Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie

A man trapped on a space station with two robots survives by mocking the bad films he is forced to watch. This time it is This Island Earth, a science fiction picture from 1955. Three silhouettes sit at the bottom of the screen and talk through it. Jim Mallon directed, from the television series of the same name. The structure is simple but the object is strange: a feature film containing almost the whole of another feature film. Universal allowed the use of This Island Earth from its own library. That is where the friction started. The studio insisted on a shorter running time, so the film being watched was cut significantly and the total came down to seventy-three minutes. The team criticised the interference openly afterwards. The series had a cult following, but the film played in few theatres and left no mark at the box office. The humour is entirely verbal; the jokes are pasted onto whatever frame is on screen. Who it is for: viewers who know the show and enjoy bad-movie mockery. Who it is not for: anyone watching with subtitles; most of the jokes live in tone and timing.