[ATTENDED: February 6, 2022] MST3K Live
This was my fourth MST3K live experience and it was a hoot. This was the first time that there was only one movie (in previous years they did two back to back–separate tickets). This was also the first year that the host was a newbie. Well, not totally new, Emily Marsh was on set for the previous show and as Emily Connor she will be co-hosting and maybe full-hosting the upcoming season.
Which is all well and good because I thought she was outstanding. A bundle of energy, great comic timing and what a singing voice!
But the show started with the imposing presence of Yvonne Freese as Mega Synthia and sweet, one-eyed purple GPC! She was outstanding last time and was even better this time as she was the center of attention for most of her on-stage time. She was very funny and threw in some good improvs as the crowd reacted or didn’t. She also has an amazing voice.
And of course, there are the bots–Conor McGiffin as Tom Servo and Nate Begle as Crow. It’s amazing what a small crew they have for this tour (the props take up more room than the people). There’s a mysterious fifth person on the tour as well. She is “swing puppeteer” Kelsey Ann Brady who I gather is meant to fill in where and when she can. Since the cast was all there, she was added as a kind of clone the Mega Synthia, which was pretty fun.
The movie this time was called Making Contact, which was an early film by the guy who made Independence Day(!). It was “set” in the U.S. but was filmed in Germany.
A boy’s father has died and he starts talking to his dad on a plastic toy phone. Then a psychotic ventriloquist dummy comes into the movie, the boy gets psychic powers and, for some reason, all of the mean boys in town ride bokes (like a thuggish Goonies), and even plot to kill him (!). By the end there’s scientists all over the house and a deadly haunted house next door.
It’s like the movie tried to cram every moment from every Steven Spielberg movie into its own plot. The bots had a host segment about a product they called Spielberger Helper which was very very funny.
The most notable thing about the movie was how many copyrights it violated. There was so much stuff from 1980s films and TV in the boy’s room. I mean it rang true because they were the kinds of things a kid would actually have. But it was still mind blowing to see the kid wearing a Dark Vader mask and then to have Darth Vader appear briefly! This movie was released in the U.S. How?
We were all (bots and audience included) shocked to see the scene where she tells him to cool off his burnt finger by dunking it is the fish bowl (and then pouring ice into it!).
The host segments were a lot of fun, of course. The Time Bubble was supposed to send the entire theater to a certain point in time–ostensibly to make us watch every single movie that the bots had ever riffed on. I enjoyed the one before intermission in which they encouraged us to fill the void in our lives by buying stuff (at the merch table).
The jokes come fast and it’s impossible to remember them because you are laughing and then there’s another one. This even did have one thing that stood out, though. The four (or five) voices performed a rendition of “Carol of the Bells” with movie-appropriate bad lyrics. But their voices sounded amazing together. Their voices! Wow.
I don’t get enough time to watch MST3K anymore. There’s just always something that prevents a 90 minute window for the Satellite of Love. So I love having the opportunity to see these shows live, With a few hundred of my closest friends.
If there’s another tour next year, I’ll be there!
Leave a Reply