Held up by many as the Worst Movie Ever Made (though the twelve people who saw Mariah Carey's 'Glitter' may strenuously disagree) Ed Wood's classic has endured so long because of the fine performances of Vampira, Dudley Manlove, and of course, Tor Johnson, the Swedish wrestler and hulking tower of flesh who turns in his best work as Inspector Dan Clay, a hulking tower of flesh. Original film made in 1959.
A true cult classic -- and one of the scariest movies of all time. The dead are walking, and they hunger for human flesh. A group of panicked survivors are barricaded in a deserted farmhouse while the army of flesh-eating zombies hovers outside their door. Now experience the bone-chilling terror in color for the first time on DVD! With a 5.1 surround sound remix, and a hilarious commentary track by Michael J. Nelson, this is the most fun you'll ever have with the living dead! Original film made in 1968.
This is it – the best movie ever made about a world-famous bouncer and his epic struggle with the evil owner of the local J.C. Penney. Patrick Swayze is at his most shirtless as Dalton, a bouncer who is as comfortable quoting Zen aphorisms as he is kicking drunken men in the head. The incomparable Sam Elliot is hilarious as Swayze's grizzled but lovable mentor, growling out lines like "I'll sleep when I'm dead," and running his weathered hand through his long, gray, greasy hair. And Kevin Tighe (of Lost) as the owner of the titular roadhouse delivers one of the strangest performances ever committed to film. Road House is the comic mother lode and Mike takes advantage of every smashed beer bottle, throat kick, and monster car smash-up in his hilarious running commentary. Original film made in 1989.
Long before the exceedingly boxy, strange-looking car, there was another Element: The Fifth Element, a clown-headed young woman in orange rubber lederhosen who held the key to saving earth from a big ball of evil…stuff. Bruce Willis is a hack (as in "cab driver") who must protect her from the malevolent Zorg (Gary Oldman sporting an acrylic yarmulke, novelty teeth and an accent that makes him sound like a cross between Foghorn Leghorn and Barney Fife). The yummy Ukrainian Milla Jovovich stars as Leeloo, the titular element. Yes, earth's very existence is in the hands of someone named Leeloo.
The bittersweet sequel to Star Treks I, II, III and IV was indeed the "Final Frontier", one last voyage for our heroic Captain Kirk and the brave crew of the Enterprise – except for another one to follow. And then of course the several dozen spin-offs and spin-off sequels to follow. "The Final Frontier" sees a special guest appearance by the one character fit to take equal billing with William Shatner: God. And so this RiffTrax deserves an awe-inspiring guest appearance by none other than Kevin Murphy, Mike's riffing companion for years on the Satellite of Love! It's a RiffTrax lover's dream come true. (And Mike and Kevin promise not to make any jokes comparing the Enterprise and Charmin toilet paper.)
A drunken Australian councils a young Tom Cruise on life, love, and female undergarments. Tom and Nicole's wedding night? No, this is the thrilling plot of Cocktail, starring Cruise, Bryan Brown, Kelly "Road House" Lynch and Gina "Showgirls" Gershon. When young Brian Flanagan (Cruise) is discharged from the Army and quickly discovers that he has few job prospects, scant talent, and no discernible intelligence, he exercises his only real option and gets a job at a TGI Fridays, whipping around bottles of Blue Curacao and serving deep-fried broccoli balls to people wearing suspenders. When Coughlin betrays his partner, Brian flees to Jamaica, puts on a cheap, Qiana jungle print shirt and resumes his half-baked act there, soon bedding down the improbably named Jordan Mooney (Shue). Coughlin follows him to Jamaica. Can they rekindle their friendship? Will they reform their circus/bartender act? Will they get a job together tossing chicken strips around at a Carl's Jr.?
Vin Diesel, the Jean-Claude Van Damme of our time, stars as Xander Cage, an underground extreme sports star who apparently lost all his hair in a tragic skydiving accident. The NSA shanghais Xander to help them bust up a dangerous group of anarchists – and what an amazingly well-organized and thorough group of anarchists they are – by using his skills at pulling the most extremely off da heezy-fo-sheezy stunts ever, bi-atch. Samuel L. Jackson co-stars as Xander's cantankerous boss, made cantankerous, we can assume, by the fact that one side of his face is melted (the result, no doubt, of a mishap while he and his nutty friends were filming a Diet Coke and Mentos stunt for YouTube.) The film is a perfect fit for Mike's RiffTrax style, what with his deep, deep roots in the underground sports community (once, when he was nine years old, he rode his bike right over a milk carton.)
Among the finest Britney Spears movies ever made, Crossroads* tells the story of a high school graduate who drives to L.A. Not very exciting on paper, but up on the big screen, it's a drive-to-L.A.-stravaganza! Fueled by today's exciting pop hits, Crossroads is sure to connect with the new "youth" market we've been hearing so much about lately. Featuring knock-out performances by Dan Aykroyd (My Girl 2) and Kim Cattrall (Turk 182!) and featuring the chart busting hits of newcomers Mystikal and *Nsync (prounounced NUHS-ink), Crossroads is Federline-free fun for the whole family. Oh, and it makes for a hilarious RiffTrax. *Not the Crossroads where the Karate Kid (Ralph Macchio) challenges Satan (The Author of All Lies) to a blues guitar contest.
On the shadowy periphery of society lives a secret organization of mutants – despised, deformed and loathed, they live in fear of a nation that holds them in contempt. They are comic book fans. And one of their favorites is X-Men, which tells the tale of a secret organization headed by Professor Charles Xavier, master of the mysterious brain device known as Cerebro and ideological enemy of the metal-manipulating villain Magneto. It's all very neat-o. Featuring the extremely British performances of Patrick Stewart (Robin Hood: Men in Tights) and Sir Ian McKellan (Last Action Hero), X-Men tries its altogether best to maintain some shred of dignity even while adults with names like Cyclops and Storm leap around in spandex suits fighting other adults named Toad and Magneto. There's a lot to work with, so Mike enlisted the help of his MST3K co-star Bill Corbett for this hilarious RiffTrax!
Iceman, Maverick and Slider: while they make great names for members of a tracksuit wearing boy band, they make even better names for shirtless, pretty boy pilots! And Tom Cruise is the prettiest and shirtless-liest of them all as Maverick, a bad boy aviator who lock horns with the large-toothed Iceman (Val "The Island of Dr. Moreau" Kilmer) and locks other things with the saucy MIT-educated Naval consultant Charlie (Kelly "Supergator" McGillis). And if you're a fan of music that is likely to be heard in an aerobics class, you'll love the pulse-pounding soundtrack by disco top gun Giorgio Moroder! For this RiffTrax, Mike flies high with his Mystery Science wingman, Bill Corbett. It will literally "take your breath away"! No breath will actually be taken away. When we say "literally" we don't literally mean it. Original film made in 1986.
Not since Chicken Fried Steak met Country Gravy has there been such a dynamic pairing as Patrick "Forever Lulu" Swayze and Keanu "Permanent Record" Reeves. The "whoa"s fly fast and furious as Johnny Utah (Reeves), a hotshot FBI agent, pursues Bodhi (Swayze), a tan little fellow with Bon Jovi's hair who dresses up in adorable little costumes and robs banks. Gary Busey (the other Nick Nolte) gives a powerhouse performance as Utah's partner, and Lori "Free Willy" Petty, in one of her thinnest roles, is the girl Johnny likes to sleep with. Point Break is 100% pure adrenaline and Mike's "Point Break" RiffTrax is 100% pure nitrous oxide!
The most shocking Halloween-related thing ever -- with the possible exception of the joke about Mrs. Ghost not being able to get pregnant because Mr. Ghost had a hollow weenie. But in a respectable 2nd place, anyway, is Halloween, the horrifying tale of an evil madman named Mike Myers (as if his Simon character wasn't chilling enough) who terrorizes a babysitter by putting on a jumpsuit and hiding in the hedge. (A technique now widely used by custodians the world over.) Featuring the blood curdling theme song by director John Carpenter in which he hits a G on a piano key 900 times, then a C about 738 times and then hammers on the G for a time before hitting a G# and then starting the process over again and repeating it several hundred thousand times. Because he was too chicken to sit in the dark and watch it by himself, Mike enlisted the help of his old pal Kevin Murphy for this hilarious RiffTrax. You'll scream, you'll laugh, you'll jump out of your seat! (And then you should probably start watching the movie).
In Earth's dirty, dystopian future, one in which every person alive is kept in a dark, moist pod and fed misinformation (kind of like Manhattan, only the odors are less pungent), only one man can save us – and that man is Johnny Utah. Wait, no – Johnny Mnemonic. Hold on, that's not it. It's some kind of car name…uh, Horizon, um….Omni. Ram Charger – No, Neo. That's it. Neo. Led by the enterprising Morpheus, and the hot-erprising Trinity, Neo learns his fate from the Oracle, a corpulent, crusty, chain-smoking broad who is likely to put you off Oracles forever. What is the Matrix? It's a laugh-a-minute RiffTrax with Mike Nelson and Kevin Murphy, that's what.
Of all the many Binks in the world, who is the most skull-crushingly annoying? Is it the Binks Company, the Canadian insurance brokers? Is it the U.S. manufacturers of spray guns, paint booths, and electrostatic spray equipment? Or is Jar Jar, the mouthy horse-lizard from the 4th Star Wars movie, appropriately titled Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace? If you said anything but number three, you are imprisonably insane! That's right, Mike Nelson and Kevin Murphy take on the franchise-ruining Star Wars that everybody loves to hate but nobody loves to watch! Only we make you want to watch it again, and laugh instead of kill! Finally, Jar Jar gets what he deserves! Original film made in 1999.
The scariest thing to come out of Japan since Pink Lady, The Grudge tells the story of a young woman who travels to Japan with her underwear-sniffing boyfriend and soon finds herself in the clutches of an evil curse (as if having an underwear-sniffing boyfriend wasn't bad enough). Bill Pullman co-stars, sort of, in that he speaks several lines of dialogue. In contrast to a high body count slasher film, The Grudge is infused with a suffocating sense of dread, very much like an average episode of According to Jim. Kevin Murphy and Mike Nelson settle their own grudge in this not-to-be-missed RiffTrax.
The greatest fantasy epic of all times is at last a RiffTrax! No, not Crossroads – we already did that. And not A Very Unlucky Leprechaun – which we haven't done yet but are seriously mulling over. We speak of course of Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, the thrilling tale of some short guys, some slightly taller hairy guys, some thin, fey, but slightly taller guys, some grungy, somewhat beefier, slightly taller guys, and a frighteningly hairy, older, slightly taller guy with a stick, and their quest to throw something somewhere hot. Mike Nelson and special guest riffer Kevin Murphy go after the ultimate comedy prize in this very special two-part RiffTrax. This RiffTrax is only compatible with the Theatrical Release, not the extended edition. It does however, work for both the single side and doubled sided versions of the Theatrical Release. Viewing Suggestion: This RiffTrax was written and performed with the whole family in mind, so if you are comfortable with your children watching Lord of the Rings, this should be perfectly appropriate for them as well. Skip the endless reruns of The War at Home and treat your whole family to the RiffTrax experience!
And the people cried out with one voice, "Maketh us a movie in which Marlon Brando can don a muumuu, false teeth, clown white make-up and a really gay bonnet. See that it also stareth Val Kilmer at his scenery-chewing best. And, yea, putteth the extras in hot, smelly animal suits and maketh you the plot absurd." And, lo, did John Frankenheimer deliver unto us The Island of Dr. Moreau. And it was good. Truly, you must see it to believe it. But you must only see it accompanied by this RiffTrax, for which Mike enlisted the talents of Kevin Murphy, or else you WILL die. Original film made in 1996.
The thrilling world of banking explodes across the silver screen! Harrison Ford is a bank security manager who gets more than he bargained for when a cold-blooded thief (Paul Bettany) breaks the little chain and steals the pen that belongs to the desk where most customers fill out their deposit slips! And as if that weren't enough, he ups the ante, nearly emptying the entire pot of complimentary coffee into his giant, one-liter travel mug that he got from the Tom Thumb! His reign of terror continues as he gets in line for the teller and begins to fill out his deposit slip only after he gets to the counter! Oh, there are gunfights and fisticuffs and intrigue and Virginia Madsen playing put-upon wives and whatnot, but mostly, this is thrilling, non-stop, ink-spilling banking at its best! The bottom line on this ledger shows an aggregate surplus of laughs, as Mike is joined by Kevin Murphy for one fiscally sound RiffTrax!
You know Dasher, of course. And Dancer, no need to refresh your memory there. Prancer, you go way back. Vixen is as familiar to you as Comet, not to mention dear old Cupid. Donner and Blitzen, why you had them over to your house for chili just the other night. But do you recall the most famous donkey of all? Neither do I. That's why Nestor the Long Eared Christmas Donkey performs such a great service. It offers THE authoritative biography of this under-appreciated representative of the species Equus asinus. And it makes a great RiffTrax! Note: Though this RiffTrax could probably technically pass with a "G" rating, it is not recommended for very young children. We suggest screening it first if you are unsure.
A post-apocalyptic thriller that substitutes dirt and grime for any inkling of logic and probability, Reign of Fire features shirtless one-upmanship at its finest. The cigar stub chomping Matthew McConaughey is finally chiseled into Mt. RiffTrax, making a gutsy bid to become the hardest working shirtless man in show business since The Swayze himself. Playing the Keanu-esque foil to McConaughey's Swayze, Christian Bale returns every hardened stare, lets no machismo go unanswered, no muscle flex go un-flexed back at, and he'll be damned if he puts a shirt on either. For good measure, the writers also toss in a few dragons, and hint at the existence of thousands more. It's an old fashioned post-apocalyptic dude-off, both on the screen and in the recording booth, as Kevin Murphy joins Mike Nelson for what is sure to be your newest favorite RiffTrax involving dragons.
Several years ago, it is quite likely that you were one of the millions who bought a ticket to see X-Men or Spider-Man in the theater. The massive success of these two movies convinced studio execs that the public was desperate for any and all things Superhero. In short, it is because of you, yes you, that the film Daredevil darkens our world. Daredevil tells the story of lawyer Matt Murdock (Ben Affleck), who due to a childhood accident involving toxic chemicals has no fear. He is thus able to leap off of skyscrapers and land on the ground without shattering his tibias. Along the way he encounters Elektra (Jennifer Garner), who he fights on a teeter-totter, Bullseye (Colin Farrell), who embraces every stereotype about the Irish, (namely that they have really good aim) and Michael Clarke Duncan, who plays against character for once, in his groundbreaking role as A Really Big Guy. Only a fool would choose to leap headfirst into such a world of second tier heroes on his own, and Mike, despite voluntarily spending hours of his time watching Daredevil, is no fool. So his good friends Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy, (who are both also Men Without Fear) are all along for the ride. It's a trio of crime fighting Riffiness that no Riffaholic should Riff without.
In the year 3000 man is an endangered species, enslaved, severely unshowered, beholden to a cruel alien race fond of dreadlocks and really impractical boots.Only one man can break the yoke of slavery and lead mankind to victory over their cruel tyranny. And that one man is television character actor Peter MacNicol. Wait – slight error there. Salt of the earth, Peter MacNicol, but it's not him. Actually, the one man who can break the yoke of slavery and lead mankind to victory is Johnny Goodboy Tyler (Barry Pepper), if you can believe that. Yes, Battlefield Earth, L. Ron Hubbard's epic tale of why you should become a Scientologist splashes* across the big screen in John Travolta's masterful** retelling. Helping Mr. Travolta along in his masterful retelling are Mike, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett. Yes, the MST3K gang is back together in full force to take on the most legendary cinematic blunder since whatever Joel Schumacher's last film was. *like vomit. **here "masterful" is used in the sense of "revoltingly, irredeemably noxious" Original film made in 2000.
"Be afraid...be twice as afraid!" So goes the tagline for Troll 2, the follow up, unsurprisingly, to Troll. A more fitting tagline might have been, "What the hell was that? Seriously, what was that? Was the director spraying Pam cooking spray into a paper bag and huffing the fumes throughout the production? Was the script assembled by a madman using words clipped from Lyndon LaRouche pamphlets? Did the actors regularly ingest a cocktail of lithium and horse tranquilizers before each scene? And Eliot – someone please explain Eliot to me, using visual aids, if you will, because I cannot even begin to grasp the barest outlines of a concept of just what the hell Eliot is or was? Or does he just exist in some shadowy, nightmare dream world of my own creation? WHO IS ELIOT? WHY IS ELIOT?! WHERE AM I?!" Yeah, that should have been the tagline, but it's a touch long. As it is, Rich Kyanka, the founder and proprietor of Somethingawful.com (and a huge "fan" of Troll 2) joins Mike for a hilarious RiffTrax. Original film made in 1990.
"To boldly go where no man has gone before," and if you don't count the 79 television shows and 5 movies that came before it then Star Trek VI does exactly that. Yes, it's bold enough to have lauded stage actor Christopher Plummer glue on a few hideous plastic appliqués and shriek out lines from Shakespeare's plays at inappropriate times. It's bold enough to hire Kim Cattrall for her acting experience alone in a role that has nothing whatsoever to do with sex. And it's bold enough to pretend with a straight face that the cast of the original series shouldn't have been dry docked 20 years prior to this film. To handle this mess, Mike enlisted the aid of Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy, his riffing companions from Mystery Science Theater 3000. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll say to yourself, Who is John Shuck and how can I avoid his work from now on?
Never make the mistake of thinking that Over the Top is just an arm-wrestling picture. Oh, there's arm wrestling, all right – more arm wrestling than an 8th grade study hall. But there's also a truck. And a kid. And a whole lot of arm wrestling! And just wait till you hear the shocking secret behind Sylvester Stallone's signature "turning the hat backward" move. (Hint: it has something to do with arm wrestling!) And there's arm wrestling! And if you're really good, maybe there'll be a Kenny Loggins song at key points in the movie. (And arm wrestling) Mike won't come out and say it, but by the glint in his eye, we suspect that this just may be the next Road House! Disembaudio co-stars in this arm-wrestlo-rama of a RiffTrax.
"Seeing it...made me feel helpless, humiliated and sad." A celebrity apologizing for their latest paparazzi shots? No, those are the words of Aeon Flux creator Peter Chung regarding the big screen adaptation of the TV show he created. Peter, Peter, Peter...Why the long face? You have it so good! You want helpless? Watch yet another director hamfistedly attempt to cope with a studio's order to "Be more like The Matrix." You want humiliated? Try Best Actress Oscar winners Charlize Theron and Frances McDormand, who must have done some hard drinking together the night before they signed up to play members of a spy sect called the "Monicans" for some reason. Want sad? Look at the latest devoted sect of fanboys whose beloved cult cartoon is now known by the general population as being "That movie with that guy from xXx." Peter my friend, when a bomb as fast and as loud and as incomprehensible as Aeon Flux comes along, it's your job to just quietly cash the checks, and then turn the reigns over to Mike Nelson and Kevin Murphy, and let the two of them do their thing. The hilarity, much like the Relical, (whatever that is), is omnipresent in this RiffTrax, and it is guaranteed to make you feel the opposite of helpless, humiliated and sad, (whatever that may be as well.)
Horror has a new name – and that name is "wicker". Once used almost exclusively in the construction of baskets and attractive outdoor furniture, wicker will now and forever after be synonymous with a terror that will chill your blood and torment your mind! (Though admittedly a certain small percentage of people, rather than associating it with terror, will continue to think of their grandma's patio set. There's nothing you can do about these intractable folks but throw your hands in the air and just give up trying to change their minds where wicker is concerned.) Yes, "Wicker Man" dares to depict a nightmarish world in which Nicolas Cage punches a woman in the face so that he can steal her bear costume. And this after having stolen at gunpoint a bike belonging to a woman dressed as a magpie and then going on to knock out Leelee Sobieski by kicking her in the breadbasket. If this doesn't sound scary, may I remind you that there's WICKER! Neil LaBute has done the impossible by making the most unintentionally funny movie since "The Lake House". With such rich fare it would be unthinkable not to let Kevin Murphy in on the fun. And so we did! Kevin and Mike couldn't have had a better time with "The Wicker Man" if he'd been made of rattan! Original film made in 2006.
Robots sent from the future into the past to kill people who will one day become important to the war against machines are like cockroaches – no matter how many of ‘em you kill, there’s always another, showing up one day naked in a little glowing ball of energy (the robots from the future, not cockroaches. Well, to be clear, the cockroaches show up naked as well, but without the little glowing ball of energy.) The point is, humanity’s loss is our gain, as Terminator 3 offers another chance for Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger to show off his prodigious acting chops [i.e., his pecs]. Kristanna Loken co-stars as the ruthless Termanatrix, a superior model of robot with, I think you’ll agree, a superior bare backside, altogether less hairy, not nearly as Austrian, with smooth, clean lines and a… anyway, back to the synopsis. Arnold must protect John Connor (Nick Stahl) not only from the Terminatrix, but also, because the kid is a supremely annoying presence, from all those who want to slap him, and that encompasses everyone who has ever met him. Things get complicated when a whiny young irritant named Kate (Claire Danes) locks John into an unhygienic dog kennel and refuses to even worm him. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines is a big, dumb movie filled with big, dumb people. Kevin Murphy and Mike Nelson are two big, dumb guys who are just dumb enough to take it on!
The television phenomenon of our time (no, not “According to Jim”) is now the RiffTrax phenomenon of this week! Yes, “Lost”, the thrilling saga of a group of castaways – of varying degrees of hotness – and their struggle to survive without having to resort to wholesale drinking of their own urine. “Lost” conveys the wit, intrigue and fierce intelligence of “Gilligan’s Island” in a modern setting – and without the mind-shattering annoyance of Bob Denver! Contains Episodes 1 and 2of Season 1.
It’s Binks-ian fun for the whole family as George Lucas empties the contents of his brain onto film one more time! This go around, the part of the annoying kid is explored more deeply by a new annoying kid, Hayden Christensen, in a performance so jaw-droppingly wooden and laughable it’s got to make Keanu Reeves feel pretty darned good about himself. Ewan McGregor returns as that one guy who was once played by that other British guy, and he’s apparently become comfortable enough with his green screen acting that he no longer even pretends it matters whether he puts in effort or not. And returning for the role of Padme Amidala is Natalie Portman, looking cute but losing her bid to keep her voice from grinding into her audience’s skull like a buzz saw. All of this would be a RiffTrax dream come true – but making it even dream come true-ier is that Mike and Kevin are joined by none other than Chad Vader, brother of Darth and star of his own colossally successful internet series. It is quite simply a RiffTacular RiffStravaganza!
Your favorite chicken-slaughtering candy-maker is now a RiffTrax! Yes, Willy Wonka (the older, shouting Willy Wonka, not the newer, thin, fey version), the chocolatier and inventor of a gobstopper that lasts a good deal longer than the older, short-lived gobstoppers, gets the treatment from Mike and special guest Riffer…(wait for it… drum roll… fanfare… small burst of fireworks…) Neil Patrick Harris! That's right, Neil Patrick Harris, not Ed Harris, the guy with the scar on his face from "A History of Violence", but rather NEIL PATRICK HARRIS! Yes, we somehow finagled the star of "How I Met Your Mother" into the RiffTrax studios to sit with one of his favorite Oompa Loompa-packed films. The result is a very special, very hilarious RiffTrax.
A spine-tingling thrill ride that moves from the exotic poker tables of Montenegro, to the exotic hotel rooms of Montenegro, then back to the poker tables, then the rooms again, then a return visit to the poker table for a more extended stay, then a short rest and back to the poker table! And there's killing, too! And lot's of sweet lovin', if you're into that. Daniel Craig inhabits the role of James Bond, the dashing MI6 agent who holds a license to kill, as well a license to wax his chest and wear tiny, undignified swimming trunks. Eva Green is Vesper Lynd, (get it?) the hot-to-trot financier who administers the majority of Bond's lovin', with luscious Caterina Murino batting clean-up. And Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen stars as Le Chiffre, a sardine-faced villain and numbers genius (he can make change for a dollar without punching it into the cash register!) Joining Mike is Kevin Murphy. Both Mike and Kevin have a license to Riff.
Are you a fan of Star Wars but feel that there just weren't enough brain-stunningly idiotic names for your taste? Do you like the Lord of the Rings films but find they move too quickly and make too much sense? Did you enjoy The Matrix but wish it could have contained a horrendously embarrassing performance by former actor/professional picnic ham John Malkovich? Then you need help! That is, then Eragon is the film for you! Ostensibly about some punk who finds a dragon egg, Eragon is actually a poignant onscreen documentation of the decline of Jeremy Irons, whose eye bags, if there were any justice, would have received third billing. And it's also a showcase for first time actor - um- can't remember his name. Really made no impression one way or the other. (In fact, was he even in the film?) But mostly it's an opportunity to watch John Malkovich turn in a performance that had to - HAD TO - be a direct challenge to the director, "Please, fire me.I'm begging you to fire me. I'll do a take like this and then you'll have to fire me. Wait,I'm still not fired?" Kevin Murphy joins Mike in the RiffTrax International Studios (and Small Engine Repair) for Eragon, the blockbuster fantasy epic that forgets to be a blockbuster.
If you're a fan of movies that feature screaming, megalomaniacal divas and their relationships to shirtless guys, you have so far been limited to Barbra Steisand's "A Star is Born". But now, like a nut-covered cheese log from heaven comes Mariah Carey's "Glitter" - the film that, more than even her decade long string of unlistenable pop songs, landed her in the loony bin where she spent several months writing lyrics on the padded walls of her recovery room using a thick crayon held between her toes. A film that, without the barest hint of shame or irony, features as a centerpiece the Robert Palmer song, "I Didn't Mean to Turn You On." A film that, against all laws of logic and common sense, gives a prominent role to the former Mr. Halle Berry (a.k.a, Eric Benet.) No one, not even Mike, is dumb enough to take this one without some serious help. And serious help he got in the person of former MST3K cast member Mary Jo Pehl. A true RiffTrax event!
Something lurks in the dense jungle. Something horrible and cruel, a creature from beyond our world. His name is Arnold Schwarzenegger. He lurks next to another unspeakable creature named Jesse Ventura. And another, goes by the handle Carl Weathers. Who himself lurks next to a monstrous slab of flesh known as Bill Duke. Together, they face down a creature who, quite understandably, hunts them for their skulls, hoping to fetch a fair price for them at the many Open Skull Markets that dot the galaxy. (If you haven't been to one, you must go. Take the kids, because the markets are very family friendly and they have these great Hawaiian Ice stands. And, of course, there's the skulls.) Predator unseals a whole tin of whoop-bottom, trotting out cliches like so many, well, like so many boiled human skulls at the terrific Open Skull Market on Nespus VIII (honestly, I know I sound like I'm raving, but it really is just a great way to spend a Saturday, and it's fairly reasonable, too.) Finally, a good use for your Predator DVD that isn't "propping up that one corner of the entertainment stand, the one whose castor you snapped off when you were moving out of that place on Spring Street because you just couldn't hack sharing a place with Beezer anymore, on account of his socks." Original film made in 1987.
This is the hugely successful, boldly innovative show that dares to tell its story in the unlikeliest setting imaginable – a hospital! But where Grey's Anatomy really ploughs new ground is in its use of attractive young lead actors, and the moody, radio friendly hits of some of today's top artists! And unlike St. Elsewhere, Chicago Hope, ER, The Doctors, Dr. Kildare, General Hospital, Ben Casey, Scrubs, Marcus Welby, MD, Doogie Howser, MD, M*A*S*H, House, LA Doctors, Nip/Tuck, Trapper John, MD, Quincy, M.E., Strong Medicine, After MASH and Doc, this one is on Thursdays at 9:00PM on ABC. Navigating the complex emotional core of Grey's Anatomy would be impossible without the help of Bridget Nelson, a writer, performer and MST3K alum, who joins Mike for back to back episodes. Dr.'s orders – take two shows for maximum results!* *RiffTrax assumes no responsibility for pain and emotional distress caused by that last line. Contains Episodes 1 and 2 of Season 1
Most film adaptations of comic books skimp on the amount of fantastic-ness, offering at best one or perhaps two units of fantastic-osity. Not Fantastic Four! It goes the extra mile by providing THREE (3) fantastic characters (plus a bonus character who's not so much fantastic as he is a fantastic irritant, in the spirit of battery acid on the skin or airplane glue in the eyes.) Plus, Fantastic Four gives you a villain who looks and acts as though he were carved out of large log of congealed tallow! And while other movies might cast Jessica Alba in a lead role and then task her with giving a performance, Fantastic Four plays to her strengths by avoiding any performance at all and instead merely parades her around in a tighter-than-skin Spandex suit. Featuring eye-popping special effects and a collection of words written down and then spoken by the actors (it would be a wild exaggeration to refer to it as a "script"), Fantastic Four gets a fantastic four star rating* from Mike and expert riffer Kevin Murphy. *Out of ten possible.
Star Trek: Generations – truly a loving gift from one generation to the next. Much like that 15-pound, 10 percent water-added Danish ham that your uncle Clark who lives in Rockford mailed to you on Thanksgiving, the one that cracked open in transport and arrived at your doorstop in a brine soaked box, stinking like a week old corpse. Yes, this is the legendary Star Trek that at long last teams two of the series' most enduring elements – Scotty, and a size 74 uniform. Not to mention a performance by respected British actor Malcolm McDowell that can only be described as, well, dis-un-respect-ulating. And Klingon cleavage? Generations has it in great heaping mounds! Mike and Kevin Murphy climb once more unto the breach for a fun-filled, intergenerational riff.
A small band of brave men struggle against enormous odds, battling a superior force, and though ultimately they are defeated their sacrifice becomes a source of inspiration and hope that rings out like a clarion call through the pages of history. But enough about the Mighty Ducks. 300, in contrast, is about a gang of shirtless and immoral baby-killing idiots who hack up a larger group of idiots on some cliff in Greece a couple of thousand years ago. To a soundtrack of ersatz Nine Inch Nails. Starring Gerard Butler as a shrieking inarticulate Scotsman (so in other words "a Scotsman"), 300 delivers on its promise to be the bloodiest movie since Carrie 2: Carrie vs. Saw. (Though it should be noted that in lieu of blood, 300 utilized digital globs of diluted road tar.) To make it a fair fight, Mike enlisted the help of battle veterans Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy. 3 against the 300! This…is…RIFFTRAX!
