The Cinematic Titanic Experience

As I promised last week, I attended the Cinematic Titanic event at the Castro last night, and got to experience a live Mystery Science Theater 3000 event in all it’s glory. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, see Joel Hodgson, Mystery Science Theater, and Cinematic Titanic.)

The first thing I noticed when I arrived at the Castro last night was a very long line—around the block. The show was sold out, and the crowd was a healthy mix of ages and genders (okay, I only noted two genders). I only saw one man appropriately costumed,  in a Gizmonics jumpsuit similar to the one that MST3K original creator and original host Joel Hodgson used to wear on the show. I also saw a panhandler outside the theater with a live chicken on his head, but I don’t think that was related to the event. (And yes, I gave him some spare change. How can you not give something to a panhandler with a live chicken on his head?)

Not counting the usual Castro organ concert, the show didn’t get started until 8:10, 40 minutes late. And then it still took a while to get going, with nearly half an hour of warm-up acts. The first one was the best: Mary Jo Pehl (the evil Pearl Forrester in the later seasons of the TV show) using the deadest of deadpan voices to introduce a standup comic who wasn’t nearly as funny as she was. It was 8:30 before Hodgson finally came on stage, introduced his collaborators, and the movie, War of the Insects, started.

Actually, as Hodgson explained beforehand, War of the Insects wasn’t the original title. The English-language credits on this dubbed Japanese horror film identified it as Genocide. Hodgson pointed out some of the problems with that title. “If a reviewer wants to praise the movie, he can’t say ‘I really liked Genocide.’”

It wasn’t the beautiful, widescreen print Hodgson promised. It looked more like an widescreen DVD, with the scope image cropped to 16×9, then incorrectly projected at 4×3. For anything other than Cinematic Titanic (or something like it), I would have complained.

But MST3K and Cinematic Titanic have never been about seeing a movie properly. They’re about seeing a movie that, properly speaking, shouldn’t be seen at all. From the opening shot of an H bomb explosion, with Pehl’s comment, "Sarah Palin’s first day as President," the jokes flew thick and belly deep. There were times I couldn’t breathe.

I don’t like going into detail about movie riffing. If you’re not watching the movie when you hear the jokes, they’re just not funny. So trust me: In context, they were very, very funny.

The experience was much better than watching MST3K at home. Of course,a large, enthusiastic audience always helps with comedy. But it was more than that. The performers weren’t riffing in a studio with newly-written, untested material. They gave a honed live performance from a script tested and performed before other audiences.

A great evening.

8/5: I’ve re-edited this post, correcting a few minor errors.