So Bad It's Brilliant! My Top 10 MST3K Episodes That I Love (and You Should Too)

There’s something beautifully bizarre about a truly bad movie. The wooden acting, the baffling plot choices, the zero-budget special effects—all of it combines into an experience that’s strangely hypnotic. 

And while some people can’t get past the clunkiness, I’ve always found a weird sort of joy in watching cinematic misfires. Maybe it’s the ambition behind them. Maybe it’s the unintentional comedy. Maybe it’s just that I like things that are a little off.

 But my love of bad movies truly blossomed when I discovered Mystery Science Theater 3000. This gloriously absurd show—featuring a human host and his robot companions riffing on terrible films while trapped in space—made bad movies not just tolerable, but downright enjoyable. 

With MST3K, what would’ve been an agonizing slog through awkward line deliveries and nonsensical plots becomes a laugh-out-loud joyride of clever jokes and shared disbelief.

 Whether you’re a longtime Mistie or someone curious about the best (or worst?) the show has to offer, here’s a look at 10 of my favorite MST3K episodes—in no particular order—plus one honorable mention. These are the episodes I go back to again and again, not just because of the movies themselves (though some are... something else), but because of the brilliant, hilarious commentary that transforms each one into a cult classic in its own right.

Eegah!

This unique offering has a really interesting vibe. I can't explain it, but there is a dreamlike quality in every frame. If you’ve experienced Arch Hall Sr. and Jr’s opus years ago, perhaps you remember it like a fever dream. Part caveman-sort-of-monster movie, part beach movie, part musical—it suffers from an identity crisis but succeeds in holding your attention as you wonder what could possibly happen next.

 Trivia: 

- The titular Eegah was played by Jaws actor Richard Kiel. 

- The famous MST3K catchphrase "Watch out for snakes!" was lifted from this movie and became a fan-favorite Easter egg, even inspiring a live tour name.

 Favorite Riff:

 (Female lead character Roxy screams uncontrollably)

 Arch Hall Jr.: "Roxy, it’s just me."

 Bots: “I know—that’s why I’m screaming. AAAAAAAAH!”

Manos: The Hands of Fate

The first MST3K VHS movie I bought, and unironically one of my favorite horror movies. Period. Not just for the riffing. Something about the strange pacing, the eerie music, and the bizarre characters stays with you.

It’s as if someone tried to make a horror film with no experience whatsoever (which is exactly what happened). The result is haunting in a way that most actual horror movies aren’t.

Trivia: 

- Made by El Paso fertilizer salesman Harold P. Warren on a bet. 

- The name literally translates to "Hands: The Hands of Fate" — a redundancy only MST3K could appreciate.

 Favorite Riff:

 Master: "Silence!"

 Joel: "—is golden!"

Pod People

This is what happens when a gritty horror script suddenly gets rewritten to capitalize on the success of E.T.

 The result: a movie that can't decide what it is. It's a horror movie with a cute alien named Trumpy, a child protagonist, and also—a rock band? Even the MST3K crew refers to it as three films in one: "Movie A, B, and C."

 Trivia: 

- U.S. distributors added the alien storyline over a more violent Spanish film. - The opening credits steal footage from Galaxy Invader, another MST3K favorite.

 Favorite Riff:

 (Alien examines multiple items)

 Crow: (Mock voice-over) “Hmmm…this is another potato. (looks at rabbit)…This potato has long ears.”

 Kid: “Trumpy, so you know what playing is?”

 Servo: “It’s where I break you in half and eat you.”

 

Santa Claus (1959)

 A Christmas movie that feels more like a fever dream. Made in Mexico and dubbed into English by K. Gordon Murray, this version of Santa Claus has him fighting a red-tights-wearing demon named Pitch, flying through space, and using a surveillance system to spy on children. The doll sequences and mechanical reindeer are pure nightmare fuel.

 Trivia: 

- Murray added near-constant laughing instead of translating the original dialogue. 

- Features a multilingual chorus of child laborers singing Santa's praises.

 Favorite Riff:

 (Pitch shivers on a rooftop)

 Mike: “Santa, I just need some ‘stuff,’ man, come on, just a taste, come on, man!”

 

Star Crash

 A Star Wars knockoff with style, and I mean that sincerely. Caroline Munro stars as space-smuggler Stella Star, alongside a Texan-accented robot, a lightsaber-wielding Fabio-type, and David Hasselhoff. And yes, Christopher Plummer delivers his lines with Shakespearean dignity in the middle of a sci-fi cheese platter.

 Trivia: 

- Plummer took the part for a short paid vacation in Rome. 

