Bringing things back to the making of MST3K, during The Mads Are Back: T-BIRD GANG With Special Q&A Guest Mike Nelson (Recorded Live May 11, 2021), I asked Mike of which MST3K song he was most proud. He hemmed and hawed a bit, but landed on “A Patrick Swayze Christmas” as the one that sticks with him. 
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I’ll throw this in because it’s about one of my favorite riffs. According to Frank, when Russell Johnson enters in This Island Earth and the riff is “What’s this ‘and the rest’ crap?”, that riff was written by Frank in the early days of writing for the movie.
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Speaking of The Movie, here’s an interesting article about a lot that happened behind the scenes making it.
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Really fascinating article. Had a lot of info that I honestly didn’t know before. Thanks for linking that!
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“Joel Hodgson admits this is the only movie featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000 that he paid to see in a movie theater…”
I would not have guessed. 
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I found some home videos on YouTube.
I haven’t watched these. These belong to other people.
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In an interview with Milwaukee Magazine, Joel was reminded of when The Giant Spider Invasion was shot in near-by Ripon, Wisconsin. " I remember those guys coming through town and doing promotion in Green Bay and explaining what they were doing. He had a little studio in Grantsburg, Wisconsin. Bill Rebane did The Giant Spider Invasion . I think he was creating a film studio in Grantsburg."
Later, of course, the movie would make it to MST3K during Mike’s era.
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Joel also discussed the Untamed Youth drinking situation, saying that it didn’t improve the writing at all and only gave everyone hangovers to deal with the next day.
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Notably, the original cut included more of “This Island Earth.” It wasn’t a considerable amount more — “Earth” runs only 86 minutes on its own as is — but there were additional “Earth” scenes to flesh out a more holistic film experience. In the final cut of “MST3K: The Movie,” audiences saw only about 55 minutes of it. Not that we necessarily needed to see much more.
You know… people keep attacking This Island Earth as a bad movie because it was riffed on, but frankly, uncut, I would call it better than a good 95% of its contemporary science fiction films. It’s mostly intelligent, it has creative designs, and while “Scrotor” makes a good joke for riffing, there was nothing like that in other movies of the time in terms of a unique alien character that didn’t look like it had carpet stapled to it.
Other than that, I liked the article. But that does grind my gears. Before MST3K:TM, This Island Earth was considered a classic of the genre.
Just because riffing can make a serious movie funny doesn’t necessarily mean that serious movie was irredeemably bad and I would put This Island Earth over most movies MST3K has shown in terms of competence and intelligence.
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I agree with your assessment. From the perspective of a theatrical release hoping to get more than just fans into the seats, it fits the bill. Looking over then entire MST3K catalog, I can’t think of many that would have a similar effect. Maybe Avalanche? Even that’s less family-friendly, though.
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I’m listening to the commentary on the Season 2 of ‘Get Smart’ and I learned that King Moody (Torcha!) was the original Ronald McDonald.
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Tell us your favorite or most interesting piece of trivia you know about MST3K! Any era! Ok, did you know that the original budget was $200? Also, crazy msties is NOT meant as an insult! It’s meant as like, how the Mads call Joel/Mike/Jonah
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Despite being set in space, the original series was actually filmed in a suburban Minnesota office park.
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Tom, Crow, and Gypsy are not actually robots. They are just puppets.
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Got one, for real. Manos: The Hands of Fate gets blamed for famously being the worst film to land on Frank Conniff’s lap for screening, but he would later say that the worst that the team couldn’t riff was a late 30s film called Child Bride.
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Would the average moviegoer be amused or infuriated that the should-be-legendary sexy lady wielding orange juice scene obscures her sexiest parts?