MST3K Homemade 'Bots

I'm a huge Mystery Science Theater 3000 fan.

Downtime in college for me was watching this show with my friends and buying the episodes from Suncoast (RIP) along with catching it on Comedy Central and Sci Fi. I wasn't lucky enough to get The Amazing Colossal Man (pulled for licensing rights issues) but I do own others from the Rhino Video collection. Some of my favorites include I Accuse my parents, The Brain that wouldn't die, Mitchell, and The Unearthly. I don't own all of them- Sigh- some episodes are just too terrible beyond watching. Wild World of Batwoman. Manos: The Hands of Fate. I'll never get those hours back.

One day back in college my friends and I are sitting around watching MST, contemplating over what to do for our next video production assignment. My friend Jeff says: "Why don't we make an MST?" We all agreed we should, we just didn't have the robots. We proceeded to brainstorm over what parts they were made of, but never decided who would actually do the building. After several days of "I'll get around to it" I took the liberty and started my quest.

The hardest part was finding pieces for Crow. I looked online for a recipe list and came up with two parts I'd have to substitute: his torso, and eye socket. Servo was the easier of the two. Both pieces were odd items I couldn't pick up at the local hardware store. (The eye socket, a soap dish only available online from a now defunct manufacturer for $60, and the torso- a rubbermaid serving platter of sorts) I hit garage sales, dollar stores, hardware stores, you name it- to find the parts. It took me an entire summer to gather all the parts and with lighting cracking in the background- I gave my creation life for a low cost of $30.

I remember all the weird looks I received from people along the way- the clerk at Play-it-again-Sports when I asked him for a child sized hockey face guard: "Little 'bro starting hockey?" to which I replied in a Ralph Wiggum response- "I'm building a robot!" "Oh." Or the kind elderly lady at Ben Franklin Crafts (also RIP) "Santa Claus doll hands? Are you building a doll?" "Yeah, you could say that." "How delightful" she added. The best response was from my own grandmother when I asked her to search her 70+ years of household items. "You're looking for a platter? I think I have something like that lying around...what did you say you were building again? A robot? Is it going to do anything?" "No, not really." I uttered. "Oh...I see." It sounded like I was asking her to do the impossible, Give up tupperware? Luckily, she agreed and with Crow's torso being the last piece of the puzzle- I assembled the 'bots and unveiled them to my friends.

Their reaction was shock and awe. Having met their approval and still having video production accessible to us, we created our MST3K with a little help from a green screen. The film we riffed was 13 Ghosts (the old B+W version) which provided many jokes and spur of the moment humor. Despite Servo's heading falling off 3 times and audio complications- it turned out great. I'll try to get it posted on youtube...meantime, here's the 'bots as they are today- permanent roomates and a tribute to one of the funniest shows I've seen.