- The script was rewritten mid-shoot, often leading to actors improvising entire scenes.

 Favorite Riff:

 (Stella Star explores a spaceship)

 Servo: “Wow! There’s no line for Star Tours!”

 

The Wild Wild World of Batwoman

 This one defies description. A strange mix of spy movie, superhero parody, and surrealist mess. It's one of those so-bad-it's-good movies made better when shared. I have a sentimental attachment to this one because I watched it with my son on VHS, and we couldn’t stop laughing.

 Trivia: 

- Director Jerry Warren reused footage from his own earlier films to pad runtime. 

- Despite the title, it has no connection to DC's Batwoman.

 Favorite Riff:

 (Three Batwomen standing together)

 Mike: “Angels, you’re going undercover tonight with Adam West!”

 

This Island Earth

This movie was the centerpiece for MST3K: The Movie, and it's just a joy to watch. The sci-fi visuals are decent, but the pacing and plot are ripe for riffing. It follows a group of Earth scientists taken to the planet Metaluna to save it from destruction. Cue the classic MU-Tant alien.

Trivia: 

- The studio cut a planned short film from MST3K: The Movie to reduce runtime. 

- "Normal view!" became a running joke in MST3K fandom.

 Favorite Riff:

 (Crew watches their home planet on a monitor)

 Exeter: “Switch to normal view.”

 Crow, Mike, Servo (singing): “Normallll viewww... NORRRRRMALLL VIEWWWWW!”

 

Space Mutiny

This movie borrows heavily from Battlestar Galactica, literally stealing footage and models. The plot follows Reb Brown as a man-mountain of a space officer trying to stop a mutiny. It's famous for continuity errors, including a dead character who keeps reappearing. This one made such an impact it made our book, which you can find here. 

Trivia: 

- The lead actor’s repeated entrance triggered a running gag of absurd manly nicknames. 

- Features one of the most awkward slow-motion chase scenes ever filmed.

 Favorite Riff:

 Mike: "Blast Hardcheese!"

 Crow: "Slab Bulkhead!"

 Servo: "Drunk Slam-Chest!"

The Beginning of the End

Peter Graves stars as a scientist whose food-growing experiment leads to a plague of giant grasshoppers. The effects include placing live insects on postcards of Chicago skyscrapers. I love this movie for its earnest tone and terrible science.

Trivia: 

- Directed by Bert I. Gordon, a.k.a. "Mr. B.I.G." 

- Famous for the shot of grasshoppers slipping off photos of buildings.

 Favorite Riff:

 (Deaf assistant flails in fear)

 Servo: “He’s signing, 'AAAAAAAAAAAAH!'”

 

Hobgoblins

 One of the most iconic Gremlins ripoffs, and possibly the cheapest. The monsters tap into your deepest desires and fantasies—then use them to kill you. Not that the logic matters. The puppets are laughable, the acting is wooden, and the plot is nonsense.

Trivia: 

- Director Rick Sloane fully leaned into the cult status and made Hobgoblins 2 in 2009. 

- One of the few MST3K films with a nightclub dance-off death.

 Favorite Riff:

 (Nightclub scene, girl trying to look seductive)

 DJ: “Is she a HIT or a MISS?”

 Guy holds up a sign: “HIT”

 Crow: “They should really add an 'S' to that.”

 Servo: “HITS?”

 

Honorable Mention: Time Chasers

 When brilliant inventor Nick cobbles together a time machine using an airplane and a Commodore-64,

 things go downhill fast. A forgettable early-'90s film transformed into a classic by the MST3K crew.

 Trivia: 

- Features Troll 2’s George Hardy as villain J.K. Robertson. 

- Nick's mullet and shirtless scenes are meme-worthy.

Favorite Riff:

 Nick (shirtless on the phone): "Sure."

 Servo: "SURE, I'm an unappealing actor in a bad movie!"

 

Wrapping Up: Bad Movies, Good Times

 At the end of the day, Mystery Science Theater 3000 is more than just a funny show about bad movies—it’s a shared language. It’s an invitation to laugh with the movie, not just at it. It teaches us to appreciate sincerity over perfection, effort over polish, and joy over judgment.

For me, these episodes aren’t just funny—they're memories. As a single dad, weekends with my son were everything. We didn’t have a lot of money for outings or events, but we had MST3K tapes, a battered VCR, and our own goofy commentary layered on top of Joel, Mike, and the bots. We'd stay up late watching these oddball flicks, rewinding the parts that made us laugh hardest, quoting riffs at breakfast the next morning.