Imagine waking up in an unfamiliar place, unable to recall where you live, what you're doing there, or even your own name. Now imagine for the first time in your life it wasn't a direct result of your downing eleven pints of Guinness and then agreeing to do a Lemon Drop shooter with Jimmy T., Spleef, and Hondo the night before at Durty Nelly's. Now imagine that you began to discover you had mysterious talents -- talents that didn't involve the ability to stand next to the open refrigerator door in your underpants and drink a half gallon of Minute Maid Pulp Free directly from the pitcher without stopping for air. Now imagine you are Matt Damon. Why, the mere thought of it is to stare into a bottomless well of agony. Yet Matt Damon awakes to that fresh horror every morning of his life (the horror of discovering that he remains Matt Damon, not all that stuff about his memory. That happens to his character in that one movie – what's it called? – The Bourne Identity. My memory's not so good.) Anyway, the point is that Bourne Identity is a pulse-pounding thriller that goes from the exotic…um, somethings of somewhere to the even more exotic – look, it's tough to recall all the little things, I'm just a little fuzzy today. Suffice it to say that Bourne Identity makes for a terrific RiffTrax – and the fact that Mike is joined by Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett, well, that's just -- what do you call it, that brown runny stuff – gravy!
In every single one of the 900 million aliens-come-to-earth movies that had come before it the aliens were malevolent, bent on man's destruction, but Independence Day changed all that. Yes, the alien's were once again malevolent, but this time Judd Hirsch was in the movie! Never before had this even been dreamt of, putting Judd Hirsch in a film. It was a brazen move, one almost as stunning as casting Bill Pullman as the president of the United States as opposed to taking the obvious path and casting him as a guy at a Rapid Oil Change who says, "Ahead. Little more. Little more. Okay, stop." And never before in screen history had a person named "Vivica" done anything let alone attempt to act credibly in a movie role. Not only that, Independence Day dares to feature one of the most ineffective inspirational speeches since those delivered in a bunker in Berlin in late April 1945. For ID4, Mike is joined by both Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy, so in the words of Captain Jimmy Wilder, Kick the tires and light the fires!* *If it wouldn't be too much trouble. And we'd like to thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in our tire kicking, fire lighting scheme.** **RiffTrax is to be held blameless for any damaged tires, bruised tarsals or burnt property as a result of any tire kicking or fire lighting engaged in by the customer.
Imagine, just imagine, if ordinary citizens suddenly began to discover that they have acquired extraordinary powers. Why, you would have X-Men. But imagine if instead of acquiring X-Men-like powers of healing, time travel, mind control and the ability to fly these people instead had those powers but weren't X-Men! Why, then you'd have the very un-X-Men-like Heroes! Follow the exploits of Claire, Hiro, Peter, Logan, Scott Summers, and Jean Grey as they struggle to come to grips with powers that are so obviously not modeled after X-Men. Join Mike as he discovers his extraordinary power to riff on Heroes. Contains Episodes 1 and 2 of Season 1.
The Sith is back, and this time he has come to make ponderous speeches to the gathered Senate and kick tail – and he's all out of ponderous speeches to the gathered Senate! Ian McDiarmid steals the show as the Supreme Chancellor Palpatine (not to be confused with the heart medication of the same name. Palpatine is not for everyone. Ask your doctor if Palpatine might be right for you.) He inhabits the character showing astonishing range: now fey and annoying, now wrinkled and laughable. As to the rest of the cast – it's the darndest thing, but I can't recall that there was anyone else even in the movie. There was a Darth Vader costume, I believe, but that was filled by a wax statue and manipulated digitally to remove any possible chance that it would be interesting in any way. And there was something called a Ewan McGregor, but further research shows that to be a technical term used by the key grip for a kind of light stand. Oh, and Natalie Portman was in it, kind of. Mike is joined by Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy on the RiffTrax for this, the Sithiest film ever made!
The ark is lost! Who will raid it?! Clearly, there is only one man for the job: but since Ben Gazzara is unavailable, Indiana Jones will go in his stead and accomplish the needed raiding. That the shoot will take place in Tunesia where the traditional fig liquor "bokha" is readily available to cast and crew alike simply means that the raiding will get off to a particularly rousing start. Along the way Nazis will be punched (stupid Nazis probably deserved it), submarines be will clung to, and staffs of Ra will be cut to the wrong size, the error discovered and finally the correct size staff of Ra fabricated! Yes, the original blockbuster finally gets the RiffTrax treatment. Raiding with Mike are Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy. To quote the soundtrack, "Da da da-da, da da-da! Da da da-da, da da DA DA DAAAH!"
When Peter Parker is bitten by one of Columbia University's many genetically engineered "super spiders" (now we know what they do with their 6 billion dollar endowment) instead of doing the sensible thing and dying, he transmogrifies into an arachnid, extruding fluids from his spinnerets, leaping about, swinging and twirling just like a spider. But being a spider naturally puts him on the bad side of Norman Osborn, the charismatic head of OsCorp Industries who manages to find enough time in his day to moonlight as an evil goblin (played by real life evil goblin Willem Dafoe.) He also finds it difficult to manage his relationship with the beautiful Mary Jane, because, well, he's a freakish wer-spider. His exoskeleton alone makes it literally impossible for him to come out of his shell until it's time to molt – and at that point he's too vulnerable for a relationship. It all makes for the most thrilling arthropod-on-human love and adventure tale ever told in the year 2002! Joining Mike are Kevin Murphy, Bill Corbett and several harvestmen that live in the corners of the studio. (Yes, we know that harvestmen are not spiders. And, no, theirs is not the most poisonous venom in the world – that's just a myth.)
Next, the thrilling story of a down-on-his luck magician (Nicholas Cage) who hitches a ride to Flagstaff! Not only that, he walks down into the Grand Canyon and shows a kid a rock! And can your heart stand the excitement when he gives a car to Peter Falk!? The fact that he can see two minutes into the future is just frosting on the ride-hitching, rock-showing, car-giving cake of non-stop thrills! Jessica Biel co-stars as a woman who spends one day with Nicholas Cage and rather than doing the sensible thing and running away, moving without leaving a forwarding address, and getting an unlisted phone number, actually falls in love with him! (Note: she also appears onscreen wearing no pants. This is in no way meant to encourage you to buy the RiffTrax by appealing to your prurient interests, we merely wish for our customers to make fully informed decisions where JESSICA BIEL WEARING PANTIES AND A SKIMPY SHIRT is concerned!) Joining Mike is Bridget Nelson, a Mystery Science Theater 3000 alumni (and Mikes' wife!) That's NEXT!
The title says it all: a missile goes to the moon! Only there are people in the missile so it's not really a missile but should more precisely be referred to as a "rocket"! Still, it goes to the moon, so the title is 50 percent right, which is more than you can say for, oh, Magnolia, which is not about magnolias at all, but rather is largely comprised of Tom Cruise talking about his junk. Not only does Missile to the Moon offer a title that is half true, it also delivers a thrilling 50's era tale filled with chunk headed scientists, shapely pageant winners, and a spider that's roughly as menacing as one of the lesser Baldwin brothers. But the real star of this RiffTrax is comedy legend Fred Willard! Yes, the funniest man in America joins Mike as they take on the classic Missile to the Moon.
The toys you got free in your happy meal explode across the screen as the loosening of FCC regulations on marketing directly to children is now a major motion picture! And the now grown-up targets of that marketing once again obeyed their overlords, turning Transformers into the loudest hit of the year! Shia LaBeouf (from the German meaning "diffident steak") stars alongside Megan Fox, who certainly lives up to her name (she looks like a Megan)! Optimus Prime (which the Feds just raised by a quarter point) battles the evil Decepticons led by the eviler Megatron for control of the Allspark, which is possibly the silliest thing ever conceived by man. It's the most fun you'll have watching toys, at least until Mr. Potato Head: The Motion Picture hits the theaters (Jack Black is in talks to star). Mike, Kevin and Bill endure the lashings of Michael Bay in a must-have RiffTrax!
The most profitable bespectacled Potter since Henry F. and Sherman T. combined, tales of Harry's indoctrination into Satan's dark and unholy arts have delighted dozens of children the world over. And this, the first movie of the series, ably helmed by Chris Columbus (Monkeybone, Christmas with the Kranks, Jingle All the Way, Bicentennial Man, Mrs. Doubtfire, Nine Months, Gremlins 2: The New Batch) captures all the wonder, magic, and reckless child endangerment, thanks in no small part to the scene chewing of some of Britain's hammiest actors. Starring Daniel Radcliffe, years before he gave everyone a good long look at his Nimbus 2000, Emma Watson and some kid who makes Ron Howard look swarthy, Harry Potter and the Something of Something Else is the most fun you'll have giving J.K. Rowling yet more of your money this year! Mike, Kevin and Bill Dumbledore their way through a Hagrid of laughs in this, the Hogwartiest of all RiffTrax! (We have no idea what any of that means!)
During the Swing Parade craze of the 1940s, it was hard to turn your head without encountering a Swing Parade. With the popularity of Swing Parades soaring, a full length motion picture was inevitable. Unfortunately, the film we got was clearly rushed out to capitalize on the Swing Parade fad. How can we tell? There doesn't appear to be a single damn Swing Parade in the whole movie! Instead, we get the Three Stooges, who wouldn't know a Swing Parade if it bit them on the...Perhaps we're overreacting here. After all, a movie with mannish landlords, songs about blind mules, and Larry must be pretty ripe for mockery. And if it's called Swing Parade but does not feature any actual Swing Parades, then all the better!
Have a Happy Life Day! And nothing kicks off a memorable Life Day quite so much as watching the legendary Star Wars Holiday Special receive a fully deserved Rifftrax treatment! Yes, all your favorite Wookies are here: there's Chewbacca, Malla, Itchy, Lumpy and Art Carney. Tony Award Winner and Oscar nominated Diahann Carroll as a singing holographic prostitute who services Grandpa Itchy. And Bea Arthur stretches her talent by playing a woman. Not only that, there are commercials from 1978 that will come close to convincing you that "1978" is fairly synonymous with "Hell". "But, Rifftrax," you say, "Rifftrax, please - The Star Wars Holiday Special is not commercially available. How am I supposed to watch this?!" Well, we assume you taped it off the TV back in 1978 using your 130 pound top loading Panasonic NV-9300 U-Matic VCR, just like we did. If not, what were you thinking? Stop right now and GO Out and Get Looking for onE. Because we taped ours off of the television set, and our NV-9300 doesn't have an "edit" function printed on one of its dozens of plastic piano key-style switches, we just left the commercials in there. (We're sure the International Ladies Garment Workers Union won't mind.) So ours is two hours long and has a descriptive scroll on the front end, just like the one you can Get frOm yOur friend Greg, in LakE VIDEO, Illinois. (Don't look it up, they don't like to draw attention to themselves in Lake Video.) Bill, Mike, and Kevin make this the itchiest, lumpiest Life Day of them all! Original film made in 1978.
The Fantastic Four are back! Or the Fantastic Four is back! Depending upon whether one is referring to the title of the film, the four individuals who are fantastic and number four, or the group of four fantastic people who use that title! The point is, they're back! And this time, unlike the first, there's a surfer made out of silver and he rises! It's fantastic! And if you're a fan of repulsive, waxy-faced Australian Prime Minister's sons as ineffectual villains, then you're in clover, because this film is packed with them (well, it has one, total). But FF:ROTSS has much more going for it. The fact that we can't think of a single thing does not in the least bit undermine our claim that it has a lot more going for it, because it does. Have a LOT more going for it. SO BUY OR RENT IT TODAY! IT'S FANTASTIC TIMES FOUR (rising of silver surfer included with every purchase).* *You might want to buy the RiffTrax that Mike, Kevin and Bill made to accompany the film because to watch it sans RiffTrax is to commit an act of monstrous, suicidal recklessness.
There have been many, many Plan 9s all throughout history, some of them more successful than others, all of them terrestrial - it took a man with the vision of Ed Wood to show us the very real horrors of a Plan 9 from Outer Space! Starring Dudley Manlove as an alien who looks as though he regularly dishes out generous helpings of Manlove, and a giant sack of animate suet called Tor Johnson as inspector Dan Clay, Plan 9 lays out a bold tale of aliens who come to earth and yell at us in a shrill and undignified manner. This is the new, vastly improved Plan 9 that brought down the house as a live show at the historic Castro theater in San Francisco. Mike, Kevin and Bill at long last take on the legendary Ed Wood classic in a new, soon to be classic Rifftrax.
Crossroads. Battlefield Earth. A Visit to Santa. As if the RiffTrax audience hasn’t suffered enough, we put to them the extraordinarily challenge of writing us a script for what is universally considered to be the source of all evil and suffering in the world, Batman & Robin. Incredibly, they accepted. (We intentionally mumbled the words “Batman & Robin” every time we brought it up and it seems to have worked.) Yes, Chris Hanel and James Whistler of Riff Raff Theater bravely spearheaded this COMPLETELY FAN WRITTEN RIFFTRAX! Mike, Kevin and Bill merely act out the gags, jokes, Arnold impressions, and most of all, the bitter contempt, all written by you, the fans. (Assuming you are both a fan and a participant. If not please amend and/or disregard.) Hear the crew kick some serious ice in this, the first ever fan-written Rifftrax! Original film made in 1997.
Every quarter century or so a project comes along that so perfectly unites artist and medium that one can only stand in wonder and proclaim, "Wow, Sandra, when was the last time something this magical came along - quarter century or so, wasn't it?" So it was with Michelangelo and marble; Paderewsky and piano; And so it is with this RiffTrax, uniting THE legendary dinosaur movie of our time and THE weirdest "Weird Al" Yankovic of our time into one harmonic convergence of RiffTastic Jurassic WeirdAlistic bliss! RiffTrax would like to say, timidly and with all humility, YOU MUST GET THIS RIFFTRAX! IT'S WEIRD AL, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD! YOU CAN FIND COPIES OF JURASSIC PARK ON BUS SEATS! Mike and Weird Al join forces on the most colossally funny RiffTrax yet! *As with all RiffTrax, this was tailored to be age appropriate to the movie itself. That is, we feel confident saying that if you're old enough to enjoy Jurassic Park, you're old enough to enjoy this RiffTrax. Original film made in 1993.
Like a previously worn diaper, The Matrix has been Reloaded! All your favorite characters are back wearing all your favorite unlaundered fetish costumes! See Trinity leap - A LOT! See Morpheus fold his hands and talk - a lot A LOT! Thrill as the Oracle and Neo have long drawn-out conversations to the effect of, "Yea, but if you know that what you know is unknowable, how can you know that what you don't know isn't unknowable, too, you know?" And this without them having consumed half a pan of magic brownies while sitting in front of an Alf marathon! But more than anything else, Matrix Reloaded is loaded and loaded again (see diaper reference, above) with NIST Certified Assloads of Agent Smith! Hugo Weaving brings his mouthful of Busey-esque, Chicklet-y teeth to this Neo-punching, "Mr. Anderson"-saying role. Kevin, Mike and Bill re-load the RiffTrax recording studio for another go at the most Whoa-eriffic movie franchise ever!
For years we at RiffTrax have lived under the mistaken belief that we are Beowulf. So we were shocked when a cartoon version of Ray Winstone squeezed into a tiny pair of leather battle panties (LBPs) and set us straight in no uncertain terms. And he's right - HE. IS. BEOWULF!! Though it took some getting used to the idea that we are not Beowulf, in all honesty it's been a whole lot more pleasant to come into the office and see pants where one once saw nothing but a sea of LBPs. But if you haven't yet exceeded your limit, may we suggest you download our hilarious new RiffTrax for Beowulf in which a fully clothed Mike, Kevin and Bill take on our less than clothed hero, his extremely unclothed lizardy paramour (played with big boobs gusto by Digi-lina Jolie), and a disappointingly unclothed Anthony Hopkins. IT! IS! FUNNY!!!
The biggest Spiderman movie of 2007 is now the biggest Spiderman-based Rifftrax of 2008*! All your favorite characters return (Hoffman, Mr. Ditkovich, Ursula) and new favorites join in the fun (Crane Operator, Emergency Room Doctor, Kid in Central Park)! And joining Mike is writer/newspaperman/radio guy/blogger extraordinaire/podcaster/best-selling author and uber-fan of the Spiderman series James Lileks! Just what will his reaction be when he sees what they've done to his beautiful series? Will he freak out and begin hitting Mike with a folding chair? Yes, he did, but we edited that out of this ArachnaRiffic Rifftrax and left only the funny! *Unless we do Spiderman 2.
"What if a monster attacked a city?" This is the shockingly novel concept behind the viral marketing triumph of the year! Filled with "fresh"* performances and "authentic"** cinematography, Cloverfield masterfully takes a page from The Blair Witch Project, reworking the "snotty 20-somethings endure trauma while repeatedly saying 'dude'" genre into something unique while still being very much the same. Look for star turns by That Girl Who Was in Mean Girls and That One Dude Who Played Eric in The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. Mike, Kevin and Bill's RiffTrax was found by the Department of Defense (and then thrown away, but we dug it out of a garbage can.) *Not very good. **Not good at all.
Let's not get into the contentious issue of exactly who is Legend. R&B singer John Legend thinks he is Legend; the Tom Cruise movie Legend think it is Legend; "I Am" thinks it's Legend; and Matthew McConaughey is as certain that he is Legend as he is that his butt looks awesome in bike shorts. (RiffTrax remains neutral, of course, but if RiffTrax was forced to comment, we'd say that Brian Bosworth is Legend.) No matter, the movie making the claim that it is Legend makes a strong case, bringing a pretty slick PowerPoint presentation featuring lots of shirtless Will Smith, a dog that can act, and plenty of slim-hipped digital zombies. Confronted with it all, Mike, Bill and Kevin slip into their own panic room and unseal a number 10 can of low-sodium whoop-ass (in heavy syrup.)
The epic story of tiny men doing very important things continues.* In this multi-hour installment the two very different towers come into sharp focus. You see, whereas one tower is the domain of a once great but now evil sorcerer who rules over an army of orcs and is bent on destroying man and taking possession of the One Ring, the other tower is the domain of a once great but now evil sorcerer who rules over an army of orcs and is bent on destroying man and taking possession of the One Ring, but - BUT - his name begins with an "S", and also contains the letters "a", "u", "r", "n", whereas the other tower guy's name begins with an "S", contains the letters "a", "u", "r", and "n" HAS NO "m" AND ADDS AN "o"! And the differences don't end there: one of the guy's names is seven letters whereas the other has six! Mike, Kevin, and Bill strap on the wizard's hats, snap into some fortifying lembas and head on the down the road that goes ever on and on... *"The hobbits' quest to destroy the cursed ring" not "Martin Short, Michael J. Fox and Danny DeVito's performances in 'Mars Attacks'".
M. Night Shalalalalalalalalalala-tee-da burst onto the scene with the biggest suspense thriller of 1999 (well, right behind a relatively short list of films that includes Analyze This, Wild Wild West and Varsity Blues.) Haley Joel Osment delivers the most miraculous performance ever given by a toddler (he was just 18 months old when he was nominated for the Oscar!) and Bruce "The Return of Bruno" Willis turns in yet another trademark performance as a guy who seems sort of tired and annoyed. When a guy in his underpants shoots a child psychiatrist (who, to be clear, was also wearing underpants, he just happened to have pants on over them) his life is turned upside down (the guy wearing pants over his underpants, that is, not the guy only wearing underpants.) Why does his wife seem withdrawn and narcoleptic? Why do the local children taunt him and call him "Casper"? Why does he seem tired, run down, just sort of dead? Watch along with Mike, Kevin and Bill as they unlock the most unlockablest secrets of "The Sixth Sense".* *This is the 1999 film, not the 1972 TV show starring Gary Collins. Gary Collins apologizes for the confusion.
Harry Potter is back with the second installment in the franchise that is worth more than the Tolkien, Roddenberry and Herge estates combined! Part Two lays the groundwork for the stunning revelation that shook the series: that the guy who plays Ron absolutely, 100% cannot act. I mean, that performance? What the hell was that? Every scene he's in looks like someone from Are You Being Served forced at gunpoint to mug at a level that would make the cast of Police Academy blush. If they were to spin Ronald McDonald's friend Grimace off into a series titled The Grimace Hour it would have less grimacing per hour than Ron in Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets (approximate number of hours in movie: five.) Watch Ron pull one face after another as he teams up with Harry, Hermione, Hagrid, and Hagar the Horrible to outwit an army of spiders, battle a giant lizard, and encounter an emo-chick who lives in a toilet. And what would a Harry Potter movie be without Quidditch? Answer: Better. Mike, Kevin, Bill and their respective self-mutilating house elves are here to riff until the Secret of the titular Chamber is revealed!
For most of us, the experience of waking up in a strange motel room, alone and disoriented, means that you were the victim of Chinese Organ Thieves. Inconvenient, sure, but kidneys are replaceable.* And how often does it really happen?** For Leonard Shelby, however, this scenario was just another part of his daily routine. You see, Leonard suffers from a rare form of amnesia, usually only found in protagonists in works of fiction. Unable to form any new memories, Leonard stumbles around Southern California, vowing after every meal that he will never eat a McDonald's Filet-O-Fish again. To be fair, he does have a slightly more pressing agenda than eating pre-formed patties of vague seafood: the attack that rendered him an amnesiac also resulted in the death of his wife. Through an intricate system of tattoos and notes to himself, he hopes to one day track down the killer and after making him beg for mercy, ask them who they are, why he has this gun and if they know directions to the nearest McDonalds. Also, at one point in time during the movie, a peripheral character muses that Leonard’s condition must be like living your life backwards. Despite this being a barely coherent thought muttered by a bearded motel attendant, it's evidently license enough to tell you the entire story in reverse, making this Mike, Kevin and Bill's first ever xarTffiR! *Just talk to the delivery guy from the Chinese food place down the street **Every time you order from that Chinese food place
Take Ocean's Thirteen, pare down its cast to a trim Ocean's Twelve, then take away one more and you've got Ocean's Eleven, the swingingest, hippest, don't-they-look-like-they're-having-fun movie since Cannonball Run II! And though it was long ago mathematically proven that Mike is the least hip person who has ever lived or will ever live, he was able to up his swank quotient considerably by enlisting the talents of Las Vegas lounge singer extraordinaire, Guest Riffer Richard Cheese! Nelson's Two takes on Ocean’s Eleven and its viva lots of laughs, baby! (Ow, it physically hurt to type that.)
The most adorable pirates you've ever seen take to the high seas to do battle with an army of walking skeletons to see who is thinner. With a team consisting of Keira Knightley, Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom they can't possibly lose! Geoffrey Rush gives it his all -- that is he does his best impression of the pirate mascot standing outside the Long John Silver's at a strip mall in Oakbrook, Illinois, and respected actor Jonathan Pryce as the girlish British governor risks being stripped of the descriptive "respected". Mike, Kevin and Bill strap on the cutlasses and swing away!
In the tradition of I, Robot comes I, Ronman, the story of a shy college student who is bitten by a radioactive guy named Ron. Our hero's DNA is transformed, his body taking on the attributes of Ron until - hang on. Apparently we got that wrong and there's nothing remotely that cool going on here. It's Iron Man and from what we're told it's just a guy in a metal suit. Kind of looks like a Transformer. Fights another guy who looks like a Transformer. And you get to see Gwyneth Paltrow's back. And it's directed by the guy who did Zathura. Not only that, it made a gajillion dollars, no doubt because people got confused and thought they were seeing I, Ronman. But Mike, Kevin and Bill put aside their collective disappointment over it not being I, Ronman and give it the most iron fortified RiffTrax yet!
The Happening is a departure for director M. Night Shyamalan: he abandons his trademark conceit of the twist ending to tell a straight-forward tale of horror. It's like going to a Gallagher show where he refuses to smash watermelons with a giant mallet. The only difference is that Gallagher's comedy is grim and depressing and The Happening is hilarious. Yes, the plants of the Northeastern United States are fed up with how we've been treating them and decide to simultaneously release a toxin that causes humanity to commit suicide in various comical ways. Evidently this is something that is entirely scientifically valid, because a hot-dog obsessed lunatic says so at one point in time during the movie. Mark Wahlberg baffles as a Lemon Drink-eyeing science teacher and the part of Zooey Deschanel is ably played by a Tarsier. Mike, Kevin and Bill lend intentionally funny riffs to this masterpiece of unintentional comedy. (Unless there's some sort of real-life Happening, in which case they pre-emptively announce their allegiance to the plants.)
The most beloved franchise in film history returns to the screen and quickly becomes one generally well-liked franchise among many in film history! Yes, Indy is back, and this time he has a skull. And he has Shia "Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd" LaBeouf's infectious logorrhea! And as promised, the filmmakers gave in to the forceful and ceaseless cries of "GIVE US MORE RAY WINSTONE!"* Mike, Bill and Kevin took their own skulls into the studio to create a RiffTrax for the ages! *Experts concede that demand for Ray Winstone may have been overstated. In fact, the cries have been traced back to one guy, Bill Tillerstot of Port Washington, Wisconsin, and his actual quote was "Give us NO Ray Winstone."
All your favorite X-people return as Magneto, Cerebro, Pyro, Columbo, Tonto, Pinocchio, and Jell-O do battle to determine who can look more ludicrous. Everyone wins! And because these are officially the silliest roles ever created we are lucky to have British and Australian actors stepping in to do the jobs Americans won't do. Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen sink their teeth into their performances as though they were big helpings of spotted dick, and Huge Ackman scowls constantly like some sort of small angry mammal. As far as plot, this is essentially Angels in America with silly hats. Mike, Kevin and Bill form their own justice league to give this movie what for!
The story of the Hulk is a complex one but we can know a few things for sure: Hulk smash and... well, that's about it. The Ed Norton version doesn't add much new information (Hulk smash, we already knew that), nor did Ang Lee's (Hulk bore.) In order to get the full picture we must revisit the beloved late 70's TV version, specifically the episode "The Final Round" (Season 1, Disc 2, Episode 3 for those Netflixing), in which we learn that Hulk befriend untalented boxer who literally dumber than half-full bag of hammers. Oh, and, Hulk smash in slow motion. Mike, Kevin and Bill riff!
If you can spare a minute, think back on the greatest work of cinema that you have ever seen. Did you think about The Dark Knight? No? Then you are a moron. Because while you were out doing whatever it is morons do...demolition derbies or...croquet, (we wouldn't know, we loved The Dark Knight), The Dark Knight pimp-slapped Andy Dufresne, spat in the Godfather's face and gave Charles Foster Kane a big ol' wedgie on its way to becoming the greatest movie of all time. All this in spite of the bat suit causing our hero to grumble like the offspring of Tom Waits and Cookie Monster. There is nothing at all silly about that. We here at RiffTrax regret even having to point out that he sounds like your Great Aunt Vivian sending you out for her third pack of Pall Malls of the day. Because The Dark Knight is not just a superhero movie. It's a gritty crime drama about political corruption and the choices men make that just happens to involve a superhero. A superhero millionaire that dresses as a bat whose voice sounds like your cat heaving up a hairball into your slippers who battles a guy with half a face named Two-Face. Despite all this, Mike, Kevin and Bill are ready to take on...(reverent pause)...The Greatest Movie of All Time.* * Source: The Internet
Summer is over—time to get back to evil school with Harry, Hermione, Ron, Sirius Black, Mrs. McGonagall, Filch, Splat, Wang, Timothy Q. Diaperhat, Professor Waddle Von Funkenskull, The Right Reverend Boo Smoothandle, Dr. and Mrs. Walrus V. Chowderboot and all the rest! This time around (the 6th, if we're not mistaken) Harry must battle an ancient curse and the desire to play Quidditch for three quarters of the film. Ron, in the meantime, discovers that his face is capable of hideous contortions as yet unexplored, Dumbledore awakes to find that he's gained a good deal of weight, and respected actress Emma Thompson sets out to prove that the respect is wholly misplaced. Thankfully, this movie has been certified 100 percent Dobby-free! Mike, Kevin and Bill wave their wands at the screen—and the result is magiclarious!* *We think that means magic and hilarious, but our research team is still working on it.
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away (Marin County, to be exact) George Lucas sparked up his favorite bong, kicked back in a bean bag chair and several gurgles later came up with the idea that would become the greatest movie of all time.* The story should be familiar to everyone: a moisture farmer leaves his beloved moisture farm (after a terrible moisture stampede), flies to the planet of Mos Def and eventually rescues a princess from the clutches of the evil Moff and destroys the horribly named Death Star. Who knew that the humble moisture farmer's name would soon be on the lips of kids the world over: yes, Biggs Darklighter, hero of the rebellion. (Or was it Jek Porkins—we forget?)
Now that marijuana (aka "reefer", "bud", "stick", "whoopie doopie", "happy grass", "tingle weed", "Abe Lincoln", "the halt", "muffin", "chew", "altoid", "the Fonz", "little Ricky", "sleestack", "chumba wumba", "red dynamite", "the oaf", "fat man", "little boy", "Richard Milhouse Nixon", "Area 51") has been eliminated as a scourge, it's interesting to go back and look at the film that was almost singlehandedly responsible for its demise. Yes, Reefer Madness let the world know that even a single dose of marijuana (aka "whip scorpion", "Batman", "Holyfield vs. Lewis", "the Kremlin", "babelfish", "Mason Reese", "chowhound", "slab bacon") caused insane laughter, enhanced skill at ragtime piano, the inability to avoid hitting old men with your car, and defenestration. Mike, Kevin and Bill light up...THE STUDIO to take on Reefer Madness. Original film made in 1936.
Fans of shops of horrors will love this nostalgic look back, before the days of the massive chain stores, and big box horror shops. In the old days, horror shopkeepers gave you the personal touch; they knew your name, asked about your kids, were always ready with a smile... before killing you, chopping you up and feeding you to their monstrous plant. Little Shop features a powerhouse performance -- as the diminutive nerd Seymour Krelboin -- by diminutive nerd Jonathan Haze, and as always, the sumptuous cinematography, lavish production values and white knuckle pacing that are the hallmark of director Roger Corman. Kevin, Mike, and Bill invite you to come inside their little shop of RiffTrax and have a look around. Original film made in 1960.
Long before lunatic millionaires Michael Jackson, Richard Branson or Rick Rockwell, there was Frederic Loren (Vincent Price), an eccentric, unhappily married fop who offers a huge cash prize to anyone who can stay overnight in the house on Haunted Hill (the house, by sheer coincidence having nothing whatsoever to do with its location on a haunted hill, is haunted). The guests have to contend with hauntings, a sparsely stocked bar, and a huge cistern filled to brimming with flesh dissolving acid (the previous owner evidently tired of hauling his excess flesh to commercial flesh dissolving operations.) The film's many twists and turns will keep you guessing! (How many twists and turns? Well, say, two twists and maybe one turn, if you want to be generous about it.) Mike, Bill and Kevin take up his offer, pack their Star Wars sleeping bags and spend a wild night in the House on Haunted Hill.
