From: The New York Times*

Date: September 6, 1990

Headline: Wry "MST 3000" a Trash-Film Treat

Photo(s): Droll Host: Joel Hodgson

Author: Schultz, Paul

Page(s): [unknown]

The movie theater darkens and you can see the silhouettes of three wise guys in the front row. On the screen, Mamie Van Doren undulates and sings out-of-tune faux rock in a prison farm's cotton field--the forgettable classic, "Untamed Youth." Or maybe the alien Ro-Man plots mankind's destruction in his gorilla suit with a diving helmet in "Robot Monster," perhaps the apogee of cinema-dreck.

All the while the three smart alecks crack jokes during the movie, turning the interminable and tacky into a new comic landscape littered with puns, pop-culture references and street-level criticism. Siskel and Ebert it's not.

It's the Comedy Channel's "Mystery Science Theater 3000."

Comic Joel Hodgson is the host-in-space on the show, the premise of which is as bizarre as the films presented. Hodgson plays a lab tech marooned in Earth orbit by mad scientists. Each week, he and his robot buddies are made to watch a bad movie as part of a crazed experiment.

Hodgson's sidekicks complement his own droll commentary; Tom Servo, resembling a gumball machine on steroids, booms out absurdities in the deep, smarmy tones of a TV announcer. (Hodgson says the character is based on "Laugh-In's" Gary Owen.) And Crow, seemingly assembled from space jetsam, chimes in with gibes, malapropisms and other galactic shtick.

"MST" has quickly become a cult favorite--a sorely needed one for the Comedy Channel--and HBO, which operates the 24-hour all-laughs cable channel, recently green-lighted the show for a second season. Starting Saturday, Sept. 15, "MST" runs 7-9 p.m. with a repeat on Sunday at 11 a.m.

The 30-year-old Hodgson created the show two years ago in Minnesota, where it ran for a season before being picked up by the Comedy Channel. In the early '80s, though, Hodgson was another kind of star-bound comedian, doing Letterman, "Saturday Night Live" and club dates all over the country. His act features weird props of his own invention, like the "head cranker" or Chiro-Gyro.

Though Hodgson says he was well on his way to becoming "a comedy avatar," he grew tired of having to spend hours on L.A. freeways searching for prop material. So after turning down a lucrative series deal with NBC, he moved back to the Minneapolis area in 1985. There he formed a production company, Best Brains, with "MST" producer Jim Mallon. The show still orginates from their studio in Eden Prairie, Minn.

The idea for "MST" came from Hodgson's love of science fiction (though the show features other kinds of genre trash) and the feeling of listening to wee-hour deejays. "Driving late at night," Hodgson says, "you hear those talk-radio guys and it's kind of spooky and cheerful at the same time."

Hodgson says some of the funniest TV is "being with other people who are making comments" about what's on the air. This is the spirit "MST" tries to capture.

Helping Hodgson in his comedic quest are technical director Kevin Murphy and set designer Trace Beaulieu, who also write and provide the voices of Servo and Crow With the new season, Hodgson says to look for "better production values, upgraded sets" and titles like "King Dinosaur," "Rocket Ship X-M" and "Jungle Goddess."

Hodgson says the show "is subject to whatever HBO gets for us" in the way of movies. But whether the film du jour is "The Crawling Hand" or "Side Hackers," Hodgson promises "to keep doing what's interesting to us."