I suspect the guy who doesn’t ‘get it’ thinks the worst is sitting in a room with someone who does.
I like some MST3Ks but the majority of the ones I’ve seen aren’t as side-splitting hilarious as a lot of the fans think they are. A friend of mine sent me loads of videotapes filled with MST3Ks, and after I watched several duds, I asked, somewhere (I don’t think it was on here) which ones were worth watching. The answer I got was “all of them”. I chose “no more” and have been re-using the tapes.
To get back to the OP in a way, I also kind of resent what the show has done to a large portion of the movie viewing audience, especially the geek portion. I realize that the show has no control over how goofballs react, but I still don’t like it.
What’s insanely fun, at least in my little corner of reality, is MiSTing nature programs - making the animals say stuff. Like watching a killer whale do a serious number on a seal, tossing him around like a five-hundred pound football… and make the seal say “Wheeeeeeeee!”
Best of all, I don’t even need an audience to get laughs.
My favorite MST3K bit was the segment they did after the short Catching Trouble, which is a horrible little movie about a supposed wildlife expert who goes out and torments innocent animals in the name of science. My group was bellowing in outrage as we watched this dude trying to whack a bear cub out of a tree with a stick, or whatever it was. Joel and the bots are expressing similar sentiments, and apologizing on behalf of humanity.
Then they come out for the host sequence, which involves putting an action figure representing the wildlife expert into a canvas sack and pounding him with a mallet, or other similar abuse. My group just howled with laughter, screaming, whistling, falling off the couch, rolling on the floor. A couple of people had to run to the bathroom before it was over lest they piss themselves.
Oh, and Crowe’s “waffles” schtick was pretty funny. My brother and I still occasionally bring it up.
When I was a wee lass, my uncle would take me, along with his friends, to films at his University. One time, we went to “Godzilla vs King Kong”, and they riffed it the entire time. Ever since, I’ve had an appreciation for what I consider to be doubling the entertainment value of a film or tv show by clever comentary.
When I first saw MST3K back in 1990 (Comedy Central, “Robotman vs Aztec Mummy”), I was absolutely hooked. But living in Canada (like the OP’er), it was impossible to get my hands on the tapes. That was before the www and Rhino.
And without MST3k, I never would have found out about the genius that is Colman Francis, or knew what a sidehack was, or have been entranced by the haunting Torgo theme.
A funny thing; I went to an IMAX showing of MST3K: The Movie in Winnipeg, MB (and everyone there was a fan, there’s so few Canadian fans: I’ve been explaining to my fellow countrymen this show for over a decade), and the entire audience was making riffs to top the riffs onscreen!
Unfortunately, this may have been partly because Grammercy Pictures, the prople that produced MST3K: The Movie, insisted that Best Brains take many of the riffs out of the movie. This was done because (A) Grammercy wanted more time for the laughter to die down between the jokes, and (B) Grammercy’s test audience consisted of drooling idiots who didn’t “get” most of the jokes, thereby requiring the existing jokes to be dumbed down.
Favorite line EVER, although it was in awful taste.
From Rocketship X-M, my favorite MSTing ever.
Shortly after the main characters have passed out from the increase in gravity (???) in the rocketship and are all lying on the floor as if dead…
Tom Servo: All right, who made the Kool-Aid?
Particularly hysterical because I had just begun college in Jim Jones’s Indiana hometown, and there were many allusions to him during quite a few of the Orientation Week skits.
And then of course the “Ho-ho, HO.” line in Space Mutiny…
SCENE: The bad guy alien points his zapper ray at somebody in a swimming pool and fires. The water suddenly turns into boiling bubbles, and the person who was swimming is now only a skeleton sinking back into the water.
TOM: “Wow, too much chlorine?”
CROW: “Another Jenny Craig success story!”
BTW, addressing the OP, this term is also used to refer to people who apply the treatment to any other medium, including the written word. You can find many websites out there, especially ones affiliated with the MST3K Usenet news groups, that collect these efforts (which include bad fanfic and spam).
Oh, and by the way:
PAUL: You’re a hustler.
TOM SERVO (as Natalie): No, I vas een Hustler.