Road riff: 'Mystery Science Theater' goes live

Call them what you will — "B" movies, cheesy, late-night or drive-in second features, or the more direct "bad cinema."

Joel Hodgson calls them "adorable."

The creator of "Mystery Science Theater 3000," the show that riffed on so-bad-they're-good movies so the bleary folks watching them at 2 a.m. wouldn't have to, said there's never been any malice in the comments — riffs — aimed at them.

"There's always been an affection behind it," Hodgson said during a recent phone conversation to promote the Jan. 15 Admiral Theatre stop by his "Mystery Science Theater 3000 Live" tour. "A lot of people misunderstand what we're doing. If you like cynicism, watch that, because you're from a nightmare world.

"We think we're painting with jokes," he said.

Hodgson approved, back in 2018, of a comparison made by Austin Chronicle writer Robert Faires, who called the movies Hodgson and his cult-star cohorts have been poking gleeful fun at since it debuted on a public-access cable station in 1988. Faires called them the cinemation equivalent of "the mutts in the animal shelter."

"Yeah, that's a great way to look at 'em," Hodgson replied. "I like that."

From its middle-of-the-night UHF beginnings, "MST3000" — which featured Hodgson, his puppet-robot sidekicks Tom Servo, Crow and Gypsy, and a bunch of "adorable" misfit movies. The show quickly was picked up by the Comedy Channel (which become Comedy Central) and later the Sci-Fi Channel (which became SyFy). New episodes ran into the 2000s in syndication, and a Kickstarter-funded revival ended up on Netflix in 2017.

Also in 2017, "MST3000" hit the road, with the riffers doing their backs-to-the-audience thing in front of live audiences.

The current tour, "The Great Cheesy Movie Circus Tour," is special, as Hodgson has announced it will he his last time out as Joel Robinson.

Hodgson said the show's cast and crew change very little to adapt to their live settings, and have never been bothered by audience members trying to add their own voices to the riffing.

"There's not a single space for them to riff, and they don't have microphones," he said of any peanut-gallery attempts to interject into the "official" — and actually quite tightly scripted — patter. "That's our job. Besides, have you ever sat next to anyone (in a movie theater) who riffed? Isn't it annoying?

"What's happening is that they're reacting," he continued. "They're laughing, and we have to react to that, because they'll laugh over jokes. We're altering the show as we do it."

Just as you'd think, "MST3000 Live" audiences tend toward longtime fans. But Hodgson was nonplussed when he found out that the Admiral show, part of the theater's current subscription season, will have a large share of season ticket-holders with little or no "MST3000" experience.

"We have new people coming in all the time," he said. "My impression is that people will check in and do a little research, and decide they should check it out."

The movie on the receiving end of all the riffing on the current MST3000 Live tour is the 1960 English feature "Circus of Horrors," about a plastic surgeon who takes over a circus just as some of the female performers start dying in freak accidents.

"We try to find movies that work with what we're doing," Hodgson said.

PREVIEW

‘Mystery Science Theater 3000 Live’

Where: Admiral Theatre, 515 Pacific Ave., Bremerton

When: Jan. 15; doors open 5:30 p.m., show 7 p.m.

Tickets: $72-$32 (VIP packages available)

Information: 360-373-6743, Admiral Theatre

This article originally appeared on Kitsap Sun: A bad movie and good riffs hit the Admiral Theatre stage