“Mystery Science Theatre 3000” is coming to York.

The series is famous for spoofing bad films, with one human host and several puppet robot characters providing a running comedic commentary throughout the screening of such legendarily bad films as “Manos: The Hands of Fate,” “Teenage Cave Man,” “Zombie Nightmare” and many more.

After years as a cult classic series, MST3K went mainstream, going from Comedy Central to the Sci-Fi Channel to a revival series on Netflix in 2017. And the show has also gone on tour, traveling across the country to perform live riffs in theaters - including an upcoming show at York’s Pullo Center on Sept. 14.

Upon reflection of where things began, MST3K creator Joel Hodgson said that “I guess more than anything, it’s weird.”

“I’m just so grateful I acted on [the idea to create ‘Mystery Science Theatre 3000’], you know, because it’s such a goofy idea.," Hodgson said. "It could have been something that just said, ‘oh, that’s too crazy it’s never going to work.’ And I’m just really glad that I was in that kind of state of mind to go, ‘I want to go for it, I’m motivated I want to do this.’ And fortunately, I then found other people were local people in Minneapolis, and I used a local TV station. We made 22 shows there. I brought in friends of mine who were comics in Minneapolis, and that’s kind of how it started.”

Hodgson was the original host of the series, playing the role of “Joel” alongside robot pals Tom Servo and Crow T. Robot. The human host has rotated over the years through the various revivals, but Hodgson is back for this live tour, which will be his final tour with the show.

We spoke to Hodgson between rehearsals for the newest touring show, which will riff on the film “No Retreat, No Surrender.”

First of all, I’m big fan. I remember watching back when you guys were on Comedy Central at, like, one in the morning or something like that.

“Oh yeah.”

So, for this show in York. I imagine a lot of people are going to be there have seen some version of the television show. But what is a live show like, compared to a pre recorded episode?

"Well, we have to design the show so it can work for anybody, meaning people bring friends who’ve never seen the show. And fortunately for us, there’s a big puppet boom, as weird as it sounds. There’s a big puppet boom going on. There’s a lot of people who just love puppets, and we’re one of the few live touring puppet shows in the country right now. And so, there’s people come to that reason. There’s people who come because they like the idea of an ironic viewing watching bad movies. And so it’s kind of the nexus of that.

“And the way it’s different than the TV show is, really, you’re building the show in front of people. It’s really like watching us make a TV show in a way, but we’re doing it right in front of you. Because while we perform, we have cameras that they put it on a big screen. So we have a giant screen that we project the movies on, but the show’s projected on there too, what we’re doing. And so it’s a stage show, but it’s also a TV show.”

How do you find such bad movies?

“Well, you know, I mean fortunately there are lots of them. And there’s more bad movies than good movies.”

Yeah, I suppose that’s true. And I guess I should also qualify the question: how, when, when it comes to watching these movies - they’re obviously of questionable quality, all of them. But do you think of them as bad movies, or are you like, ‘oh, I kind of like this in a goofy way?’ Is it a fondness, or is it like ‘this is actually painful to watch I have to make fun of it'?

"Well, to me ... I’ve done it for over 30 years now, and so I consider them adorable. Like, you know how something is ugly and cute at the same time? That’s kind of how I look at them. Because there are really terrible movies that you just don’t want to do - that just are just so bad that you end up commenting on just how bad it is all the time.

"And that’s not what we do, really. We don’t really talk about the quality of the movie. We’re really using everything in the movie to springboard jokes and riffs and stuff like that. So over time, it’s just kind of finding those movies that you think will work really good with ‘Mystery Science Theater.’ And it really could be anything. The movie that we’re starting with is ‘No Retreat, No Surrender.’ It’s kind of a knockoff of ‘The Karate Kid,’ I guess. What the filmmakers were trying to do is, ‘karate movies are big, we’re going to make a karate movie.’

“But it’s got a unique style, because when you movie riff, you’re dancing with the movie, really. It’s like, what’s a good dance partner? That’s kind of what I’m looking for. Some movies have it, and some movies don’t. It’s derivative work - we’re like spring boarding off this movie, and trying to make a new piece of entertainment with it.