Imagine being holed up in a filthy dilapidated building, surrounded by pale-faced hollow-eyed creatures, unable to call for help, while before your eyes zombie-like beings commit the most unspeakable acts. Yes, a night of performance art at your local coffee house is something to be endured. But then so is a Night of the Living Dead! Shocking at the time for its graphic portrayal of the titular living dead feasting on pieces of the dead dead without even a hint of table manners or personal hygiene, what is most startling to modern sensibilities is the performance of the guy in the white pants who looks like Joaquin Phoenix. He manages to actually be worse than Joaquin Phoenix! And if you're a fan of inexplicably hostile, growling men then you have hit the jackpot (you may even throw away your laserdisc collection of the films of Robert Loggia!). Mike, Kevin and Bill spend the better of a night with the Night of the Living Dead.
More than a decade before Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and The Other Guy actually landed on the moon, Missile to the Moon made giant leaps for both man AND mankind with its daring portrayal of how the first lunar voyage might play out. It turned out to have gotten a lot of the details right. Except that instead of a meticulously planned journey that took NASA countless man hours to achieve, the impromptu trip of Missile to the Moon takes place on a crazy old man's whim, and four of the five participants wander aboard the ship by accident. Also, where Missile to the Moon portrayed the moon as a dynamic backdrop for intrigue, love, betrayal, and deception, when our guys got to the moon, they sort of just looked around for a while, hit a golf ball or two, then got the hell back to Earth to try and catch Carson. And the real moon also turned out not to be crawling with beauty queens, giant spiders and hideous rock men. Just dust.
Just speak the word "jaws" to anyone and their pulse quickens, the hair on the back of their neck stands up as a dim memory rises to the surface of their consciousness - a memory of the first time they saw Murray Hamilton. Most likely it was in an episode of B.J. and the Bear, or perhaps The F.B.I with Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., but if not that, then his turn as the sartorially resplendent, gravelly voiced mayor of Amity in Jaws, the movie that made a generation of people afraid to go into the water (they were justifiably terrified of getting a skin disease from coming in contact with Quint's run-off.) Yes, long before blockbusters like Spider-Man 2, Shrek the Third, or Garden State there was Jaws, the story of small town mayor Larry Vaughn (played by the magnificent Murray Hamilton) and his quest to find the perfect jacket to wear while resisting the whining of Richard Dreyfuss. There is also a shark. Mike, Bill and Kevin cruise the movie like a large squalus grabbing it with their powerful—oh, what's the word for it...mandibles - then, a little shakin', a little tenderizin', and down it goes.
Most carnival going experiences follow roughly the same pattern: some trouble-maker suggests it and, due to alcohol use or lack of personal will power, you ignore the alarm claxon blaring in your head and hop in the car. Six hours later you stumble through the exit smelling of sweat, rancid corn dog oil, cigarette smoke and vomit, roach clips in your hair, breathing in the mercury-laden fumes of a huge Chinese-made stuffed giraffe and praying for your own death. The Carnival of Souls is a lot like that, only with the addition of organ music! Yes, this is Herk "Shake Hands with Danger" Harvey's timeless classic about a mouth breathing church organist who drives to Utah in order to have coffee with a greasy warehouse worker. Mike, Bill and Kevin load into the car, their pockets jingling with fresh souls and spend a few hours at the carnival!
As the old song goes, "I love a parade." However, this was undoubtedly spoken by someone under torture or extreme mental duress. Parades for most people evoke memories of the many raised welts, received at the hands of the crazed, hard candy-throwing Shriners tooling around on their infernally loud 2-cycle-powered magic carpets (man, they were sadistic!) These were almost always accompanied by Sousa, performed badly by teenagers in large fur hats (good Sousa is trying enough). And then there's the clowns. For the love of all that is good and holy, the clowns! A mind-splitting terror beyond anything cooked up by the foulest demons of Gehenna, clowns!! Luckily, there are no clowns in Swing Parade—there are Stooges! With clowns, all is darkness and torment. With Stooges, all is goodness, bliss, and the occasional scratched cornea. And man, does this parade swing! Mike, Kevin and Bill really bring the riffs, daddy! Original film made in 1946.
Your favorite sand-phobic, midichlorian-rich super villain is back! And this time his capes are even more fabulous, his thigh-high Uggs resplendent like never before, and his burnt chicken head cloaked in the shiniest plastic helmet yet! And if that wasn't enough, Mike, Kevin and Bill are pleased to be joined by Darth Vader's bellicose but lovable brother Chad! Yes, the movie that gave us one of cinema's most startling revelations, and perhaps the most memorable silver screen quote ever ("I thought that hairy beast would be the end of me") gets the RiffTrax treatment. Lots of laughs. Lots of Chad Vader. And no pod racing.
RiffTrax was caught up in the Twilight frenzy, and not surprisingly, given that we are staffed almost exclusively by 13 year-old girls. So when we heard rumors of the feature film—the whispers of John Goodman being cast as Edward were especially worrying—we sent so many texts beginning "OMG!!!1!!!!11!!" we nearly shut down our SMS service. At the movie's premiere we were there among the throngs, shrieking with girlish glee when Robert Pattinson got out of his limo (it turns out we had mistakenly gone to the premiere of The Changeling and were actually shrieking for John Malkovich, but the point still stands.) And when it was finally released on DVD we ruined our first three copies by hugging them too much. But we've overcome these obstacles to give you the best RiffTrax for a sparkly-emo-vampire film that we know how to make, and we say with as much humility as we can muster, that's a pretty darn good sparkly-emo-vampire RiffTrax! Turn off that Ashley Tisdale download, tell the clerk at Hot Topic you'll buy that hoodie later, and cozy up with Mike, Kevin and Bill for the mopiest RiffTrax ever!
When a spaceship full of hairy people crashes on an unknown planet, it's not enough that the surviving members look a lot like the Starland Vocal Band (it is a help, of course, but not sufficient for their survival). They must forge off on a non-stop mission of wandering around doing nothing in particular, not saying anything particularly noteworthy, and not looking particularly attractive or interesting. However, they do provide a tasty and nutritious snack for some pretty sweet looking stop-motion dinosaurs! Their routine deaths become a challenge to their intrepid captain, who prefers to rule by whining, equivocation and frequent "rest periods." This leaves him vulnerable to a coup by the crew's most hirsute member, Jim, who presses the enormous advantage provided him by what looks like a beard made out of 2-dollar-a-yard fun fur. Kevin, Bill and Mike sharpen some sticks, put on their least smelly animal furs and prepare to poke at the Planet of Dinosaurs. Original film made in 1977.
One of the things we like to do here at RiffTrax (during those rare moments when we're not absorbed by our frequent, mandatory company-wide Schnappi sing-alongs) is to challenge ourselves. Sure, it's easy enough to make hay out of a bear-suited Nicholas Cage, but what really tests one's mettle is to see how he reacts when he's staring down the business end of THE GREATEST MOVIE EVER MADE. Yes, our respect and admiration for Casablanca is unbounded, but if our motto—We Don't Make Movies, We Make Them Funny—is to have any meaning at all then it must be tested by fire. So we offer you this, our first in a series of RiffTrax Challenges, where we step outside our comfort zone (our comfort zone, by the way, is a large rumpus room here at RiffTrax Towers, with lots of bean bag chairs, thick shag carpet and a huge supply of Cheddar 'n' Bacon Easy Cheese) for our equivalent of a corporate "team-building" exercise. (We tried the more traditional rafting expedition but lost half our staff. We think it was at a Mobil Station in Bakersfield, CA.) Will Mike, Kevin and Bill triumph? Merely survive? Suffer a huge smackdown by an angry, gargantuan Sidney Greenstreet? Join us for our first ever RiffTrax Challenge to find out!
You asked for more voodoo—and we deliver, with a RiffTrax exclusive*, Voodoo Man. Young women are vanishing somewhere on the road that leads to the creepy old house of a deranged bachelor (Bela Lugosi) and his two lonely assistants. Remarkably, no one thinks to question the deranged bachelor and his two lonely assistants, so the disappearances just keep stacking up. Until one day when the blandest man alive ("Ralph", appropriately enough) uses his remarkable ability to run out of gas at just the right time and discovers their plot. The highlight for most people will be the most shameful performance of John Carradine's career as a thin, mincing idiot, and the most shameful performance of George Zucco's career (they must have had a bet going) as a voodoo priest/gas station clerk. Mike, Kevin and Bill return to the loving (and needle tracked) arms of Bela Lugosi as Voodoo Man. Original film made in 1944.
The typical reaction to an encounter with The Room looks something like this: puzzlement, revulsion, laughter, amazement, hunger, affection, deep depression, inability to digest milk proteins, and ultimately, an unbreakable addiction. Yes, this is the film you've probably only heard rumors about, a truly jaw-droppingly weird melodrama written, starring, produced, financed, endlessly promoted by (most famously by a high profile billboard in Los Angeles for five years), and featuring the hideous naked backside of Tommy Wiseau, the world's shaggiest and most mysterious auteur. The Room's plot seems mundane: a banker looks forward to his marriage unaware that his fiancé is cheating on him with his best friend. But beneath this quotidian veneer lurk peculiar treasures that almost literally defy description. Quite simply, you must see this. Though this film is hard to come by your efforts to secure it will be richly rewarded. Mike, Kevin and Bill are honored to be able to join you for your first viewing of The Room.
The year was 1984. While the fascistic regime foretold by Orwell had not yet come to power the nation had been brought to its knees, the victim of repeated playings of Karma Chameleon and Sister Christian. The country needed something to believe in, something besides aerobics or Emmanuel Lewis' winning the People's Choice Award. And so they came, a ragtag group of heroes in a beat-up pickup, complete with a beat-up gun rack: Jed, Aardvark, Daryl, Arturo and their brave, though prone-to-sniveling compatriot Robert (played by the prone-to-sniveling C. Thomas Howell.) The dawn may have been a red one, but they would make sure that when the sun set, it would be red... white and blue! Joining Mike for this very special RiffTrax is Joel McHale, the Daryl to Mike's Arturo, or perhaps the Jed to his Aardvark, or maybe the Aardvark to his Daryl. The point is, it is the perfect partnership with which to assail the enemies of freedom, i.e., the makers of Red Dawn!
Did you like the 2001 sleeper hit The Fast and The Furious, but are you really not a fan of definite articles? Then 2009's Fast & Furious is the movie for you! After the twin triumphs of The Pacifier and Babylon A.D., Vin Diesel has finally reunited with his co-star from The Fast and The Furious: a several-sizes-too-small wife-beater! Also returning is the other guy from The Fast and The Furious (legal name: The Other Guy From The Fast and The Furious), shocking those of us who were pretty confident that he was the guy that had helped us try on shoes the other day at Famous Footwear. When his girlfriend is murdered, Vin Diesel is forced to return to the US where he is wanted for...well that isn't really made clear. But before he even has a chance to mumble something unintelligible in a really deep voice under his breath, he finds himself in the race of his life! Seriously, the races often feel like they have lasted for the duration of a human lifetime. But at least in between the interminable driving scenes we're treated to a rich, nuanced film tapestry, featuring the very finest in Stock Characters spouting refined Screenplay Clichés. If your idea of a good time is watching the Angry Chief say "Talk to me", you're in for quite a thrill ride (just make sure to "lock and load.") Mike, Kevin and Bill hopped into the sidecar for Fast & Furious, but were concerned by the lack of seatbelts for all three of them so they instead observed it from a reasonable distance.
If you're like most of us, you stormed out of your midnight viewing of The Matrix Reloaded saying to yourself, "Man, was that terrible! When I come back in six months to see The Matrix Revolutions, they had better balance out those ponderous scenes of two characters quietly discussing the minutiae of the plot with a lot more tedious action sequences where I can't tell what is going on. And instead of involving Neo, Morpheus and Trinity, you know, the characters we care about, it should mainly focus on people we've never seen before. Like a whiny kid and a butch chick with a crew cut. Give them prominent roles! Now hurry up and refill my Dew, I already bought tickets to see this again at 2:35 AM!" If your conversation mirrored ours in any way, then you're in luck: The Matrix Revolutions delivers on all bullet points! Abandoning all the pseudo-philosophical mumbo-jumbo that for a brief window had desperate college professors teaching lectures on the original movie, Revolutions instead dials the THX up to 11 and hopes you don't notice because your eardrums are too busy rupturing. Your enjoyment also depends heavily on understanding the plot of Reloaded, which was mathematically proven to be impossible in a Harvard study. And to top it off, there's a healthy dose of old-fashioned, ham-fisted blasphemy thrown in for good measure. Mike, Kevin and Bill jack in to deliver The Matrix series a hearty goodbye "whoa."
When we heard that Korean studio Younggu-Art Movies was making a picture called Dragon Wars, we were both excited and disgusted at the same time. Excited because we have had many conversations about which Korean movie studio would direct our "dream" dragon movie, and the name Younggu-Art Movies just kept coming up. But we were also disgusted, because the movie title failed to provide its own abbreviation as part of the title. This is a major gripe that we have with just about every single movie that has ever come out: Abbreviations of a movie's title should always be included as part of the title. In today's busy web 2.0 world, who has time to refer to anything by its whole name? However, we run into trouble when movies don't specify how we should abbreviate their titles, and competing, non-standard abbreviations are adopted. Fortunately, our disgust was misguided, as Dragon Wars bucks the trend and includes its own abbreviation in the title: D-War. A true abbreviation, where Dragon becomes D and Wars becomes War, Dragon Wars: D-War provides the consumer with something so sorely missing from movie titles today: Choice. So whether you choose to experience the fantastical creatures and hi-octane action sequences of Dragon Wars, or prefer the ancient story of a love that knows no bounds of D-War, you must know one thing: this D-movie D-bites D-hard. Mike, Kevin and Bill decided to D-riff Dragon Wars: D-War, because a fan in attendance at our 2009 Comic-Con panel suggested it. The moral of the story? Don't do that. Original film made in 2007.
At its heart, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is a love story. A love story between two dogs, Mojo and Frankie, who are shown humping several times in the first fifteen minutes of the movie*. Stunningly, this remains a highlight over the next two hours of movie. We don't see much of the dogs after their owner, Shia LaBeouf, leaves for college, but we found our thoughts frequently drifting back to them as the human characters dropped their pants, ran into things, and stammered incoherently. Who was feeding the dogs? Were they getting along with the other dogs at the dog park? How was Frankie adapting to the new diet the vet had put him on back in June? Sadly, these questions go unanswered. In fact, any question you may have regarding Transformers will go unanswered, because Transformers movies are not in the business of answering your questions. Transformers movies are like the street corner rantings of a tinfoil hat wearing lunatic. You don't expect that guy to actually stop and explain to you what he meant by "The IRS built Yellowstone National Park on the same evening 180 years ago that the Lizard People shot down Sputnik with a rifle made from Avogadro's Number!" You just slink past him and try to wash the spittle off of your jacket when you get home. The same applies for Transformers. Don't you dare ask it "How did these characters whose names I don't know get to this location and what is their purpose once they get there and who is punching who right now?" Just lie back and think of the dogs. Focus on the dogs...Always on the dogs... The tinfoil hat guy gave Mike, Kevin and Bill's riffing of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen two thumbs up, a rating he had previously only given to a shopping cart wheel that he believed influenced the 2004 presidential election. *This is not a joke
On the cold, starry night of April 14, 1912, in the iceberg-infested waters of the frigid North Atlantic, a shocking and utterly disturbing event occurred. We’re referring, of course, to the sullying of a beautiful 1912 Renault limousine by Jack Dawson and Rose Bukater. Yes, the film Titanic is less about the epic tragedy of the same name, and more about one of the most unlikely, unbelievable, and shortest on-screen romances of all time. She’s a gal from the upper echelons of society. He’s a guy from steerage. The ship’s crew would never let him roam the upper-class decks to meet her, let alone caress her lovingly at the front of the ship. And yet it happens, and we are the worse for it… The original 5 hour version screened in test markets was a resounding failure. In that cut, Rose makes some room on the floating door, and Jack survives to marry her. Then we are treated to an over-hour-long epilogue in which they live together for many years in squalor and complete poverty, Jack scribbling cartoons for low-end skin magazines while wearing a grease-stained wife-beater, and Rose yelling at Jack that he should get a real job, lamenting the loss of her fortunes, and thinking she would have been better off at the bottom of the Atlantic after all. Mike, Kevin and Bill hop aboard to bring you their most Titanic riff yet! Oh, and may we add: Rose, Rose! Jack, Jack! Rose, this way! Jack, this way! Jack! Jack! Rose! Rose! Jack!!!
Like the odometer on your 1984 Plymouth Reliant rolling back over to zero, the Star Trek series gets a reset! The previous thirty-eight films had barely begun to scratch the surface of these fascinating characters, and so Star Trek is back to answer all your burning questions: What’s Scotty’s favorite brand of bacon? Why does no one seize the moment and slap the hell out of Chekov? Why does Uhura jam that huge piece of machined steel into her ear? Was Spock’s mom younger than him, and which uncle taught him that nerve pinchy thing? A tour de force of shameless retconning, Star Trek nevertheless introduces a bold new sci-fi innovation: time travel! And black holes! And characters meeting themselves! And ice planets! And evil nemeses who vow revenge! And ship flybys! These are by themselves very compelling reasons to watch, but Star Trek gives you an even more compelling one—to learn Uhura’s first name. Sure, you never knew she didn’t have a first name, it was never an issue for you, and you haven’t even given it one millisecond’s thought, but at last you get to find out! (It’s Nyota, by the way.) Mike, Kevin and Bill self-consciously tug down their red Federation uniform tops and go boldly into Star Trek! Original film made in 2009.
Unless you regularly do mushrooms and go to Lady Gaga concerts with your good friend Crispin Glover, then watching Maniac is guaranteed to be the weirdest experience you have ever had. (Not since The Room has a film had such a deep impact on the staff of RiffTrax, so much so that the images in Maniac temporarily dislodged from our minds the mercurial Tommy Wiseau, the stark horror of Chris-R., even the enchanting beauty of Lisa!) Maniac starts conventionally enough, when a Vaudeville-impersonator-turned-lab-assistant-to-a-mad-scientist refuses his bosses reasonable request that he shoot himself in the heart and offer his corpse as an experimental subject. After that, it starts to get strange. A disturbed patient who thinks he is the orangutan from Poe's The Murders in the Rue Morgue is mistakenly given super-adrenaline (which evidently exists) causing him to give one of the most eccentric performances in the history of film. Meanwhile, the mad scientist's next door neighbor is disturbed because one his cats is missing from his cat ranch, where he harvests their fur after feeding their flesh to the rats (which he feeds to the next generation of cats, and so on.) After that, the offbeat aspects of Maniac really kick in. We caution you that Maniac is not for the faint of heart. There is brief, partial, creepy, music-free, 1930's nudity (mercifully, the emphasis is on "brief"), plenty of cat-on-cat violence, and a scene in which our hero pops out the eyeball of his own lab cat and snacks on it. That said, it's probably tamer than any given episode of Top Chef and you would really be depriving yourself of something special if you let that keep you from this very, very unique and hilarious journey, with Mike, Bill and Kevin as your guides, into the heart of RiffTrax madness known as Maniac.
Tired of horror clichés like empty parking garages, gypsy curses, and séances gone wrong? Drag Me To Hell sure isn’t! Wide-eyed ingénue Alison Lohman (featured in…some other films, presumably) navigates the heady politics of a small bank branch while voluntarily maintaining a relationship with Justin Long (Mac Guy , “funny person”). Yes, with a life like that, a refreshing trip to Hell is just what the doctor ordered! Fortunately, condemnation is easy as pie—an oozing, eyeball-filled pie that director Sam Raimi will throw in your face! Because stuff like that is hilarious. Or maybe scary? Or probably neither. But back to the Hell-dragging: it turns out gypsies are not the most reasonable people, and will sentence you to eternal suffering for any minor infraction. Refuse to extend my credit? Drag you to Hell! Cut me off on the freeway? Hope you like dry heat! Politely suggest that Evening Shade** wasn’t the greatest television show ever produced? Let me introduce you to your new roommate, Adolf “always leaves the seat up” Hitler! Join Mike and Bill on this sentimental excursion down Hell Lane (Kevin dodged the bullet on this one thanks to an unassailable “no Justin Long” clause in his contract—well played, sir). Just watch out for falling anvils and, really, just copious amounts of eyeball splatter. ** All of our research suggests that Evening Shade is universally beloved in gypsy circles. This will never be confirmed nor denied, as gypsies don’t use the internet.
The comedy event of 2009 comes to Blu-ray! The stars of Mystery Science Theater 3000 meet the worst movie of all time to bring you RiffTrax Live. Join Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett live and onstage at the historic Belcourt Theater in Nashville as they riff along hilariously to Ed Wood’s classic B-movie blunder Plan 9 from Outer Space. Hosted by internet superstar Veronica Belmont, and featuring geek troubadour Jonathan Coulton, RiffTrax Live offers non-stop music and laughs. Also included is Flying Stewardess, a 40’s travel short that gets subjected to the guys’ signature brand of rapid-fire riffing. Join Mike, Kevin, Bill and the gang for a truly magical night of comedy and cult classics with RiffTrax Live: Plan 9 From Outer Space, available now for the first time in high definition! Bonus features include a behind the scenes slideshow and uncut versions of the "commercials" that aired during the show.
Return of the Jedi. For sixteen years, it was widely regarded as the worst chapter in the Star Wars saga. We now look back upon this period of time, appalled and embarrassed at how naive we were. For while Return of the Jedi may be slow to get started, while it may delay the final confrontation between Luke and Vader in favor of an endless Ewok/Stormtrooper battle, while it may feature C3PO as its main character for the first twenty minutes and while it may have killed off Salacious Crumb instead of making him the focus of the entire movie, consider this: nobody utters the line "Yippee". Return of the Jedi begins where The Empire Strikes Back left off: with George Lucas deciding which scenes to ruin by inserting a musical number by a hideous creature named Sy Snootles, who sounds like Disembaudio did before he took singing lessons. The dance scene is vital to the plot: how were we, the audience members supposed to know whether or not Jedi rocked, unless there was a song included in the movie named "Jedi Rocks"? Yes, the song is sung in a foreign tongue and the only way you'd know it was called "Jedi Rocks" was if you bought the soundtrack, but ignoring those irrelevant points, we can finally conclude after watching six episodes of Star Wars, a task that would take up well over half of one day of your life, that Jedi do in fact, Rock. Fans of puppets, Hutts and metal bikinis: your ship has come in. Cancel your weekend trip to the Great Pit of Carkoon, boil up a big bowl of Tatooine paddy frogs and call up your buddy Nien Numb to come sit next to you even though you don't speak the same language: we're finally riffing Return of the Jedi. As this is the final chapter in the Star Wars saga for RiffTrax to tackle, Mike, Kevin and Bill would like to take the time to reminisce about their favorite moments in the series. Here they are in order: The time Jar Jar became a senator and the time Stinky the Hutt was kidnapped. Thank you and good night.
Terminator Salvation is the thrilling story of the journey of a once valuable franchise. When the intellectual property rights lapse after a disappointing third movie, they're snatched up at well below their estimated market value by a wacky mismatched duo of producers. The petulant star they bring on board demands to play a role that wasn't actually in the script, massive rewrites ensue, and the novice director is forced to fall back on the skills he honed directing Sugar Ray music videos. Will the franchise rise to the occasion, renewing our enthusiasm for its once beloved characters? Or will the resulting film be a cynical, calculated exercise in maximizing profitability with little regard for story or coherency? Terminator Salvation firmly casts its lot with the latter. Christian Bale, apparently unaware that The Dark Knight had wrapped shooting, alternates between his raspiest "Harrison Ford in Firewall" whisper and barking like a mandrill/harbor seal hybrid. Fortunately, the movie turns out to not really be about him. It's actually about the guy from Avatar, the guy who played the new Chekov and a mute eight year old girl. Thrill as the resistance discovers the secret weapon that could save mankind: a specific radio frequency! Bonus points if you can identify which scene Christian Bale was taking so seriously that he unleashed the most humiliating caught-on-camera rant since Hall of Famer George Brett discussed soiling his pants. Google it. As a result of having to endure repeated viewings of Terminator Salvation, Mike, Kevin and Bill are all done professionally with each other.
Paranormal Activity succeeds by putting the viewer in the most deviously terrifying position ever imagined by a filmmaker: captive audience to an idiot's home movie. It recreates the experience of being stuck in a room with Micah (pronounced MEEK-uh, or DOOSH-bag), the kind of guy you immediately want to start punching and never stop punching until the punching is done. The kind of guy who spends his free time at the mall, conspicuously checking out 16-year olds while chatting loudly on his Bluetooth headset about hair gels. In short, Micah is a super sweet dude. In a hard-to-swallow supernatural twist, Micah has somehow acquired a live-in girlfriend, Katie. In any other film she would stand out as a shrill, unlikeable person, but in the twisted world ofParanormal Activity she is borderline tolerable. Katie carries some baggage, namely some sort of ghost, or demon, or...well it's not really clear. Whatever it is, it's up to no good, pulling off masterful scares such as moving keys off the counter, and gradually shifting a door while Micah and Katie sleep. By the way, get used to watching Micah and Katie sleep, because that's pretty much the whole movie. Oh, and one time they go outside and Katie sits in a chair. Strap in for terror, or at least a steady, crushing, existential dread, as Mike, Kevin, and Bill go up against the film equivalent of sitting next to a talkative moron on a 6-hour flight: Paranormal Activity.
What do ice-skating reindeer, pipe-smoking santas and a parade of aquatic champions have in common? You’ll see them all in the RiffTrax Live: Christmas Shorts-Stravaganza! The stars of Mystery Science Theater 3000® have a sackfull of delightful and demented shorts to riff live onstage. Some of the forgotten gems of Christmases past prove to be the perfect targets for the rapid-fire riffs of Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett. And if that wasn’t enough, they’re even joined by comedy legend “Weird Al" Yankovic for a musical short about the wonders of pork! It’s funnier than Ernest Saves Christmas and far less creepy than The Polar Express! Join Mike, Kevin, Bill and Al for a festive night of hilarious holiday comedy that is destined to become traditional Christmas viewing.
Twi-Hard. A once proud word that has been shockingly cheapened by over-use. It used to mean something. These days, any given twelve year old girl with Team Edward wallpaper on her iPhone can be the star of a "Vampire Fever" cover story photo in USA Today. It's not right. Just because some soccer mom blows two months of grocery funds on an elaborate face tattoo replicating the iconic "Cullen baseball" scene, that DOES NOT make her a real Twi-Hard, okay? It's something you earn. It's something you live. Forgive our emotion on this issue, but it's just that Mike, Kevin, and Bill are probably the biggest Twilight fans on the planet. Just survey Kristen Stewart's file of restraining order requests, and see which names pop up the most (Stephenie Meyer's file is alarmingly similar). So it should surprise no one that these three sparkly warriors trekked to the theater dozens upon dozens of times to feast upon the sweet succulent cinematic nectar that is New Moon. After the fourteenth viewing, the girl at the ticket counter was unable to make eye contact with them, muttering something about "grown men" under her breath. The pimply popcorn vendor filled his friends' inboxes with texts like "OMG third time today," while the theater janitor constantly fought the urge to beat them with his mop. In a word: epic. But the shame they endured, along with the suffering of their long-neglected wives and children, is your gain. Thanks to these endless, obsessive, life-destroying viewings, Mike, Kevin, and Bill are able to present this RiffTrax of New Moon on the eve of its DVD release. Let's just hope that, now that the ride is over, they can put their lives back together once and for all (they're not making any more of these movies, right?).
By now, everyone knows the story of how Avatar single-handedly changed moviemaking forever. Its visionary director (whose name escapes us, you know the one, he's that guy who didn't win an Oscar this year) proved that progressive films can succeed in today's marketplace. As long as progressive means "completely unoriginal and devoid of depth" and the high praise heaped upon the work is entirely based upon it being nice to look at. In this sense, Megan Fox is a progressive actress, and The Hills was the most important television show of the last 10 years. It is truly a bold, experimental piece of work, keeping in mind that crystal meth and fat substitute Olestra (which brought the phrase "anal leakage" into our lexicon) were also the results of experimentation. For those of you who haven't seen it (*cricket cricket*), Avatar is the story of just how pretty a jungle planet can look in 3D, and maybe there are some people fighting in it or whatever. It's also a great refresher on some of your favorite 90s action movie dialogue clichés. Mike, Kevin, and Bill implore you to "GO GO GO!" and "MOVE MOVE MOVE!" lest you be "s*** out dead without warning" before enjoying Avatar!
Widely considered to be one of the five or six best Harry Potter movies, Harry Potter & The Goblet of Fire is a breath of fresh air for a series that desperately needed one. Casting aside the familiar tropes of the first three movies in favor of bold new innovations such as Quidditch, a sinister new faculty member and dragons, The Goblet of Fire leaves the viewer wanting more! And then continues for another hour and a half... We welcome aboard dynamic new characters such as Viktor Krum, who has a line or two; Fleur Delacour, who the books made seem a lot hotter; and Madame Maxime, who engages in a romance with Hagrid. One has to imagine blackmail, a bar bet, or a fetish so vile we dare not speak its name played a major role in that one. Will Harry enter the prestigious Triwizard Cup tournament? Let's just get this out of the way: yes, of course he will. Will he win, let alone survive it? Again: yes. Will a student actually die, justifying all the jokes we've made about this series over the years? And if so, will that student be portrayed by a previously unknown actor who went on to become one of the most universally loathed characters in one of the most universally loathed series of the past three decades? We're not telling! (but you may just want to keep some champagne on ice.) Tuck into some moldy bread and stinking salmon with Mike, Kevin and Bill as they cast their name into the Goblet of Fire, attempt to win the Triwizard Cup and get busted trying to sneak some Clash of the Titans collectors glasses out of Burger King.
