Last semester for English class, I did a project about “Hamlet” on film. In order to do this project, I had to watch several versions of “Hamlet” on film.
Well, technically, the project could have been done without seeing any versions, although everyone in the class did see the Branagh version, so therefore I would’ve at least seen that, but still, I think I went the extra mile and actually purchased the movies. Three of them!
I found that waiting for these purchases to arrive took a long time. Much longer than expected. Soo, I needed something I could do in the meantime, other than research. I mean, reading about the movies helped, but you really do need to see them. I planned on talking about Olivier’s “Hamlet”, but, alas, that version did not arrive, and it instead was the one with Mick Jagger’s girlfriend. Who by the way, totally disappointed me.
Actually, all the Ophelias did. I didn’t see any Ophelias who matched how I pictured Ophelia. Kate Winslet was a bit too over the top, and all the others were a bit too passive. I liked Lisa Simpson’s Ophelia, and she was my first Ophelia, so she is what I judged all the others by. So a good Ophelia, to me, would be Lisa, but a little more serious, you know? But that’s besides the point!
Anyway, during this time that I waited for my DVDs to arrive, I started trying to find other places to obtain these movies. The only copy I could obtain over the internet was (I believe) the Russian “Hamlet”. My dad found it and thought someone had taped it at a movie theatre or something, because you could see and hear these people talking.
Ah, but I knew what this was about. These were not just any people. They were two robots and a people. This was “Mystery Science Theatre 3000″. If you don’t know what it is and you don’t want to wiki it, then it’s a TV show with a dude and some robots who watch these old cheesy bad movies from the sixties and thereabouts, and you see the person and the robots overlayed at the bottom of the screen, along with them doing commentary.
And you know what? It was really really funny.
Some of it I don’t know if I would have gotten if I didn’t read “Hamlet” so extensively, but a lot of it was just plain funny anyway.
Of all the “Hamlet”s on screen I have seen, methinks this is my favourite.
You can check it out on YouTube. It’s split into eleven different clips, I believe, and you can find the others by search for “hamlet mst3k”.
I’d tell you some of my favourite bits, but I’d end up quoting most of the commentary. The “Night Fever” bit was when I realized it was going to be good, heh heh. I also really liked the end of the Yorick scene. And I can’t agree more that Claudius totally looks like Oliver Reed.
Now, keep in mind, this was from the 80s/90s. One part that I found unintentionally funny was when Hamlet was doing a soliloquy and one of the people said “he should take up journaling”. Ha ha ha. Journaling? What’s that?
I then watched MST3K’s “The Horror at Party Beach”, another movie I’d seen previously. This is just a regular old cheesy sixties monster movie, but with MST3K, you get so much more. I can’t recall any really hilarious parts, but I know there were some.
And so, I shall spend the rest of my last Saturday of March Break watching another MST3K movie. By the way, I believe all of them are available on YouTube if you had any interest in watching them. :)