Huzzah! I actually like watching most of the movies. I got started watching MST3K one summer when there was nothing to do but laze around and watch movies. Some Godzilla movie is on, cool, then add a bunch of guys making wisecracks, and it was the best thing ever.
I do my own jokes, or try to, or carry on trains of thought the guys on-screen have started.
Yeah, Ryu is a big talker. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that of course.)
I like Mike, but then again, I cannot ever tell who the speaker is, so what do I know?
Either suits me, although Mike is my favorite.
Yes.
I like Mike. I like the sketches, too.
Sorry, I like Joel and Mike. I don’t have to choose, so I don’t. (Addams Family AND The Munsters. Star Trek AND Star Wars. Chocolate AND Vanilla.)
Sometimes I like the sketches better than the movies. The sketches are why I started watching. I especially loved the later stuff, the Planet of the Ape stuff and Pearl. I never liked Pearl while Dr. Forrester was still on the show, but I loved her when she became the crazy random Bobo-and-Brain-Guy-bossing maniac.
My favorite is Pod People. This was the first episode I saw more than a few minutes of. So it’s the first time I heard such classic phrases as, “Meanwhile, in another movie…”
I have a real fondness for “The Screaming Skull.” It has an odd sort of “Dark Shadows” quality to it, if you know what I mean. (Ok, I know you don’t. But I still like it, Ok?)
I also have to thank MST for making “Batman and Robin” so enjoyable. Without MST I would have watched two minutes of this when it came on cable, then turned it off. Thanks to MST, it’s one of my favorite movie “experiences.” It’s the movie that was made to be MST-ed.
I really liked it, personally – but then, I would, being hopelessly addicted to Shakespeare and stuff.
Actually, I saw a very blah production of Hamlet at St. Louis Shakespeare a while back (why are all the worst productions I’ve seen Hamlets?) and during the last scene my brain kept supplying the riffs from the MST3K ep… 
Now then, the poll…
I suspect, regarding the Joel or Mike thing, that most people tend to like the one they saw first. I’ve mostly seen Sci-Fi eps, so Mike for me. Though Joel’s cool too.
I like the sketches. Though there are some bad ones too, of course.
Favorite episode: Hobgoblins. Squirm gets lots of points too, not so much for the movie itself, but for the brilliant “Case of Spring Fever” short, which features perhaps the most terrifying creature ever committed to film, the evil spring-loving imp Coily. :eek:
Least favorite: The Incredibly Strange Creatures that Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies, because the movie itself is just too icky to make the experience worth it.
(Random MST3K-related side note: I got my brother Manos: The Hands of Fate on DVD for Christmas. Imagine my surprise when I found out he’d done the same for me… ;))
Joel-because he was the first. It is like the James Bond thing with Connery then the rest. Having said that the I feel that the best shows with Mike.
Host segments-I enjoy most of them and cannot think of any that I would FF through.
Favorites-Final Sacrifice, Skydivers, Manos the Hands of Fate, Racket Girls, Gamera vs. Guiron and many more. I also cannot think of any show they did I will not watch.
I discovered it while talking on the phone with a friend. I had the TV on in the background flipping the channels and came across a giant jet powered tutle flying in space! After we hung up I kept watching it not sure what to make of it. At first I was annoyed with Joel and the bots talking, but then started listening and almost fell out of my chair laughing. I was definitely hooked from then on.
:smack: please ignore the poor grammar and spelling in the above post.
<whiny kid voice>
ROWSDOWER!!
</whiny kid voice>
Sorry…reflex reaction. 
I love them both but I think Mike is funnier and maybe more willing to sacrifice himself for the sake of the joke. If you miss these guys as much as I do, be sure to check out Mike’s two hilarious books: Movie Mega-Cheese and Mind Over Matters. He posts an essay on his site regularly which is usually very funny. He also has a novel due out shortly.
As for favorite episodes. mine are: The Screaming Skull, Danger! Deathray, Space Children, Quest of the Delta Knights, Horror of Party Beach & Soultaker.
Favorite shorts: Mr. B Natural & Robot Rumpus
Unwatchable: Angel’s Revenge, Wild World of Batwoman
My mom’s favorite MST3K is Hamlet, but she’s an English professor who shows Mel Gibson’s version or Kenneth Branagh’s version every year, so make of that what you will. (She also was deeply frightened by that movie with the talking head that lives in a hatbox and commands people to do its bidding, back when it first came out and was un Mist-ed.)
I never saw any Joel shows, so I can’t weigh in on that.
My own personal favorite is… oh, crap. Forgot the name. It’s the one where the guy can make himself invisible with his watch, and he drives a truck… yes! “Riding with Death!” And halfway through it turns into a movie about racecar drivers instead of truckers, and I’ve never been able to follow the plot from there. “parts - the clonus horror” was pretty good, too.
The host segments are boring to me, but on the other hand, if they weren’t there, then we wouldn’t have any sense of the characters.
The Mike Era ushered in better writing, so Mike wins.
The sketches could be hilarious; I’m thinking of the one where Servo gets a new head, a plastic one from some sort of doll, that sends Crow into a kind of dazed terror. Mike pulls off the head leaving a decapitated Servo to run around while Crow really loses it. I also liked the one where Servo got really big and spoke like Tor Johnson; “ME NO LIKE MOVIE…MOVIE BAD!”
Never had much use for Joel’s invention exchanges.
Best eps: “Red Zone Cuba”, “Jack Frost”, “The Brute Man”
Best shorts: “Why Study Industrial Arts?”, “A Date with Your Family”, “The Days of Our Years”, “Out of This World”
1: I didn’t start watching until the Sci-Fi days (am I the only one pissed off that not only did they cancel, but they had to hype up the fact they were?) so the vast majority of the shows I’ve seen feature Mike, which weighs heavily in his favor. I do like Joel’s delivery better though.
