Special Event: The Mads: Manos The Hands of Fate
February 29, 2024 4:36 PM - Subscribe
Next up on MST Club's current mostly random sequence of further riffing as we can get it is The Mads' showing of (gulp) Manos The Hands of Fate. Infamously one of the worst movies MST3K ever did, this return to the trough has Trace Bealieu and Frank Conniff tackling it by themselves. Rifftrax also covered Manos, in a live show, but we'll save that for a future date. As for the movie... yeah, its Manos. A family of three on a vacation trip unwisely stay the night at the mysterious Valley Lodge, run by "Torgo," a balking goat-man with intrusive theme music. Turns out Torgo is in league with the forces of darkness, which include The Master and his undead wives out in the desert. Things don't well, either for the family or for the viewer. Good luck, once again, everyone.
We used a paid-for copy of The Mads' riffing. If you'd like your own copy of this episode, Dumb Industries has it for sale for around $12.
We used a paid-for copy of The Mads' riffing. If you'd like your own copy of this episode, Dumb Industries has it for sale for around $12.
Ah, but tonight's episode will start a little late, I'm on the interim transition board and our meetings unfortunately take place on Thursday nights, gah.
posted by JHarris at 4:43 PM on February 29 [1 favorite]
posted by JHarris at 4:43 PM on February 29 [1 favorite]
Not my favorite MST3k film by a long shot, but certainly one of the more memorable. In a weird way, Torgo is one of the best characters ever put on film. Certainly unforgettable. I still whistle his theme music from time to time.
posted by SoberHighland at 5:51 AM on March 1 [2 favorites]
posted by SoberHighland at 5:51 AM on March 1 [2 favorites]
Not to hijack this event, but this seems like as good of a place to mention it as any in case anyone doesn't know, and I've been meaning to tell you, JHarris, in particular:
The official MST3K YouTube Channel has been running a marathon of doom for the past 2+ months that started with the Christmas marathon, rolled right into NYE, and then just kept going due to popular demand.
Viewership counts have been consistently ranging between 1000-3000+ people the whole time, complete with live, high quality riffing in the stream chat.
For a while they had a schedule that was matching the official Twitch stream and (maybe) the Shout TV YT channel stream, but at some point like a month or so ago the people in charge of threw up their hands and just hit random on a huge playlist of MST3K, RiffTrax, Cinema Titanic and Film Crew episodes.
They were also doing a lot of the new Season 14 episodes for a while with the new cast and crew, but sadly I think they pulled those because people were complaining too much in the chat.
Due to rights it does seem like a fairly limited playlist and isn't all inclusive, but they seem to have added some new episodes to the roster in the last week or so, because we were getting a lot of repeats.
And since it's on random playback, well, at least once I've seen the same dull short played back to back at least once and it was amazingly horrible. You never know what you're going to get and it's kind of amazing.
One notable moment was a real brain-numbing sleeper like MST3K Radar Secret Service followed immediately by the RiffTrax of Zindy, and Zindy might be the absolutely worst film they've ever done of all time on any of the spinoffs or mainstream MST3K seasons.
posted by loquacious at 11:42 AM on March 1 [2 favorites]
The official MST3K YouTube Channel has been running a marathon of doom for the past 2+ months that started with the Christmas marathon, rolled right into NYE, and then just kept going due to popular demand.
Viewership counts have been consistently ranging between 1000-3000+ people the whole time, complete with live, high quality riffing in the stream chat.
For a while they had a schedule that was matching the official Twitch stream and (maybe) the Shout TV YT channel stream, but at some point like a month or so ago the people in charge of threw up their hands and just hit random on a huge playlist of MST3K, RiffTrax, Cinema Titanic and Film Crew episodes.
They were also doing a lot of the new Season 14 episodes for a while with the new cast and crew, but sadly I think they pulled those because people were complaining too much in the chat.
Due to rights it does seem like a fairly limited playlist and isn't all inclusive, but they seem to have added some new episodes to the roster in the last week or so, because we were getting a lot of repeats.
And since it's on random playback, well, at least once I've seen the same dull short played back to back at least once and it was amazingly horrible. You never know what you're going to get and it's kind of amazing.
One notable moment was a real brain-numbing sleeper like MST3K Radar Secret Service followed immediately by the RiffTrax of Zindy, and Zindy might be the absolutely worst film they've ever done of all time on any of the spinoffs or mainstream MST3K seasons.
posted by loquacious at 11:42 AM on March 1 [2 favorites]
Ah thanks. I'm aware of the infinite MST3K stream, but didn't know they were showing other things in it besides Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes.
It's nice that it's happening! When the Kickstarter for Season 14 failed a lot of fans were pretty depressed, it helps to fill that hole in all our hearts.
posted by JHarris at 2:22 PM on March 1
It's nice that it's happening! When the Kickstarter for Season 14 failed a lot of fans were pretty depressed, it helps to fill that hole in all our hearts.
posted by JHarris at 2:22 PM on March 1
When the Kickstarter for Season 14 failed a lot of fans were pretty depressed, it helps to fill that hole in all our hearts.
Yeah, the amount of hate and vitriol that the Season 13 crew was getting in the live stream chat was depressing, too, because so much of it was just plain old sexism and misogyny. Or even hating on the name change for G*psy to GPC as being too woke. (Hah, I just hit the automod flag for that G word, that's a first for me.)
The chat mods basically were constantly handing out bans and time outs to these people when the new seasons played and I think it had a lot to do with why I haven't seen any of the Season 13 episodes on the forever stream in a while, but that might have been a limited use offer for season 13 rights, idk.
But it was fucking depressing because I expect better from MST3K fans, like do they even pay attention to the show? Yeah, there's a lot of shitty trans related riffs, but there's even more so called "woke" riffs making fun of fascism, cop culture and conservative politics.
posted by loquacious at 11:09 AM on March 2 [4 favorites]
Yeah, the amount of hate and vitriol that the Season 13 crew was getting in the live stream chat was depressing, too, because so much of it was just plain old sexism and misogyny. Or even hating on the name change for G*psy to GPC as being too woke. (Hah, I just hit the automod flag for that G word, that's a first for me.)
The chat mods basically were constantly handing out bans and time outs to these people when the new seasons played and I think it had a lot to do with why I haven't seen any of the Season 13 episodes on the forever stream in a while, but that might have been a limited use offer for season 13 rights, idk.
But it was fucking depressing because I expect better from MST3K fans, like do they even pay attention to the show? Yeah, there's a lot of shitty trans related riffs, but there's even more so called "woke" riffs making fun of fascism, cop culture and conservative politics.
posted by loquacious at 11:09 AM on March 2 [4 favorites]
I think they were just the Loud Brigade, the whole reason they changed the big purple bot's name to GPC in the first place was due to fan requests. Always remember, because the great majority of fans and users never interact at all, it's not hard on the internet for a group to seem bigger than they are if they're just really verbose about it. MST3K's fanbase has always skewed left overall.
posted by JHarris at 3:29 PM on March 2
posted by JHarris at 3:29 PM on March 2
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posted by JHarris at 4:41 PM on February 29