The Comic Galaxy of Mystery Science Theater 3000: Twelve Classic Episodes and the Movies They Lampoon by Chris Morgan

Author:Chris Morgan
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: McFarland & Company
Published: 2015-01-30T22:00:00+00:00

9

Laserblast, or “There’s a point where it stops being a movie”

The seventh season of Mystery Science Theater 3000 began in early 1996. By this point, Comedy Central was a very different network than when it began, and the television market was changing. After all, MST3K was, initially, one of the first shows for a brand new network called the Comedy Channel. By 1996, however, there was plenty of content on its way. The Daily Show, with Craig Kilborn as host, debuted that year, and South Park, which really put the network on the map, was set to debut in 1997. The network did not have large swaths of open airtime any more. Old episodes were getting cut down in reruns, on the increasingly rare occasions they were rerun.

Comedy Central got a new president in 1995, Doug Herzog, and soon after the network and Mystery Science Theater 3000 would have a new deal, but it also felt like a death knell. After a few seasons with episode totals reaching over 20, season seven’s deal was for a mere six episodes, with an option for three more. On February 3, 1996, the first episode of season seven, featuring Night of the Blood Beast, aired. On March 14, 1996 Best Brains announced the news that MST3K fans were dreading: Comedy Central was not going to make further episodes. Within this announcement there was a mention of talks with the Sci-Fi Channel but at this time that was but a glimmer of hope. Mystery Science Theater 3000 may have been ending for good. On May 18, 1996, MST3K aired what was seen at the time as the final episode of the show. The movie being shown? A 1978 slice of cinematic incoherence called Laserblast. If this was going to be MSTies’ final chance to see their beloved show, the hope was that they would be able to go out with a bang. Not just by showing a movie that was comically bad, but by having a strong set of riffs and host segments. Everybody wants to go out on a high note.

There are two notable things I want to address about Laserblast before delving further into this film and into the episode of MST3K it is featured in, and neither of these facts are related to it being the final episode of the show’s Comedy Central run. First, Leonard Maltin gave this movie two and a half stars when he reviewed it. Considering where this movie ended up, on the show that lampoons bad movies, this is probably surprising, especially since we are talking Leonard Maltin here. I would wager that, currently, Maltin is the most prominent living film critic. He hits a nice middle ground, and is probably a bit more populist than some other notable film critics. Maltin isn’t quite as cerebral as a Roger Ebert or a Pauline Kael, but he also has much more integrity than a Gene Shalit or a Rex Reed. Plus, he has a real sense of humor about himself.

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