson and the rest of the MST3K gang decided to take their movie-riffing act on the road with this summer’s Watch Out For Snakes! tour. We’re absolutely shameless about our love for MST3K here at The A.V. Club, and so we’re…
Following Mystery Science Theater 3000’s successful Kickstarter campaign and subsequent return from The Great TV Beyond, Jonah and the bots are hitting the road. As series creator Joel Hodgson told The A.V. Club, MST3K will bring its movie-riffing act to 29 cities in this summer’s Watch Out For Snakes Tour, with…
Season 11 of Mystery Science Theater 3000 made big Netflix stars out of Crow T. Robot and Tom Servo, so they’ve more than earned the right to talk back to their new digital overlords. They started by riffing one of the streaming service’s biggest hits, and now they’re sitting down with Netflix CCO (pronounced,…
Here’s what’s up in the world of TV for Friday, April 14 and Saturday, April 15. All times are Eastern.
Joel Hodgson wants feedback about the new Mystery Science Theater 3000. We’re in the lounge at the Music Box Theatre, the historic Chicago movie house where Hodgson has just screened the first episode of the movie-riffing series’ 11th season, which comes to Netflix on April 14. If the laughter seemed especially robust…
The original run of Mystery Science Theater 3000 spanned multiple broadcast formats (UHF and cable) and broadcasters (Twin Cities station KTMA, The Comedy Channel, Comedy Central, Syfy) for 11 seasons, totaling 197 episodes—“experiments” in the terminology of its in-show search for the worst movie ever made. Thanks to…
When Netflix revives a beloved TV series, it doesn’t always provide the primary evidence for why that show was beloved in the first place. Gilmore Girls’ popularity on the platform was a contributing factor in Netflix ordering Gilmore Girls: A Year In The Life, but Fuller House was not preceded by the acquisition of…
For years now there has been a bitter behind-the-scenes struggle over notoriously shitty movie Manos: The Hands Of Fate. Despite the film dying a mercifully swift death upon its initial release and disappearing into the wilds of public domain (where it only existed in the form of a crappy print), it resurfaced and…
Welcome back to AVQ&A, where we throw out a question for discussion among the staff and readers. Consider this a prompt to compare notes on your interface with pop culture, to reveal your embarrassing tastes and experiences, and to ponder how our diverse lives all led us to convene here together. Got a question you’d…
Welcome back to AVQ&A, where we throw out a question for discussion among the staff and readers. Consider this a prompt to compare notes on your interface with pop culture, to reveal your embarrassing tastes and experiences, and to ponder how our diverse lives all led us to convene here together. Got a question you’d…
“J.R.R. Tolkien’s kid catches shit, but he just wants to protect his father’s work. Same thing.” So says Joe Warren, whose father, Hal Warren, directed what many people consider to be among the worst films of all time. Shot in 1966 for a miniscule $19,000 in the badlands outside of El Paso, Manos: The Hands Of Fate…
Upon the re-release of Miami Connection, Rob Humanick of Slant Magazine commented that the film should have been featured on an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and that it “would have likely been seen as a prize specimen and [they would have] went for the jugular.” This October, that injustice will be…
This November, streaming video will once more justify its existence by serving up a nourishing bounty of Mystery Science Theater 3000 reruns on Thanksgiving Day. (That’s American Thanksgiving—sorry, Rowsdower.) Entering the third year of its Shout! Factory-enabled resurrection, the MST3K Turkey Day marathon is on for…
Characters added in the middle of a TV show’s run get a bad rap. For every Cousin Oliver or Scrappy-Doo, there are characters who actually added something to their show, even rejuvenating a longrunning series’ later seasons. Some start as stand-ins for departed cast members, then take on expanded roles—others begin as…
Plenty of bad movies have had their soundtrack released on vinyl. Even The Phantom Menace soundtrack got a deluxe LP edition earlier this year. Now comes the album that nobody has been waiting for: Ship To Shore PhonoCo. will be releasing the soundtrack album to Manos: The Hands Of Fate onto glorious vinyl.
The A.V. Club began handing out end-of-the-TV-season superlatives yesterday, honoring the best in drama and reality TV, from Cookie Lyon’s cutting putdowns to Robert Durst’s fateful on-mic carelessness. Today, we conclude the 2014-15 TV Club Awards with picks from the season’s best comedies and animated series,…