In a cozy suburb of Minneapolis, a guy in a blue jumpsuit is once again stuck aboard a space station with his robot pals, watching the worst movies ever made. To paraphrase the show’s catchy theme song, if you’re wondering how that works, it’s just a TV show, so you should really just relax. In May, Variety went behind the scenes of “Mystery Science Theater 3000: The RiffTrax Experiments,” the latest revival of the beloved cult comedy series “Mystery Science Theater 3000,” to get an up close and personal look at how poking fun at bad movies gets done at the highest level.
The series — which features an amiable host and his sharp-tongued sidekicks Tom Servo and Crow riffing on obscure movies like “Manos: The Hands of Fate” and “Space Mutiny” — originally aired from 1988 to 1999, mostly on Comedy Central and the Sci-Fi Channel. Joel Hodgson created and starred as that guy forced to screen cheesy flicks; he left mid-run and was replaced by Michael J. After the show wrapped, Nelson and fellow “MST3K” writer-stars Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett took the basic idea and launched their own version, RiffTrax, which started as a website and branched out into live performances and its own FAST channel.
Then, in 2017, Hodgson revived “MST3K” at Netflix and launched a related streaming platform called The Gizmoplex, but the RiffTrax team wasn’t involved. That all changed this year. In January, Hodgson sold his ownership in the series to Radial Entertainment and once again departed.
Radial then recruited the RiffTrax team to return for four new episodes. The transition of “MST3K” to Radial allowed the company to approach the RiffTrax team (who hadn’t been formally involved in any new interations of the show since 1999) about joining forces, which they were eager to do. Fans were in: They raised $2.7 million in a Kickstarter campaign to fund the revival, and “The RiffTrax Experiments” were off and running.
As Variety visits the “MST3K: RiffTrax” set, the cast and crew are nearing the end of a rapid-fire shoot on the new episodes. At this point in the shoot, the host segments that serve as interstitials for the movie mocking that made the original a success have all been filmed. As a result, most of the main sets are already torn down.
But there are still various robot puppets and spare props lying around the studio, including a sign for the show’s fictional sponsor, ‘Syd’s Olive Loaf.’ There is a definite handmade quality to the props and puppets that are part of the show’s charm. Nelson, Murphy, and Corbett return in their original roles both onscreen and behind the camera, while much of the show’s original crew are back as well. That includes director of photography Jeff Stonehouse, props master and puppeteer Patrick Brantseg, and costume designer Beth “Beez” McKeever.
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