What guiding light led you to Mutant Reviewers?

[BlackCatWhiteCat]

I don't know if this has been asked on the forums before. *cough* laziness *cough* I'm always interested in knowing how someone first came across such a completely addictive substance as MRFH, if merely to help me cope with my own obsession. There is, sadly, not yet a MRFH Anonymous meeting near me. Or anywhere, that I know of.

So to the point! I ran across this site when, about 3 or 4 years ago, I was looking for a list of good romantic movies. I wanted a list of stuff to play that both my husband and I would be interested in (we both hate cliched romantic crap). He was coming home from an eight month deployment and I wanted things that would help set the mood and not overdose us with a diabetic amount of saccharine slop. I don't remember what I typed into the search engine, but somehow the MRFH review for Y Tu Mama Tambien popped up. Yeah. WTF? Anyway I was intrigued by this odd search result and had to check it out.

Life has never been the same.

How about you, gentle readers? If you MRFH staff want to join in, feel free. I'm sure some of you have stuff in your bios and scattered in random places but hey...I'm always up for a good story.

[CheshireKat]

Most of the staff stories can be found in our "Mutant Memories" articles that we did for the site's 10th anniversary. To find them just type mutant memories into the google search field on the front page.

Or just click here

[bladestarr]

That's a non-existent URL dude.

[Rett Mikhal]

The standard Movie Review Query Engine. The first review I searched for was Ace Ventura, because I was tired of people bashing it. I think I read through reviews for about 4 hours that night. That was the OLD days, before mutantreviewers.com, back when you had to favorite it or remember the geocities code.

On a sidenote: I miss the old reviewer title banners. I also hate change, those two facts may be related.

[TheLuckyOne]

I wish mine were more interesting, but it basically boils down to me being at my first grown-up job after graduation, and my department being located in an out-of-the-way room that other people rarely visited. That, plus the tedium inherent in the job, created ideal conditions for web-surfing as relief from boredom. I'd recently read The Crow and was interested in the movie version, so I searched online for reviews and voila! - Justin-y goodness. I was intrigued enough to keep reading and the rest, as they say, is history.

-D

[Storm_Rider]

Pretty much the same idea, I was looking for reviews about The Army of Darkness (because I had only recently found out that was the name of the movie - previous to searching for it I had seen it quite a few years ago...dubbed in Italian) and since in this place Ash is pretty much a deity, well you can do the math. Also with a name like Mutant Reviewers From Hell, well it's kind of a beacon to geeks of all shapes and alignments.

[aargmematey]

I was looking for reviews of Thirteen Ghosts, stumbled upon this website, kept reading reviews, and then didn't see Thirteen Ghosts for another four years.

Thanks MRFH!

[StarOpal]

I remember it was May or June in... *looks at forum profile* 2004. For some reason (most likely nostalgia, but there might've been a reason reason, dunno) I was looking up Empire Records and, either with Google or through IMDB, I found MRFH.

Then I decided to look around some more of the site (because the name was awesome. Can you believe there are people who don't get it? What's up with that?). "The Spanish Prisoner? Dead Again? Dead Alive? This place is worthy of even further investigation!"

Dude, four years. Crazy.

[Al]

I was going through a phase of creating themed icons and wallpapers for my desktop (yes, I am a dork). I was using MRQE to try and find movie reviews with pictures from The Crow, saw the name of the website, and couldn't resist. The only picture I found on the page was a little spining film reel, but I was pretty well hooked. I can't remember if it was late 1998 or early 1999, but I know I thought of myself as a regular reader by the time The Phantom Menace came out.

EDIT: I think the second review I read was Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion, I movie I still haven't seen. Go figure.

[BlackCatWhiteCat]

Always gotta be different, don't you, Al?

[sarahbot]

I was looking for info on Adventures in Babysitting (man, am I glad I was googling a half-decent movie), because the college guy she hooks up with at the end looked insanely familiar. I found Justin's review, liked the tone of the site, and that was that. I still don't know where else I've seen that guy though.

(No, it wasn't Bradley Whitford. The other one.)

[Hucklebubba]

All I can recall is the year of my arrival--2001--and the movie/topic at hand--Tank Girl.

Can't really remember any details aside from that. Or, for that matter, anything else from the Before Times.

[bladestarr]

I found the site after seeing Unbreakable and searching for reviews to see what other people said about it. Needless to say, my first visit to MRFH was also my first visit to the forums.... to complain about Justin's treatement of the movie. I wonder if anyone remembers that? I believe at the time I was calling myself BladeStarr, and I had an avatar of Socrates' head... and my "title" was Cuisinart of DOOM..... I've come a long way since then I like to think.

EDIT: Correction, it was Clare's review that I had a problem with, and then I got into a pretty heated discussion on the forums about it.

Ah, those were the days.... back when people would actually argue with me instead of just delete my posts....

[pfrsue]

Well, I guess it was around 1980. I was tooling around on my trusty VIC-20, teaching it to say really cool things like, "Hi!" when it occurred to me that what the world really needed was a very cool cult-oriented movie reviewing site.

Alas, the internet had not yet been invented. Neither had web sites.

Also, I was only twelve.

Anyway, a few years later, I was shooting the bull with my good buddy Al Gore over a few glasses of limeade (Tipper makes a mean pitcher of limeade,) and just for kicks, we went ahead and invented the internet. I mean, why not? No one else had gotten around to it.

It was pretty cool really, but even after letting it grow for a while, there still seemed to be a lack of a quality cult-movie oriented website. Adult content IRC channels, yes. Cult movie sites, not so much.

So, using super-secret technology, I picked out a random college student who looked particularly malleable and had a chip implanted in his brain. From there, I manipulated the genesis of the Mutant Reviewers From Hell from a secure location.

And it was good.

Still, after a few years, I started to suspect that my puppet, subject, apprentice was beginning to go rogue on me, and decided that closer supervision would be in order. Therefore, I arranged the . . . er . . . downsizing of a few key staff members and sent in an application, including the pre-programmed code phrase, "small unmarked bills," which ensured that I would be hired. And so it was.

All in all, I think things have worked out splendidly so far.

[bladestarr]

Jul 13, 2008 9:35:43 GMT -5 pfrsue said:

Well, I guess it was around 1980. I was tooling around on my trusty VIC-20, teaching it to say really cool things like, "Hi!" when it occurred to me that what the world really needed was a very cool cult-oriented movie reviewing site.

Alas, the internet had not yet been invented. Neither had web sites.

Also, I was only twelve.

Anyway, a few years later, I was shooting the bull with my good buddy Al Gore over a few glasses of limeade (Tipper makes a mean pitcher of limeade,) and just for kicks, we went ahead and invented the internet. I mean, why not? No one else had gotten around to it.

It was pretty cool really, but even after letting it grow for a while, there still seemed to be a lack of a quality cult-movie oriented website. Adult content IRC channels, yes. Cult movie sites, not so much.

So, using super-secret technology, I picked out a random college student who looked particularly malleable and had a chip implanted in his brain. From there, I manipulated the genesis of the Mutant Reviewers From Hell from a secure location.

And it was good.

Still, after a few years, I started to suspect that my puppet, subject, apprentice was beginning to go rogue on me, and decided that closer supervision would be in order. Therefore, I arranged the . . . er . . . downsizing of a few key staff members and sent in an application, including the pre-programmed code phrase, "small unmarked bills," which ensured that I would be hired. And so it was.

All in all, I think things have worked out splendidly so far.

This is the single coolest thing that I have ever read on this site.