And yet, I still haven't discovered what the heck "Snarf Farms" are.
October 21, 2014 8:48 PM   Subscribe

Figuring out some of the more obscure references in an episode of MST3k is a labor of love for some devoted fans. The folks over at The Annotated MST3k (previously) have been at it for eleven years now and have 113 episodes completely annotated. But for those who prefer their annotations in real time, you're in luck. The official YouTube channel for the show has posted two completely annotated episodes (Mitchell and Manos - The Hands of Fate) for your viewing pleasure.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI (39 comments total) 41 users marked this as a favorite
 
Damnit Mosley, I have term papers due Thursday!
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 9:13 PM on October 21, 2014 [1 favorite]


Has anybody ever successfully sourced the "Hellooo, hellooo, Mister Magic Plane Person..." bit from MST3K: The Movie? Ever since I saw it, it seemed like a reference that I should recognize from something, but it continues to elude me.
posted by Strange Interlude at 9:44 PM on October 21, 2014


...so I'm not going to write that book after all
posted by The Whelk at 9:58 PM on October 21, 2014 [3 favorites]


It's almost mind-boggling how they were able to write the show without the internet. I wonder how often they just bought a movie or album just to get a certain line exactly right.

And yet when you got a reference you were sure not everyone got, there was a greater satisfaction than there would be if you Googled it. Or even when you stumbled across a source much later and realized "So that's what that was from! ...Or when you thought some funny wisecrack wasn't a reference, then find out it actually was, to your embarrassment.
posted by TheSecretDecoderRing at 12:59 AM on October 22, 2014 [1 favorite]


To this day when wandering through the underbrush with friends, someone will have to cover their mouth and muffle out "Watch out for snakes!", leaving the rest of us to wonder... who said that?
posted by FatherDagon at 1:27 AM on October 22, 2014 [6 favorites]


These are great. It does make you wonder how it came to be that the ten hippest people in America all lived in Minneapolis in the early '90s?
posted by ob1quixote at 1:37 AM on October 22, 2014 [9 favorites]


It was Patton, he read my book.
posted by kyrademon at 3:46 AM on October 22, 2014 [2 favorites]


My apologies. It would appear that Manos does not have annotations, at least not yet. I'm guessing they'll be adding those to the uploaded video soon. In the meantime, Mitchell awaits!
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 5:26 AM on October 22, 2014


"Hellooo, hellooo, Mister Magic Plane Person..."

I always thought this was just a take off on the nebbish Hellooo voice that Billy Crystal does.
posted by tetsuo at 6:40 AM on October 22, 2014


ob1quixote: It does make you wonder how it came to be that the ten hippest people in America all lived in Minneapolis in the early '90s?

Pffft, that was just spil-over from St. Paul, where we were all that awesome -- plus also, too modest to tell the rest of America. You really had to be there -- and by "there" I mean the St. Clair Broiler, Seven Corners Hardware, Ax Man, the William Marvy Company, and Porky's.
posted by wenestvedt at 7:28 AM on October 22, 2014 [3 favorites]


In the meantime, Mitchell awaits!

I can't wait to get home, pop a Schlitz, and spill it on myself while watching this.
posted by octobersurprise at 7:40 AM on October 22, 2014 [5 favorites]


My MST3K mystery was the sketch about petting the llama and giving Mikey some matches. (It's from THE AMAZING TRANSPARENT MAN episode.) I kept thinking that was taken from an actual tv show or play, but the internet seems to think they just made it up. It's some of the creepiest stuff they ever wrote.
posted by wittgenstein at 8:34 AM on October 22, 2014 [2 favorites]


I thought it was very cool to see the annotated video on the "official" channel. If you have a hankering for more MST3k, they recently put a whole slew of them up for rent/purchase at vimeo.

Also looks like there will be a Turkey Day Marathon event with Joel again this year. He tweeted that he was prepping back in July. I'd love to see a MetaFilter Turkey Day live chat again this year. Last year's was a blast!
posted by Otis at 8:37 AM on October 22, 2014 [2 favorites]


I kept thinking that was taken from an actual tv show or play, but the internet seems to think they just made it up. It's some of the creepiest stuff they ever wrote.

Mine favorite creepy line was the "Venison! Venison!" bit from the "Circus on Ice" short. The Annotated MST3k site thinks its a riff on "Attica! Attica!", but I don't think that's right. It sounds like something from a deep dark corner, like an imagined line from "Lord of the Flies".
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 8:46 AM on October 22, 2014


Joel mentioned at DragonCon that they were doing internet Turkey Day again this year. (Sorry not to mention that before, I didn't exactly keep a transcript.)
posted by JHarris at 9:21 AM on October 22, 2014


I watched the Mitchell annotation, and I was surprised at just how many of the riffs I thought I got, but really didn't. I suppose that's part of the beauty of the show. I remember watching episodes with my nephew, who was probably six or seven at the time, and he would laugh at jokes I knew he didn't really understand, clearly because he was just ready to laugh... The anticipation of a laugh made him laugh, and the MST3K guys just gave him a trigger.

