It’s been indicated that the new season will have a Halloween special. So I thought we could speculate on the possibilities of other holiday specials and what movies to pair with them.
Arbor Day has gotten some holiday special love from the Peanuts franchise, so why not MST3K? For that, I would suggest the 1990 William Friedkin film The Guardian. Go on Youtube and you can watch the two thumbs down review Siskel and Ebert gave it, which features the silliest flying scene since Pumaman.
For a bit more traditional MST3K fare, there’s The Haunted Strangler (produced by Richard Gordon, who gave us Devil Doll), which could be featured on a St. Blaise Day special.
Just checked out the RiffTrax site; looks like they already did it. With four more films already in the making not sure the studio would sign off on it again.
Rifftrax doesn’t require to get the rights because they are just making an audio commentary users play alongside the movie the user has already rented/owned.
I absolutely could see a plot line in which Kinga decides every episode in the new season has to be a holiday special, then tries desperately to tie into random holidays for each movie.
Kinga: “Your movie this week is Robot Wars! Joyous Robonakuh!”
Max: “Robonakuh? Wasn’t that a made-up holiday from Futurama?”
Kinga : “I’m sure you MEANT to say it’s a very solemn and hallowed occasion for all our robot brethren. Now FLUSH THEM THE MOVIE!”
Crow: “Well, have fun in the theater, Jonah.”
Tom: “Yeah, see ya later, Meat Bag.”
Jonah: 'Wait, what?! It’s movie sign, we’re all going into the theater!"
Crow: “Didn’t you hear them? It’s Robonakuh! We’re not working today!”
Tom: “Respect our religious freedom!”
[Growler starts playing piano in the background]
GPC and Waverly [singing]: “Robonakuh, Robonakuh, Zero-One-One-Zero-One…”
It’s really a good thing. It’s copyright laws. It protects the owner of the intellectual property from being exploited. Stinks for MST3K to have to find movies that are either so old their license is expired/cheap enough for them to afford. But then again, I think the charm of MST3K is that they aren’t riffing big budget films, but are creating cult classics from their riffs.
Would love representation for some of the less holiday-y holidays. Give them their own mascots? Like the Labor Day Space Dragon. Or make something from the movie a mascot for the holiday!
Battleship would be a good one too…that movie was enjoyable to watch, but also super ridiculous to make a movie out of the board game and then just add aliens. Lol
The rights issue is also why you so rarely see a major studio’s logo at the start; the one that really stood out to me was the Warner Brothers logo on Catalina Caper.
There’s a really goofy romantic movie called Moment By Moment that would be perfect for Valentine’s Day, starring John Travolta and a then-closeted Lily Tomlin.
How about this for a Halloween episode? And yes, it’s from the public domain.
Also, imagine if Kinga’s invention exchange for that episode would be the Robotic Vampire Bat. I think that once it enters the SOL and bites the bots, they would turn into Vampire Bots.
Incidentally, the MST3K team was in the hunt for Moment By Moment but lost the rights at the very last minute, according to Jim Mallon: "MST3K: The Movie' launches into orbit
I personally can always use more animated films in the mst3k episode list, so for Christmas I recommend the Rapsitte Kids Believe in Santa film with perhaps a short. I would say the Elf Bowling movie but the whole and I’m not joking and I’m not trying to get banned, “sl**ery makes the world go round” song in there makes me really not recommend it.