MST3K [Hamlet (1961), Wirth] (1999), Nelson

On Saturday mornings, young CGriff (then CSmith) would wake up in time to watch Mystery Science Theatre 3000 with her dad and brother. We never really got around to this one then, but I have fond memories of bad acting, worse FX, and 2 robots with a guy named Mike trapped in space, doomed forever to watch the most horrible movies their captor, Pearl, could throw at them. But at least they had their comic commentary.

Their take on Shakespeare was most popularly done with a dreary made-for-TV German version of Hamlet from 1961 which had been redubbed in English. For MST3K, at least, the film version would have run just under 90 minutes, which, for as s-l-o-w-l-y as they talked, meant that a LOT of text must have been cut. This film is probably the reason we have Hamlet and Vampires today, given it's faintly Transylvanian setting and speech.

Anyone who's seen MST3K knows that the commentary ranges from the supremely easy (fart noises) to the fairly intellectual ("Ugh. Yeah, go a LOT to England."). They will make fun of anything from the acting choices ("and now my patented SPAZZ move!"), to criticism of the text ("is there a word in English he HASN'T said?"). Between suffering through chunks of the movie, the robots Crow and Servo have short vignettes with Mike, making more fun of what we've just seen.

One of their first segments takes the cake for me, though, because they make fun of me. Yep. Hamlet's SO popular to do abstract modern versions. Countless College Students indeed. Also, which of the Ros and Guil pair is Squiggy? Slay me, but I love Ros and Guil jokes. And the 'Alas Poor ?' game where the robots had to identify celebrities by random skeletal remains was pretty funny.

Anyhoo. I spent about half of this show being tickled to death, and the other half messing around on my phone to kill time between boring scenes. Seriously - it is the darkest, slowest, most ridiculously interminable Hamlet. And it's less than 90 minutes.

Right now you can find the whole thing on YouTube, or on Netflix, if you're feeling legal. 10 minutes of the best of below.