I love this show. I've been slowly introducing it to my own five-year-old son -- he calls it "the robot show" -- and I'm itching for the day when he has the attention span that will allow him to appreciate it, even if he doesn't yet understand it.

I'm huge!
posted by gern at 9:23 AM on October 22, 2014 [1 favorite]


My MST3K mystery was the sketch about petting the llama and giving Mikey some matches. (It's from THE AMAZING TRANSPARENT MAN episode.) I kept thinking that was taken from an actual tv show or play, but the internet seems to think they just made it up.

Aaaaah, that's one of the funniest things they ever did. (Here you go!) I think there might be some upsetting real life encounters behind that sketch....

A lot of things they do aren't references, especially in host segments. A key to enjoying MST3K on a deeper level is realizing that, even when they refer to something, it's rarely just a reference, there's a joke that the reference is part of.
posted by JHarris at 9:26 AM on October 22, 2014 [3 favorites]


What's a good episode to start kids with, do you think?
posted by Chrysostom at 9:37 AM on October 22, 2014


What's a good episode to start kids with, do you think?

I would go with something with good production values yet remains goofy. The quintet of Universal pictures they did at the start of season eight such as "The Deadly Mantis", "Revenge of the Creature" and "The Mole People" are pretty good bets.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 9:57 AM on October 22, 2014


I was hooked with THe Projected Man, The Deadly Bees, and The Leech Woman - I was about 10?
posted by The Whelk at 10:00 AM on October 22, 2014


These are great. It does make you wonder how it came to be that the ten hippest people in America all lived in Minneapolis in the early '90s?

Well --

Joel Hodgson was the one who got it all underway. He grew up around those parts, but he had recently hit it big as a stand-up comic. But he became disillusioned with the whole fame track, the hollowness of show business. The anecdote I've heard is that a studio making a braindead sitcom wanted him to act in it. He didn't like the project, he thought it wasn't funny, and refused. They shot back a counter-offer for twice the money. It was the confidence, from the makers, that the reason he didn't want to participate was just him negotiating for more money, that it couldn't be that he just didn't want to do that, that disturbed him.

So he went back to Minnesota and bummed around doing things for a bit. Particularly, he started making robot sculptures out of found objects and sold them to a local art store. Eventually he met with Jim Mallon (co-producer, usually voice of Gypsy) , who worked programming local KTMA-23. They had a thing where they tried not just to rely on outside programming like many local stations do, but to make some of their own stuff. Working with him there were Kevin Murphy (Tom Servo) and Trace Beaulieu (original Crow). They got together and made a show and aired it late Saturday nights on KTMA.

After they made two or three they set up a fan club line people could call to leave messages on. The next day they came in and found the tape was full -- people loved it. That's when they began to suspect they had something.

Mike was a local standup they found working at TGIFridays. The others were also mostly found locally. I think the midwest is a great untapped source of ingenuity and originality. It's the same area that gave us Garrison Keillor, after all. (BTW, Mike Nelson's novel Death Rat is all about the weirdness of Minnesota.)

What's a good episode to start kids with, do you think?

* Any of the Finno-Russian fantasy movies, they're actually not bad films but silly and goofy and whimsical. Those are The Day The Earth Froze (422 Joel CC), The Magic Voyage of Sinbad (505 Joel CC), The Sword and the Dragon (617 Mike CC) and Jack Frost (813 Mike Sci-Fi).

* The two Christmas movies. The first Santa Claus Conquers The Martians (321 Joel CC), is one of the great bad movies, has a long reputation even outside of MST, and is one of the best episodes. The second, however, Santa Claus (521 Mike CC), is just as weird and just as good an episode, and actually a little heart-breaking in telling the story of poor Lupita.

* The whole Gamera line, Gamera (302 Joel CC), Gamera vs Barugon (304 Joel CC), Gamera vs Gaos (308 Joel CC), Gamera vs Guiron (312 Joel CC) and Gamera vs Zigra (316 Joel CC). Of these, especially Vs Guiron, probably the funniest and weirdest of the lot. Other good Sandy Frank intro movies are Time of the Apes (316 Joel CC) and maybe the two Fugitive Alien movies, Fugitive Alien (310 Joel CC) and Star Force: Fugitive Alien II (318 Joel CC), although those last two, while made as Japanese kids programming, are a little talky. (I left out Mighty Jack, of a similar lineage, as that one was edited to near incomprehensibility by Sandy Frank.)

* Also, the Godzilla movies. Godzilla vs Megalon (212 Joel CC) and Godzilla vs The Sea Monster (213 Joel CC). The second is actually kind of a dud, but the first is one of the best episodes, and a great introduction to anyone, not just kids.

