Mystery Science Theater 3000 Review: MST3K Brings Super Bad Movies To NetFlix

For those unfamiliar with "Mystery Science Theater 3000", the premise is pretty simple. A guy and his robot sidekicks are held hostage on a space station (known as the Satellite of Love). They are forced to watch terrible B movies which they hilariously crack on. The commentary is BY FAR the best part of the show (given the atrocious quality of the flicks). Jonah Heston (actor Jonah Ray) is the kidnapped guy (creator Joel Hodgson and Michael Nelson previously played him). The robots include Tom Servo, Crow, Gypsy, and Cambot.

"MST3K" originally aired on a local Minneapolis station. It's ten seasons (with 197 episodes) were later picked up by the Comedy and SyFy channels. I have not watched all but my favorite continues to be "Manos: The Hands of Fate". This 1966 film is the sole work of fertilizer salesperson Hal Warren. He bet that anyone could make a movie. So armed with $19,000 off he went. The results are cringe worthy. Without the MST3K treatment, "Manos" is impossible to watch. It is consistently voted the WORST movie of all time. See Entertainment Weekly's take on it here

Season 11 was produced thanks to a KickStarter campaign. For the new release, NetFlix updated the opening credits and added a few famous faces. Patton Oswalt joins as TV's Son Of TV's Frank (Max for short) and Felicia Day appears as second generation mad scientist Kinga Forrester. Will Wheaton and Erin Gray also make cameos.There's a house band called the Skeleton Crew. Skits are performed as commercial breaks. It's all great cheesy fun.

I've watched four of the 14 episodes thus far. Reptilicus is my favorite to date. It's a Danish import about a giant reptile tail that magically regenerates and terrorizes the citizens of Copenhagen. The screaming citizens, cheap models of the city and super weird winged reptile (with tiny arms) are hilarious.

Grade: 4 Monsters (out of 5). If you like horrible movies, rapid fire riffing and tons of pop culture references, "Mystery Science Theater 3000" is for you. Hopefully this is the first of many seasons on NetFlix. There are plenty more bad movies where these came from. And some are so bad, they're actually good.