Mystery Science Theater 3000’s best, most insightful jokes about horror movies – SYFY WIRE

Screenwriters have to walk a tightrope when crafting horror movie victims. If viewers care too much about the soon-to-be-dead, their worry for regular people will outweigh the fun of the scares. Some writers avoid this problem by filling their films with utterly unlikable, disgusting human beings, so we can enjoy their demise without that pesky empathy getting in the way.

Of course, filmmakers can make their characters too unlikable, as Joel and the bots discover while watching 1975s The Giant Spider Invasion. Even before the titular spiders launch the titular invasion on a small Wisconsin town, viewers meet a gaggle of hateful yokels who spew the type of ugly dialogue Rob Zombie dreams about. So disgusting are these characters that Crow lasts only a few minutes before chanting, Go spiders! Go spiders! Go, go spiders!

While the movies non-existent special effects budgets prevent the audience from seeing bad people come to worse ends, The Giant Spider Invasions bottom-of-the-barrel stereotypes do inspire plenty of top-shelf riffs. Theyre poor only in money, and spirit, and dignity, and moral fiber, and hygiene, Joel observes as the camera pans past a shack filled with nasty locals. These barbs might seem harsh, but the movie despises its characters more than Joel and the bots ever could. And when the film goes for another stomach-churning incest joke, its hard to disagree with Crows assessment: This movie hates us, doesnt it?

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Mystery Science Theater 3000's best, most insightful jokes about horror movies - SYFY WIRE