2: The sketches can be hillarious, though sometimes I have to wonder what they were thinking.
3: Favorite episodes: I was going to say Final Sacrifice, partly because it’s pretty good, partly because of Larry Czonka (sp?), and mostly because of the circumstances under which I watched it last. But reading through everyone’s personal lists, I have to include some more:[ul]
[li]The Incredibly Strange Creatures that Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies-or whatever the hell the title is; you know which one I mean. This is the first one I can remember watching, even though I know I’d seen others prior to it. “They’ve got the microphone in a Saltine box across the street”[/li][li]Red Zone Cuba-just the sheer garbage-ness of the film. Something about “we will attack at dawn”, cut to attack scene in mid-afternoon…[/li][li]Hobgoblins-absolutley awesome. “Paint my muscle car prune color!” The fight with lawn equipment, the ultra-organized make-out spot, the song Mike and the bots sing when they try to escape, and everything that has to do with the bar. A close second, if not actually first.[/li][li]Riding with Death-Don’t remember much about the MST-ing of it, just the fact that the second half has no relation whatsoever to the first. Oh, yeah…just remembered…is this the one where Servo becomes a trucker? That was hillarious.[/ul][/li]Just as an aside, check out the imdb.com trivia for Manos, the Hands of Fate. And I’ve always thought that naming “the hands of fate” Manos is about as inspired as naming a robot Tobor.
Oh no, those are two more of my favorites. I even bought the un-Mistied version of Batwoman before the DVD.
Mike, because I don’t like Joel’s sleepy thing. It’s annoying.
Almost none of the interstitials are watchable. I, too, am perplexed by how such great comedians can do such bad work.
My favorite is Prince of Space. “As I have said before, in my remark of 26th June, your ray guns have no effect on me whatsoever.” Manos comes in second.
I can’t choose a least favorite, but Angel’s Revenge is one that sticks out in my mind as unwatchable. MST3K comes in phases like SNL does.
My favorite bot was Crow. He was just such a complete weirdo.
I like both Joel and Mike, so I prefer the episodes where Joel hosted, because they were both on the show. I loved Joel’s delivery. And he always seemed basically good-natured; Mike’s humor (as well as some of the other writers’) seems to have just a hint of mean-spiritedness to it. Everybody who left the show (Joel, then Frank Coniff, then Trace Beaulieu) took a little bit of the charm with them, but didn’t outright kill it – one of my favorite episodes was Werewolf, which was towards the end.
Some of you people are just high. Many of the sketches were brilliant, and they’re integral to the show. The best were in Fire Maidens from Outer Space, especially the Lever That Controls Everything. But other highlights were: The Jet Jaguar Fight Song, The Master Ninja Theme Song, Servo’s Creepy Girl Song, Joel & the bots acting out the credits from Cave Dwellers, the gang acting out the recording studio scene from Pod People, the Godzilla Genealogy Bop – and that’s just the start. I was a big fan of the invention exchanges too, like the cheese phone (with our new curdless model).
Favorite episode is Godzilla vs. Megalon. Master Ninja I (“Lee, you want to check those bags at the door?”), Pod People (“Hmmm… furry potatoes.”), Fire Maidens from Outer Space (“Jupiter: America’s Dairyland!”) and Werewolf (“Vhat you are saying is absolootly incradabul.”) are runners-up.
I still can’t make it through Castle of Fu-Manchu, or any of the Coleman Francis movies; even with the jokes they’re just too horrible. And Manos comes close to being unwatchable, Torgo or no.
Favorite bot is Crow, of course.
And new question: What’s with all the anti-Mary Jo Pehl (Mrs. Forrester) bias? She’s [url=“http://www.ironminds.com/ironminds/issues/000817/dreams.shtml”]an enormously funny writer* and had a great attitude for the show. Plus, I always liked the Mrs. Forrester character, especially in the early days when they had her look exactly like Dr. Forrester including the mustache.
And what’s with all the people who don’t preview their posts before they hit “submit” on a board they know doesn’t allow users to edit their posts?
The Mary Jo Pehl articles are right here, and another one here.
I couldn’t stand Movie Megacheese. Kevin Murphy’s book was uneven, but I think I prefer his general take on cinema (even if he does disappear up his own expletive deleted on occasion).
Personally, I think the show jumped the shark when TV’s Frank left. I liked Mary Jo Pehl’s Mrs. Forrester after Trace left (before, she was too cliched for my taste), but she couldn’t save it.
2. The sketches are wildly uneven. Many of them are good, especially in the late-Joel/early-Mike era. About the same number are mediocre. A handful just aren’t good at all. One or two are, IMHO, worse than the movie, although I can’t think of titles off the top of my head.
3. Earth vs. the Spider is going to be the quintessential MST3K for me forever. I don’t know if it’s altogether their best (I missed quite a bit of the first and last seasons), but it’s the one I like the most. I also remember really enjoying Prince of Space, which has already been mentioned.
4. Gypsy, of course. (Who else?) Although I wish we’d gotten to know Cam-bot better.
The Golden Age of MST3k was episodes 512 to 624, inclusive. Mike hosting with TV’s Frank in Deep 13. Joel could be great with camp, but I get the feeling he wanted the show to be accessible to kids. Either that or he just he fostered an annoying paternal facade with the bots, shushing them when their comedy got dark or a tad blue. I never liked that. Plus Kevin and Trace seemed to be a bit more relazed around Mike. You’d hear them improv and laugh more. And you just couldn’t make dirty refueling jokes around Joel.
My persoanl favorites are The Starfighters, Skydivers, Space Mutinyand Incredibly Strange Creatures…. Oh and the shorts. Love the shorts.