Word: mst3k
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...show, however, MST3K may be kaput. Citing a ratings dip, the Comedy Central network first cut the number of episodes from 24 a year to a paltry but precious six, then banished the show to hours appropriate only for Psychic Friends Network infomercials (2 a.m. weeknights, 7 a.m. Sunday and the big prime-time slot, 5 p.m. Saturday). Late last year Doug Herzog, the new president of Comedy Central, said the network was not picking up the show. Negotiations to devise a new format were unfruitful; two weeks ago, Herzog gave Best Brains, MST3K's production company, permission...
...routine is the same in their big-screen debut, except that Best Brains chose a not-so-bad film, This Island Earth--Universal-International's 1955 space opera about American scientists kidnapped to a distant planet, where they are attacked by macrocephalous monsters. The MST3K prologue is a bit ragged, but once This Island Earth kicks in, so does the Brains' mother wit. It finds the absurd everywhere, from the studio logo ("Doesn't the fact that it's Universal make it International?") to the ethereal, annoying ringing sound that accompanies the aliens ("Now we know what the world sounds...
...typical MST3K show has perhaps 700 of these asides. There are fewer in this riff on This Island Earth--the whole thing, ruthlessly pared down, lasts only 73 minutes--but watching it in a crowd offers a different high. As the gags pile up remorselessly, and the viewer strains to keep up with the story line and the cutting subtext, a furious but benign apnea takes hold. You can't enjoy a good long laugh because you'll miss too much; you must let it explode in short blasts. It's the happiest form of internal injury...
Next month the Laserblast episode will take MST3K out in style, with deftly flicked allusions to, among others, Eddie Deezen ("heir to the Arnold Stang fortune"), Ram Dass, Georgia O'Keeffe, Haile Selassie, Sister Mary Elephant, Iron Eyes Cody and Roddy McDowall ("as Dr. Casabamelon"). Crow notes that "this movie was run through a highly technical process called 'tension extraction.'" And in an especially inert section of Laserblast, Servo says what might be said of any MST3K experiment: "There's a point where it stops being a movie...
...actor-writers answered questions about their favorite MST3K movie (Manos -- the Hands of Fate) or about the off-camera relationship of Murphy and Beaulieu to their puppets Tom and Crow (Murphy: "We have a little place up in the Poconos"; Beaulieu: "Crow and I are not on speaking terms"). The creative staff, led by producer Jim Mallon, signed autographs for hours. At another panel, Beverly Garland, plucky star of three Roger Corman dramas savaged by MST3K, said, "My God, I wish we had had that dialogue when we were doing the picture!" The convention moved to Minneapolis' State Theater...