We've got MOVIE SIGN!!!

PEOPLE OF EARTH, MY NAME IS JOEL. I’M MAROONED IN SPACE. I’M THE SUBJECT OF A BIZARRE MOVIE-WATCHING EXPERIMENT, AND NOW I GUESS, SO ARE YOU.

That’s how comedian Joel Hodgson once summarized the premise of his television program, Mystery Science Theater 3000. One of the few television programs not produced in New York or Hollywood, MST3K (as it is known by its fans) began in 1988 on a small UHF station and quickly moved to the national spotlight on cable television every week through 1999, all the while never leaving its home base of Minnesota.

Since the television production capabilities of the North Star State were somewhat lacking in comparison to its counterparts on the east and west coasts, the creators wisely stuck to a simple visual style that could have just as easily been shot in the 1950s as the 1990s. That’s not intended as a criticism. Quite the contrary, its chintzy visual charm would allow the program’s best asset—it’s humor—to take center stage.

For the bulk of its run, the show featured only two real sets: the control room of the Satellite of Love, where a human guinea pig and his robot (puppet) friends are held captive, and Deep 13 (later Castle Forrester), where the evil mad scientists plan their latest schemes. Each set is only ever shot with one camera—there are no reaction shots or cutaways. If the director of the episode wishes to draw our attention to a particular object on screen, the camera operator just zooms in over the course of the segment. The actors play more to the camera than to each other, which is very appropriate, because we aren’t watching characters on a television show, we’re watching an experiment in progress shot by a never seen robot named Cambot.

But the program is more than just a demented puppet show. At the end of one of their rants on pop culture or a song parody, the mad scientists activate the movie sign. The wall in the back of the set opens up and the camera (actually, we, the viewers) travels down an odd looking tunnel that finally ends up in the theater.

The theater segments, accomplished by a relatively simple special effect, is the main visual element that is identified with the program. Even channel surfers who stare blankly when confronted by the show’s title will immediately recall the image of an old movie playing with the silhouettes of our heroes sitting in movie theater seats at the bottom of a screen. That’s the bulk of the program: the crew of the S.O.L. making wisecracks during an entire feature-length movie.

The simple format works surprising well, probably because the writing is so strong and varied. A bit of witticism that hinges on an obscure reference to a Greek play might be followed immediately by a fart joke. The surrealistic host segments allow the performers the flexibility to stage both Green Acres and Ingmar Bergman parodies. (One area of humor that the stable of writers tends to shy away from is overtly sexual jokes; a bonus that makes it one of the more family-friendly shows on TV.) The concept and the humor are so distinctive that it allowed the show to get away with numerous cast changes over its ten-year run without missing a beat. The concept even translated without a hitch to the big screen for the S.O.L.'s one and only motion picture venture in 1996.

With the Sci-Fi Channel canceling the program last January, the only place to observe the Dr. F's diabolical experiments now is on DVD. Rhino Home Video has released numerous single episodes and boxed sets. They're definitely worth a look for bad film fanatics, horror/sci-fi buffs, and comedy lovers.

Puppets, stage-bound skits, and overdubbed movies. King Solomon was right: there is nothing new under the sun. But even if MST3K wasn’t the first program to use these ideas, it did combine them in a most original way. And isn’t that what a successful experiment is all about?