Twitch.tv is no longer just for watching some nerd on the internet play StarCraft while prepubescent boys hurl insults in a chat box. Now you can do that AND watch a six-day MST3K movie marathon! Check out the video promo for the marathon here.
If you aren’t familiar, MST3K stands for “Mystery Science Theater 3000”, the greatest show from the 1990s (and recently revived on Netflix) which takes bad movies and makes fun of them with jokes in real time. It’s funny. You’d like it. (for more on my deep love of MST3K and how it probably started my obsession with movie marathons, check out my article on the subject here)
According to the Twitch.tv announcement, they’ll be playing 38 classic episodes of MST3K over the space of six days, starting on June 26 at 11 a.m. Pacific Time and end July 3. A typical MST3K episode (minus commercials) is about 1.5 hours. By my count, that’s approximately 57 hours of MST3K content. The announcement indicates that the remaining time will be filled with “an assortment of vintage educational shorts and other bonus content in between each episode.” Commercials are also presumably involved.
If you are a prepubescent boy, no worries, real-time chat will still be available during the marathon. In fact, that’s part of the appeal. According to Variety’s article:
The point: to highlight Twitch’s ambitions of becoming a home for more than just live video-game action. Twitch refers to itself as a “social video platform,” letting viewers chat in real-time in a window next to the video.
Not convinced to take the next week off of work? Need to try before you buy? Many classic MST3K episode are available on the MST3K YouTube channel. Might I suggest one of my personal favorites: King Dinosaur?
In this movie, 1950’s scientists travel to planet Nova, discover giant iguanas and call them T-rexes, and (spoiler alert) end up nuking the new life forms they discovered. Why? Because…well… they brought an atom bomb with them. It was a good time to use it!