1009-Hamlet

Film Year:  1961

Genre:  Drama

Director:  Franz Peter Wirth

Starring:  The voice of Ricardo Montalban and an actor named Paul Verhoeven who isn't that Paul Verhoeven

MST Season:  10

The Movie

William Shakespeare's Hamlet.  Quite possibly the most endurable and everlasting play ever written, other than perhaps Romeo & Juliet.  It has been adapted for film many times by filmmakers such as Laurence Olivier, Mel Gibson, and Kenneth Branagh, and has served as inspiration for films such as Akira Kurosawa's The Bad Sleep Well and Disney's animated feature The Lion King.

So obviously the first film we think about in relation to Hamlet is a made for television German film.

The story of Hamlet should need no introduction.  The title character is the Prince of Denmark, haunted by the ghost of his deceased father.  He is told that his uncle Claudius murdered the King to be crowned King himself and marry Hamlet's mother.  Unsure of whether or not this is the truth, Hamlet devises a scheme to make Claudius's guilt apparent and seek retribution.

Drab and dour, and with a monotonous dub that's doing it no favors, this particular version of Hamlet is a bit of a sour experience.  It never let's the viewer's attention span take over and just kind of stands still and announces the play at the audience.  It's like a really bad High School performance full of actors who think angst is ACT-TING!

But still, Hamlet is Hamlet, no matter how poorly done.  This version is probably done a disservice by being featured on Mystery Science Theater because it was initially two and a half hours long!  About half the movie was cut out to fit into the show's format, enough of a length that they could have easily made a two part episode out of it.  But considering what is onscreen, another hour of this might have been murderously boring.  Forget the ear poison, just put on this movie instead.

The Episode

Aha!  Mike gets the upper hand on Pearl, Bobo, and Observer with a game of Three Card Monte.  As a reward he gets to pick the movie this week, and he chooses "The greatest drama of all time," Hamlet.  But Pearl has this puppy up her sleeve instead.

Good one, Nelson!

Widely considered by fans as the worst episode of Mystery Science Theater ever filmed, I find Hamlet to be a lot better than it's reputation.  I remember sitting down to watch this episode in 1999 and being intrigued by the idea of riffing Shakespeare, and as I watched I had an admiration for what they were doing, their approach to it, and their general level of enthusiasm for doing something so outside of their comfort zone.  When it ended I didn't think it was their funniest episode, but I had a generally positive impression of it.  It wasn't until I started to get into the online MST community that I started reading about how hated this episode was, and I kind of blinked and said "Really?"  But then again, I had the same reaction upon discovering people considered Pod People and The Final Sacrifice among the best of the series.

Hamlet is something different, experimental, and while it's slower paced, it has enough laughs to be considered above average.  The inherent problem of making an MST episode out of a Shakespeare play is that there is a lot of dialogue.  Writing around it proves problematic because there is hardly any space and writing over it could create an incoherent experience.  One of the pros however is that...well, it's Hamlet.  Even if you do write over the dialogue your general audience member still won't lose grip of the movie because chances are they were brow-beaten with this play during their literary studies in Junior High School.  But still they need to respectfully dance around it, and Mike and the Bots do about as well as they can in the circumstances.

There is a bit of a thick question in the air of how can you riff Hamlet at all.  Do you take aim at the production?  Sometimes they do.  They notice little overblown movements that don't quite work in the actors' favor as they perform this play.  One of my favorites is during a monologue from the King's ghost the film focuses squarely on Hamlet's face, causing Crow to peak around the corner looking for the source of the voice and Mike to urgently state "Camera 2!  Cut to Camera 2!"  There's also weird facial expressions, like Queen Gertrude's wide eyes causing the quip "My contacts are fine!"  Do they litter it with contemporary humor to contrast the dated "Thou, thy, and thee" dialogue?  Often that's the case.  They give little modern touches to plot developments, like Gertrude marrying Claudius, and giving them little notes like "Slut...I mean, what?" or Hamlet going to confront the ghost of the King, while his companions stay behind and shout "Go get 'em, Ham!  Kick his ass!"  A favorite moment of mine happens when Ophelia descends into madness and starts singing, causing Crow to state "Ugh, it's Jewel.  Get her out of here!"  And then there are moments where they find an opening and just heckle the play, with shots like "Lights, camera, soliloquy!" and Crow giving the Claudius-manipulated Laertes the knobish misinterpretation that he should kill Hamlet by cutting his throat in a Church.

I quite enjoy the host segments too.  They actually keep the energy level of the episode up to counteract the slow crawl of the movie.  I adore the opening segment in which Tom Servo officially changes his name to Htom Sirveaux.  The Three-Card Monte opener is pretty funny, and it sets up the very different movie selection this week brilliantly.  They play with the core concept of Hamlet in many interesting ways throughout, with the Bots putting on an interpretive musical theater version of the play and a game show centered around the famous "Alas Poor Yorick" scene.  We close with a wildly funny visit by a cut character from the play named Fortinbras and the cute Hamlet action figure.

In the end, as different as this episode is, it's probably not surprising that it wound up being divisive.  Most people want what they're familiar with.  But I have to disagree strongly with those who claim this episode is "unwatchable."  It's perfectly watchable, and I've watched it many times.  But I don't really find any episode of MST to be unwatchable, though this wouldn't be one that I would put in my bottom ten "close to unwatchable" episodes if I ever compiled a list.  I've always found it charming.  Maybe it's a little bit of an enigma why some people think it's a solidly funny episode while most find it a taint upon the series, but as someone here who does enjoy it I can assure you that we enjoy it for a reason.

Good

The DVD

Hamlet was released early on in the DVD volumes, much to the dismay of this episode's detractors everywhere.  But the film featured is in public domain, so it makes sense that is was one of the first Sci-Fi era episodes released.  Rhino released it on the all-Sci-Fi-episode debut collection of Volume 4, featuring a bizarre flaw that may be native to the episode itself and not just the DVD.  The first theater segment is a bit odd in that the picture of the film is fine but the theater seats are actually pixelated for some weird reason.  The sole special feature is an intro by Michael J. Nelson in which he assures us we'll enjoy it (most disagreed).

Shout Factory later released the episode as a Shout Select single exclusively through their website.  There were no bonus features.

Volume 4 was later re-released by Shout Factory with Hamlet still intact.  And the pixelated theater segment remains, leaving me to conclude it's just how the episode was mastered for some reason.  Mike's intro is retained.