One of the hardest things to do with a popular series is to give it the conclusion it deserves. Some of the greatest entertainment phenomenons of our time, be it The Sopranos, Lost or Hi Honey, I'm Home! have failed to give fans the closure that they, as uninvolved spectators watching at home for free, feel they are entitled to. The Lord of The Rings series, on the other hand has mastered the art of delivering a satisfying conclusion. And The Return of The King does it so well, in fact, that it decides to end seven or eight times. The final chapter of one of the most beloved trilogies of all time finds our characters picking up where they left off. Frodo and Sam continue onwards towards Mt. Doom, despite Frodo increasingly appearing to Sam as a walking roast turkey. Aragorn faces down one of lifes toughest questions: whether to embrace his true destiny, or to combine three flavors of Combos into one bag and lay on the couch with his shirt off eating them. Gimli and Legolas have started an organic dog biscuit bakery in Vermont. And Mushmouth is futilely trying to convince the gang to make him the Buck Buck breaker instead of Fat Albert. All the while, the fearsome Eye of Sauron is observing their movements in a style that can best be described as "pretty funny when you really think about it." There's also drunken table dancing, Elven poetry and a spider proboscis that you would best be served to never think about if you're ever considering venturing into the outdoors again. The journey through Cirith Ungol is never an easy one, so it's best to join up with Mike, Kevin and Bill, who have their very own Light of Earendil*, tin of pipeweed**, and satchel of Lembas Bread*** *Can of Raid **Big League Chew ***Bag of combos with three different flavors of Combos combined in it
The past decade has not been kind to John Travolta. It began with Battlefield Earth, and ended with the movies about the middle-aged guys on motorcycles (Wild Hogs), the middle-aged adoptive fathers (Old Dogs), the middle-aged guy who found valuable dancing shoes (Gold Clogs), the middle-aged children's book author who runs at a medium pace (Roald Jogs), and the middle-aged guys who flip milk caps in a meat storage locker (Cold Pogs). It may seem like Travolta has gotten a raw deal from movie-going audiences. Despite the fact that he hasn't had a hit in a long time, believes some crazy things about Thetans, and is starting to resemble the batty aunt you've never seen wear anything but a muumuu, you still feel like maybe the guys deserves a fairer shake than he's gotten. Then you revisit The Boy in the Plastic Bubble and remember that, no, he in fact doesn't. His shorts alone in the 1976 made for TV movie render him undeserving of our sympathy til the end of time. Travolta plays Todd Lubitch, a boy who was born without any immunities and cannot venture outside his sterile environment, lest he slip on a banana peel and end up on America's Funniest Home Videos. He observes the girl next door's every move through his binoculars, and she responds how all females would in this situation: be finding this cute and falling in love with him. Along the way, we meet up with supporting characters Mr. Brady, a hybrid of William Katt/Ian Ziering, and an unaging doctor. The whole thing is set to a theme by noted orangutan dresser-upper Paul Williams, who makes modern day singers like Bon Iver seem like raging barrels of pure testosterone. Mike, Kevin & Bill insist that you please leave them alone in their one room shack in the country, so they can riff The Boy in the Plastic Bubble to their hearts content.
Much like a scandalous private photo of a semi-famous teenage girl (what? just an example), High School Musical mysteriously showed up in the RiffTrax mailbox one day. And now we thank Efron, the ancient god of non-threatening gender ambiguity, that it did. We’d been searching for a movie that would finally address the issue of cliques in high school, something you never see in a high school film (unless you’ve seen any high school film).
RELEASE THE RIFFTRAX!! Yes, all too often a movie is reduced to a silly one-liner, a ridiculous catchphrase. This is a sad and unfair practice, demeaning to films with creative integrity and purpose. Fortunately, Clash of the Titans has neither! Upon viewing it, Sean Connery went out of his way to say “You are NOT the man now, dog!” When invited to a screening, Harrison Ford frantically searched for an excuse, finally issuing a panicked “I ALREADY WORK AROUND THE CLOCK!” When a friend asked Admiral Ackbar to come along and see Inception again, Ackbar suspected he was being tricked into watching this movie instead and said...well, you know what he said. Our old Avatar friend Sam Worthington is along for the ride, maintaining his policy of only acting in front of green screens. Also, his policy of not actually acting. Also, his policy of letting his Australian accent slip through frequently, regardless of the role. Also, his policy of being a big charmless slack-jawed meathead. Also, his policy of general turdiness. Anyway, we’re big Sam Worthington fans around here. Mike, Kevin, and Bill can’t help but think this movie would have been improved by a star from L.A. Law and a goofy mechanical owl.
A lot of bad things have come “from the mind of M. Night Shyamalan,” but we feel it’s safe to say that this one came straight from his colon. What is there to say about The Last Airbender that isn’t already said by its Rotten Tomatoes rating of 6%? A whole lot, as it turns out. It’s becoming apparent that the true genius of M. Night is finding a way to make the wrong creative decision at any given moment. Dialogue, casting, music cues, every choice in the film suggests that the once-acclaimed director has given up Alfred Hitchcock as his inspiration, and replaced him with a certain T. Wiseau. And, frankly, we couldn’t be happier. But, Mr. Shyamalan: we worked with Tommy Wiseau, we know Tommy Wiseau, and you, sir, are no Tommy Wiseau. Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for The Last Airbender, the most disappointing adaptation of a beloved franchise since Mario Brothers 3: Luigi Buys Some Eggs.
Every now and then a sequel comes along that is arguably superior to the original film. The Godfather II. The Empire Strikes Back. 3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain. But the makers of The Twilight Saga: Eclipse cleverly avoided such comparisons by just making the exact same movie a third time. You want a slack-jawed girl who can’t choose between some squinty, mopey fellows? We got it! You want a red-headed vampire lady running around causing some sort of unspecified trouble? We got it! You want a consistent mythology, or a story that builds tension and develops in any way over the course of three films? We got...uh...hey look, werewolf nipples! All our favorites are back: Moustache Dad, Harpo, the Volvo. And really, why should anything change? If you like Big Macs, and you order a Big Mac, you want the Big Mac to taste just like every other Big Mac you’ve ever had. And if you keep eating Big Macs all the time you’ll wind up alone, unloved, with a colon that would make even Louie Anderson’s doctor say “Dear God, you’ve let yourself go.” Just like the Twilight franchise! So settle in, get a warm plate of muffins, and join Mike, Kevin and Bill for The Twilight Saga: Eclipse!
"Man's Greatest Achievement." This was the entirety of the note we wrote down in the official RiffTrax screening room log book for Santa & the Ice Cream Bunny. If "Man's Greatest Achievement" doesn't do it for you, then perhaps the actual tagline from the Santa & the Ice Cream Bunny movie poster will: "What a Story!" You will have to ignore, of course, that Santa & the Ice Cream Bunny barely contains a story, let alone a coherent thought. But you'll be willing to let this pass, since it does contain pigs, gorilla suits, paper mache birds, soiled Santa costumes, child endangerment and, of course, an Ice Cream Bunny. What is an Ice Cream Bunny? We're not quite sure, and the movie doesn't really bother to explain. Evidently he has a fire truck with an air raid siren, and lives at a place called Pirates World. We also know that we are strongly in favor of ceding all power to it and letting it enact whatever foul agenda it desires, just as long as it lets us take a ride through Pirates World in that sweet, sweet fire truck. It's one of the strangest and most baffling pieces of outsider art that Mike, Kevin and Bill have ever riffed, and we were only 65% kidding about that "Man's Greatest Achievement" thing. Please join us in experiencing: Santa & the Ice Cream Bunny. Original film made in 1972.
The ending of Christopher Nolan’s Oscar-nominated Inception left audiences with several burning, thought-provoking questions, chief among them being “When did Tom Berenger become a giant piece of boiled meat?” The film does a lot to support Mr. Nolan’s title of ABSOLUTELY DEFINITELY THE GREATEST DIRECTOR OF ALL TIME ZOMG I AM SWEATY (source: Ain’t It Cool News). Who other than a true genius would think to put crucial lines of exposition in the mouth of an actor with a Japanese accent so thick he’s nigh-impossible to understand? Why, anyone who questioned the elaborate dream-logic of this film would have to be an idiot or a racist, but probably both!! (source: IMDb comment threads) Yes, Inception is a shoo-in for the Best Picture Oscar and it will be a travesty if it doesn’t win, according to a bunch of people on the internet who haven’t actually seen any of the other nominated films but are really hoping to get around to it, maybe after they watch their Blu-Rays of The A-Team a third time. Mike, Kevin, and Bill spent so much time watching Inception that they’re now permanently stuck in fourteenth-level dream limbo! (or maybe it was just another whiskey bender...either way we need a hose and a mop)
It’s Order of the Phoenix time and the entire gang is back! Harry, Ron, Hermione, Old Weird Harold, Beezus, Ramona, Moomintroll, Peppermint Patty, Churchy LaFemme, Handsome Pete, Kimmy Gibler, Trevor Ochmonek, Chris-R, Sawyer, CCH Pounder, The Fat Kid from “The Sandlot”, Snoopy’s brother Spike, Gobbler, Muffy the Mouse, Minkus, Van Go Lion, Two Bad, Fin Fang Foom, Ugly Naked Guy, Clamps, Yaddle, Carl Winslow, Strong Sad, Mr. Digger, Funky Kong, Error, U-God, Flute Cop, Lester Freamon, The green sumo wrestler thing from the Commodore 64 version of “Bruce Lee”, Dr. Robotnik, Earl Sinclair, Cedric Diggory...Wait, scratch that last one... Yes, in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the series continues its descent into the dark, twisted real world problems that the wizards face. Namely, the addition of an irritating wizard named Tonks to the cast of characters. Hogwarts is taken over by the Ministry of Magic, who installs a puppet regime in the form of Dolores Umbridge. Because if there’s one thing kids love in their fantasy novels, it’s ham-fisted satire of totalitarian regimes! Will Harry master occulmency? Will he describe his first kiss simply as “wet”? Will he severely overreact to the death of a character he had only really met a couple of times? Will Mike, Kevin and BIll imply that Dobby has taken up pimping as a way to earn extra cash? All these questions and more will be answered in the affirmative in this RiffTrax of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix!
Birdemic: Shock and Terror is the story of a software salesman who founds his own solar energy company after cashing in his stock options. Where it differs from the countless other Hollywood tales of software salesmen who found their own solar energy companies after cashing in stock options is that occasionally birds attack and kill people. Strong emphasis on occasionally, mind you. For while a less assured director might insist “I paid 12 dollars for these bird animations, and they’re gonna be on-screen for every frame dammit!”, Birdemic director James Nguyen instead chooses to focus on his characters. They eat meals, go to pumpkin festivals, hang out with their families, have themselves a party and every now and then make millions, buy Ferraris and date Victoria’s Secret cover models. You know, typical stuff. The comic atmosphere is undercut, however, by the serious message Nguyen wants to impart onto the audience: the dangers of global warming. Trust us when we say that the only way that this sensitive issue could be handled more deftly is by anyone, anywhere, using any means. Birdemic: Shock and Terror is what you’d get if the Ice Cream Bunny starred in The Happening as directed by Tommy Wiseau. Mike, Kevin and Bill invite you to join them for this must-see RiffTrax. And do yourself a favor and experience it on Blu-Ray!
According to legend, the screenplay for cult favorite Highlander appeared when a basement-dwelling metalhead kicked over his bong in a futile attempt to stand after consuming two “share size” bags of Combos and a tube of raw cookie dough. The bong water within, which was ancient and, indeed, nearly solid, spewed forth across the shag carpeting, musty since times of old. The mystic fluid soaked all in its path, including a half-completed “Society for Creative Anachronism” application, one WWF comic book, a cassette containing Queen’s greatest hits, and two or three Dragonlance novels. From the resultant mist, which did reek mightily of Mountain Dew, the film was born. And yea, the world spoke as one: “We won’t see this in theaters but we might check it out on VHS later, maybe.” Mike, Kevin, and Bill were dying to watch a movie about a mopey immortal cursed with loneliness since the women he loves age and die before his eyes. But then they found out there wasn’t a new Twilight movie yet, and instead took a big, hearty, Sean Connery-as-a-Spanish-Egyptian-infused hit of Highlander!
If you’re a normal, reasonable person, your knowledge of the Karate Kid franchise likely begins and ends with the following items: the phrase “Sweep the leg,” that awesome “You’re the best around” song, and the ironic Cobra Kai t-shirt you purchased online. But, lucky for you, we at RiffTrax are neither normal nor reasonable, and so we know that the richest, fattiest, saltiest meat of the series lies within Karate Kid III. Please, ignore everything you know about diminishing sequel quality, box office success, and critical acclaim, and just trust us on this one! One can only imagine the joy a 1980s lad might feel, settling into his theater seat to enjoy the third installment of the adventures of his film hero, Daniel-San. Never mind that Ralph Macchio is now pushing 30 and looks like maybe he’s been skipping some crane kick practices between movies, he’s ready for action! The action of bonsai store ownership! Spending all his time with a strange old man! And, most importantly of all, hounded by Terry Silver, a millionaire evil mastermind who devotes 100% of his resources to getting revenge on a teenage boy for the sake of a casual acquaintance! How does he wreak this vengeance, you and the wide-eyed young Karate Kid fan might ask? By pressuring him into signing a karate tournament application form, using all the proper and appropriate channels! Eyeball-popping stuff! How would Mike, Kevin, and Bill rate Karate Kid III? By growing evil 80s ponytails, cracking their knuckles, and mugging to the camera, “Perfect.”
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is commonly regarded as the most fun and exciting installment of the film franchise. This may well be true, especially given that the average Star Trek film is about as fun and exciting as a half-cup of plain yogurt. If you polled fans about what makes this particular film so thrilling, odds are they’d respond, “All the allusions to Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick!” (results may vary). Indeed, the original script contained even more quotes from that classic novel. Most notably, the moment when Kirk, in a fit of vengeful rage, leans back and roars to the heavens, “Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.” VERY popular on t-shirts. Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill as they dive into the great valley between Ricardo Montalban’s bulbous pectoral muscles for complete immersion in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan!
On August 19th, thousands witnessed what can only be described as one of the top two RiffTrax Live events of 2010. RiffTrax Live: Reefer Madness was that show, and now you finally have the chance to relive all the laughs, chortles, and fancy headresses on DVD! In RiffTrax Live: Reefer Madness, Mike, Kevin and Bill deliver their trademark form of rapid fire comedy in front of a live audience! Lines could be flubbed! Tomatoes could be thrown! Mountain lion attacks are entirely possible! The performance not only includes the classic anti-marijuana propaganda film Reefer Madness, but also three shorts which quickly became instant classics: More Dangerous Than Dynamite, Frozen Frolics, and At Your Fingertips: Grasses. Among the most insane things the guys have ever riffed, they’ll clear up any questions you might have about washing your clothes in gasoline and whether corn is grass. RiffTrax Live: Reefer Madness: it’s the perfect chance to hear all the jokes that you missed because you were laughing too hard the first time!
Is there any possible downside to accepting an invitation from Vincent Price to spend an evening in a creepy mansion that was built on something called “Haunted Hill?” If so, Mike, Kevin and Bill couldn’t find it! In fact they were so eager to join Mr. Price and his terrifying moustache that they riffed the film live, on-stage, and now you can reap the rewards from the safety of home with this live show DVD! Yes, horror classic House on Haunted Hill provides a mesmerizing walk down “people actually used to find this SCARY?!?” lane. Join the RiffTrax guys as they bring their special brand of rapid-fire comedic commentary to every skeleton-hanging-from-visible-wires, clumsy sexual overtone, and a stunningly inept test pilot whose “heroics” typically lead him to bloody his own nose after locking himself in a broom closet! The guys are joined by guest riffer Paul F. Tompkins, comedy person extraordinaire and quite a snappy dresser to boot! They also riff two vintage, never-before-seen shorts live on-stage: Paper and I, in which a small boy is haunted by a talking paper bag, and Magical Disappearing Money, about a supermarket witch whose main concern is that you don’t spend too much on rice. No, seriously, that’s what they’re really about! Join Mike, Kevin, Bill, and Paul for an unforgetttable All Hallow’s Eve of mind-melting comedy!
Are you a giant, cheaply-made monster looking for a nice place to terrorize? Your search is over: Crater Lake is the spot for you! Get your limp rubbery body down here, you’ll be feasting on mustachioed creeps quicker than you can say “AaaUUurgghh, I’m a monster!!” This small, sleepy community has everything you’re looking for. A sheriff who will refuse to believe in you until it’s too late. Uptight scientists that DO believe in you, for the sheriff to ignore. A pair of drunken hicks to provide aimless, misguided comic relief, and also be ignored by the sheriff. All this, and random unlikable tourists for you to snack on along the way! Just avoid choking to death on all the hideous 1970s facial hair, and you’ll have the time of your life. Mike, Kevin, and Bill became the laughingstock of the scientific community for their fervent belief in The Crater Lake Monster. But they’ll show them, yes, soon they’ll show them all!!
There are some things in life that you’ll do without a second thought. Lend a friend a quarter. Help an elderly woman across the street. And if you’re like the lead character in The Devil’s Hand, join a satanic cult to sacrifice your fellow humans in the name of The Great Devil God Gamba. Yes, when he encounters the owner of a mysterious doll shop, Rick Turner turns his back on his friends and family to embrace a life of voodoo in the name of the author of all lies. But to his credit, there wasn’t anything good on TV that night. Once signing up for the cult, Rick is drawn into a sinister web of chanting and plodding drumbeats that make Meg White look like John Bonham. Will voodoo executions follow? They will! Will the victims relish the sweet embrace of death as a way to escape the incessant drumming? Probably! Should you immediately download this RiffTrax? The Great Devil God Gamba* commands** it! *Mike, Kevin & Bill **Humbly requests*** ***OK, tearful begging
For some reason, San Francisco has become the go-to location for hack directors to set their abysmal movies. The mere sight of the Golden Gate Bridge or Lombard Street are enough to trigger unpleasant memories of Tommy Wiseau's ass. And as if to prove that the city's unique charms were no fluke, James Ngyuen broke out the coat hangers and did him one better with Birdemic. But we venture to say that with X-Men:The Last Stand, director Brett Ratner has outdone both of those movies in terms of resources squandered and the resulting tonnage of raw suckitude. For while The Room gave us endless catchphrases, breast cancer scares and Chris-R, and Birdemic delighted us with Hangin' Out With My Family, bark beetles and solrpnls, X-Men 3 only offers up the ridiculous sight of Kelsey Grammer in bright blue fur as a means of easing the pain of cliché ridden dialogue, disinterested performances and Vinnie Jones. Mike, Kevin and Bill were extremely disappointed to learn that X-Men:The Last Stand even lies with its name, as the franchise continues to stand to this day, despite repeated requests at ever escalating volumes to please, PLEASE, in the name of all that is holy, take a seat!
When a spaceship crash lands in a rural community, the locals flock to the scene. Well one local really, a kid who calls his former professor, who fields the call from his bed without a shirt on. Once he confirms that a UFO has actually been sighted on Earth, he springs into action, instructing his former student to sit by the side of the road for six hours, since it will take him a while to get there and he has some phone calls to make first. That’s when The Galaxy Invader really turns the thrills up to eleven! The brainchild of visionary* director Don Dohler, The Galaxy Invader chronicles the struggle faced by the alien when he lands in a new world and discovers that the inhabitants are hostile and fearful of those who are different. Mainly because he kills the first two people he meets and shows no remorse as he repeatedly kills again. Fortunately he’s landed in a hideous backwoods town full of rednecks where hygiene has been outlawed and the mayor has recently been impeached and a can of Skoal elected in his stead, so the deaths are chalked up to the ill effects of that durn book learnin’. Our hero is Joe Montague, a mean, unemployed drunk who threatens his family at gunpoint, slaps his children and enjoys compiling a list of differences between various translations of Dostoyevsky novels (one of those three things isn’t true.) Throughout the entire movie he also sports a costume sure to be the hottest Halloween costume this year: a filthy t-shirt with an enormous hole in the center of it. Our team of experts have yet to determine whether or not the actor portraying Joe even knew he was in a movie. It’s intergalactic cheese at its very ripest and Mike, Kevin and Bill are here to ensure that no moment of the invasion goes unriffed. Join them for: The Galaxy Invader! (In about six hours, they have some phone calls to make.) *possessing the capability to breathe
Our new release Abraxas: Guardian of the Universe follows the heroic exploits of a galactic defender, played by Jesse Ventura, who comes to Earth to--wait, wait, that can’t be right. Jesse Ventura? The washed-up 80s wrestler known primarily for his feather boas and conspiracy theories? No, no way. Who would let THAT GUY guard a universe? Forget that, who would even let him guard some small part of the universe? Say, a state of the United States of America, a state with a population of roughly 5.3 million, perhaps located in the Midwest, with an area of 86,939 square miles, famous for its thousands of lakes? Totally implausible, the world just isn’t that silly. And yet, here he is, ready to stumble into action and visibly struggle when he speaks! It’s a Terminator-infringing wonderland of snow, words like Comator (or Colemader, or Cone-mater, depending on who happens to be saying it) and organic apple sales. And it features JIM BELUSHI AS AN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL PRINCIPAL. He’s there for some comic relief, in the sense that if someone has been stepping on your throat but then stops to step on your chest instead, it’s sort of a “relief”. According to Jim, but also Mike, Kevin, and Bill, it’s time to slap on a bald cap and rat-tail combo and take a ride in the Governor’s car to Abraxas: Guardian of the Universe!
Thor is the rare superhero movie that raises important questions. Namely, the important question “If Thor was considered the good superhero movie of 2011, just exactly how wretched must Green Lantern have been?” Yes, Thor, for all its critical acclaim, features not one, not two, but three distinct scenes of our hero being rendered unconscious for comedic effect all within five minutes of each other! (For the record, in order: Thor is tazed, injected and hit by a van. Rumor has it the Extended Cut features a scene where he is trampled by a hungry hippo.) No doubt this cartoonish buffoonery is the touch of acclaimed director Kenneth Branagh, whose intention for Thor seems to have been “Let’s bring out the Shakespearean elements of the comic book, but instead of soliloquies, we’ll have grunting, and instead of intrigue, more grunting.” Sadly, Branagh fails to deliver on the demands made by the most hardcore Thor fans, that he bring to the silver screen the short lived 1985 plot line where Loki turns Thor into a frog and he helps other frogs defeat some rats (this actually happened and you should look it up right now.) So you don’t get any frogs, but you do get fanservice, a thoroughly implausible love story and performance by Sir Anthony Hopkins that were it any more phoned in, would be conducted through two tin cans and a piece of string. Mike, Kevin and Bill needed a nice long Odinsleep once this one was over.
Sure, sure, we know what you’re thinking. “Laser Mission? What kind of a thing is that to make a movie about? Everybody’s been on a laser mission, heck I did three-and-a-half laser missions on my way to pick up some eggs this morning.” Just trust us when we tell you, this one is special. First: unlike lesser laser missions, Laser Mission features exactly 0 lasers, and exactly 1 Ernest Borgnine! Nothing says “action” like Borgnine! (No, really, he says the word “action” in a funny accent.) Second: if most laser missions were to include a theme song that repeats on a seemingly endless loop, that theme song would probably contain the words “laser” or “mission.” Not Laser Mission! No, instead you’ll be treated to “Mercenary Man”, a little ditty cooked up by David Knopfler (the junior Knopfler of Dire Straits), over, and over, and over again. And, in the role of the Mercenary Man, none other than Brandon Lee of The Crow fame! It just doesn’t get more laser-ish or mission-esque than this! Mike, Kevin, and Bill came to violence deciding who would get to use “Mercenary Man” as their personal ringtone, but they all agree you really oughtta check out Laser Mission!* *and before you do, it may be a good idea to watch this classic Ernest Borgnine interview clip, which just might come up, “a lot.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3I_PeLNzxNQ
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was released at an important moment in film history -- namely, the last moment when actor Rupert Grint (aka, Ron Weasley) could say “I will definitely be in two more films.” There is a version of this movie that’s about a prince who accidentally donated half his blood in a drive at work, and Harry Potter keeps chasing that guy and saying “Hey, you donated too much blood, come back here you dang Half-Blood Prince!” Unfortunately, that version exists only in the mind of a stoned guy who read the title and collapsed in such a giggle fit that it took three Best Buy employees to drag him out of the store. Mike, Kevin, and Bill put on their favorite “Dumbledore 4 Life” and “Albus will NEVER die” t-shirts for this one: please savor their exquisite heartbreak and join them for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince!
Everyone knows Hercules (or Heracles, if you’re really fun to talk to at parties), the mighty Greek whose heroic exploits included cleaning up tons of horse crap. But not everyone knows his sons, who for some reason went by the name The Sons of Hercules! Yes, The Sons of Hercules, whose theme song informs us “were men as men could be.” What in the hell this might conceivably mean, we have no idea. Perhaps their Y chromosomes are bulked up monstrosities like Popeye. Or maybe it’s because, as the song goes on to inform us, “They shook the world AND took the world,” while the rest of us, failing to be as men as men could be, merely do one or the other depending on who’s playing in Monday Night Football. This particular episode centers around Argolese, a man whose ability to grow a respectable beard is severely hampered by his periwinkle mini-skirt. Argolese befriends a horrible man named Babar who, as a sidekick, ranks somewhere in between Jar Jar Binks and Shia LaBeouf’s character in Crystal Skull. Their lighthearted goal? Free a bunch of innocent people who have been horribly enslaved! Along the way they’ll wrestle a lion (real), fight a dragon (fake) and evade a hungry bear (we’re not sure. We’re leaning toward it being Nicholas Cage.) One thing is for certain: a sword and sandals tale this bizarre requires the full riffing efforts of Mike, Kevin and Bill, who, put together, come very close to being as men as men could be.
There’s an old saying that goes “Behind every successful movie, there’s a horrible Italian rip-off of it that uses three seconds of endless looped drumbeats as its soundtrack.” Never has this reliable chestnut been more true than in the case of Warriors of the Wasteland, which proudly acts as the mangy dog, devouring the table scraps that The Road Warrior turned up his nose at, opting instead to lick itself for nearly half an hour. Yes, once again the inhabitants of Earth have reduced our proud, McRib-consuming planet to a smoldering wasteland. You might assume nukes, or genetically altered chimps are the culprit. Wrong you are, (though if you’ve recently ate a McRib, you’ve likely consumed some of the latter.) This time around what did us in was -- Books! How did this happen? It of course is not explained. But it was books, you sure can count on that! So the Warriors of the Wasteland drive around in their admittedly sweet cars, sporting their admittedly heinous hairstyles, kinda resenting books and occasionally massacring an outpost of survivors. If you can suspend disbelief for just one moment, hear this: there’s a heroic lone wolf who attempts to enforce justice on these criminals (we know, it’s a groundbreaking path for a character to follow.) Books may have caused the apocalypse, but laughable special effects and ludicrous dialogue certainly survived it. Please join Mike, Kevin, Bill and a bunch of folks who couldn’t afford tickets to Thunderdome for Warriors of the Wasteland. Original film made in 1983.
When you really stop and think about it, there are two kinds of movies: movies where rugged men punch mountain lions, and movies where this sadly does not happen. Fortunately, Buffalo Rider is the inaugural member of this first group, and while it waits for another movie to join it, (we’re looking squarely at you The Help 2), it is content to quietly kick some ass all by its lonesome. Buffalo Rider tells the story of Jake “Buffalo” Jones, a legend of the Old West who tamed and rode a two-ton buffalo named Samson and, in the process, proved that there really must not have been much to do in the Old West. And while the sight of a man who resembles a Doobie Brothers roadie riding a gigantic buffalo is spectacular in itself, the producers decide to spice up the action a bit by keeping crates of vicious wild animals just off-screen and occasionally releasing them to attack Jake and the buffalo. Bears, wolves and cougars all show up to take on Jake, who appears to have been informed of these animals’ presence seconds before they were released. You may have seen the clips of the “Guy on a Buffalo” song. Please, let us reassure you that you have NOT experienced the entire Buffalo Rider universe until you’ve seen the whole movie. This is a film that devotes nearly 1/10th of its screen time to tell the tale of a very, very unfortunate raccoon named Bandit. It has its own majestic theme song that you will be singing for days afterwards. Imagine if all you saw of Birdemic were the coat-hanger scenes. You’d be forgiven for assuming that was all the movie had to offer, but then you’d miss out on solrpnls, hanging out with your family and the spruce bark beetles. Please do not miss out on Buffalo Rider. Although the cougar punching is still pretty damn sweet...
Hey, you know what happens if you hit play on Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and Transformers: Dark of the Moon at the same time? We tried it, turns out they don’t sync at all and the Pink Floyd album will immediately set itself on fire in protest (who knew mp3s could burn?). So instead you should probably sync it with the RiffTrax, as that is officially the only way to watch Transformers: Dark of the Moon without ending up in a fetal position, weeping at the horror of its brave new world. It’s hard to believe the franchise soldiered on after the loss of its most beloved character, Megan Fox’s butt. Yet somehow Michael Bay boldly moved forward with a new rich & complex female character, who ALSO has a butt, which happens to be the very first part of her shown in the film! And don’t worry, all your other favorite characters are back, including: Noise! Chaos! Stuttering Shia! Racism! Screaming Shia! Respected actors shaming themselves for vacation house money! Stuttering WHILE Screaming Shia! The Matrix of Leadership! The coma induced by your laughter at the fact that they want you to take something called “The Matrix of Leadership” seriously! Join Mike, Kevin and Bill as they take on Transformers: Dark of the Moon because it’s simply not safe to watch this movie alone.
We’re happy to present the first ever RiffTrax Christmas special! In the spirit of the season (that is, delusional hysteria and madness) we’ve dug up some hilariously bizarre holiday oddities, all new to us and never-before riffed! Join your hosts, Mike, Kevin, and Bill, as they: *Exchange gifts, with vintage toy commercials *Riff a new short, The Shanty Where Santy Claus Lives *And riff the main event, Magic Christmas Tree! Magic Christmas Tree is a fresh slice of holiday weird, sure to bring back cherished childhood memories. Remember how your parents used to tell that old Christmas tale of a boy who hit his head trying to help a witch retrieve a cat named Lucifer, hallucinated for months, and befriended a creepy, sarcastic tree? No? Well that’s probably for the best, you were a young, impressionable child. But you’re ready now! Gather the family, get a bucket of eggnog, and settle in for Christmas with RiffTrax!
Captain America: The First Avenger tells us the inspiring story of a skinny weakling who takes excessive quantities of a dangerous performance enhancing drug and becomes a national hero. Along the way he meets a girl, records propaganda films and defeats Sammy Sosa for the 1998 regular season Home Run title. Standing in Captain America’s way is the evil Red Skull, who bears a striking resemblance to the father of the kid in “Son of The Mask.” Red Skull has developed some sort of laser, which he intends to use to achieve modest goals of establishing himself as a respected political figure in a small, manageable region of, we’re just kidding, he intends on taking over the entire world. Aiding Captain America is Tommy Lee Jones, who appears to have been 73 for the past three decades, his loyal sidekick Bucky, who we’re pretty sure had some lines in the movie, and a guy named Timothy Aloysius Cadwallader "Dum Dum" Dugan who wears a bowler hat, ironic mustache and to re-emphasize, is named Timothy Aloysius Cadwallader "Dum Dum" Dugan. You can’t have an Avengers movie without several years of breathless hype and inflated expectations sure to leave fans disappointed The First Avenger, and Captain America certainly makes a case for filling that role, in that he becomes an Avenger and may even have done so before anybody else. Mike, Kevin and Bill are just happy to see Hitler get punched.
