Mystery Science Theater 3000
HBO Downtown Productions for Comedy Central, Best Brains, Inc.
What happens when you take a lab technician, maroon him in outer space, and subject him to experiments testing the effects of bad movies on the human species? Mystery Science 3000. The creative minds of Jim Mallon, Joel Hodgson, Trace Beaulieu, Kevin Murphy, and Mike Nelson are mostly responsible for this mania. With references to everything from Proust to Gilligan’s Island, Mystery Science Theater 3000 fuses superb, clever writing with wonderfully terrible B-grade movies. The lab technician and his robot pals are silhouetted in the lower portion of the television screen, offering lively, humorous commentary about inferior movies the mad scientist force them to view. During intermission, they perform farcical skits based on the action in the movie and interact with their evil tormentors, who monitor their fiendish experiments from and earth-based laboratory. For producing an ingenious eclectic series, a Peabody to Comedy Central and Best Brains, Inc. for Mystery Science Theater 3000.