Now that he's grown, it’s something we still share—a shorthand of inside jokes, bad sci-fi, and great memories. These cheesy old movies gave us a way to bond, to laugh, to connect. That’s what Mystery Science Theater 3000 does best: it turns the worst movies into some of the best times.

About the Author:

Dr. Dax Bradley is a professor of Computer Science and a lifelong connoisseur of all things nerdy. When he’s not teaching data structures or debugging Python code, he’s diving into Dungeons & Dragons campaigns, quoting obscure B-movies, or debating the finer points of Star Wars canon. He believes comic books are literature, bad movies deserve love, and if there’s a bigger nerd in the room, he’d really like to meet them.

Scam Alert

 

 If you suspect a scam, keep these red flags in mind:

• The site asks for payment by wire or money order instead of Paypal or Credit Card. Always use a card if possible, because you can usually dispute a scam an receive a refund.

• The site uses a professional brand name, but also includes special characters or words rather than just the brand name. Case in point Pandorasukonline, which is now pulled. Pandora does not add phrases or words to their brand.

• Hyperlinks that go nowhere (broken links)

• Spelling errors, grammar errors, or unusual wording - a dead giveaway that the administrator's first language is not English. While that in itself is not a crime, keep in mind real retailers thoroughly vet their content professionally before publishing 

• While this may sound obvious, it needs to be said: If it sounds too good to be true, it normally is. If someone as in the computers example above offers you a Predator (c) gaming rig, even refurbished, for less than $1500 US, especially at $99, you are looking at a scam

-Dax

Update on the "Four in a Row" app progress

10/5/17

I had put the Connect Four clone project on hold while I was in school. I finished the first part of my dissertation, so now I have a couple of week break before returning to school, so I worked on the game project a bit more. I added some sounds, and tweeked the code to make it simpler to play.

The goal is for anyone to be able to pick up and play the game without any coaching, so simplicity is the order of the day. I made it easy to click any region on the screen and drop a token into place. Also I added some instructions to carry out if the program "senses" that there are four of the same colored tokens in a row. It was pretty easy, until I realized that the diagonal four-in-a-row routines would require a different approach then horizontal and vertical.

But, I got that problem solved with some elbow grease. If you know a little about programming and algorithm design, I used a "Brute Force" algorithm to check all possible cases for diagonal four-in-a-row success.  Basically, it asks, "Are there four in a row for Case 1?  No, Ok, how about Case 2..." and so on.  If you've never heard of brute force algorithms, it's basically what it sounds like. It checks each possible outcome, one at a time until it reaches all possible outcomes.

It's kind of a pain in the neck, but it works.

I'm 100% certain that a better programmer would have created an easier way, but I suppose that the good news is that part is done. Yay!

My Connect Four Clone Project

Project

A Connect Four clone (personal challenge)

Software Used

Clickteam Multimedia Fusion Developer

www.clickteam.com

Cool 3D

www.ulead.com

Screen Recorder

Blueberry Flashback Express (Free Edition)

www.blueberry.com

I have this vision of developing and marketing cross-platform games under my own label. They would be non-violent content and ministry tools for youth, and some retro-style simple games like the kind I enjoy.  I haven't had as much time to finish most of the projects because of all the fires I got going at the moment, but I sometimes sit down and try to build on an idea.

Recently I challenged myself to a personal project. I wanted to see if I could throw together a demo of Connect Four in one day.  I'll be transparent and say right away that I did not succeed, but that's okay.  The idea came up originally when I was in a statistics class, and thought about a Connect Four game board, and how many possible combinations there were to win. It's a nerd thing.

I drafted a quick mockup of a Four in a Row game board like the one in the video, which is not the official size of Connect Four, but a smaller version, and determined 68 ways to win, counting both red and black. Little disclaimer: I don't know if that's correct, but it's what I came up with.

I hadn't had time to play with the idea until my most recent class ended and I had a little free time, and decided to take up the challenge. I did not build the game demo in one day, but I built some rudimentary art and basic animations in a day. They are not up to commercial quality, but the point was just to see if I could do it. That was two days ago. 

Yesterday, I built the basic instructions into the play pieces. Where I got stuck is how to bring in a piece and drop it into the slot of your choosing. At first the method was to apply a drag-and-drop routine to the entity (the "checker" piece) and line it up with the slot and have it collide either with the bottom, or another piece.

The brick wall I kept hitting was that if the player didn't line the piece up just perfectly, then it would fall down haphazardly and might be barely visible. No problem, I thought, with my usual optimism. I'll just build barriers between each column, and make them real skinny and invisible to the player. I'd use instructions in the code that if the piece collides with the barrier, it would bounce off and keep it in line with the grid holes.