Yes, yes, Ghosthouse is a film about a dead little girl who has an evil clown doll that commands her to kill. That’s all well and good. But it’s the little things about Ghosthouse that really make you stand up and say “Wait, what?” The star of Ghosthouse is a Ham Radio operator who, HEY GET BACK HERE!!! Anyways, this Ham Radio operator one day asks a fellow Ham Radio operator “Who is more popular in Denver, Kim Basinger or Kelly LeBrock?” This has nothing to do with the plot of Ghosthouse, but we just wanted to point out that this pressing question is raised in an actual movie at some point in time. So the Ham Radio guy and his ambiguously European girlfriend eat some chili, debate Ham Radio ethics* then go to the Ghosthouse where they meet a guy named Jim Dalen. We learn a lot about Jim Dalen, who’s staying outside in an RV with, among others, his sister Tina. That would be Tina Dalen. Jim Dalen’s sister. And hang on a second, we nearly forgot Pepe! Pepe is no relation to Jim Dalen, but he...you know what, this whole thing will make a lot more sense once you watch Ghosthouse. Go spend some time with Jim Dalen, Tina Dalen, Kelly LeBrock and Pepe, then come back when you’re ready to discuss the film. We’re going to go get some chili. *Both of those things actually happen in Ghosthouse
For many of us, the last time we uttered the title “Planet of the Apes” was when we were angrily demanding from a teenage usher “I’ll ask you one more time: Are you going to give me a refund for Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes, or am I going to have to take another finger?” However, at that time, nobody could have foreseen the Ape Boom of the aught’s. It was spurred on by the box office dominance of a trilogy that made the LOTR movies look like one excruciatingly long version of Carrot Top’s Chairman of the Board: MVP: Most Valuable Primate, MVP 2: Most Vertical Primate, and MXP: Most Xtreme Primate. Fortunately, Tim Burton has resisted to urge to “reimagine” any of these classics, though he has expressed interest in making a worthless version of My Gym Partner’s a Monkey. Anyways, the Ape Boom® culminated in yet another Planet of the Apes movie that nobody really asked for or cared about. But when the movie came out, it proved what we once overheard our dad saying to our mom on Christmas Eve: “Set their expectations really, really low, then they’ll be delighted when they get a Man-E-Faces toy where two of the faces don’t work. Dammit, we’re out of beer already??” So, while we kid, Rise of the Planet of the Apes more than delivers on its non-existent expectations, giving audiences what they want: Apes (Yes!), Apes, (Yes!!) and more Apes (Yes!!!!) and James Franco (Wait, what?). Andy Serkis is also along for the ride, playing the role of “Guy who will probably get awarded an honorary Oscar in about thirty years and be really self righteous about it.” Follow Mike, Kevin, Bill and Zippy’s lead: don a fez, plop down on a unicycle and smoke your finest cigar - it’s time for the Planet of the Apes to Rise!
When word leaked that the final Twilight movie would be split into two parts, most people assumed that this was done by the studio as a cynical cash grab. Not so. The last chapter in the Twilight saga is so vast, so detailed, that it demanded the lush, panoramic two movie treatment. Okay, maybe they could have trimmed some of that twenty minute wedding because it was very straightforward and didn’t impact the story in any way and essentially could have been a wedding from a Reese Witherspoon movie. And we probably didn’t need every single one of the scenes where Jacob visits the Cullen’s house and shouts at someone. And dear god, they are showing them playing chess on their honeymoon AGAIN! Fortunately, the remaining twelve minutes of the movie that advances the “plot” in some fashion makes up for the slow pace of the rest of the movie by being disgusting and incoherent. The birth of Bella and Edward’s horrible mutant spawn is repellent, nasty and vile, and yes, we are just referring to the decision to name it Renesmee.* Also, this time the wolves go to a logging plant and communicate via telepathy. Mike, Kevin and Bill love to hang out at the logging plant too, or at least they did until that lame foreman called their parents and ruined all their fun. *DO NOT NAME YOUR CHILD THIS OR ALLOW ANYONE YOU KNOW TO NAME THEIR CHILD THIS
When four hot air balloonists crash land on remote Frankenstein Island, one thing is certain: they have a dog named Melvin! That’s about all we were able to figure out regarding the plot of Frankenstein Island. The rest is a glorious potpourri of insanity, including but not just limited to: jungle babes in leopard skin bikinis, a bedridden 200 year old man, zombie slaves, Kung-Fu, a brain in a jar, a confused John Carradine, a guy who looks like the protagonist of the fictional Twitter account DadBoner and a scene where a shirtless man injects a mannequin with a hypodermic needle. All things said, it’s a little less strange than The Room. How did these men get here? What is the strange power that runs the entire island? There’s only 15 minutes left in the movie, is Frankenstein ever actually going to show up? Questions like these aren’t important on Frankenstein Island. How dare you ask them. Here, the bikini chicks are dancing with a snake now. Is that better? I thought so. Mike, Kevin and Bill hop into a hot air balloon with Melvin (a pastrami sandwich), and head off into the wild blue yonder to riff Frankenstein Island!
Mesa of Lost Women! Not to be confused with the Plateau of Misplaced Babes, the Bayou of Wandering Broads, or the Tundra of Girlfriends Who Keep Trying to Get You to Ask for Directions but You’re Simply Just Too Foolish and Proud. It’s packed with everything you want in a vintage monster movie: giant spiders, dancing girls, spider-girls, DANCING spider-girls, mad scientists, square-jawed test pilots, and minor characters based on horribly dated ethnic stereotypes (we’re looking at you, Pepe and Woo the “houseboy”)! And, of course, nonstop wall-to-wall flamenco guitar. It’s like everyone says, “Flamenco guitar: why have a little when you could have an insane amount that is clearly way too much?” The action starts when an escaped mental patient forces a group of strangers onto an airplane, which subsequently crash-lands in a strange, deadly wilderness - which, coincidentally enough, was also how RiffTrax got started, so you definitely don’t want to miss this one!
Well, we found it. The Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny of horror films. Read that again. Reflect on it. Maybe discuss it with your local librarian, or, better yet, one of the pungent men who spends all day on a library computer glancing over his shoulder nervously as he “does internet research.” The Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny of horror films. A bold claim, especially when you consider that Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny is arguably a horror film itself, based on the raw metric tonnage of nightmares it’s produced. Just like that holiday classic, Curse of Bigfoot feels like an insane sandwich slapped together by Dagwood Bumstead after an extended opium binge, maybe Peanut Butter & Tacks & Pimento Loaf & a laserdisc of Newsies. A film within a film within a damp cardboard box within a film. Some highlights: a hideous papier-mâché creature (Bigfoot?) gradually approaches a woman feeding her dog for five continuous minutes. A high school teacher, apparently of the common high school subject “Monsters,” forces his students to listen to a guest speaker who would never be allowed within 500 feet of any school. Logging. Lots of logging. Logger deaths. And, to wash it all down and make sense of everything, a vintage monster movie stapled to the end, featuring a monster who may or may not be Bigfoot (it definitely isn’t Bigfoot). You don’t want to miss this.
If you’re into cheesy stop-motion dragons, leprechauns in bottles, drunk Vikings, and Giants-Who-Need-Killing, then Jack the Giant Killer is for you! Actually that’s an odd set of things to be into, hypothetical person reading this, and frankly it’s about time you let us get to the point. Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Bill Corbett riffed this vintage 1962 epic live in Nashville, and now you can enjoy the show in the comfort of your own home, castle, or bottle you share with a leprechaun! Also! The guys riff the supremely weird short What Is Nothing? (spoiler: we still don’t know what nothing is). Plus two hilarious cartoons from Rich “Lowtax” Kyanka of somethingawful.com, a Behind-the-Scenes slideshow, and movie trivia slides done RiffTrax style! Make sure all these giants didn’t die in vain - join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for a full evening of great live comedy.
(This is the live version. Already in Specials. This should be remove and updated.) If you’re into cheesy stop-motion dragons, leprechauns in bottles, drunk Vikings, and Giants-Who-Need-Killing, then Jack the Giant Killer is for you! Actually that’s an odd set of things to be into, hypothetical person reading this, and frankly it’s about time you let us get to the point. Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Bill Corbett riffed this vintage 1962 epic live in Nashville, and now you can enjoy the show in the comfort of your own home, castle, or bottle you share with a leprechaun! Also! The guys riff the supremely weird short What Is Nothing? (spoiler: we still don’t know what nothing is). Plus two hilarious cartoons from Rich “Lowtax” Kyanka of somethingawful.com, a Behind-the-Scenes slideshow, and movie trivia slides done RiffTrax style! Make sure all these giants didn’t die in vain - join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for a full evening of great live comedy.
Not so much the X-Men kind of mutant, and not so much the Teenage Ninja Turtle kind of mutant, Mutant is all about that most iconic form of mutant: the one that seems a lot like a zombie. Yes, when you see hordes of zombies chasing the citizens of this sleepy Southern town, you might be tempted to tell yourself “I am watching a zombie movie.” When the words “mutant” and “mutation” are never used in the course of the script, and you are watching flesh-eating zombies eat flesh, you might really get into this closed-minded “this is absolutely a zombie movie, why is it called Mutant” headspace. But remember that these are definitely mutants, NOT zombies, and the title surely has nothing at all to do with the fact that the film was originally released with the title Night Shadows before the producers realized that sounded a little more “shade of mascara at Hot Topic” than “horror movie.” Wings Hauser, Wings Hauser’s brother, and Wings Hauser’s giant face are prototypical 80s yuppies (translation: they’re jerks and their shorts are way too short). To escape the stress of life in “Capital City” they take a road trip and wind up stranded in a sleepy Southern town infested with violent hillbillies, a drunk sheriff, and some good old down-home toxic waste. Something is mutanty in zombietown, and our heroes suspect a conspiracy that goes to the top of a local terrifyingly powerful mega-corporation (translation: a few guys in a barn with a hose and a hole in the ground). Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for this classic 80s tale of snobs vs. slobs who are mutants who are zombies, Mutant!
When a local TV host gets into a car accident with an electrician, she didn’t count on one thing: that he would be the two time state champion who had also defended the interstate trophy in the ancient art of Kendo Swords. Because honestly, why would you count on that? It’s patently absurd, clearly some sort of horrible plot contrivance. What the hell is a kendo sword anyways? Certainly nothing a grown man should be messing around with. Watch the sample! The point is, those two end up as Prisoners in the Lost Universe, which looks a heck of a lot like Earth except that there is a kind of tree that grows dinner plates, and another kind that grows pods of orange berries. Just try to wrap your little head around that, and also how a film this derivative and cheap looking came out the same year as Return of the Jedi. One thing it did have in common with that film, however, is the presence of horrible little sidekicks. Return of the Jedi had the Ewoks, and Prisoners has Malachi, who makes the Ewoks look like Martini sipping, bon mot spewing embodiments of class and dignity. Malachi...Damn, now we’re thinking about Malachi again. He’s...He’s just the worst. Ugh. He’s also joined on the quest by the Green Man, who’s called that because he’s the same shade of blue as a Na’vi, a giant killer baby in a diaper, and a talking vulture. Grab your finest kendo sword and get ready to defend the interstate trophy with Prisoners of the Lost Universe! Original film made in 1983.
Say hello to Brainiac, one of the finest movie monsters we’ve ever had the pleasure to know! Sure, he looks like the Troll dolls’ creepy uncle who’s no longer invited to family gatherings. Sure, his mask seems to have been hastily assembled out of found garbage and shower-drain hair five minutes before they started shooting the movie. Sure, he sucks brain matter through his ridiculous plastic tongue, then saves it in a fancy dish to be secretly eaten during posh dinner parties where he could easily be caught. Hm, seems like we should put something nice about him here to round this out. Well, he’s a very snappy dresser. Back in 1661, a Spanish baron in the middle of burning at the stake escaped by hitching a ride on a passing comet, as one does. And now he returns, 300 years later, a shapeshifting monstrosity bent on killing the descendants of those who wronged him, via a series of polite social gatherings (this is the actual plot). Luckily, those who wronged him somehow only have one descendant each, and all the descendants still happen to live in the same town, and also look exactly like the ancestors he knew 300 years ago. What a timesaver for a busy Brainiac on the go! Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill and let’s all get our pesky thinking parts gobbled up by Brainiac!
When a group of sexy ladies shows up to take sexy pictures in a sexy castle that once belonged to a sexy executioner who may or may not be the reincarnation of the sexy Marquis de Sade, one thing is for sure: we just used the word ‘sexy’ seven times in one sentence (including the ‘sexy’ after the colon and this one inside the parenthesis.) Yes, unfortunately for the llllllllllladies, a guy who thinks he’s the legendary Crimson Executioner is haunting the castle. Wearing nothing but pair of tights and a skullcap that makes him look like a perverted matchstick, clearly this fiend is an unstoppable menace, who may or may not spend more on chest waxing every month than he does on groceries. The insane, diabolical, evil-to-the-core Crimson Executioner (real name: Travis) has a variety of torture implements gathering dust in his basement. They range from the traditional (Iron Maiden) to the idiotic (spider piñata) to the highly specific (Suge Knight dangles you by your ankles over a balcony, may only apply to Vanilla Ice.) Filmed in PSYCHOVISION, (which we hear Fellini used to shoot in), Bloody Pit of Horror is must see Italian horror at its cheesiest. Mike, Kevin and Bill brave the spider piñata and give it their bloody best.
David Carradine in Future Force is what you’d get if Arnold substituted creatine with frosting, Stallone started cutting his own hair and Seagal...Well, Seagal wouldn’t have to change much actually. As John Tucker, he’s the only member of the C.O.P.S. (Civilian Operated Police Incorporated) (That’s not a joke) who’s interested in standing up to corruption. Fortunately, he’s got an incredible weapon at his disposal: his robotic remote-controlled glove, which can fire deadly lasers and fly and bears a hilarious resemblance to the Nintendo Power Glove. Something this powerful comes with great responsibility, so fortunately Carradine leaves it in his Jeep’s trunk most of the time and uses a standard pistol instead. Aside from video phones in cars, the dystopian future of 1991 is not noticeably different from actual 1991, though we did notice a distinct lack of Color Me Badd music. So perhaps there isn’t much to complain about. Grab a warm can of High Life, slap on some Gold Bond Medicated Powder and get ready to watch David Carradine try not to pull a groin muscle while he’s kicking some butt in Future Force.
One of the first Mexican wrestling movies to be titled by an excitable 5 year old boy using a box of magnetic poetry, Neutron the Atomic Superman vs. the Death Robots is not to be missed. The sport of Lucha Libre was once so popular in Mexico it spawned the genre of Luchador films, in which popular wrestlers played crime-fighting superheroes. Here’s hoping Hollywood finally rips off this great idea and replaces the cast of Avengers 2 with Stone Cold Steve Austin, Brutus the Barber Beefcake, and of course, for a little sexy eye candy, the Bushwhackers. Neutron, whose exposure to atomic energy has given him the power of - well, being moderately good at wrestling - takes on the evil Dr. Caronte, who you know is a legit doctor because his Mexican wrestling mask is white. But the real star of the show is Caronte’s little person sidekick, Nick. With his unibrow and voice that sounds like the death rattle of an emphysemic frog demon, Nick fever is sure to sweep the nation like nothing before! (Note: Nick fever and its resultant sores are currently untreatable. RiffTrax cannot be held accountable for Nick fever related insomnia, infections, or gout.) Join Mike, Bill, and Kevin for one of the few superhero vs. robot movies to feature no actual superheroes OR robots, Neutron the Atomic Superman vs. the Death Robots!
You expect a movie called The Revenge of Doctor X to have two things: a character named Dr. X and said character enacting some sort of revenge. Were it to lack a Dr. X, you might assume this was a careless oversight. Were it to lack revenge, you might be slightly upset, but perhaps hopeful that it instead replaced it with something comparably exciting, such as blackmail or bobsledding. Were a movie called The Revenge of Doctor X to lack BOTH revenge and Dr. X however, there could be only one explanation: Ed Wood was involved. Yes, Ed Wood reportedly penned the screenplay for this movie, which of course contains no Dr. X and no noticeable revenge. It begins with Dr. Bragin, NASA’s chief aerospace engineer. When a rocket launch goes awry, Dr. Brain’s assistant suggests that he immediately take a vacation to Japan. As one does. Dr. Bragin responds, as he does to just about every situation, with barely contained sputtering rage. On the way to Japan, NASA’s chief aerospace engineer stops at a service station/plant nursery/snake farm. Again, as one does. Here he buys a venus flytrap, which he smuggles into Japan. Waiting for him in Japan is his assistant’s cousin, who informs him that she will take the next few months off from work to accompany him to an abandoned resort that her father owns with a fully functional greenhouse and a hunchbacked caretaker that is near the rim of an active volcano. Yes, yes, a familiar cliche, but stick with us here. Dr. Bragin/X crossbreeds the venus flytrap into a horrible abomination, that would be the most terrifying creature in film history, were every detail about it the exact opposite. It resembles a giant stalk of celery combined with a used car lot tube man wearing giant boxing gloves, and of course, it develops a thirst for blood. Not motivated by any particular kind of revenge, mind you. Any blood will do. The victim does not have to have wronged it. It’s a cautionary tale about the limits of science, the cor
Featuring half-man/half-jaw actor Miguel Fuentes, a.k.a. the Aztec from The Pumaman! There are lots of theories about why ships disappear in the Bermuda Triangle. Some blame magnetic anomalies affecting navigation. Some cite alien abduction. Others point out that it’s actually just a huge amount of ocean, and of course you’re going to lose some ships out there, you nitwits. But the makers of The Bermuda Triangle have their own fresh theory, and it all comes down to something NEVER BEFORE SEEN IN A HORROR MOVIE -- a creepy doll, telling a creepy little girl to kill her family. But this time, it’s on a boat. A BOOOOOAT!!! A hilariously dubbed Italian-Mexican joint production, The Bermuda Triangle is low on logic and high on ridiculous old-fashioned racism. A family sets out to find Atlantis with a crew of stereotypes, including a black cook character that would embarrass Amos and Andy. Heading the family? None other than legendary actor and director JOHN freaking HUSTON, in a role that one can only imagine he took in order to spend time near the ship’s other most notable passenger, A REALLY HOT WOMAN IN A BIKINI. Will they find Atlantis before they’re all dead? Will anyone on board even seem aware they’re looking for Atlantis? Find out by disappearing into The Bermuda Triangle with Mike, Kevin, and Bill! (and, y’know, also that bikini woman we mentioned)
Just when things looked grimmest for Hollywood’s bottom line and executives started seriously considering adapting the origin stories of cereal mascots for the silver screen, along came The Hunger Games to save the day! Yes, The Hunger Games, the series that critics are saying is “Almost definitely going to have the last book split into two movies” finally arrives to bring you archery, love and oh so much reaping! Star of the show is Jennifer Lawrence, who wowed audiences in Winter’s Bone by being able to make it through a movie called Winter’s Bone without cracking a smile at the fact that the movie was named Winter’s Bone. Starring as Katniss, she volunteers for the games as a substitute for his sister Primrose, which forces her to leave behind her sort of boyfriend Gail, and get sent off to the capitol with a guy named Peeta. We contacted the folks at NASA and asked them to fire up some of their supercomputers in order to calculate which of those four names is the stupidest. They were willing, of course, but as soon as they hit start, we heard a loud buzzing in the background, and some people saying “No...No, this can’t be happening!” and “I’ve never seen a mainframe melt that fast before!” and “To the escape pods! No children allowed!”, so we figure we’re due to receive those results any minute now. Anyways, at some point in time Lenny Kravitz shows up, bringing back fond memories of the wonderful moments just before he shows up. Stanley Tucci interviews the doomed contestants and determines whether they will join Hufflepuff or Slytherin. And Woody Harrelson, one has to imagine, took the role thinking he’d get to hang out on set all day with noted babe Elizabeth BanDEAR GOD, WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO NOTED BABE ELIZABETH BANKS!? We’ll just say this: at one point Peeta claims that his professional, almost magical level of talent as a camouflage artist all stems from the fact that he is good at frosting cakes in his family
The Guy from Harlem is the first blaxploitation film we’ve ever riffed. Why? To quote the temperamental yet ultimately quite sensitive gangster Harry De Bauld, a character you will grow to love as much as we do - “well, it’s...it’s kinda personal.” Okay it’s not actually personal at all, it’s just that the movie is really, really funny. It trades most of the sleaze, grime, and, well, exploitation that you expect from the genre for dopiness, sexual situations that fail to lead to actual sex, a clumsy confused sweetness, and more botched lines per minute than anything we’ve ever seen. As you’d expect from the title, The Guy from Harlem is set entirely in Miami. The makers of Casablanca almost used the same approach, with early drafts titled The Dude from Somewhere Other Than Casablanca. It’s the story of private eye and titular Guy, Al Connors. Al’s a man with such a reputation that when it’s time to protect an African queen/princess/wife of a chief of state (her title changes pretty much every time it comes up) the CIA goes straight to his dingy shag-carpeted office and begs for help. Later, when gangster Harry De Bauld’s daughter is kidnapped by the sinister Big Daddy, and his own criminal organization is just “too upset!” about the whole thing to deal with the situation, where do you think he goes? That’s right. To the guy who’s the best at being from Harlem there is, baby. Join Mike (what you say?), Kevin (that cat’s a bad duuuude), and Bill (get on down!) for The Guy from Harlem!
When we last left him, things were looking up for John Tucker. He had landed a babe way out of his league. That nerdy kid who was always bothering him had been gunned down. He owned the world’s most powerful glove, which he occasionally admired as it sat in a box in the back of his dirty Jeep. But Tucker’s world is about to come crashing down when a mysterious visitor shows up at COP headquarters. (Unable to decide whether the acronym was COPI or COPS, the creative team* behind Future Zone just dropped the fourth letter altogether. Also, they may have moved from LA to Mobile, Alabama. The movie is very unclear about this. Oh, and the main bad guys in this one were in Future Force, but we’re pretty sure they are playing different characters here. Lest these changes scare off the potential sequel viewer, do not fear: Carradine’s beer belly remains very much intact.) Anyways, the mysterious visitor shows up. He’s wearing a mesh shirt and seems to know a little too much about John Tucker. Who is this mystery man and where did he come from? This is a question you will ponder for exactly four milliseconds before you, like every other non-brain damaged person, quickly realize “That is obviously his son from the future.” How did he travel back in time? “My friends built a time portal,” he casually mentions, never to address it again. Yeah. It’s that kind of movie. But the family affair doesn’t just stop there! In a delightful twist, Carradine’s real life wife plays his onscreen wife. The chemistry between Carradine and the woman who sold him out to the media after his death with quotes like “He had his kinky moments” and “He would go to a hardware store and buy the stuff” really is the emotional heart of Future Zone. Mike, Kevin and Bill splashed a fresh coat of mud onto their Chevy Blazer and make sure any and all gloves are firmly secured in an out of the way box as they hop on the highway to the Future Zone! *hahaha
Nightmare at Noon might sound like what happens a few hours after trying items from Taco Bell’s breakfast menu, but in fact it’s a movie! A totally 80s movie that reunites two stars from our VOD release Mutant: the terrifyingly-faced Wings Hauser and his gruff, permanently drunk pal, Bo Hopkins. And, weirdly enough, they are once again facing off against a rural town full of people turned into ghouls by environmental contamination. But whereas Wings played a young whiny sarcastic yuppie in Mutant, this time he’s...a slightly older whiny sarcastic yuppie. And while Bo played a small town sheriff in Mutant, this time he’s...a cop who lost his job for doing the right thing. But it’s not a sequel! Somehow! Basically, they took what made Mutant such a good movie (nothing), threw in George Kennedy (yes, that George Kennedy), some cleavage (not George Kennedy’s) and a ridiculously long helicopter chase that was probably pulled from an Airwolf rerun, shook it all up and poured a big glass of Nightmare at Noon! It’s worth noting that this movie is also known by another title, Death Street U.S.A. (kinda like how Mutant also had another name, Night Shadows). It’s also worth noting, according to the movie itself, that Wings Hauser’s character loves croissants, but HATES them when they’re microwaved. Might we fixate on this bizarre character detail? Oh, we might. We just might. Help Mike, Kevin and Bill stuff croissants into a microwave until Wings drops to his knees in despair at this Nightmare at Noon!
Capitalizing on the widely-publicized series of unsolved murders that occurred at the Liberace Museum in Las Vegas in the late 1970s*, Tourist Trap is a slasher film with all the classic elements. It’s got a big beefy killer in overalls and a mask, portrayed by Chuck Connors, known primarily for his television role as The Rifleman but also for his 400 pound chin. And, of course, a couple of scantily clad babes, including replacement Charlie’s Angel Tanya Roberts, who would later make MILF history as the neighbor in That 70s Show. For some reason the babes are on a road trip with a girl who’s sort of a more conservative version of Sarah, Plain and Tall when their car breaks down (you don’t say!) near a freaky roadside museum. It’s full of creepy mannequins that big Chuck operates via his never-explained telekinesis, proving that if people started developing X-Men style mutant powers in the real world their first impulse wouldn’t be to rule the world OR try to save it, but instead to perv out and build a giant whackin’ emporium full of RealDolls. The girls, naturally, trust museum owner Chuck completely. They don’t realize he’s the killer picking them off one by one, a ruse that even Scooby and Shaggy would immediately see through, even with red-rimmed eyes after hotboxing the van. Throw in a twist ending so shocking it’ll leave you saying “huh, I guess that was the ending,” and you’ve got a Tourist Trap even more perplexing/disappointing than Santa Cruz’s famous Mystery Spot (where, incidentally, the Colby Jack cheese blend was first invented**). Put on your Hawaiian shirt, fanny pack, and Teva sandals with socks, then join Mike, Kevin, and Bill in the Tourist Trap! *not factual, this is just an urban legend we’re trying to get off the ground **this is another one
Ah, Christmas. That magical time of year when Santa travels all over the universe by means of the fifth dimension, (which his close friend Merlin invented in a floating space castle), delivering toys that were made by a skunk in a factory overseen by a wolf in a village whose head of security, Puss in Boots, occasionally has to fend off giant ogres. A story so familiar and comforting, it’s like wrapping yourself in a warm blanket. By which we mean it’s so insane and twisted, it makes the Ice Cream Bunny look like Tiny Tim Cratchit. Christmas with RiffTrax: Santa’s Village of Madness is three shorts from the mad mind of K. Gordon Murray, who brought you the MST3K episode Santa Claus. Featuring cheap mascot costumes, terrifying music, an utter lack of coherence and a Santa who appears to have been dead for most of the shoot, they are some of the most astounding things we have ever laid eyes on, and will quickly become a new yuletide tradition, provided your eggnog is adequately spiked. Mike, Kevin and Bill will be your hosts throughout your journey, introducing each short with their best brave faces as they stare into the abyss of Christmas Skunks and magic flowers that subvert the space/time continuum!
Earth’s Mightiest Generators of Studio Cashflow, Assemble! These heavy-hitting Marvel heroes (and also some bow and arrow guy) are finally together in one place, thanks to Samuel L. Jackson’s commitment to hanging out after the credits in their movies. Enjoy the fruits of his passive-aggressive labor, a big superhero flick written and directed by the GREAT, FLAWLESS AND IRREPROACHABLE JOSS WHEDON (internet law requires we write his name that way). Once fans got over their disappointment that the film’s roster didn’t include iconic Avenger Dr. Druid (I know, I know, we still can’t believe it either) they had to agree this was a pretty fun movie. And it is fun, once you get past the Iron Man quips, the malnourished art major Loki as primary villain, generic robo-creature-guys from space or wherever -- once you get past all that, you have the true emotional core of the movie. Agent Coulson, and his barely-mentioned offscreen romance with a cellist who recently moved back to Portland. That’s what it’s really all about, True Believers. So shout “Excelsior,” try to keep your eyes from rolling out of your head at the inevitable Stan Lee cameo, and join Mike, Kevin and Bill for The Avengers!
WARNING! Contains naughty language and Christopher Walken impressions! Let’s get this out of the way: Yes, this movie is called McBain. No, it has nothing to do with what you’re thinking: it’s not a biopic of Diane McBain, star of the 1960 TV series Surfside 6. Oh, or that Simpsons character either. No, there’s no Mendoza for McBain to take out in this one. That’s just in the silly movie series The Simpsons came up with. Probably only took them a couple minutes too. Mendoza...Ha! This McBain is much more legitimate and creative. Its drug dealer is named Escobar. Christopher Walken (Mousehunt, Joe Dirt, The Country Bears, Gigli, Kangaroo Jack) stars as the titular McBain. When the man who rescued him from a POW camp is executed by a Colombian dictator, it’s time for McBain to put together a ragtag group to avenge their friend. He rounds up a smooth talking technology expert, a black guy who is afraid of flying, and a guy who repeatedly asks him if it’s really a good idea to rip off The A-Team so blatantly. Finally, they’re ready to take out the dictator and what follows is possibly the most incoherent mess of an action film there ever was. The body count soars, plot threads are introduced and discarded at a moment’s notice and a WrestleMania hat is given prominent screentime. Evidently, nobody ever told the producers of McBain that 80s action flicks were out of style, or that it’s not very badass to make your supposed action hero a welder (McBain is a professional welder, we forgot to mention that until now. Also, his first name is Bobby. Both of these things are true.) McBain is the movie that will have you saying, “Seriously? Christopher Walken did this only three years before Pulp Fiction?” Join Mike, Kevin, Bill and Rainier Wolfcastle for McBain: Let’s Get Silly. Original film made in 1991.
RiffTrax Live: Birdemic is now available as a VOD! Relive what critics are calling “Definitely one of the top two RiffTrax Live events of 2012!” If you loved the live show the first time you saw it or missed it because you were too busy hanging out, hanging out with your family, now here is your chance to own it! There will be solrpnls, bark beetles and animals such as seals! Plus, the show kicks off with everyone’s favorite lovable loser, Norman, in the short Norman Checks In. Birdemic is one of our favorite bad movies of all time, and there’s no better way to watch it than RiffTrax Live. So grab a coat hanger, fire up your solar powered TV and for the love of god fully vest your stock options! Birdemic!
