I’ve been trying to get her to watch a full movie for years now.
She gets the idea, even bought me tickets to the live show a few years ago for my birthday and wound up laughing her head off the entire time.
But her main issue is: as funny as she finds it, she still cant get past just how TERRIBLE the movies are.
I’m trying to find one that’s not brutally painful to sit through.
I got her to watch a few chunks of Catalina Caper tonight; she got some good laughs out of all the jokes about how WHITE that movie is (she’s black) and the hysterical dance sequences.
I just need a full movie that’s not too old, or terrible sound or picture quality.
It’s kind of putting the cart before the horse, but Diabolique (final Mike episode) is a reasonably good movie, and it’s even in color. Most of the Netflix eps are newer movies than the original run, so maybe Starcrash?
Seasons 11 & 12 had movies of decent visual/audio quality, try some of those.
This is a great idea. I did a similar thing with friends leading up to Season 11 where I asked for film genres they liked, then recommended episodes based on those criteria. Outside of animation, since they’ve not riffed on an animated film yet (though I would recommend some RiffTrax episodes for that option), I believe any film genre has been covered by MST3K and thus you can ascertain what episodes your friends & loved ones would like.
Maybe try easing her into the format via a Rifftrax “just the jokes” for a movie she’s familiar with? I’m pretty sure it was watching the “Twilight” movies back in the day that made my now-wife a fan. From there we did some early Rifftrax (“Night of the Living Dead” was a fave of hers) before moving on to MST3K proper with a classic like “Manos.” I agree with other posters that the Netflix-era riffs are easy to get into as well, especially fun films like “Mac and Me.”
The Russo-Finnish troika (Sinbad, Day the Earth Froze, and Jack Frost) have fantastic production value and cinematography, and are mainly on the show just for how goofy they are.
A few you might try (I suggest checking them out for yourself first, just to get a sense of whether she’s likely to get into them):
Village of the Giants
Space Mutiny
The Time Travelers
Mac and Me
These are all bad movies, but they’re shot well, so they don’t LOOK awful in a visual sense.
I would 2nd starting small with shorts. I have tried to introduce many a person to the riffing world. While they weren’t to big on the full movies they usually enjoyed the shorts. I would suggest riff traxs shaking hands with danger.
Yeah, a shorts collection would probably be the ideal way to go if you don’t decide to go with a movie that’s part of a genre she enjoys.
The shorts themselves aren’t brutally painful to sit through, so that’ll probably work well for you.
If you want to go with full-on episodes, I’d go with the Russo-Finnish episodes, as @RyanLohner suggested. Also, I think your strongest seasons for your viewing purposes will be Seasons 5, 7, 8, and 11 (of course, weeding out the more painful and excruciating films to be on the safe side).
Whatever you decide to go with, I hope you both have a fantastic time!
When going with shorts, “Design For Dreaming” or “Once Upon A Honeymoon” would be the most obvious choices. They look good despite being completely bonkers.
Or try something like Avalanche, which is dated, but still has a decent pace for a bad movie. Or Mac and Me, for some 80s nostalgia cheese. Or Atlantic Rim for some schlock-y, bad CGI bull butter.
My son is honestly enamored with Manos, but can’t stand monster a go-go and blood waters of doctor Z.
And even though it started off INSANELY slow, he is OBSESSED with the secret agent super dragon song Joel and the boys performed.
So, I guess, this is the long way to say- find what she likes, tailor your movie choice to it, and maybe try and break the viewing up into several chunks- use the commercial breaks as a time to come up for air…
P.S. - I’d say don’t feel like it’s a huge failure for either of you if she watches an occasional episode with you but remains more a dabbler than hardcore fan. There’s only so many hours in the day and only so much time people can spend losing themselves in hobbies, no matter how fabulous those hobbies are.