"One of the things I noticed last time I watched an episode was that you have to fit the jokes into where the movie is. So you have to make them quick jokes when there’s lots of dialogue, but then when there’s a long stretch of silence you can really pile on the comments. You have to, in fact, pile on the comments. Is that same sort of juggling act of pace and matching the movie that that happens in the live show?

"Oh yeah. The crazy thing, the real art of movie riffing live, is that you never know exactly how the audience is going to react. So you’re kind of editing it in real time, all three of us. Nate [Begel, who plays the robot Crow] and Conor [McGiffin, who plays the robot Tom Servo] and I are all editing.

"Because if an audience reacts really strongly to a joke, we have to kind of bail on the next joke or two, because their laugh is going to cover up the setup to the next joke. So that’s really the art and movie riffing: it’s just peeling away jokes. And there’s nothing better than having your joke eclipsed by a big laugh. so that’s what you want. But you have to be really tuned in, and you’re really are editing in real time, the whole time.

Is there, improvisation on the night, or do you work your way through the movie like, ‘all right this is pretty much the framework, this is what we’re going to do’?

"Yeah, it’s really fun because you really are ... I guess the closest thing you could describe it to is jazz, where someone will play a song, but you’re kind of, it’s a performance. And so, you’re really putting yourself into it, and so each night is different. Sometimes the lines are the same and sometimes you just want to disrupt the line. Sometimes you want to try to make the next guy laugh, give him a different line that he’s used to hearing you do. And that’s kind of part of the fun.

"It’s like, it’s kind of like being like a Harlem Globetrotter with jokes, you know. You just kind of have a bunch of jokes ready. And you can use a bunch of different ideas. So really what we have is, we’ve assigned who says what joke at what time. But that joke can change. We just know how much time we have so we can alter it.

“It’s a living thing. We’re always making it better. It’s kind of like how the Marx Brothers, before they shot their movies, they would go and do their shows live. And they did the same process where they were kind of workshopping live. They were always in a process of improving the material to get stronger and stronger. We have a really great promotion company, but so much of the way we sell tickets is all word of mouth and people just posting about it and liking it.”

So you still have a lot of word of mouth, cult classic sort of vibe?

"Yeah, we’re really dependent on it, because it’s such an unusual show. It’s always amazing to me how I meet people and they don’t even know that we have 20 new shows on Netflix and we’re 100% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. I think that Rotten Tomatoes released the list of 150 shows on Netflix and based on our ratings were number three. It’s really funny, but it’s this world where people are kind of siloed away from that information if they don’t happen to know it.

Speaking of streaming services and websites, how do you feel about the state of today’s sort of mainstream movie mockery? I’m thinking of YouTube channels like Cinema Sins or Honest Trailers, which have millions of subscribers. They don’t do the same thing that that Mystery Science Theater does but it’s still built around, ‘oh, here’s the movie and I’m going to make fun of it.’

"Oh yeah, the people from Honest Trailers are big fans. We were going to do one with them actually when we launched the show but we just didn’t have time. They’re always really nice about it when I meet them.

“It’s just a part of the culture and it’s always been there since movies first started. People have always felt obliged to react to them. And I just came up with a delivery system for it.”

I just had one more question: is the audience allowed to participate? Are they are they throwing out jokes as well?

“No, they don’t because I think everyone around them would tell them to shut up! There’s no room for it. There’s just no way. Only, like, drunk people or people are kind of socially out of touch. We do get those, and they just get thrown out. They don’t know, they don’t understand that people paid good money to hear us do it right. Last tour at the Hard Rock Cafe, there was a drunk guy who thought he could do it. Yeah.”

Joel, thanks so much for talking to us, and thanks for all the laughs.

“Of course. Thank you so much.”

IF YOU GO

Mystery Science Theater 3000 Live: The Great Cheesy Movie Circus Tour: “No Retreat, No Surrender”

7:30 p.m. Sept. 14 at The Pullo Center, 1031 Edgecomb Ave., York. Cost: $57, $45, $32. pullocenter.york.psu.edu