Contains scenes of nudity. (Fortunately, not Charles Durning.) The sequel is coming from inside the house! That’s right, one of the tiredest pop culture tropes of all time finally gets a sequel! And you’ll never believe where the calls are coming from this time (because it’s a really, really stupid reveal. We’re talking the end of Signs level stupid.) Julia is a babysitter, whose motto was evidently “Charisma free child care or your money back!” Her plan to put the kids to bed and then spend an evening quietly enjoying a glass of water is disrupted when a stranger comes to her door. He has a chilling request: he needs her to call the auto club because his car is broken down. Julia responds as anyone would: by lapsing into a hysterical panic attack while the poor guy trudges four miles to a gas station and misses his kid’s birthday party. We’re just kidding of course, he actually is a maniac and he kidnaps both the kids and they’re never seen again. Traumatized by the incident, Julia responds by growing a Joe Dirt level mullet and enrolling in a small liberal arts college. (Experts strongly recommend you do neither of these things, but if you must choose just one, they tentatively recommend the mullet.) Everything is going just fine until one day she notices that small objects in her apartment are not where she left them. Cue hysterical panic attack. She’s really a charmer, this Julia. Fortunately, she’s got Charles Durning and Carol Kane to help her. Durning appears to have gotten over Doc Hopper’s failure to sign Kermit The Frog as spokesperson by eating the Electric Mayhem Band and Kane looks appropriately traumatized for someone who had to play the wife of both Billy Crystal AND Andy Kaufman. At one point, in one of the most terrifying and disturbing scenes ever filmed, Charles Durning goes to a strip club to watch a ventriloquist act. With Mike, Kevin and Bill there to riff, When A Stranger Calls Back will have you ho
Vanilla Ice’s album To The Extreme sold fifteen million copies. It is important to keep this in mind while you watch Cool As Ice, because at some point in time, you will inevitably shriek at the TV, “Who thought this was a good idea? How did this happen? Are they really trying to make ‘yep yep’ his catchphrase? Why???” And the answer to most of those questions is: Vanilla Ice’s album To The Extreme sold fifteen million copies. Vanilla Ice (That’s My Boy, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: The Secret Of The Ooze) stars as a troubled French missionary volunteering at a refugee camp in the Sudan we’re just kidding he plays a white rapper. The only stretch he gives his acting abilities is playing a character named “Johnny” instead of his real name. At this moment, we will point out for the record that his hilarious real name is Robert Van Winkle. The sleepy little town that Vanilla rides his motorcycle through is not prepared for his chillaxed baditude and funky fresh fashions. Or perhaps they are just stunned that in a movie whose entire reason for existence is the star had a wildly popular album, none of the songs from said wildly popular album make an appearance. No Ice Ice Baby. No Play That Funky Music. Not even Havin’ A Roni. In fact, there is not even the vaguest hint that there was even a Roni anywhere to be Had on the set of Cool As Ice. Despite the lack of Ronis, Cool As Ice is still one of the finest looking bad movies of all time. This is because the director of photography went on to do the cinematography for films such as Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan and Lincoln. That’s right, a mere three years after Janusz Kaminski made sure that Vanilla Ice’s Stussy shirt was properly lit during the construction site frolicking scene, he was finding the right lens to shoot Liam Neeson’s “I could have got more” speech in Schindler’s List. It is perhaps the only movie that is more 90s than the entirety of VH1s I Love T
“You see, son, sometimes, when a shirtless teenage werewolf and a newborn love each other, very, very much...” Baby girlfriends! International squads of vampires with a host of mutant superpowers that should be blood in the water to Marvel’s legal department! A final, epic showdown between the forces of vampire “evil” and vampire “meh, whatever”! All that sounds amazing, right! It’s what we’ve been building to for four movies, right??? Like, something’s finally gonna happen! RIGHT?????? Ah ha ha haaaa, remarkable. Believing this series would pay off in any way... to paraphrase Twilight: New Moon songstress Lykke Li, “There’s no posssibilityyyyyy.” This movie is mostly about an extended vampire family gathering to show support for Bella, its newest, most insipid and simpering member. Because that’s why people love vampires -- to see them form coalitions of understanding, and talk out their differences. But there’s hope, in the form of effete ancient men in red - that’s right, more Volturi than ever before! And the great Michael Sheen offering a cackle of delight so extraordinary that the petition to make it part of his eventual Oscar death reel should begin NOW. Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill as they hide in the mustache of Mustache Dad for one last journey into the land of vampire sensitivity, Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 2!
Breaker breaker good buddy! We got a bear in the air on 95 going north, a bear in the grass on route 50, with Brother and Sister Berenstain Bear running a checkpoint for icons in the bear community over by the bear shop, so buckle your bearbelt, step on the bear pedal and get ready to haul some bears. We don’t know much about trucker slang here at RiffTrax, but we gather that roughly 98% of it is bear based. In Breaker! Breaker!, Chuck Norris, star of the jokes from 2007 that your lamest uncle is just now finding out about and preparing to forward to you, stars as a trucker who is also a champion arm wrestler. It's like Over The Top only with slightly less confusion about the hero’s last name. Chuck’s brother is making his first ever trucking delivery, and his cargo is several hundred frozen TV dinners. His routine haul goes awry when his truck is attacked by lonely men in search of cheap, barely edible food-like substances. Actually, he’s captured by the citizens of a rogue town of drunken hicks led by the delightfully Kelsey Grammer-esque Judge Trimmings. Chuck must go in search of his missing mustache, and also his brother. To rescue him, he’ll need to very slowly kick some butt, due to the lack of mobility afforded by his denim jacket/pants combo. Fortunately, he’s got an ace up his sleeve: all his trucker pals who are apparently willing to kill dozens of people and destroy an entire town based on one CB radio message from an anonymous source reporting that a guy who they’ve seen arm wrestle once or twice is apparently in some sort of trouble. It’s a tale full of moonshine, hillbillies and sweet airbrushed eagles on the sides of vans. Mike, Kevin and Bill 86 the tuna, get the six top seated and give the blue plate special wings (trucker slang) in one of Chuck Norris’ finest mustache-less films, Breaker! Breaker!
Evel Knievel was a 70s icon most known for the “stunt” of flying across the country to beat his former promoter, an executive at 20th Century Fox, outside the studio commissary with an aluminum baseball bat, shattering the man’s arm while shouting “I’m going to kill you!” Okay, that’s not what he’s most known for, but it’s what he should be most known for. I mean, did you know that? We didn’t know that. But it just might come up once or twice in our new Rifftrax of Viva Knievel! The cast of this movie is basically a list of names designed to make you go “whoa, all those people are in this movie?” Screen legend Gene Kelly! Red Buttons! Lauren Hutton! Frank Gifford! Space Mutiny’s Cameron Mitchell! Dabney Coleman! The inexplicably-named Marjoe Gortner! And, perhaps best of all, the diabolical druglord villain played by none other than Leslie Nielsen! If you’ve seen him in The Naked Gun or Airplane! every line he says will sound like a joke to you, and trust us friends, that is a very good thing. From Evel waking up orphans late at night to give them his own shoddy action figure merchandise, to, oh right, the occasional motorcycle jump, there’s almost too much to like about this one. So grab your baseball bat and join Mike, Kevin, and Bill as they spectacularly fail to jump Snake River Canyon and see Viva Knievel! Original film made in 1977.
The year was 1980 and one trend was sweeping America! No, not that animated dancing cat from the Paula Abdul video. We admire you thinking outside the box, but jeez, you were off by like nine years. Reign it in a bit. We were talking about the nationwide fad of really crappy musicals! Yes, 1980 brought us Xanadu, The Village People’s Can’t Stop the Music and of course the crown* jewel of them all: The Apple. Because what we needed at the start of Reagan’s America was the book of Genesis set to music. The Apple tells the story of Alphie and Bibi, a pair of sweetheart musicians from Canada who make the Osmonds look like GG Allin. Alphie’s vaguely foreign-y accent and resemblance to sensei John Kreese do nothing to slow them down as they ascend the ladder to stardom. Of course, they have a little assistance from Mr. Boogalow of the sinister BIM Corporation, which is at times a record company, an oppressive totalitarian regime and the producer of a reality singing TV show (listed in order from least despicable to most.) Forgot the name BIM already? Do not worry, there is a solid ten minutes of the movie where people shout it at you while doing aerobics. When Bibi is unable to resist the temptation and signs the record contract (GET IT???) she’s vaulted to superstardom, but at what cost? The answer appears to be not much for her. She’s actually doing pretty OK. Alphie on the other hand moves in with an elderly female landlord, as you do when times get rough. The real victims of Satan’s nefarious temptation appears to be the audience’s ear drums, which are assaulted with a variety of songs that are best described as Disco’s death rattle. Mike, Kevin and Bill would love to stop and chat but they just got word that BIM is on the way. Why don’t you watch The Apple while they wait for him to get here. *One of those cheap cardboard crowns you get at Burger King Original film made in 1980.
Captain Kirk. T.J. Hooker. Twilight Zone plane guy. Johnny Legal (presumably his name on Boston Legal, didn’t bother to check).The Dad Who Says Sh*t. All great characters, sure, but William Shatner will always be best known for one role, and one role alone: RACK. Rural veterinary doctor Robert “Rack” Hansen, of course, he of the inexplicable nickname, fondness for cowboy hats, and habit of hitting on his brother’s widow by saying he’d like to “milk her.” A lesser man would’ve stopped with Rack, his legacy complete. Such a great, internationally beloved part, it’s a testament to Shatner’s skill as an actor that he’s escaped its shadow, the Kingdom of the Spiders conventions and catchphrases and reboots, and become known for more than just Rack. RACK. Rack. No seriously, he has people call him Rack and he thinks he’s a sexy cowboy. Rack. Animals and people are dying of spider venom in Rack’s sleepy Arizona town, and when he and a foxy out-of-towner discover a gigantic hill of venomous spiders on a local farm they somehow don’t immediately make the connection, burn it down, and end the movie. What unfolds is a creeping, ridiculous, town-destroying horror, packed with more real live tarantulas than the basement home of that spooky pale guy who sold drugs outside your high school. Rack up, put on your spider-stompiest shoes, and join Mike, Bill, and Kevin in the Kingdom of the Spiders!
Turns out hilarious re-imaginings of classic Hitchcock movies aren’t just for James Nguyen! They even dug up the original Norman Bates (aka, Anthony Perkins, you may know him from his other work in just kidding, obviously, just kidding) and his momma (quite literally) for this one! Not to mention the Motel and roadside homestead, and even the iconic shower scene! Because, when you see a timeless thriller beloved by millions, the thing you want most is to follow it with a sequel 22 years later that pays homage by just whizzing all over it in every way possible. Norman gets released home to his family crime scene with some help from psychiatrist Robert Loggia, who’s tough and cool as always, but utterly inept as a psychiatrist. Despite the fact that Norman’s killing spree would’ve made national news, with college kids wearing ironic t-shirts of him in his mother’s dress by now, very few folks in his sleepy hometown seem to remember him at all. And those that do are eager to give him a job, or, in the case of Meg Tilly, go back to his home and spend the night, just for funsies. Only Dennis Franz (and, presumably, his bare bottom) is suspicious of the man who IS STILL OBVIOUSLY INSANE. But hey, who knows, maybe Norman’s fine now? JUST KIDDING, OBVIOUSLY, JUST KIDDING, HE’S STILL NUTS AND TELLS THEM SO HIMSELF MULTIPLE TIMES. Join Mike, Bill, and Kevin for Psycho II, and turn the crank on Hitchcock’s grave one more time!
ATTENTION, WHOVIANS! (for the uninitiated, that is not something Jay-Z yells at the beginning of a song, it’s a name for Doctor Who fans) Before Matt Smith, before David Tennant, before Christopher Eccleston, before even the scarf and afro guy, there was Peter Cushing. Well, not before, exactly, because this feature-length movie isn’t a canonical part of the Doctor Who universe or storyline. So it’s sort of more adjacent, than before. It’s nearby, if nothing else. Approximate, at least. Like, Dr. Who is in it! But instead of a mysterious Timelord alien, he’s kind of just a confused human grandpa with the last name Who. But he does have a TARDIS! Of course, instead of a disguised alien craft it’s just, like, this junky thing he made with his granddaughter. Oh yeah, he hangs out with his granddaughters. Yeah. But then they travel through space and fight the most classic Dr. Who bad guys of all, the Daleks! Of course, in this imagining of Dr. Who, the Daleks are just some dopey trashcan looking guys with plungers sticking out of ‘em that talk funny -- oh, that’s how they still are? Seriously?? PERFECT! IT’S CANON AFTER ALL! So no matter how much you know, don’t know, or don’t want to know about Dr. Who, this movie will fill your needs. Plus, the RiffTrax itself is totally canon, and an official part of the Mike, Kevin, and Bill timeline (unlike that regrettable one-off TV special, “RiffTrax goes to Hawaii”, which shall never be spoken of again). Exterminate Dr. Who and the Daleks today!
You know you’re in for a treat when we were considering starting this description, “When an Estonian cyborg defects to America...” This Estonian cyborg, as you’ve come to expect from Estonian cyborgs by this point in time, is the ultimate killing machine. Played by The Actor You Get When Reb Brown is Making Something Even Crappier, he possesses the devastating ability to shoot lasers out of his eyes! For this reason he is called LaserEyes. Er, The Blinkinator. Maybe Cyclops from X-Men. No, it was Firehead! He’s called Firehead, since he can shoot fire lasers from his head eyes. Who’s the most suitable man to track down Firehead and ensure that he doesn’t go on a rampage? Did you say Chris Lemmon, son of screen legend Jack? Of course you didn't. Did you know he existed? Well, have you ever seen someone really commit themselves to a terrible Jack Lemmon impression? Right, of course you haven’t. But take our word for it, Chris makes a strong case that the true villain of this movie is Hollywood Nepotism. Actually, the real villain is a shadowy organization known as The Upper Order, which plots the beginning of World War III from a rented conference room at the airport Ramada. They are led by another legend, Oscar winner Christopher Plummer, who was having so much fun that he brought along fellow Oscar winner Martin Landau. Rumor has it they almost convinced Orson Welles to come along too, but he wanted to spend his twilight years pursuing dignified, artistHAHA! We almost made it through that sentence! Join Mike, Kevin and Bill, all Estonian defectors themselves, as they riff LaserEy Firehead!
Even before Prime Minister Berlusconi brought fame to Italy with his countless deviant and reprehensible acts, it was a sexy, saucy nation. And, according to its old horror movies, it’s also full of sexy, saucy, abandoned castles, owned by sexy, saucy, possibly dead but still wealthy men. And of course, most important of all, lots of sexy, saucy, scantily clad women to explore these castles and gasp at basically everything they see. As you might have guessed, our new feature Fangs of the Living Dead is loaded with your daily recommended intake of exactly this kind of Sexy Sauce (now available at Arby’s). Leading the way is Anita Ekberg, known for being Miss Sweden, her role in Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, and most of all for going out of her way to keep people from finding out she played “the most beautiful model in Italy” in Fangs of the Living Dead about 10 years after all that. Anita is summoned by her “uncle,” aka the Italian Vincent Price, to a remote castle he claims is her inheritance. What she discovers leads to a shocking twist ending, one SO shocking that not even the filmmakers knew it was coming - seriously, they made the movie one way and at the last minute the producers made them tack on a twist ending that makes no sense. See if you notice! (you will absolutely notice) Ease into your most practical dungeon-exploring negligee and join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for Fangs of the Living Dead!
Take Chuck Norris. Pair him up with the guy who played Flounder in Animal House. Quickly ball that screenplay up into a wad and toss it into a garbage can where it lands next to a half-eaten ham sandwich because that is obviously a terrible idea and what have you got? Silent Rage! Silent Rage has trouble deciding what type of movie it wants to be. For some scenes, it’s a really, really bad action movie about doctors reanimating a serial killer’s brain. For other scenes, it’s a really, really bad comedy about a bumbling deputy. And in others, it’s a really, really bad romantic love triangle between Chuck Norris, an ex-flame, and his mustache. But when you add all these disjointed elements together, the results are magic! (One of those crappy plastic magic tricks that you ordered from the back of a comic book when you were seven and even you knew it pretty much sucked but you had to pretend you hadn’t wasted your parents’ money so you bothered your dad with it when he was trying to watch football until he told you to go outside.) The plot is fairly standard. Guy kills innocent people, doctor revives him, biker gang invades town, Ron Silver plans a surprise party for his sister, doctor goes mad with power, guy kills again, doctor ignores warnings, Ron Silver breaks his wife’s heart by telling her her cinnamon cake is no good, guy keeps killing, Chuck Norris kicks some guys. And at one point the guy who played Flounder in Animal House tells an anecdote about a dog that is so wildly misplaced and tone deaf you’ll wonder if just maybe he should be kicked in the nads in real life thirty one years after filming it. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you probably won’t be so silent about the great deal of rage you’ll feel. Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for Silent Rage! Contains a few brief scenes of nudity. No gorilla-grams are provided.
Ever since RiffTrax Live: “Manos” the Hands of Fate aired in theaters nationwide, people have been asking us when it will be available for home viewing. Seriously, non-stop. Leaving notes under our windshield wipers. Lurking outside our windows at night, softly whistling the Torgo theme. Polite, perfectly friendly facebook comments. All KINDS of crazy ways! For those who missed it in theaters, this is a completely new riff of “Manos” the Hands of Fate, the Texas-fertilizer-salesman-directed classic made famous by Mystery Science Theater 3000. All new jokes, same old Torgo. See Mike, Kevin and Bill riff it all on stage in front of a live audience at the Belcourt Theatre in Nashville! PLUS! Before the main event, a live riffing of two extra-demented shorts. At Your Fingertips: Cylinders, from the same insane child arts & crafts series that brought you Grasses and Boxes. And Welcome Back, Norman which introduced us all to revolting folk hero Norman, along with his now famous (and also revolting) catchphrase. The time is now! Run, don’t stumble-walk-with-accursed-goat-legs to watch RiffTrax Live: “Manos” the Hands of Fate!
This 1997 giant bug alien war flick was an adaptation of Robert Heinlein’s 1950s militaristic sci-fi novel of the same name, in the sense that director Paul Verhoeven later said he never finished reading the book, and in fact stopped after the first few chapters because it made him so “bored and depressed.” Inspiration, indeed! Whatever you think of the big expensive film he made—simply dumb and loud, or dumb and loud on purpose to make a point it’s a brilliant satire and I am TYPING IN ALL CAPS NOW—it’s definitely not boring or depressing. Go see The Lone Ranger if you’re looking for that. Starship Troopers is the tale of young trooper Johnny Rico, played by Casper Van Dien, star of this and...well, some direct to video sequels of this, mostly. He’s joined in the war by Denise Richards, impossible to believe as a gifted starship pilot long before she was impossible to believe as a gifted nuclear scientist in that Bond movie. He’s also joined by the great Neil Patrick Harris, who is somehow much easier to believe as an intelligence officer with psychic abilities that help him communicate with the giant bug aliens. Throw in Michael Ironside, because duh, it’s a war movie, you’re gonna need Michael Ironside, and Jake Busey, because duh, he just showed up on set and wouldn’t leave, add a love triangle, heaps of alien splatter, and you’ve got the sprawling, great, goofy mess that is Starship Troopers! Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for this gorilla-gram free version of the blockbuster live show!
Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s...a copyright attorney that represents DC Comics handing out cease & desist letters to the producers of Supersonic Man! Sadly, Supersonic Man, though he tries his hardest, still does the best to crib from various, more well-known sources. He has the Man of Steel’s strength, Dr. Manhattan’s occasional be-speedoed-ness, and yes, the awkward, moron-like flying of The Pumaman. What original attributes does he bring to the table, you may ask? Well, he uses his amazing supersonic powers to shatter the speed of sound and...turn a gun into a banana. And he’ll need every banana he can get his hands on because a nefarious bad guy played by Cameron Mitchell (Death of a Salesman, Frankenstein Island, Space Mutiny) has an evil island lair where he intends to start slow, really focus his energies, and take over one very specific three block area in the city of Richmond, Vir—we’re just kidding of course, he intends to take over the entire world. Fortunately, he has an ace up his sleeves: possession of the world’s lamest robot, which despite its slow movements and general clumsiness, can still shoot gigantic flames that appear to measure approximately a few degrees less than the core of the sun itself. Can Supersonic Man outwit this foe and save humanity? Assume a rigid, very uncomfortable looking flying stance and join Mike, Kevin, and Bill to find out!
Fresh out of the grave and ready to download or stream! This is the complete show, including the final short in the beloved Norman Krasner series, Norman Makes a Speech, because Norman is EVERYONE’S favorite zombie! This classic 1968 horror film is where it all began. No, not the cronut trend, we’re talking about the omnipresent zombie craze! 28 Weeks Later, Resident Evil: Retribution, that Zack Snyder remake of Dawn of the Dead...We wouldn’t have any of them without Night of the Living Dead! (Pause to think about whether this is a good thing.) When she’s attacked in a cemetery by zombies, a young woman named Barbara flees to an abandoned farm house. There she’s joined by a ragtag group of survivors who band together to wait out the apocalypse, with the occasional light descent into madness. The rest of the movie plays out like The Big Chill, but instead of Glenn Close sobbing naked in the shower, they board up windows and occasionally get devoured alive. So in this respect, Night of the Living Dead is the slightly less depressing movie. Shotguns! Molotov cocktails! Exploding cars! Headshots galore! Like one of those awesome zombie video games (except you don’t get to play it), RiffTrax Live: Night of the Living Dead is guaranteed to be scarier than Brad Pitt’s beard in World War Z and funnier than the acting on The Walking Dead! You won’t want to miss it!
By the seventh Harry Potter movie, you’d think they were starting to run out of ideas! Not so! Deathly Hallows Part 1 introduces several brand new ideas to the fantasy genre such as: an item of jewelry that must be destroyed in order to eliminate an evil wizard and his army, and when you wear it, you slowly become evil and turn against your friends, which makes the long journey on foot across the countryside even more difficult. OK, so maybe that’s not too original. But there are lembas bread barf flavored jellybeans! When our story begins, grave danger lurks in every inch of the wizarding world. How grave? Well, grave enough that our heroes cannot return to Hogwarts. Yes, that’s how bad things have gotten: evidently Hogwarts, the most dangerous death trap on the British Isles*, has somehow become even more dangerous. Note: this does not mean that the Weasleys will cancel the wedding of one of their unimportant sons and the girl from the movie where Edward the vampire died. Don’t be ridiculous. While the Hogwarts action is lacking, Deathly Hallows does contain surly teens moping in the woods, an inexplicably animated section detailing the origin of O-Ren Ishii the deathly hallows, and the death of a character that may atone for Jar-Jar not biting it during any of the Star Wars prequels.
Yes, it’s an utterly baffling horror film about a mad doctor who believes death is simply an evolution and that every woman wants to sleep with him. Yes, he is laughed out of the academy and moves his decency-defying research to a swamp in Ecuador, as one does. Yes, he’s investigated by a sheriff who can only be described as a chunk of swarthy walking meat, and who also believes that every woman wants to sleep with him. But MORE THAN ANY OF THIS, Swamp of the Ravens is a vehicle for an original song about being in love with a dead robot that will change the way you view songs, movies, songs in movies, robots, dead robots, living robots, and love itself. Seriously, we haven’t been so infatuated with a song since Damien Carter taught us all about “Hangin’ Out With [His] Family” in Birdemic, and we know you’ll love it just as much as we do. You poor souls. Oh and also, there are no ravens in the titular raven swamp. Just buzzards. Really, it’s a heck of a movie. So grab the dead robot you love most and join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for Swamp of the Ravens! No ravens required!
Many have forgotten (or choose to forget) the Santa/Martian wars of 1964: Santa Claus Conquers the Martians bravely attempts to set the record straight. Martian parents Kimar and Momar become concerned that their children Bomar and Girmar (are you picking up the “mar” theme? BECAUSE IT’S VERY SUBTLE!) have become too attached to television programs from earth. Their solution is brilliant, if a bit of a non sequitur -- they launch a plan to kidnap Santa Claus! The nasty Martian villain Voldar (his face is coated in green oil and he has a huge mustache, therefore he’s evil) captures two Earth children, Billy and Betty, who don’t hold out for even a minute but rat out our fattest, jolliest elf without a struggle. Voldar takes Santa and the children prisoner and heads off for Mars. Only the bravery of Billy and Betty and the bumbling of a stowaway and “the laziest man on Mars”, Droppo, can foil Voldar’s evil plans! Throw into the mix Santa and the Fairy Snow Queen, an insane short featuring a pixie named Snoopy, a horrific life size Jack in the Box, and a lion who is oh so proud of his candy eating ability, and you’ve got one of our funniest live shows to date. Please join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for RiffTrax Live: Santa Claus Conquers the Martians!
The Doctor is in, and he’s less canonical than ever! Yes, Grand Moff Peter Cushing is back in this follow-up to fan favorite Dr. Who and the Daleks. Those cheerful, not-at-all-soul-crushingly-annoying Daleks have come to Earth, and they’ve brought along the longest, most ridiculous movie title in Rifftrax history. Luckily, the fate of the human race is safe in the hands of Dr. Who (an elderly human, not alien, no powers, possibly not even a doctor), his young granddaughter, and the menagerie of other people he’s chosen to recklessly endanger this time. The Doc and his crew of allies/victims travel to 2150 AD for reasons that are, somehow, seriously, never explained. Once there, they find humanity dominated and subjugated by a race of heartless authoritarian overlords - so, y’know, a big bold departure for Doctor Who and sci-fi stories in general. Will they save Earth? Will the title get any longer? Will our dashing hero get home in time for Matlock? Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill to find out in Dr. Who: Daleks etc. etc. so on and so forth AD!
Journey with us into the heart of the Amazon in this cheesy adventure film from...1985? Really? 1985? You’re sure this didn’t come out in 1962? You’re sure. This came out two years after Return of the Jedi? A year after Temple of Doom? The same year as Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend? What, B:SLL is a very common point of reference for people. William Katt fans consider it his “understated masterpiece,” his Bob Dylan’s “Oh Mercy,” his Coppola’s “One From The Heart,” the Birdie the Early Bird of McDonaldland characters. We apologize for the direction the previous paragraph took. Despite being filmed in 1985, Treasure of the Amazon is not “instantly woefully outdated,” it’s old school! It’s from a time back when men had beards, other men wore really tiny shorts, and other men wore diapers. When every voyage into the Amazon had at least one medieval friar on board. Add in a whole bunch of classic National Geographic style toplessness, Donald Pleasance as a treasure hunting nazi, a diva who alternates between a southern and British accent, and a cast that can’t remember whether they’re supposed to be alligators or crocodiles, and you’ve got yourself one mess of a movie. Book a ride at your nearest discount seaplane emporium, strap on a bulky diaper of your own, and get ready to defile an ancient burial ground. What could possibly go wrong? Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill, (who all pony up the 80 bucks for free Prime shipping every year) for Treasure of the Amazon!
Our most “not in Kansas anymore” release since Avatar! Yes, after years of riffing blockbusters packed with dialogue cliches, we finally went to the source, the motherlode, the true original, The Wizard of Oz. This film is so big and influential that not only movies but books, song lyrics, and even ordinary everyday conversation are 90% Oz references! Quotes, and images, and made-up statistics, oh my! From flying monkeys to monster trees to casual witch murder, The Wizard of Oz has delighted and permanently traumatized children for decades. It’s a timeless classic, a cultural touchstone, and perfect for riffing. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll say “Wait, in this scene the Scarecrow has a gun?? Was that always there?!” It was! Join Mike, Bill, Kevin, and their little dog, too, on the yellow brick road to the horse of a different color that’s no place like home but represents the Lollipop Guild and okay that’s probably just about enough lines from The Wizard of Oz!
RABBIT! The very word strikes fear into the heart of anyone with a very strange definition of the word fear! Their very existence seems to bring terror, what with their gnawing on vegetables and hopping and...twitching their little tails… Starring in a surprisingly wide array of beloved books, cartoons, and other children’s entertainment, OK, look, rabbits aren’t scary, at all. But what if, through a combination of terrible editing and confusing camera angles, we pretended like they were very big? Hey, where are you going! So it goes in Night of the Lepus (Latin for rabbit, as characters frequently remind each other and the audience.) When rabbits overrun a farmer’s land, he turns to a local scientist for a cure rather than poison them. Thus the true message of this movie: poison rules. When the scientist’s cure backfires, the rabbits grow to enormous size and the real conflict begins: that of the special effects team vs the movie producers who evidently budgeted next to nothing for the special effects team. Using an innovative technique known as “replaying the same damn shot over and over again” the makers of Night of the Lepus manage to create the eerily convincing sensation that you are watching normal sized rabbits run towards a camera in slow motion. Occasionally they run across the screen right to left in slow motion. That Cadbury commercial where the rabbit clucks like a chicken is infinitely scarier. So is the mustache that DeForest Kelley sports in this movie. Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for Night of the Lepus, the least scary thing involving rabbits since Bugs Bunny dressed up like a woman and seduced Elmer Fudd.
Cyborg Cop 2 is the special kind of terrible movie that has failed before you’re even done reading the title. That’s right folks, Cyborg Cop 2 does not even manage to contain a single cyborg cop. Technically, the main character, Jack Ryan (before his shadow was recruited) is a DEA agent, so he is actually neither a cyborg nor a cop. The second thing we should tell you about Cyborg Cop 2 is that multiple characters wear gigantic fanny packs all the time. Like the kind a tourist without any dignity would wear instead of just sporting a sandwich board that says “Please pickpocket me and my idiot family.” The fanny packs are never addressed or commented on. Perhaps they are meant to distract from the fact that there is not a cyborg cop in the movie Cyborg Cop 2. None of the RiffTrax performers have seen Cyborg Cop 1, nor have any members of the writing staff seen Cyborg Cop 1, yet we were able to follow the plot fairly well. This is not meant to imply that we did not have any questions. We did, namely “So is the cop a cyborg?” and “Seriously, is there a cyborg cop in this thing or not?” Take David Carradine’s Future Force, remove the robotic remote controlled arm as it makes the cop too much like a cyborg, and you’ve got Cyborg Cop 2. Strap on your fanny pack and join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for low budget action cheese at its finest. Note: contains some pointless nudity.
The world, characters, music, even the sound effects of the Mario video games are among the most iconic entertainment creations of the 20th century. So naturally if you made a Mario movie, you’d want to abandon everything that people liked and recognized about them, and then just in case people were still willing to give it the benefit of the doubt, throw in The Happening star John Leguizamo. Let’s say you went to the cinema hoping to see your favorite character from Mario 3, the red carnivorous fish Big Bertha. Ignoring the fact that you are a moron for your favorite character not being the King of Ice World when he’s been transformed into a seal, you might be disappointed to to learn that in the movie, Big Bertha is instead a large, violent woman with prodigious cleavage who wears S & M-esque garb. (Or maybe you’re into that. In that case, you’re probably not welcome in many of the theaters that were showing Super Mario Bros.) So Big Bertha isn’t a fish, the goombas aren’t tiny, stompable, sentient mushrooms, and there’s nary a Tanooki suit to be found. No big deal, as long as the Mario Brothers are still brothers, right? What’s that? For no apparent reason Luigi is the adopted ward of Mario? Well, maybe it could still work as long as the movie isn’t an incoherent, hideous mess full of shouting and chaos and cheap sets and… Why are you shaking your head sadly? Strap on your Kuribo’s shoes and join Mike, Kevin, and Bill up on Jugem’s Cloud for riffing on the best live action Mario property that doesn’t contain Captain Lou Albano.