MST3K is interesting in that they actually understood that a lot of their audience were kids and tried to remain appropriate for children, so most episodes are at least okay. The worst they got was a usage of "shit" in MST3K The Movie (probably to avoid getting pegged as PG -- it's probably the only thing that made them PG-13) and some allusions that will go over the head of kids. Of course, some movies are talking heads or Serious Adult Drama, so I wouldn't introduce them with Rocketship XM or most of its fellow cadre of gray 50s Sci-Fi, or for that matter Hamlet with its Shakespeare jokes.
posted by JHarris at 10:04 AM on October 22, 2014 [11 favorites]


I'd have to think of others, but Santa Conquers the Martians immediately came to mind also. It's a good thing you asked this late in the year.

Also, "action"-oriented movies like Master Ninja and Cave Dwellers are goofy fun. And in color.
posted by TheSecretDecoderRing at 11:20 AM on October 22, 2014 [3 favorites]


I had discounted Master Ninja for being too 70s and talky, but there is a lot of silliness there, and hey, kinda-ninjas. Also, once the kids have Lee Van Cleef fixated in their minds, you can maybe introduce them to some awesome westerns.

Cave Dwellers might be good. Some of the Hercules movies perhaps, although you might end up having to explain things to kids like Joel has to to the 'bots during one of the host segments. Maybe Catalina Caper, although you might have to explain what "hopped up on goofballs" means when you get to Little Richard's musical number. Eegah is also pretty goofy, mostly, but there are some slightly disturbing scenes with Eegah and Roxy and Roxy's dad where they're in the cave.
posted by JHarris at 11:29 AM on October 22, 2014 [1 favorite]


Great links!

I have no idea if it's suitable as an intro episode for anyone else, but the first one I ever watched was Pod People (3x03). I encountered it somewhat randomly. A local NBC (I think it was) affiliate where I grew up was airing the syndication versions of the episodes where they cut individual episodes in 2 and had intro segments as Jack Perkins to provide context. Oddly, the affiliate would air both halves together so there was never any lack of context for me. I was 12 or 13 and in the habit of staying up to ungodly hours playing Quake and messing around on the internet and stuff late at night on weekends and just stumbled across it by accident.

I laughed until I cried even not understanding all that many references and trying to keep quiet at 3am or whenever it was on a Saturday night/Sunday morning was ... difficult even with a pillow. I immediately started taping it, and once our cable provider got Comedy Central started watching new episodes (and later followed the show to Sci Fi channel and its eventual end).

I'd sort of guess some of the goofier Japanese monster movie episodes work well (they've already been mentioned in this thread) for people of a certain bent. I'd already loved Godzilla movies when I was younger than when I first encountered the show, so getting me to watch something Gamera-y would've been quite easy. Some of those Finno-Russian fantasy movies might work better on others.

Weirdly, I think some of the more famous episodes actually are not where to start. Something like Manos or Hobgoblins is maybe a bit much to take in at once even with the riffing if you're not already acclimated to the show. There's also a certain grade of b-movie they did a lot of that makes for a difficult first experience, I'd think. Lots of dry shoe leather scenes that the riffing mostly helps but is very dry. Something that's more... engaging (is the word I'll go with) on its own for the person you're showing the show to is probably better.
posted by sparkletone at 1:28 PM on October 22, 2014 [1 favorite]


What's a good episode to start kids with, do you think?

Probably not I Accuse My Parents, but if they've been really bad, then Mr. B Natural should give them the DEEP HURTING they deserve.
posted by octobersurprise at 1:48 PM on October 22, 2014


I was maybe 14 when I stumbled upon it, and there was a brief time where I'd FF to the host segments (I remember doing this with Viking Women and the Sea Serpent). But I learned to appreciate the whole thing.

And Manos probably wouldn't be a great intro for newbies even if they're adults. Definitely a graduate-level entry.
posted by TheSecretDecoderRing at 2:58 PM on October 22, 2014


The thing about Mr. B Natural is that it was made to show to kids, as a sales film for C.G. Conn instruments. But most of the fun comes from watching it with an adult sensibility.

But yes, I think it's pretty well known now that some episodes shouldn't be shown to newbies. Not just because, if you're not already invested in the premise, you're going to find the movie hard going, but also because it helps to leave them for later. Manos should be seen only after you've seen a lot of other episodes, as a kind of culmination. Same goes for (ugh) Monster-A-Go-Go, Hobgoblins, Castle of Fu Manchu and others.
posted by JHarris at 3:11 PM on October 22, 2014


Chrysostom: What's a good episode to start kids with, do you think?
S4 E18 Attack of the Eye Creatures
posted by ob1quixote at 4:31 PM on October 22, 2014


Attack of the The Eye Creatures.
posted by JHarris at 4:42 PM on October 22, 2014 [2 favorites]


My favorite episode of all time is Prince Of Space. It has puppet Mike! And some of my favorite jokes - I can make myself giggle just by thinking the line "Samuel Barber's Adagio for Young Japanese Children".

