The Minnesota story behind 'Mystery Science Theater 3000': An interview with Jim Mallon
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On television, she was a robot; but in Jim Mallon’s hands, she’s a bundle from the home improvement section.
Her neck is Menards drainage tubing. Her head is a car seat. Her eye is a flashlight.
Mallon pulls a string and the robot’s mouth opens.
“Welcome to the show,” Mallon says, in his best falsetto.
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Close up, the homemade quality of the show is apparent, and that was part of its charm.
Mallon co-created “Mystery Science Theater 3000” in 1988 as a new production manager on Twin Cities television channel 23. He also occasionally appeared as Gypsy the robot.
The show was science fiction at its outset — a man sent into space by two mad scientists — but the meat of each episode included a running dialogue of jokes and banter over low-budget B-movies.
The team, including Mallon and co-creator Joel Hodgson, won a Peabody in 1993 and has been credited for inventing a new genre of comedy. The original iteration was picked up nationally by the Comedy Channel and then Comedy Central, running until 1999. It quickly became a cult classic.
The entire time, the show was produced in the Twin Cities.
Mallon grew up in Rochester, Minn., in the 1960s. He calls his childhood there “Spielberg-esque” — it was quaint and gave him room to spread his wings creatively.
“We were allowed to range as far as the dinner bell would reach,” he said.
As children, Mallon and his friends created comedy shows on a wind-up 8mm camera. He took that passion with him to the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
After graduation, he won a $20,000 grant from Madison’s PBS station. Mallon teamed up with high school friend David Herbert to create the campy horror flick, "Blood Hook,” filmed in Hayward, Wis., where Herbert had a family cabin and the pair had produced another movie back in high school.
The film follows young adults at a Wisconsin lake house where a man went missing under mysterious circumstances.
“Blood Hook” was produced on a shoestring budget, but it has a cult following today. The town of Hayward hosts a screening each summer, coinciding with the town’s famous Musky festival. The film was recently re-released on DVD.
Despite the obvious camp behind “Blood Hook,” Mallon doesn’t think it would have been right for “Mystery Science Theater 3000.”
“The best films for ‘Mystery Science’ were the ones that the production company and the people behind it took it seriously,” Mallon said.
At the time of the show’s creation, CGI was becoming more mainstream in movies and television. Mallon and Hodgson went the other way, doubling down on their low-budget methods.
The robot character Crow’s eyes were ping-pong balls and his beak a bowling pin. They produced the show out of a warehouse they rented for free from a brother of one of the actors.
“One thing I learned from Joel [Hodgson] early on is that audiences are very forgiving of low-tech, if you set the rules to say the show is low-tech.”
“Mystery Science Theater 3000” was revived in 2017 and 2021 but without Mallon’s involvement.
He changed careers. Mallon retires this week after more than a decade as a mental health counselor.
The career change was, in part, because of tragedy in his personal life. In 1997, his daughter died in an accident.
“It turned my world upside-down, and I was pretty much lost,” Mallon said.
Mallon was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2017, which is one of the factors leading to his retirement this week.
As a therapist, he found himself working mostly with artists. He understood where they were coming from because he had been in their shoes.
Mallon was taught in grad school that most of good therapy is about the relationship with the client. And his willingness to run with a bit served him well in that career path, too.
“I think having a sense of humor builds relationships,” he said.