Follow-up to the rarely seen, totally imaginary films Ennui at Eightkiller and Nausea at Ninekiller, Terror at Tenkiller really brings the goods! And by “the goods” we mostly mean there’s a character named Tor in it. Seriously, at this point the Venn diagram of “movies featuring a character or actor named Tor” and “movies we have riffed” must be approaching a perfect circle. Why does this keep happening? We don’t know, but you can be sure an insane scientist in some B movie is hard at work on the answer, and that his name is Tor! This particular Tor lives at a lake called Tenkiller, where his hobbies include boat maintenance, wearing upsettingly tiny shorts, and purifying the world of unclean people with murder. Oh, that Tor! He works with Preacher, an old creep whose voice seems to have been dubbed in a bathroom stall by a sleepy hillbilly. When two cute college coeds show up at the lake to get away from an overbearing boyfriend, and the fact that they’re somehow roommates despite a 15 year age difference, it’s time for terror! And phone calls. And long conversations about restaurant management. And naps. And people waking up from naps. And peaceful walks to the dock. But mostly, the first thing! What was it again? Oh yeah, TERROR! Join Mike, Kevin, Bill, and Tor for a relaxing spa murder weekend to Terror at Tenkiller!
Fist of Fury! The 1972 Bruce Lee classic! Not to be confused with Fists of Fury, or Jackie Chan’s New Fists of Fury, or Fist of Fury II starring Bruce Li (who himself is not to be confused with Bruce Lee). Oh and also, Fist of Fury is known by a couple other names, The Chinese Connection and The Iron Hand, don’t let that confuse you either! Here’s a good way to keep all these movies straight: this is the one where a guy named Bruce takes on a bunch of corrupt bad guys and kicks everyone’s butt real good. There, that clears it up, right? It’s a good old-fashioned Hong Kong revenge story. Bruce’s martial arts teacher is killed by members of a rival martial arts school (spoiler: Bruce roars “TEACHERRRR!” at the thundering heavens quite a bit when he hears about this) and, wouldn’t you know it, decides to undertake a one-man mission of vengeance, pitting his Chinese school against their Japanese enemies. It’s kinda like the “slobs vs. snobs” setup of Caddyshack, except with a lot less gopher dancing and a lot more deep ethnic animosity. Fun! So tense your whole body, make some strange bird sounds, punch a guy to death while you’re not even looking at him, and join Mike, Kevin and Bill for Fist of Fury!
A game of Russian roulette at a sorority initiation goes tragically awry: one of the guns does not kill the pledge! The other one does. We gather that was supposed to happen. Sisters of Death; it’s right there in the sorority name after all. What were you expecting, a pimp and ho mixer with Delta house? But it turns out that the father of the girl who dies is a total drama queen about his “daughter” being “murdered” and decides to go all Liam Neeson in Taken on her sorority sisters. Well, not exactly like Liam Neeson in Taken. He doesn’t so much kick butt as he does lure people to a luxury vacation rental where he provides them with free booze and a pool. And he doesn’t issue chilling phone threats about his set of skills as much as he plays the flute. But he has a spider! We think... It may have just been in the house already when he rented it. When the girls start dropping one by one, they start to realize that maybe accepting money from a complete stranger to get in the car with two other complete strangers (one of whom has a complete distrust of light bulbs) for no specified reason may not have been a wise idea. It’s up to them to find out who’s behind this scheme (the dead girl’s father) and why he wants them all dead (because they killed his dead daughter.) Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill as they pledge Delta Gamma and get initiated into the Sisters of Death!
When a dollmaker’s wife leaves him, which of the following does he do? A) Reflects inward on his failed marriage, seizes the opportunity for self-improvement, starts working out, embraces meditation, and emerges a better man. B) Starts putting away a twelve pack before noon every day, eating week old Chinese takeout, and getting really into English Premier League soccer as a means of ignoring his sorrows. C) Starts shrinking people down into a collection of miniature doll-people for no real reason. If you guessed C, then congratulations, you’re clearly a madman bent on ill-fated schemes of varying degrees of lunacy. And no you can’t borrow our shrinking ray. Attack of the Puppet People tells the story of such a madman, and the unfortunate woman who stumbles across his scheme while working as a secretary at his doll factory. That’s right, he makes dolls, and turns people into dolls, and dolls are probably found in a section of the toy store close to puppets, hence: Attack of the Puppet People. There is a puppet show in the movie, but it isn’t a result of the madman. It’s the result of another madman, it supposedly played on Broadway, and you will not believe your eyes when you see it. Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for Attack of the Puppet People, classic 60s B movie cheese that is almost as scary as that Roberto Benigni version of Pinocchio!
Visit the scenic City of the Dead! Just up the road from the Village of the Damned and a hop, skip and a jump away from the Municipality of the Mildly Bloated. This is vintage horror stuff. A sleepy northeastern town, still under the shadow of the witchcraft trials it once held, a town that’s now somehow completely forgotten by the world despite existing in the middle of New England in the 1960s. Get out your vintage horror bingo card and prepare to check off things like “elderly gas station attendant who warns people not to go up that road.” Yes, all your favorite cliches are here! Speaking of vintage horror cliches: Christopher Lee! Before he was Saruman, before he was…*sigh*…Dooku, he was a professor of the occult with a penchant for sending pretty young female students off to dangerous, devil-worshipping towns. Might he turn out to be secretly evil? For your answer, we remind you again that this is Christopher Lee. Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for a road trip to the City of the Dead! Because hey, it’s still gotta be better than Fort Worth.
Riding the tail end of the great Swamp Boy movie craze of the early 70s (see: Columbo the Swamp Boy, McCloud the Swamp Boy, Maude the Swamp Boy) Zindy the Swamp Boy effectively ended the genre. And for good reason: it violated one of the sacred tenants of the swamp boy genre: do not cast the annoying little kid who played Zindy as your swamp boy. Unfortunately, Zindy was cast in the movie because the director is his father, Rene Cardona Jr, who also made the previously RiffTrax-’d The Bermuda Triangle and Treasure of The Amazon. Unlike those movies, Zindy does not have a killer doll or a nazi hunting Donald Pleasance. It does however have a chimp that does the dishes, gator wrestling, and the world’s most deadly two square feet of quicksand. When Zindy’s grandfather discovers his son and daughter-in-law have been hospitalized, he does what we’d all do: flee the premises leaving them to die and guns down the man he believes is responsible. Then he gathers up their infant grandson and moves in with a chimp named Toribio. They move into the swamp, right? WRONG. Turns out Zindy the Swamp Boy is actually forbidden from entering the swamp, or more specifically the swamp zone. Yep, it’s that kind of movie. Sadly, Zindy also plays the flute, so you quickly begin to root for a quick outbreak of malaria to sweep through the swamp and all attached zones. Fortunately, the movie has an ending so wonderful that you’ll want to start the movie over as soon as it’s done, just to relive everything you just saw with the knowledge of where it’s leading. To say any more would be a disservice to you. Please watch, and experience Zindy The Swamp Boy for the first time.
We’ve seen so many big screen weddings that they’ve begun to feel a touch cliched. Yes yes, the handsome husband sweeps the beautiful bride off her feet. Blah blah, he carries her over the threshold. Yada yada yada, he takes her down to the basement to meet the gorilla named Spanky that he keeps in a cage down there that he had never mentioned owning until that very moment. Etc etc, the chimp escapes and attacks the bride, triggering a relapse to a previous life when she lived as a gorilla herself, interrupted only when the husband guns Spanky down in cold blood. And then they return three of the extra fondue pots they got as wedding gifts. This is the plot of The Bride and the Beast as written by one Ed Wood. This time around, instead of balling it up in Albuquerque, our characters go on on a honeymoon in Africa. You might think that since a main character has revealed that she was a gorilla in a previous life, this might affect the plot in some way. At least they spend the majority of the movie around gorillas in some capacity. Clearly you have never seen an Ed Wood movie before. No my friend, the plot revolves around deadly tigers, which we think were the alien’s Plan 10. The tigers are played by Fake Bela Lugosi. The Bride and the Beast is full of bad gorilla suits, absurd stock footage, and last minute realizations that “Oh yeah, this was supposed to be about gorillas, wasn’t it?” Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for this RiffTrax of The Bride and the Beast.
The cheesy 1962 fantasy epic Jack the Giant Killer is back, in newly recorded studio form! This one’s got it all: stop motion dragons, a leprechaun who lives in a bottle, a Viking who turns into a dog… it’s like if your hyper little brother wrote and directed Game of Thrones. Not to be confused with the recent Jack the Giant Slayer (just kidding, we know you weren’t confused and likely forgot that remake existed until this very moment) this movie keeps it old school, and answers the question “what would Ray Harryhausen style special effects look like if you didn’t hire Ray Harryhausen?” It also answers the question “would it be funny if a leprechaun in a bottle kept yelling ‘SEIZE A BONE’?” with a resounding yes, yes that would be very funny. Originally riffed live in Nashville, now updated and recorded fresh and extra Giant-Killing-y, say “Be right there!” to Mike, Kevin, and Bill and join them in mourning Herla the Wizard (poor, sweet Herla) for the fun of Jack the Giant Killer!
Yambaó! No, it’s not a dopey social media app you’d never heard of until it was purchased by Google for billions of dollars. Nor is it a miracle cleaning solution sold in 90s infomercials for only $19.99, including a bonus travel-sized tube of Yambaó. Yambaó, quite simply, is Yambaó, and there’s nothing else quite like Yambaó. It’s also entirely possible we just enjoy saying Yambaó. Yambaó (AKA Cry of the Bewitched, but why would you call it that when you can call it Yambaó) takes place on a sugarcane plantation in Cuba in the 1850s, and centers on the love triangle between a master, one of his slaves, and Yambaó, the mysterious dancing granddaughter of a sorceress who lives in the wilderness - yeah, we know, another one of those dang Cuban plantation witch love triangle movies we’re always doing. It’s weird, it’s fun, it’s flirty, there’s a cave granny with evil magic powers, it’s Yambaó!
Slumber parties! What could be more terrifying?? Thrill as a rented movie is watched! Chill as a boy someone likes is called and hung up on!! Squirm as ice cream is devoured directly from the container!!! OK, maybe slumber parties are not actually that terrifying. The one featured in The Last Slumber Party, despite the presence of a scalpel toting psychopath is no exception to this rule. This is because any hint of terror that might arise from the idea of high schoolers being murdered is completely negated by the VHS video quality, amateur sound, and baffling dialogue such as “Who’d you think it was, Shelley Hack?” It’s the last day of school, and one thing is on everyone’s mind: whether or not they are talking to Shelley Hack. In order to solve this problem, they gather at a friend’s house, where the oblivious parents fail to notice that the boys sneaking in and out of the house are in fact d-bags. All is good and stupid until an escaped lobotomy patient shows up and instantly becomes the most intelligent, well-mannered character in the movie. The fashion is 80s, the soundtrack is hair metal, the poster on the wall is inexplicably of Sesame Street, and the Shelley Hack references are more abundant than every other RiffTrax we’ve ever done combined. Slip into your footie pajamas and join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for The Last Slumber Party! Original film made in 1988.
Beast of the Yellow Night! No, it’s not a cleverly-named Simpsons Treehouse of Horror segment, it’s a movie! A movie about a man named Langdon and his deal with the devil. Langdon’s deal doesn’t involve a fiddle made of gold, it’s more about turning into a monster with a face straight out of the mask section at Spencer’s Gifts. Also the devil is not so much the traditional “pitchfork and horns” type, he’s more of a fat ghost with a bad hairline who travels with his own fog machine. And the fog machine seems to break down a lot. But hey, are you a fan of “yellow nights”??? Because the movie doesn’t actually have any of those. As far as we can tell, Langdon is some kind of undead murder spirit, sent by the fat devil ghost to do evil stuff at different points in history. Like Quantum Leap, but with slightly more cannibalism. This incarnation finds him in a beautiful home, with a beautiful wife, but rather than asking himself “how did I get here?” or just enjoying this luxurious life, he gets mad and ruins it all. If none of this is making sense, keep in mind the filmmakers didn’t even bother to specify a setting for their movie more clearly than “A Country in Southeast Asia.” Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill in going completely mad trying to figure out what exactly is supposed to be happening in Beast of the Yellow Night!
Time for Dinosaurus! Not to be confused with Dinosaur U.S., the traveling show where patriotic velociraptors do a leggy synchronized dance to entertain the troops. No, Dinosaurus is a vintage 60s monster flick, complete with a caveman and drunk-looking stop motion dinosaurs (or are they dinosauruses? It’s never quite clear). The dinos find themselves unfrozen on an island chock full of stereotypes (stereotypuses?) including a square-jawed hero, a fat man-child sidekick named Dumpy, a kid who knows what’s really going on but gosh, gee golly, nobody will listen to him, and O’Leary, an Irishman so drunk and cartoonish he single-handedly inspired the formation of the Irish Anti-Defamation League. And, last but not least, the Island Manager (which is apparently a thing) whose hat and beard and general sliminess might just remind you of a certain fella whose interests include keeping the Master happy and slow pizza delivery. It’s not about DinosaurMe, it’s not about DinosaurYou, it’s about DinosaurUs. We love this one and think you will too, join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for Dinosaurus!
And the 80s said, “let there be fantasy movies,” and there were fantasy movies, and they were good. Well, they weren’t really. But lo, raise thy flagon to the 80s, for through the mists of legendry* (*actual phrase from the movie) they bring us The Sword and the Sorcerer! Before George R.R. Martin ever Gamed a Throne, The Sword and the Sorcerer had a witch bringing forth a hideous monster, a noble family of good guys getting wiped out, and even a Red Wedding! Or at least a Magenta Wedding. It also has a three-bladed sword that shoots blades, the kind of idea that seems like it could only have been pitched by an 8 year old boy right after the phrase “You know what would be COOL?” Follow the adventures of our hero, Talon, a rogue/warrior/buccaneer/general/upholsterer/freelance architect/hooker with a heart of gold, as he gets vengeance and shoots his sword and swings on ropes and whatnot, y’know, hero stuff. It’s high fantasy, just like the blacklight posters and pewter figurines at Spencer’s Gifts envisioned! Join The Mike and The Bill and The Kevin for The Sword and the Sorcerer!
R.O.T.O.R. could be described as The Room meets Cyborg Cop 2, and if that makes any sense to you at all then you know how excited we are about it! It’s an embarrassment of riches, where to begin? Our hero Captain J.B. Coldyron, police robotics genius and ranch owner, whose dialogue was all dubbed by a different actor and written by a different species? The goofy office robot who somehow possesses more sophisticated intelligence than the dangerous “advanced” prototype on the loose, aka R.O.T.O.R.? Or what the acronym R.O.T.O.R. itself stands for: Robotic Officer of the Tactical Operations Research. Yes, the last word in the killer police robot’s name is Research, for some reason. Except later in the movie, when it suddenly stands for Reserve instead. Why? If you want an explanation, you’d better ask Shoeboogie, the wacky Native American janitor who loves to dance. Actually, don’t ask Shoeboogie anything, it’s probably best to avoid all eye contact with Shoeboogie. Coldyron! Research! Shoeboogie! If you say those words real fast they kind of sound like a song, but they’re also three of the many reasons you should join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for the wonder of wonders that is R.O.T.O.R.!
If you took a Dungeons & Dragons adventure written hastily by an 8th grader during study hall and turned it into a movie, you’d wind up with something a lot like Hawk the Slayer. In fact, we wouldn’t be surprised if that’s how they actually got the script. But this movie has something that no D&D adventure can claim: Jack Palance. A whole lot of Jack Palance. Specifically MEGA-EVIL Jack Palance, playing a character named Voltan. He yells, kills, yells, whisper-threatens, whisper-yells, kills, and mostly just yells his way across the countryside. Seems no one can stop him until his brother Hawk - yes, his brother, despite being about 40 years younger - gathers an elf, a dwarf, and a giant to take him down. Not as much dignity as a Fellowship of the Ring, more of a… Crew of the Stuff. Keen-eyed fans may recognize the dwarf from our release Prisoners of the Lost Universe. Also, the actor playing Hawk went on to portray Jack’s dad in Lost -- hmmm, Prisoners of the LOST Universe, LOST, time to dig up your old Lost conspiracy theories because there’s something happening here, IT’S ALL CONNECTED. Join Mike, Kevin and Bill for a heaping helping of Jack the Palance and Hawk the Slayer! Original film made in 1980.
Decades before somebody had the revolutionary idea to do a Godzilla remake that was “good” or “cool”, Hollywood hired the director of 2012 to make one that would be neither of those things but would instead have an ad campaign co-starring the Taco Bell chihuahua. Matthew Broderick stars as Dr. Niko Tatopoulos, because obviously when you have a character named Niko Tatopoulos, you get Matthew Broderick to play him. Co-starring is the hit Puff Daddy single “Almost Certainly the Low Point of Jimmy Page’s Career” (Sample lyrics: Uh-huh, Yeah, uuh / Uh-huh, Yeah, uuh.) And in all the commercials they showed that part where the guy gets stomped on. Somehow this is a two and a half hour long movie. About as scary as the Tamagotchi you had back in 1998 and about as loud and obnoxious as the Prodigy CD you were listening to that summer, Godzilla was one of the biggest RiffTrax Live titles we’ve ever done. Join Mike, Kevin, Bill, and roughly 82% of the cast of The Simpsons for this studio MP3 version of Godzilla! Original film made in 1998.
We would say that Fun In Balloonland is our favorite RiffTrax movie that we've ever done, but there’s just one problem: it’s hard to really describe it as a movie. It is an event. To attempt to describe its plot to you would be like attempting to divide by zero. There are balloons, there are kids, there is a parade, and there were mercifully cameras rolling to capture the madness. It’s a spectacle so cracked and baffling that you’ll have to double check to make sure it wasn’t recorded at Pirates World, home of Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny. In fact, the Ice Cream Bunny would have taken one look at this flick and begged off saying “Too weird for me man! Even I have my limits! Oh whoops, lost another kid off the back of the fire engine. Well, you’re gonna get that.” Fun In Balloon Land throws a whole casserole of crazy at the screen: kindergartners in gold lamé diapers, giant Indian stereotypes, a maniac of a parade host, blow fish who halfheartedly tell jokes, a lengthy guessing game, The Farmer In The Dell, two headed cats, and something called The Marrying Turkey. Then Santa shows up. Trust us, it will all make sense when you sit down and watch it.* We've been holding this one back for the holiday season ever since we discovered it at the beginning of the year and we’re delighted to finally present—no, unleash would be the better word—we’re delighted to unleash it to all of you. Please join Mike, Kevin, Bill, and the Marrying Turkey for: Fun In Balloonland. *100% untrue.
A fiendish super-villain is kidnapping star jai alai players in order to harvest their organs! Even more shocking, someone pitched that plot to a Hollywood executive and they said “Yes, we’ll make that movie!” And when you want an obscure paddle sport champion kidnapped, there’s only one group to turn to: The Wonder Women! No job is too big, no outfit too skimpy, no catfight with fellow Wonder Women worth passing up! (Warning: Please note that we said Women, not Woman. This movie does not contain any invisible airplanes or golden lassos. If you or a loved one dons an American flag style leotard at any point during the viewing, please consult a doctor, especially if it’s grandpa doing the donning.) The only thing that stands in their way is Ross Hagen. Well, Ross Hagen and several thousand Filipino citizens who were apparently unaware that a movie was being filmed and literally stand in the way during the movie’s several chase scenes. Fortunately, their lives were endangered, quite possibly lost, for a quality production, one that uses something called “Brain Sex” as a central plot point. Mike, Kevin, and Bill don Linda Carter’s Bracelets of Submission to riff Wonder Women, the rare sort of movie that manages to rip off Charlie’s Angels despite coming out three years before Charlie’s Angels.
Hollywood legend Lash LaRue returns to the silver screen in this thrilling tale of zombies, the occult, and stretching the definition of “Hollywood legend” as far as our lawyers will allow us! Lash LaRue, as you’ll undoubtedly recall, was famous for being playing a cowboy that used a whip. In every movie he was in, he found a way to pick up a whip and crack it a few times. Cattle rustlers? Whip! Pistols at dawn? Whip! Bankrupt from loss of cattle because trying to stop cattle rustlers with just a whip is incredibly stupid? Whip! Dead from ignoring the pistols part of pistols at dawn and instead bringing a—Well, you get the idea. Yes, Lash and his whip were inseparable. It’s even claimed that he taught Harrison Ford how to use the bullwhip! Sadly for Lash, he was providing his “whip lessons” on the set of Regarding Henry, and was escorted off the lot by security after startling Harrison in the bathroom. But that didn’t stop Lash, and he’s still flinging his whip around in The Dark Power. And it’s a good thing too, because four ancient Toltec Indian chiefs have risen from the dead and are terrorizing a house full of college students who don’t look a day over 32. Turns out that defiling their burial ground was a bad idea! Who knew? Can Lash drive his Chrysler there with his blinker on the entire way before the students are picked off one by one? Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for this RiffTrax to find out!
Did you ever watch the movie Carrie and think, “hm, pretty good, but her creepy home life wasn’t nearly creepy enough”? Then boy, have we got something for you! Meet Susan. She’s just like any other troubled teen, except her dad is an undertaker, their house is a mortuary full of corpses, she’s got a sleazy uncle who’s around a little too often, and a room full of pet tarantulas who do her bidding. And what’s her bidding, exactly? Revenge murder against those who’ve wronged her, of course! And how exactly do the tarantulas kill her enemies, given that tarantulas are really not that dangerous to humans? Well, they… um... you’ll just have to watch the movie and see if you can figure it out, because we really can’t. Some of the slowest murders in film history, a final sequence so drawn out that the first time we screened it we were in tears (the laughing kind of tears, mostly), and middle-aged teenagers galore! Time to pucker up for your Kiss of the Tarantula!
Finally, the acclaimed smash hit RiffTrax Live event of 2014 is now available to own! Considered by many critics to be one of the greatest movies ever made in the “Tornado full of sharks” genre, Sharknado debuted in 2013 to unprecedented buzz. Not since Snakes On A Plane had the internet been so excited about a movie, and not since the late 90s had anyone been so excited about anything starring Tara Reid. From the moment it debuted, Sharknado was one of the most requested titles in RiffTrax history. It makes Jaws IV look like Jaws III, and Jaws III look like Jaws. Riffed LIVE from the State Theater in Minneapolis and broadcast to over 700 theaters across North America, this hilarious live event also features an all-new take on the Mystery Science Theater 3000 fan-favorite short A Case of Spring Fever starring Coily the Spring Sprite! Look, why are you still reading this? It has chainsaws, helicopters dropping bombs, and the aforementioned TORNADO FULL OF SHARKS!
When you see a title like Alien Outlaw, you know to expect one thing: a heavy focus on rural gunfighting shows and the agencies that book them to regional fairs. What’s that? You expect some quantity of alien outlaw activity? Well, there is some of that, sure, a small amount. But surely the next thing you expect is a healthy dose of elderly whipmaster Lash LaRue, sort of wandering around the set and shouting things at other characters? And that he’ll be shirtless at some point? Okay, good, glad we’re on the same page there at least. When last we saw Lash LaRue he was fighting ancient Native American zombies over a sacred rental property in The Dark Power. This time he and his protégé, the young pantsless gunfighting phenom Jesse Jamison, are defending a tiny mountain community from alien outlaws - no, that’s not a typo, despite the title Alien Outlaw there are actually multiple alien outlaws in this movie. It’s also not entirely clear that they’re outlaws, and it’s even less clear why they came to Earth or what their plans are at any point in the story. But one thing’s for sure: they love old-timey Wild West gunfights! Because okay, why not! Homemade Predator costumes, Lash LaRue AND his fat hillbilly sidekick buddy from The Dark Power, an alien killed with a fishing hook, what more could anyone ask for? For Lash to use the whipping talent that made him famous at some point in the movie, maybe? Good luck with that! It’s time for befuddlement and laughter, join Mike, Kevin and Bill for Alien Outlaw!
It is a tale as old as time: four turtles are exposed to a mutagen and grow up to annoy the living crap out of every adult within earshot. They form distinct, marketable personalities and headband colors: nerd, joker, leader who seems to not grasp that a long sharp sword can actually cut things, and cool but rude.* Then, when a major entertainment conglomerate deems it long enough since the last movie to be financially prudent, they emerge from the sewers and onto the silver screen. Occasionally Splinter makes a funny. This iteration was not without controversy, however! Turtles fans were outraged when Witwicky love interest Megan Fox was cast as April O’Neil. Many complained that she was completely wrong for the role, and that the only true April O’Neil was Judith Hoag, Paige Turco, Renae Jacobs, Veronica Taylor, or perhaps Sarah Michelle Gellar. Fortunately, Ms. Fox delivers a subtly nuanced performance, and is often the most realistic looking thing on screen. Mike, Kevin, and Bill take on the winner of our “Worst Movie of 2014” poll, TMNT! *It has come to our attention that there is a faction who interpret the theme song lyrics as “Raphael is cool but crude.” These people are literally worse than everyone who was tried at Nuremberg combined.
There’s riffs out there this big?? One of our favorites, now available as a studio riff, the movie that’s been called “Probably one of the top four films in the Anaconda series,” Anaconda! Anaconda stars a pre-fame Jennifer Lopez, a post-fame Eric Stoltz, and an Owen Wilson who even then was somehow ashamed of his role in The Internship despite it not happening for another sixteen years. With the help of Ice Cube (Straight Outta Compton, F@%& Da Police, Are We Done Yet?) they set off into the Amazon in search of those drones they claimed were going to revolutionize package delivery. Then Eric Stoltz gets stung and paralyzed by a venomous wasp, so things are really looking up for our crew when they encounter Jon Voight. Voight has been obsessed with hunting down a deadly anaconda ever since the snake tricked him into selling his beloved Chrysler LeBaron to George Costanza. From then on, things spiral into a deadly game of cat and mouse, one where the cat is played by a snake, and the mouse is played by Danny Trejo. And, as if that wasn't enough, at one point the anaconda spits a monkey right at a man’s face! How many movies can say that? Don’t miss out! Original film made in 1997.
This is the tale of a man who transforms into a violent lizard creature whenever he’s in the sun too long. No, he’s not the third wheel love interest in an upcoming Twilight reboot, he’s The Hideous Sun Demon! It’s the late 50s, a time when exposure to radiation still caused fun stuff, like superpowers and shape-changing, as opposed to less fun stuff, like, y’know, death. After some radioactive material falls off the toy train the scientists use to transport it through the lab (actual plot point, not a joke) mild-mannered genius drunk Dr. Gilbert McKenna is changed forever. Sunlight turns him into a reptile man-monster, presumably because that’s the rubber suit that was cheapest to rent when they made this movie. But not cheap enough for them to rent the bottom part of the suit, apparently, because he runs around in totally soaked khaki pants for roughly half the movie. Why are his pants so wet? That’s just part of the mystery! It’s a superhuman dose of old-fashioned nuclear mutation fun, stay out of direct sunlight and join Mike, Kevin and Bill for The Hideous Sun Demon!
Bruce Dern has it all: A beautiful wife. An expensive house with a pool. A two headed monkey. Casey Kasem for a neighbor. And yet, he’s feeling unfulfilled, perhaps because— What’s that? Oh, you’re right, we did kind of just gloss right over the unusual part of that sentence. Yes, Top 40 DJ Casey Kasem is Bruce’s neighbor. He’s always stopping by to deliver a long distance dedication or prattle on about some dead dog while Bruce is trying to do important stuff, like attach heads to a monkey or an idiot manchild. For you see, Bruce’s entirely normal pastime is figuring out how graft additional heads onto things. Why? Why did Michelangelo paint? Why did Mozart compose? Man is compelled to create, and sometimes what he creates is as stupid as a serial killer’s head sewn onto a local hillbilly’s shoulder. Needless to say, this does not go well. (Both being neighbors with Casey Kasem and the whole 'manufacturing godless abominations in the guest room you converted into a lab' thing.) Come for the mutant in overalls, stay for the wife in a cage, it’s all here in The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant!
“We should rip off Road House and Billy Ray Cyrus should play Dalton!” There are two types of people in this world: those who read the above sentence and immediately lapsed into fits of hysterical, table-pounding, pants-wetting laughter. And then the other .00001% of people, who thought “Sounds good to me! Is Michelle Pfeiffer’s sister available to play the love interest?” We have that .00001% to thank for Radical Jack. Eight long years after "Achy Breaky Heart" came out, and approximately 7 years, 364 days, 23 hours, 59 minutes and 34 seconds after the first jukebox playing "Achy Breaky Heart" was smashed with a pool cue, American cinemas got the movie they needed. Except, minor detail, it was actually released direct to video in Russia. Which makes a lot of sense once you see Radical Jack. Fans of Road House will recognize the key points: a loner with a mysterious past comes to town and finds employment at a local dive bar. A local arms dealer has grown rich running the town, despite the fact that its population appears to hover around 35 people. Occasionally Billy Ray takes breaks from doing construction to pour water all over himself in slow motion while seductive music plays1. The only thing missing is the Monster Truck. Once you see the budget on this thing, you’ll understand why they had to leave it out. And Radical Jack doesn’t just rip off one of our all time favorite RiffTrax titles! Shot in Rutland, VT, it features the very time machine from Time Chasers itself!! (AKA, a crappy, weathered small airplane.) Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for Radical Jack. Just don’t tell their lips, their fingertips, or various other body parts. 1 This never actually happened in the version of Road House that was shown in theaters, but it does in the one that airs on a loop in our hearts.
To Catch a Yeti. To live a dream. To Meat a Loaf. Some things just seem too good to be true. Meat Loaf, in a movie about a bigfoot? But Meat Loaf isn’t playing the bigfoot? Might seem disappointing, until you find out Meat is instead playing the world’s greatest hunter, Big Jake Grizzly, and his prey is a yeti that’s 2 feet tall and makes the puppetry in Mac & Me look like high art. Even calling the yeti a puppet is really an exaggeration, since basically all it can do is sit still and whimper and blink. But that doesn’t stop it from doing some rad skateboard moves1, because hey, it’s the 90s!!! (1radical skateboard moves = someone dropped this stuffed animal disaster on a board and kicked it down a hill) Against all notions of reason and good taste, a little girl is charmed by the creature and makes him her friend. But there’s also an evil little rich boy (who somehow manages to be even more detestable than the yeti and ‘Loaf COMBINED) who wants the hideous goggle-eyed creature for himself. It all leads to a thrilling hijinks-filled showdown in New York City...or at least, the best fake approximation of New York City to be found in a production so Canadian your screen will ooze maple syrup. Maple syrup, Meat Loaf, a horrific puppet, and more things you’ll never want to eat again after To Catch a Yeti!