Although I loved Trace Bealieu as Crow, I think Bill Corbett is really sort of a genius. He really added a lot to the show IMHO.
posted by wittgenstein at 4:43 PM on October 22, 2014 [3 favorites]


Shhhh! This is the movie's statement! Let's listen…
There.
posted by ob1quixote at 4:43 PM on October 22, 2014


Prince of Space is a good one. It's got some great riffs.
posted by ob1quixote at 4:45 PM on October 22, 2014


I really need to get the weekly watchalong set back up. The things that caught me up before were the work I ended up putting into the writeup (which, other than the book quotes, I probably wouldn't do this time) and time pressures (which has eased up a bit, since I'm no longer "with" Dominos, although I haven't found someone to hire me for something else yet....).
posted by JHarris at 4:49 PM on October 22, 2014


I'm sure it's been answered elsewhere (presumable on the annotation site) but "snark firings" is the actual line, as in the SM-62 Snark rocket.
posted by ShutterBun at 8:42 PM on October 22, 2014


What's a good episode to start kids with, do you think?

I would suggest Outlaw of Gor, for the same qualities mentioned above. Reasonably good production values, plenty of goofiness, excellent riffing fodder, and a great song during one of the host segments.
posted by ShutterBun at 8:45 PM on October 22, 2014


MST3K is interesting in that they actually understood that a lot of their audience were kids and tried to remain appropriate for children, so most episodes are at least okay.

I'm glad you pointed this out, and it's one aspect I was always appreciative of. I know the whole show was a take on boomer-era children's programming, but I wonder if the letters they got from kids made them realize it wasn't just stoned 20-somethings watching. And they so easily could've done less of the nerdy/old-fashioned humor, and more topical/frat-boy stuff.

Though I'm still kinda surprised they could get away with "dickweed" back then.
posted by TheSecretDecoderRing at 10:20 AM on October 23, 2014 [2 favorites]


It is weird hearing someone suggest a movie based on the Gor books as being suitable for kids, but the movie doesn't feature much of the kind of content that has made Gor internet infamous.

Deathstalker is similar. The one the MST guys did seems to be the least porny of the series.
posted by JHarris at 10:07 PM on October 23, 2014


It is weird hearing someone suggest a movie based on the Gor books as being suitable for kids, but the movie doesn't feature much of the kind of content that has made Gor internet infamous.

I didn't know what Gor was when I started watching MST3k, but I'd definitely heard of it (and had no interest in reading any) so I was very surprised seeing they'd MST3k'd a Gor movie. I wonder whether they edited out anything that was over the line, leaving us with just some really unfortunate costuming (but then isn't it always) or if the movie is actually that sanitized.
posted by sparkletone at 10:17 PM on October 23, 2014


I wonder whether they edited out anything that was over the line, leaving us with just some really unfortunate costuming (but then isn't it always) or if the movie is actually that sanitized.

I've seen the first Gor movie unMSTed (it was something random on Netflix), which is similar in content to sequel Outlaw, and obviously containing the seeds for the second movie Marvel Movie Universe-style. The slave trade doesn't play a big role in the plot except in the typical fantasy movie ways, as something to rescue a character from and a threat for other characters to be branded as such. The exception is when evil overlord guy near the end has hero Cabot in his court and is trying to turn him to the ways of eeevil, and tells the nubile young girl slave to "please him." Whatever she's doing to him is off frame due south, but it's making him nervous. He tries to press her for information, which she refuses to give. He asks her "Don't you want to be free?" and she responds with a sultry "No, master!" without elaboration. That's as far as it goes into Norman's philosophy.

The little guy ("the littlest buffalo shot of them all") is in it too, and is actually "shown off" even more. Remember, everyone, to sing every day the praises of pants.

BTW, Cabot is one of those guys who's the hero only because someone has to be for the movie to progress, he has little in the way of heroic qualities and actually gets his friends who believe in him in trouble early on. After an opening where, as an Earth college professor, he delivers a lecture to his class about his magic ring that all the students are clearly amused to hear (it is presented as something both Leonardo da Vinci and Albert Einstein have puzzled over the mysteries of!), he's transported by it to Desert Barbarian World where he soon completely accidentally kills Evil Henchman #1 while running near the beginning of the movie in a laughable and unlikely way. The resistance guys adopt him as leader on the basis of this act despite its ludicrous randomess, and Cabot immediately sets to work showing them what a stupid choice they've made. Just, not a good film. I assume that Outlaw unMSTed is substantially similar in construction.
posted by JHarris at 2:20 AM on October 24, 2014


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