Do you have a personal connection to a riffed movie? Share it here!
Mine is Time Chasers. I have eaten in the restaurant that Nick and Lisa bring Matthew Paul in the future. It was a Papa Gino’s in a mall. Rest assured that Nick succeeded in averting the dystopian future as the restaurant (and the mall) no longer exist.
Following Beginning Of The End, Mike and the bots mock the special effects using postcards and rubber grasshoppers. One of the postcards is of Oldenburg, Indiana, which is a tiny village located less than a mile from the small town where I grew up.
I haven’t one, but my ex’s landlady was in the Home Economics short… and his primary advisor in college directed it. Watching it with him was always a treat.
This may be cheating since San Francisco has a number of shooting locations for The Room, but I made sure to visit the restaurant featured in the “I cannot tell you. That’s confidential” scene.
Not a movie, but a short… I’ve been to the Space Needle and that area often (Century 21 Calling)
And not an episode but a live show… No Retreat, No Surrender, where most of Seattle was shot in California, except for Bruce Lee’s grave. Which was visited by 3 of the live cast.
In the KTMA episode of Gamera vs Guiron, Crow riffs that the accent of the two aliens means they’re from “Macon, GA”, which is very near where I grew up (lived nearby growing up, worked there for 14 years, and it has had an active comedy stand-up presence years back, which might be why Trace singled it out).
There was a riff that followed a high pitched laugh was " HAHAHAHA… Raceway Park!" I grew up a few miles from Raceway Park and frequented it often back in those days.
The " HAHAHAHA… Raceway Park!" was an annoying radio ad that played incessantly on nearly every local radio station.
One of my earliest childhood memories is of a nightmare I had, and it wasn’t until seeing Invasion of the Neptune Men on MST3K that I realised the movie was the source for the dream. The nightmare incorporated a number of elements from the movie and I recognised them immediately. So I must have seen the movie on a local UHF channel way back then.
This also brought home to me just how big the difference can be in response and emotional impact of something on a child versus an adult. Present-day me can appreciate how unremittingly goofy the film is, yet still see how it could horrify an impressionable child.
Not an episode connection, more like the theme song connection.
I remember in a documentary, Joel mentioned meeting up with Josh at a diner named The Square Peg and that’s where they hammered out the original MST3K theme. I used to eat there on a semi-regular basis when I worked in the area but it shut down a few years ago. That’s about as close as I’ve gotten to any element of the actual show.
This is a really good point. I remember being very little watching Gamera vs. Guiron over a friend’s house. His mother ran next door to talk with a neighbor, leaving us alone for less than 10 minutes. But in that time frame, Guiron made his debut in the movie.
Idk, if it was his appearance, his theme music, or us being alone. But, we both became terrified. All these decades later, I can remember that clear as day. It seems ridiculous now, that silly monster would have struck so much fear in us.
So many connections. The San Fernando airport was a location for The Slime People, Red Zone Cuba and…The Starfighters? No, The Skyfighters!
The Van Nuys airport was featured in This Island Earth and a little known B-movie called Casablanca. There’s a fun little restaurant there called the 94th Aero Squadron.
As a (n untamed) youth, I drove around Hollywood to find the apartment Ed Wood got evicted from shortly before his death. I think the building was torn down, though.
When we went rock climbing (yes!) as kids, we were generally in Chatsworth, an area that was hugely used for old Westerns, like Stagecoach—but also classics like The Creeping Terror, The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent, Teenage Caveman, The Tomb (which hasn’t been MSTied and may never be due to langauge and nudity, alas), Gunslinger, Teenage Caveman, War of the Colossal Beast and many, many more!
We used to have cookouts juuuust over that ridge. Don’t even get me started on Vasquez Rocks and Bronson Canyon.
When I worked in San Francisco, it was near Chinatown and I used to walk to my car through the area shown in East Meets Watts. Both the Bow Bow Lounge and the chicken market were still there.
Does my dad working at “Pine City Vo Tech” (name dropped in a few riffs, but most notably “Being from Another Planet”) and me having vivid memories running around the campus as a kid during the 90s count?? LOL
Mine’s just a connection to a riff, but in Mitchell when “BENTON” is being shouted, the riff “Harbor, Michigan!” is added on. I grew up in the area and worked in Benton Harbor for a couple years. It’s not a big area, so I was pretty surprised to hear it referenced!