Prior to the Netflix release of Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Gauntlet, the 12th season of MST3K that arrives on November 22, ComingSoon.net got Jonah Ray to list his Five Favorite Movie Punks for us. If that seems out of left field, it’s good to realize that Ray started his career as a punk rocker in his native Hawaii before becoming better known as a comedian. Check out Jonah Ray’s Five Favorite Movie Punks list below!
This year’s Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Gauntlet will riff on six classic movies, including 1979’s Killer Fish, 1980’s The Day Time Ended, 1989’s Lords of the Deep, 2013’s Pacific Rim knockoff Atlantic Rim, the McDonald’s-sponsored E.T. ripoff Mac and Me and 1982’s Ator, the Fighting Eagle (another in the film series that also included MST3K classic Cave Dwellers!). In keeping with the binge-watching model of Netflix, all six episodes are part of one long story arc in which Jonah and the bots have to endure all six movies back-to-back.
RELATED: Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Gauntlet Trailer Released
Created and co-directed by Joel Hodgson, the Mystery Science Theater 3000 revival stars Jonah Ray (The Nerdist Podcast, Maron) as Jonah Heston, along with his robot sidekicks Tom Servo (Baron Vaughn, Grace and Frankie) and Crow T. Robot (Hampton Yount, The Eric Andre Show), who are forced by Kinga Forrester (Felicia Day, The Guild, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog) to watch (and hilariously mock) terrible movies onboard the Satellite of Love. Comedian Patton Oswalt (Young Adult) appears as TV’s Son of TV’s Frank, Kinga’s henchman.
In late 2015, Hodgson started a highly-successful Kickstarter campaign to fund the new season, which through voracious fan contributions netted $5.7 million, a Kickstarter record. The B-movie titles for the new season were licensed through Shout Factory, the label that also distributes the classic episodes of MST3K on DVD/Blu-ray. Highlights from Season 11 included the bigfoot kids movie Cry Wilderness, 70’s disaster flick Avalanche and the sexy sci-fi romp Star Crash, as well as a guest star roster that included Wil Wheaton, Erin Gray, Neil Patrick Harris, Jerry Seinfeld, Joel McHale and Mark Hamill!
The original Mystery Science Theater 3000 was created and hosted by comedian Joel Hodgson and produced out of Minnesota from 1988 to 1999 for 197 episodes, each cracking jokes over a different piece of trash cinema from badly-dubbed Japanese Gamera movies to the obscure sleaze masterpiece Manos: The Hands of Fate. Halfway through the show’s run, Hodgson left the show over creative differences and was replaced as host by head writer Michael J. Nelson, who also starred in 1996’s Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie.
Jonah Ray's 5 Favorite Movie Punks
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Trash – Return of the Living Dead (1985)
ACTOR: Linnea Quigley
DIRECTOR: Dan O'Bannon
BOX OFFICE: $14.2 million
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Trash – Return of the Living Dead (1985)
Jonah Ray: One of my favorite movie punks is Trash from “Return of the Living Dead." She’s just such a funny and nihilistic 80's punk, where she’s rubbing her legs and going, “Do you ever fantasize about dying?” Stuff like that, and then she gets naked in a cemetery. You can’t really get more punk than that. Linnea Quigley’s so great.
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Debbi and Duke – Repo Man (1984)
ACTORS: Jennifer Balgobin and Dick Rude
DIRECTOR: Alex Cox
BOX OFFICE: $3.7 million
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Debbi and Duke – Repo Man (1984)
Jonah Ray: I would say Otto from “Repo Man” but Otto sells out when he becomes a repo man, so I’m going to have to give the next spot to the group of punks who are, again, so perfectly nihilistic in their punk attitude, where they just want to go and commit crimes. "Let’s go get sushi and not pay for it." Just these low-level, funny, fuck-the-system moments of being a punk.
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Mike – SLC Punk! (1998)
ACTOR: Jason Segel
DIRECTOR: James Merendino
BOX OFFICE: $299,569
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Mike – SLC Punk! (1998)
Jonah Ray: For the next one I’m going to go with Jason Segel from “SLC Punk." He’s the least punk of the crew, but to me that’s the kind of punk I was, where I was in college with shirts and glasses, but I was always in the pit at a punk show. So I connected with Jason Segel being this tall, dorky guy in the punk scene from “SLC Punk."
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Skinner – Suburbia (1983)
ACTOR: Timothy Eric O'Brien
DIRECTOR: Penelope Spheeris
BOX OFFICE: N/A
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Skinner – Suburbia (1983)
Jonah Ray: In the original “Suburbia" the moment I’m remembering is, “Hey, where’s my shirt?” And then the other guy goes, “You’re wearing your shirt.” “Not this shirt, idiot. My yellow one,” and then punches the dude. That’s another one of my favorite movie punks.
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Zed - Police Academy 2-through-4 (1985-1987)
ACTOR: Bobcat Goldthwait
DIRECTOR: Jerry Paris, Jim Drake
BOX OFFICE: $127 million combined
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Zed - Police Academy 2-through-4 (1985-1987)
Jonah Ray: I’m going to say Bobcat Goldthwait in the “Police Academy” movies. Basically he was crossover punk. He was that metal/punk hybrid that was going on at the time when the Cro-Mags started doing solos and whatnot, and Bad Brains became a metal band.