That didn't work, because the code took the collision to mean that the piece should just stop in place, and get stuck halfway down. Sometimes when programming a game with gravity and "platform" rules, you run into the same limitations you would in the physical world.

I settled on a different approach, which I fixed today. I have five buttons to pick from, and they are set up to spawn a piece which will fall perfectly in line. Not the most elegant solution, but it works for now. This is day three of my one-day challenge, lol  :-)

Should Taxpayers Continue to Give $2 Billion a Year to Fund Online Access in Public Schools?

By Dax Bradley

A University of Chicago study examined the impact of an E-Rate program and found that the number of poor schools going online had increased dramatically.  However, the study found no evidence that the program had any effect on students’ performance on the Stanford Achievement Test.  Should this be sufficient evidence to discontinue this program, which costs U.S. taxpayers roughly $2 billion per year?

The annual spending per student has seen a decline in recent years.  Balanced-budget rules have forced spending cuts to education in most states ("School Spending per Student Drops for Third Straight Year," 2016), which puts educators in the difficult position of determining how to spend the funds that are available.  The E-Rate program, provided through the Telecommunications Act of 1996, earmarked $2.25 billion to provide schools funds for upgrading their access to Internet resources (Reynolds, 2012, p. 325).

The problems unearthed by the press and by a Federal investigation highlight some very serious issues.  Among the discoveries outlined by House Representative James Greenwood (House Hearing: E-Rate Program: Waste, Fraud, and Abuse, 2004):

·         In Puerto Rico $28 million worth of improperly stored and stockpiled equipment

·         $58 million network equipment sitting unused

·         NEC allegedly rigged millions of US dollars in bids in several states

·         $101 million for setting up high-speed Internet yielded two computers per school, using dialup

·         $31 million paid for high-speed Internet access which went unused

·         Consultants paid high fees without doing any work, leaving schools with no equipment or with technology they had no idea how to implement

·         Government warehouses contained many pallets loaded with shrink-wrapped E-Rate computers paid for but never used

It should be noted that the Congressional Hearing contains over 100 pages, and the summary above depicts a small portion of what was discovered.  The E-Rate program was designed with the goal of providing students with improved technology and Internet access, which would be a helpful tool in providing an education, particularly today where students must be prepared to enter the market already saturated with computer technology.  However, if a tool is not being used, or is being mishandled irresponsibly, then it represents a colossal waste.  The issue is not with the program itself, but an apparent lack of oversight.

The funds were controlled by a collection of telecommunication company representatives which calls itself the Universal Service Administrative Company.  The Federal funds earmarked for education should be distributed to the state, not one company handling bids for the whole country.  With better oversight, the E-Rate funds would be used to improve low-income schools rather than “over-building” existing networks in higher-funded schools in areas such as Washington (Eggerton, 2017).

The fault is not strictly with USAC, however.  Funds were distributed according to requests filed by the school districts, which entailed some restrictions.  For example, schools were instructed that only one service provider could be used to build the network.  The Russell-Tyler-Ruthton School District was ordered to repay over $42,000 when it was discovered that multiple contracts were awarded to different providers (Isaackson,2017).  Additional guidance is needed for districts to understand precisely what the restrictions are, and how to properly utilize the federal dollars allotted to them.  Confusion, rather than greed could be just as likely the cause for some situations.  For example, Idaho schools stand to lose $2 million of E-Rate funds because they negotiated telecommunication contracts independent of USAC’s guidelines, voiding their agreement (Richert, 2016).

All is not lost, however.  The program should not be eliminated, but should have more accountability across the board.  It is insufficient to blame the telecoms for charging and not fulfilling the contracts, or to crucify school district heads who do not follow up on equipment that might have been shipped and never installed.  There should be greater attention to detail from conception to installation.  There has been improvement since the 2004 hearings.  According to the State of States Report published by the Education Superhighway, 77 percent of districts have access to high-speed internet, more than double the amount which achieved the target set by the FCC in 2013 (Schaffhauser,2016).

Does shuffling more money into schools automatically guarantee gains in performance?  While there has never been conclusive empirical evidence that directly connects spending to school performance (Turner, 2016), the better question should be about how the funds are spent.  Proponents of technology integration argue that students should be given the latest tools to learn from (King, 2012).  The point of emphasis here is that as long as technology integration is exactly that, a tool, and not the focus of the education, then it can be a highly effective resource and deserves proper funding.

Reference:

Reynolds, G. (2012). Ethics in information technology (4th ed.). Boston, MA: Course Technology, Cengage Learning.