Imagine you were in high school, or perhaps college in the 1990s.
You and your regular group of friends end up at one of the parents’ houses after a late evening out, turn on the TV to, what? likely one of the UHF stations out of Detroit. The only available programming consists of low-budget, truly awful, never-should-have-been-made movies produced decades earlier.
With that, everyone settles in on the couch and begins attentively watching — talking over the soundtrack throughout, each of you more eager than the next to make better fun out of this than the original company ever could have.
That was the concept behind Mystery Science Theater 3000, which aired from 1988 to 1999. The difference in their send up was that they provided the ridiculing commentary for you. The show recently re-booted on Netflix, but what if you’re a purist, you want a bit more of the original DNA? [1]
The answer is RiffTrax. [2]
Available for a while now as an option for home viewing, RiffTrax has now partnered with Fathom Events to simulcast their “updated” movies through local screens such as our own Emagine Theatre here in Saline.
The target for this round is Space Mutiny — which, although largely irrelevant, IMDb indicates as having a 2.1-star rating. With RiffTrax, better to regard this as a first-run movie for a completely new experience here. [3,4,5,6]
No prerequisite that you be familiar with Mystery Science Theater 3000 (or “MST3K” as those in the know often call it), nor that you were either too old or too young to have been of the age group mentioned above. Whatever this new form of art is called, it’s simply about having fun.
Two showings are scheduled for Saline, the first of which will be live.
- June 14 (Thursday), with live show at 8:00pm
- June 19 (Tuesday), with show at 7:30pm
As always, before finalizing plans, check the Emagine Entertainent website to verify show dates and times. [7]
References
- “About the Show” Mystery Science Theater 3000.
- RiffTrax (home page).
- “What is Rifftrax?” Rifftrax.
- Fathom Events (home page).
- “RiffTrax Live: Space Mutiny” Fathom Events.
- “Space Mutiny (1988)” IMDb.
- Emagine Entertainment (showtimes).