Rock n Roll Nightmare is what you’d get if Mötley Crüe guest hosted The Muppet Show. But it turns out it wasn’t Mötley Crüe, it was a Mötley Crüe tribute band. And it wasn’t The Muppets, it was some scrap foam from the Muppet factory that fused together when the dumpster behind the studio got too hot and a bum stuck googly eyes on it. And it wasn’t a Mötley Crüe tribute band, it was a sizeable pile of industrial ooze that was struck by lightning and achieved basic sentience and learned rudimentary musicianship. Wait, that actually may be Mötley Crüe... Yes, Rock n Roll Nightmare combines the exciting worlds of hair metal and hideous puppets! The Tritonz have rented a house in rural Canada. Their ambitious goal? To record ten new minutes of music. For this they have set aside an entire month. Little do they know that years earlier, or perhaps the previous day, an Oven Skeleton killed the family that lived in the house (just stay with us.) Needless to say, this causes any number of unspeakable horrors to happen, namely the full length performances of several Tritonz songs and the sight of singer Jon Mikl Thor’s butt in the shower. Also, a literal portal to hell opens up and the devil and several of his minions come through. Be warned, these scenes are not for the faint of heart, as a few of these puppets are slightly scarier and more grotesque than Baby Sinclair on Dinosaurs. Like Spinal Tap recording The Basement Tapes on the set of Labyrinth if it was written by Otto from The Simpsons, Rock n Roll Nightmare is some serious 80s cheese. Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill to talk about rock, around the clock, because their energy has got them where they wanna be.
Well, Save my Bell and Lost my Boys, it’s Mario Lopez and Corey Haim! In Fever Lake, A.C. Slater and The Other Corey™ are college kids, or possibly high school students, depending on what part of the film you’re watching. They, a sex-crazed buddy, and some female teen-adults leave whatever kind of school it might be for a trip out to a cabin in an equally vague rural location, Fever Lake! Might it be the kind of cabin with a dark past that “nobody goes up to anymore”? Starring those Tiger Beat heartthrobs and Bo Hopkins as a grizzled cop, Fever Lake is a good clean old-fashioned horror movie the whole family can enjoy.
Stone Cold tells the story of John Cold, a renegade cop played by failed NFL player Brian Bosworth, whose most notable football accomplishment was having a bad haircut. We’re just kidding of course. The character’s name is John Stone. Otherwise that first sentence would be ridiculous. When the FBI wants to bust a notorious biker gang by sending in an undercover agent, there’s only one choice: John Stone, who is sure to blend in since he walks around with what looks to be a piece of roadkill that got run over by a bleach truck glued to his head. Inside the gang he meets bikers with names like Ice, Gut, Chains, AWOL, Beetle, Sarge, General Halftrack, and Miss Buxley. At first everything is going great, but then it turns out that the murderous, drug-dealing nazis are actually kind of a bunch of dicks. So Stone is forced to take them out the only way he knows out: by maximizing civilian casualties and property damage. Despite Boz not being an actor, or even able to tackle Bo Jackson, Stone Cold turned out spectacular. Like, “launching an unmanned motorcycle into a helicopter to bring it down on the courthouse steps” spectacular. Stone Cold is like if you wadded up all the Fast & Furious movies into one gelatinous ball, replaced all the crap about "family" with maniacs who shoot beer cans off each others heads with machine guns, and then fired it out of a shark you’d somehow transformed into a bazooka. Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for a RiffTrax that’s so 80s, they legally couldn’t put it out until the 90s!
Did you like Birdemic, but find yourself wishing it had focused less on the birds and more on stock options, dinner dates, and fifty percent discounts? Did you wish that Rod’s friend who says “A day without sex is a day wasted” had been explored more as a character? Did you find Rod too charismatic and dynamic as a lead? Well spruce my bark beetles, this may just well be the Hot Ferrari you’ve been looking for! Before he made Birdemic, James Nguyen made Julie and Jack. All the familiar Nguyen trademarks are there: poor Tippi Hedren. Blown out white balance. Characters announcing they are going to purchase Ferraris after their company is bought out and their stock options are fully vested for a childishly round number (seriously, that specific scenario happens in both his movies!) But while Birdemic explored the issue of global warming with the nuance of Grover explaining the terms ‘Near’ and ‘Far’ to a three year old, Julie and Jack attempts to delve into the deepest philosophical question of them all: what does it mean to truly love someone? Needless to say, this goes very poorly. Nguyen shoots in a wide variety of exotic offices that he definitely used to work at, or at least deliver things too. The cast features some familiar faces from Birdemic, as well as actors that were evidently too crappy to cast in Birdemic. And just when you think it can’t get any better, the director makes a cameo himself. Sample line of his dialogue (keep in mind, he wrote it himself): "Jeez, you know, I mean, yeah, I'm so busy working on the computer theory, the algorithm, and uh, and the computing uh, math theory that I'm, that I totally ignore and forgotten about the computing history." Julie and Jack is a must see for any fan of Birdemic, or for anyone who enjoys seeing the obsessions of a madman manifest themselves in movie-like form. Grab your favorite blurred candy, postpone that Victoria’s Secret cover shoot, and invite over your favorite marine mammals su
1982. The decade of the action hero was underway. Within years, catchphrase-mumbling sentient biceps like Stallone, Schwarzenegger, and Guttenburg would come to dominate the cinemas. Audiences hungered for mayhem, bloodshed, and for a very brief period of time, Billy Zabka. What they got instead was Megaforce. Named “Movie of the Year” by critics from a diverse array of publications including “Upsetting Jumpsuit Enthusiast,” “Dweeby Dirtbike Review,” and “Our Memories are Severely Clouded by Nostalgia Monthly,” Megaforce made film history by giving lead character Barry Bostwick both a funny headband and a funny hairstyle. They would prove to be the film’s most enduring legacy. Some viewers may criticize its paper-thin plot, tedious action sequences of no consequence, and overall cheap feel despite having a shockingly high budget for the era. To this we respond: funny headband and funny hairstyle. Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill (who do not) for the oft-requested RiffTrax of Megaforce!
Meet George. He’s twenty, unemployed, lives at home, and spends his free time using a magic pool to spy on nude women while they are taking baths. If the movie were taking place in present times, George probably would have already called you something horrible in a comment section today. But somehow he is the hero of our story. Standing in George’s way is the evil wizard Lodac, who intends to feed the Princess to his pet dragon. After confirming that she will not be nude when she is fed to the dragon, George decides to rescue her. Fortunately, he has an ace up his sleeve: the birthday presents that his mommy gave him. At this point we should acknowledge that George is not exactly Liam Neeson in Taken. These presents include some magic armor, a magic horse, and yes, a magic sword. The armor filed a grievance against the producers when the movie title was announced, while the horse merely continued filling his dung sack. Along the way, Jack, er, Arthur, er, Jon Snow, er, GEORGE is helped by a band of merry knights, all of whom seem to be participating in a “who can do the worst accent” contest. (SPOILER: The Irish guy wins.) They also encounter an ogre, a hag, elves, and pretty much everything else that you can find on the “List of Fantasy Clichés” Wikipedia page. Spells will be cast! Heroes will be born! Bones will be seized! Join Mike, Kevin, Bill, and a horse that may or may not be magical, we don’t know since the title doesn’t address it, for The Magic Sword!
If you scooped a pile of goo out of a backed-up gutter, submerged a pair of electrodes into it, fed it a slurry of protein rich nutrients while sending jolts of ever-increasing voltages of electricity through until it demonstrated the most basic signs of what could technically be considered life, then immediately handed the pile of goo a video camera, it is impossible that it would make a worse movie than Rollergator. Why is it so bad? Let’s start with the ultra cliched plot: The talking, purple, almost twelve year old alligator is on the run from the skateboard ninja who is employed by the evil carnival owner. We know, we’ve heard it a million times. But here’s where Rollergator differs from all the other talking animals the 90s gave us. Get this: he’s totally in your face. We’re talking x-treme with a capital X, ‘tude with a capital ‘. Does he rap? Please. You may as well ask if Poochie ever hitchhiked to the fireworks factory. Standing in the way of Rollergator’s goal of endorsing every Blue Razzberry flavored product that 1996 had to offer is Joe Estevez. Joe is the villain, because he merely wants to put Rollergator in a cage, whereas the rest of humanity wants him destroyed in the quickest way possible. Joe thinks people will pay a pretty penny to see Rollergator quip at them. What he doesn’t realize is that nobody will be able to hear Rollergator’s quips because SOME HORRIBLE MUSICIAN IS PLAYING THE SAME AWFUL ACOUSTIC GUITAR RIFF OVER 98% OF THE MOVIE!!! Shot on video without any fancy pants “microphones” or “lights” or “permits to record here”, Rollergator is truly something to behold. We’re not saying this is the worst movie we’ve ever done here at RiffTrax, but that’s only because we aren’t being asked to do so under penalty of perjury. Please join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for Rollergator.
Many years ago the people of El Paso, Texas gave their money to a local fertilizer salesman and said, “Go make us the best horror movie you can make.” The result, "Manos" The Hand of Fate, is an object lesson in why you should never give your money to an El Paso fertilizer salesman. Manos has it all: teens making out, luggage fetching scenes, The Master, Torgo... Did The African Queen have a Torgo? We think not! Did Casablanca have teens making out? It did not! Did The Master have a The Master in it? Okay, perhaps you’ve got us there. Manos is still one of the strangest examples of what one person with no particular talent can accomplish when given a camera, what technically counts as a cast, and a soundtrack that will drive you mad and/or serve as a pretty sweet ringtone. Originally regarded as one of the defining episodes of Mystery Science Theater before becoming one of the most popular RiffTrax Live events of all time, this studio VOD version of "Manos" The Hands of Fate is perfect for anyone who lives in terror of jib shots, live audiences, or Norman.
It is with glee in our hearts and clumsy 70s karate vengeance on our minds that we present to you the amazing, undefinable Death Promise. So goofy, so full of confused non-actors wandering through their dialogue like kids lost at the mall, and with so much more gentle sincerity than you’d expect in a movie about systematic revenge against a group of evil slumlords. It’s Guy From Harlem meets Kill Bill meets an after-school special about friendship - in other words, we really like it. A boardroom full of comically-dressed, openly-evil New York City rich guys are hassling their slum tenants for reasons that don’t quite get around to becoming clear. Fortunately, their harassment methods don’t go much beyond “empty a box of rats into a building that’s already filled with rats.” But when they kill an old drunk boxer, the old drunk boxer’s son makes a vow, a pledge… oh, what to call it… an oath to demise? A commitment to casualties? Well, however you want to phrase it, he and his surprisingly agreeable friend Speedy work their way through the list of baddies who wronged them. All in pursuit of the main baddie, a shadowy figure who - and we’re not making this up - sits so that you can’t see his face, only his evil hand stroking the evil cat in his lap. Again, this movie is taking itself seriously. Again, we really like it. Settle in for some upbeat revenge with Mike, Kevin, and Bill. We don’t just promise you’ll have a good time: we Death Promise.
An organized crime syndicate is attempting to muscle out all the karate dojos in the country with the aid of deadly Russian black belt, and it’s up to the new kid in town and his breakdancing sidekick to defeat them, if the local bully doesn’t stop him first! Here is a test: at which point in the above sentence did you realize the film was a product of the 80s? A. After “Karate Dojos” B. After “Deadly Russian” C. After “Breakdancing sidekick” D. I actually thought it was a Sofia Coppola film from the late 2000s If you answered A, B, or C, then congratulations! Your senses have been honed to detect the fine subtleties of 80s cheese and you are going to enjoy the hell out of No Retreat, No Surrender. “Borrowing” the jingoism of Rocky IV and pretty much everything else from The Karate Kid, it adds the baffling twist of having our hero learn karate from the ghost of Bruce Lee. It is the second most unrealistic thing in the movie after having Jean Claude Van Damme portray a Russian. Co-starring other 80s staples such as the fat guy who is always eating (otherwise viewers might not have noticed that he is fat) and training montages that out-parody every training montage parody you’ve ever seen, No Retreat, No Surrenderwill get you so pumped up you’ll be tempted to forgive Van Damme for Street Fighter. All that’s missing is a ponytailed, toxic waste dumping millionaire to deem it: “Perfect…”
When you review the list of reasons that the Star Wars Holiday Special was such a colossal failure, very rarely does “Not enough Judd Hirsch” come up. “Contains no Judd Hirsch” was actually one of the few things critics cited as a positive for the SWHS. In fact, rumor has it that George Lucas got the entire special green-lit solely by pitching an hour of television that Judd Hirsch would not appear in. So while The Night that Dracula Saved the World does not have Harvey Korman, or crappy animation, or an elderly wookie pleasuring itself, it does have Judd Hirsch. Please do not go into this special expecting not to see Judd Hirsch. You have been given fair warning. Judd Hirsch plays Dracula, who is facing a major dilemma: he’s played by Judd Hirsch. Also, The Witch is refusing to fly over the moon, something that is totally a thing that everyone associates with Halloween. If she doesn’t fly over the moon, Halloween will be cancelled (it was already on thin ice after a Halloween special starring Judd Hirsch aired.) Fortunately for Dracula, he’s got a lineup of monsters to help him, none of whom are played by Judd Hirsch. If you’re on a box of seasonally available General Mills marshmallow cereal, you’re in this special: Frankenstein's monster, The Wolfman, The Mummy, even MST3K's own Brain Guy makes an inexplicable appearance. Together they must stop The Witch from doing the unthinkable and ruining Halloween, (though everyone probably would have blamed it on Judd Hirsch anyway.) Thrill and chill at how low the standards were for winning an Emmy in the 70s! (Seriously. It won one.) The Night that Dracula Saved the World is probably the second worst holiday special of all time, but then again, see it and decide for yourself. At least the Star Wars Holiday Special had those funny old commercials. Happy Halloween!
“I love the Power Glove… it’s so bad.” This iconic movie quote is often misattributed to Lawrence of Arabia, but in fact it’s from our newest VOD, The Wizard! Before there was a terrible movie about the Super Mario Bros., there was a terrible movie about PLAYING Super Mario Bros. Fred Savage’s little brother is a savant video game player, and the two of them run off to California so he can compete in Video Armageddon, that big famous video game contest like they had in the 80s, remember those? Sure, we all remember those, and they definitely happened all the time. They’re joined by a plucky little girl who’s just putting up with all this until she can grow up to sing in the indie rock band Rilo Kiley (no, really!). The kids are pursued by a child bounty hunter, again, something that might sound fake but is definitely just as real as Video Armageddon. To add to the playful Nintendo fun, the child bounty hunter looks like, well, a sexual predator. And at one point he is even accused of inappropriate touching. No, really! All this happens in The Wizard! The little kid Nintendo movie! And we haven’t even scraped the surface of the unnecessarily complex and bleak family drama at the center of this movie that is, primarily, a commercial for Nintendo and Nintendo-based products. There’s almost too much to love here. Dust off your NES Advantage, blow in the cartridge even though we all know that doesn’t do anything, and join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for a walk down “not how you remember it from childhood” memory lane with The Wizard!
Ah, Christmas. The stockings are hung. The fire is roaring. Mom and dad have been abducted by an African warlord and their son forces a friend to board a plane to Finland to find them only to be kidnapped by an ogre who forces them into slavery. Chestnuts roasting. You know how it goes! I Believe in Santa Claus starts with our hero, Simon, being locked in a closet by a cruel janitor. Perhaps he was trying to eat pudding without eating his meat, we’re not sure. Anyways, Simon is a bit of a whiner these days because both his parents have been kidnapped while on an aid mission to Africa. Where in Africa you might ask? “Just Africa!” the movie says, and yes, it’s going to be that kind of film. Anyway, you’re probably way ahead of us, but yes, Santa Claus goes on a covert mission to rescue the hostages with the aid of a fairy princess and a couple of automatic weapon toting child soldiers. Kris Kringle nearly gets devoured by an alligator, Simon nearly gets devoured by the ogre, and there’s probably a scene on the cutting room floor where Blitzen nearly gets devoured by Comet and Cupid. Because yet again, it’s that kind of film. Add in some of the most maddening Christmas earworms this side of “Dogs Barking Jingle Bells”, and you’ve got yourself a brand new RiffTrax Christmas classic that’s destined to join the ranks of Stinky the Skunk, Droppo, Accordion Wolf, The Small Tree of No Account, Lupita, the husky kid from Magic Christmas Tree, Rudolph’s foxy mama, Norman Spear Jr, and the Ice Cream Bunny himself. Stop all your crying business and join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for the madness that is I Believe in Santa Claus.
It’s obvious what the makers of Icebreaker were going for: Die Hard on Skis. Unfortunately, they weren’t even able to make A Good Day to Die Hard* on Skis. We think they should have gone with making Speed 2: Cruise Control, aka Die Hard on a Boat on Skis. We heard the boat was available. Terrorists have taken over a Vermont ski slope! Why? Who knows! Their motives are extremely unclear. Perhaps they were frustrated by the state’s lack of east to west interstates. Or maybe they were angered by Vermonters' inexplicable preference of Heady Topper over the superior Focal Banger.*** The point is, Sean Astin is the only man who can stop them. Why? We actually know the answer to this one: because that’s how the Die Hard on a ____ format works, dammit! Standing in Sean’s way is B-movie god Bruce Campbell, who evidently really wanted an all expenses paid ski vacation. And when we say “Standing in Sean’s way” we mean it quite figuratively. We are not entirely convinced these two ever actually were on set at the same time. The two trade quips at a bunny slope level that culminates in the most thrilling series of snowboard stunts we’ve seen ever since we tried to play a downloaded ROM of 1080 on a stuttery N64 emulator. Written and directed by David Giancola (Time Chasers) and featuring a memorable performance by Asahi T-shirt Guy from Radical Jack, Icebreaker is one film that will make you say Yippee Ki Yay, Mr. Gamgee!**** *It’s technically the fifth** Die Hard movie. **We know, we prefer to pretend it doesn’t exist either. Besides, how can there be a fifth Die Hard movie when we’re also pretending the fourth one doesn’t exist?) ***Please forgive us, one of our writers moved to Vermont four months ago and these are the only two facts about his new home he has learned in that time. ****I refuse to apologize. What are you going to do, come find me?? I’m in Vermont!!
At long last, the conclusion to the endless, seriously endless, so-unbelievably-endless-they-took-two-whole-movies-to-end-it endless Harry Potter saga is here, fully riffed and available in delicious RiffTrax flavored jellybean form! Until this movie came out, a lot of people thought Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 was the end of the series, the “Part 1” thing being a cute ironic affectation like Leonard Part 6 or when you call a fat guy “Tiny.” But no, Harry Potter is back, and it’s time to watch his whimsical friends who we’ve goofed along with for seven full movies drop dead rapid-fire like background players in a Vietnam movie. Part 1 was all about finding and destroying horcruxes, but Part 2 really ramps it up, following the kids as they… continue finding and destroying horcruxes. Like the film version of your nephew forcing you to watch him rack up Xbox achievements and trophies, but with more crying! We couldn’t be prouder or happier to bring the saga to its conclusion. Much like Dobby the House Elf, we is free! And also like Dobby, we is dead. Very, very dead. Join Mike, Kevin and Bill for one last hilarious broomstick ride into the ultimate Quidditch bloodbath, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2!
In 2015 we kicked off The Crappening by riffing The Room live! Due to a certain cast member who will remain nameless (OK, it’s the guy who says “Lisa looks hot tonight” during Johnny’s birthday party) we’re unable to release that live show on our site. But this studio MP3 of the live show is the next best thing! Consider it a “Special Edition” MP3. Tons of all new jokes, fully riffed sex scenes, and Denny even shoots first! Just borrow a laugh track from Fuller House and you’ll feel like you’re watching it live! Alley football, underwears, breast cancer, doggy, barbecue chicken rice, framed spoons: The Room has contributed so much to our culture, way more than suckers like Van Gogh or Thomas Pynchon. It is one of our all time favorite bad movies and this MP3 version is the definitive riffing! Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill-R for this studio MP3 of our The Room live show! Do it quickly, before Mark moves to a bigger place - word on the street is he’s making some pretty good money these days.
From the deepest, darkest, most sorcerously stained corner of the video store, in the “mid-80s fantasy movies trying to trick you into thinking they were kind of like Star Wars” section, it’s Wizards of the Lost Kingdom! Yes, it’s hard to believe now, but in the 80s people were still pretty obsessed with Star Wars. Oh, how the world has changed since then! And Wizards of the Lost Kingdom brings the knock-off heat. A roguish but charming scoundrel who can’t help but do the right thing: Check! A giant hairy monster mess of a best friend who makes digestive sounds to communicate: Check! A whiny unlikable kid prodigy who’s the son of a more famous magic type: Check, with extra unlikeability! A thrilling plot full of amazing special effects and edge-of-your-seat action: uh… did we mention the furry digestive sounds guy? Wizards of the Lost Kingdom is like 6 different movies in one, in the sense that it was seemingly cobbled together from at least 6 different movies into one not-at-all cohesive whole! And it stars Bo Svenson, who you may recognize from small parts in some Tarantino movies, the kind of small parts in Tarantino movies actors get because they were once in obscure movies like Wizards of the Lost Kingdom. The film business is confusing! Finders keepers losers weepers, sorry Wizards but it’s our Kingdom now! Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for the tour of an ancient Spencer’s Gifts store that is Wizards of the Lost Kingdom!
The Samurai Cop is here to kick ass and chew bubblegum, and he’s already infringed on enough movies and cliches so he’s just going to stop with that introduction right there. Yes, the cop they call Samurai has travelled to Los Angeles from a faraway land they call San Diego. Because it would just make no sense to have the movie take place in San Diego, or to have the cop be from LA to start with. Or, y’know, Japan. Why do they need the Samurai Cop in town? Because frankly, the chief was telling everybody how absurd his haircut was, and nobody would believe him, so he said “Look, I’ll have him come to town and you can see this damn thing for yourselves.” It is a work of art. If it seems like there’s a serious threat at any point in time, it’s going to leap off his head and start kicking ass on its own. Samurai Cop is assigned a partner, whose main job appears to be mugging to the camera as the Samurai Cop punches people. Together, they’ve got to bust a gang whose stated goal is putting someone’s head on their piano. These villains are lead by Robert Z’dar, who will hopefully reinforce any piano he plans to put his own prodigious cranium on top of. Decapitations, explosions, poorly subbed in stunt doubles, mangled dialogue, prominent lion heads, and unfortunate banana hammocks abound in this extremely eighties-y nineties movie. Join Mike, Kevin, Bill, and Alfonso Rafael Federico Sebastian for Samurai Cop!
Cyber Tracker! No, it’s not a spyware killing program from the early 2000s that, when downloaded, actually adds MORE spyware to your computer. This Cyber Tracker is a robot policeman designed through a shady collaboration between the shady government and a shady corporation, and those usually work out pretty well in movies. But this isn’t just any Terminator knockoff, it’s far weirder than that. Taking on the vaguely cyborg, not-vaguely hairless menace is Don “The Dragon” Wilson. Don “The Dragon” is an actual martial arts expert but not an actual dragon, or actor. He is a hired bodyguard, who immediately turns on his evil bosses when he notices he’s taking orders from an Australian bro with a permed mullet. Don “The D” escapes to join a revolutionary group headed by a newscaster who just happens to also be a top-level hacker because sure, why not. Will they fall for each other while tracking the Tracker? First Don will have to get over his lost wife, who only comes up occasionally and is maybe dead but maybe just left him because he sucks, you’ll have to watch to find out! Truly the Geo Tracker of 90s robot movies, with an ending you really, REALLY won’t see coming, log on with Mike, Kevin, and Bill for Cyber Tracker!
Many Hollywood insiders were baffled when Star Wars, a mildly popular franchise that has never rendered multiple generations of otherwise right-thinking people incapable of critical thought, announced a seventh movie. Over the past two decades, very little had been written on the internet about Star Wars, and almost nobody had expressed their enthusiasm about excruciatingly minor details of the franchise, so it seemed risky to make a brand new movie. There was a strong chance it might be a massive failure and only make something like six billion dollars on its opening weekend. Any naysayers were of course proven wrong, likely buried beneath a pile of t-shirts which, get this: mashed up aspects of Star Wars and other pop culture franchises. (They thought of everything folks!) The Force Awakens was a massive hit. Experts estimate that the value of BB-8 merchandise thrown away thus far is more than the Fantastic Four movie made last summer. Those same experts went on to point out that maybe we shouldn’t be buying so much Star Wars crap when the average household income worldwide is well under ten thousand dollars, but we inserted our earplugs that look like Lor San Tekka so they couldn’t harsh our buzz. Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for the movie event to end all movie events: grainy home video footage of Bib Fortuna’s retirement party. Er, I mean, Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Additional contributors: Conor Lastowka - Senior Writer Sean Thomason - Senior Writer Contributing Writers: Molly Hodgdon, Jason Miller, Mike Schuster, and Joseph Scrimshaw
Yes, Arachnia, for people who want a goofy spider movie but find the word Arachnophobia a couple syllables too long. As is required in Edgewood films, it all begins with a light plane crash. (TIP: if you ever find yourself living in the Edgewood film universe, stick to big planes, the little ones will only get you in trouble.) This particular crash brings this particular crew of non-actors to a little remote cabin in a little remote place that claims to be somewhere near Arizona but sure looks a lot like Vermont. (Another tip: if you find yourself living in the Edgewood film universe, no matter where you think you are, you are actually in Vermont.) The macho pilot, sleazy horndog scientist, stoner idiot grad student, smart assistant and some impossibly stupid undergrad eye candy meet up with a grizzly old coot in this convention of not-quite-right stock characters. They’ll wage war against the massive spider monsters who threaten their lives and the very limits of what qualifies as “stop-motion animation.”
When three hillbillies on their way to Nashville take a detour and end up in a haunted house, most critics stop reading after that sentence and immediately assign the movie whatever grade is several grades lower than the lowest grade they’ve ever given out. Shamelessly cashing in on the Hillbillly Craze of ‘67, Hillbillys in a Haunted House finally gave country music fans what they had long been demanding: a movie where John Carradine interacts with a sweaty guy in a gorilla suit and is interrupted by the occasional hootenanny. It’s sort of like a country fried Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band with the Bee Gees replaced by the cast of Scooby Doo, but not that dignified. Warning: Contains extreme closeups of Lon Chaney Jr, the name “Ferlin Husky,” and misspelled words in the movie's own title.
Long before winter was coming, winter was… well, still coming. We’re taking it all the way back to the first episode of Game of Thrones! To a simpler time before [spoiler alert] killed [spoiler alert] and [spoiler alert] betrayed [spoiler alert] and [spoiler alert] severed [spoiler alert]'s [spoiler alert]. A time of direwolves, imps, and gratuitous nudity that would be screen-capped throughout the realm. The challenge begins: If we riff every episode before George RR finishes the next book, he has to buy us all our own Unsullied! Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for the premiere episode of Game of Thrones!
Mamma mia! Some Italian filmmakers decided to rip off Jaws! The Last Shark doesn’t have the acting talent or music score budget of the original, but it does have a substantially higher percentage of actors with mustaches! The town’s annual windsurfing regatta is threatened by the presence of a killer shark, and rather than do the sensible thing, cancel it and refund both the tickets they’ve sold, the town presses onward. The result: extremely hilarious shark attack special effects! Tell Mrs. Kintner to stop mourning and get her slappin' hand ready, it’s The Last Shark!
“Oh look, honey, we got something from Space!” “That’s nice, open it, what is it?” “Ugh, looks like it’s another stupid Attack.” “You know, I’ve just about had it with Space.” Attack from Space! Several Japanese sci-fi movies from the 50s, conveniently and nonsensically edited and repackaged into one American TV movie in the 60s. The system works! The aliens of the Emerald Planet, who are basically piles of shoeboxes wrapped in tin foil sitting at a table in space, are worried about their enemies the Sapphireans attacking Earth and taking over the whole dang universe. That’s right, Emeralds vs. Sapphires, there really aren’t enough gemstone based feuds in modern sci-fi. So naturally the Emerald guys summon Starman, a pudgy man in a tight, no-detail-spared unitard with a goofy antenna and a couple of guns. Not laser guns, just regular normal guns, for shooting people. Science fiction! Will Starman defeat the Sapphireans and save the universe? Can he destroy their Death Star? Do they really have a thing called the Death Star? Yes, they really do! Strap on your head-antenna and buckle your space diaper, it’s time to join Mike, Kevin and Bill for an Attack from Space!
Southern desperation, B-movie drive-in theaters, and the vengeance of the angry dead all come together in Ruby, honestly one of the weirdest things we’ve found in a long career of finding weird things. Ruby is a failed performer hanging on to her glory days, Baby Jane style (hey, whatever happened to her?). She also happened to help some gangsters kill the love of her life in a swamp 16 years ago this very night, but we’re sure that won’t come back to haunt her or anything. Now she and her pal, Stuart Whitman (of Night of the Lepus fame!), run a seedy theater and are sort of just generally professionally seedy, all the time. Everything’s great - well, as great as it can be running a drive-in next to a Florida swamp - until people start dying in spooky, albeit comical ways. Ruby is played by Piper Laurie, aka Carrie’s mom in Carrie, and she brings that same low-key subtle energy to this—we’re kidding, she shrieks and chews all the scenery and it’s great. The movie’s like somebody wrung out a filthy sponge all over a Tennessee Williams play, then added a heavy splash of The Exorcist. Oh, and there’s some Norman Bates stuff going on too! Ruby’s got it all, baby! Don’t miss it.
This is it – the best movie ever made about a world-famous bouncer and his epic struggle with the evil owner of the local J.C. Penney. Patrick Swayze is at his most shirtless as Dalton, a bouncer who is as comfortable quoting Zen aphorisms as he is kicking drunken men in the head. The incomparable Sam Elliot is hilarious as Swayze's grizzled but lovable mentor, growling out lines like "I'll sleep when I'm dead," and running his weathered hand through his long, gray, greasy hair. And Kevin Tighe (of Lost) as the owner of the titular roadhouse delivers one of the strangest performances ever committed to film. 100% new riffs with all three riffers
Dead bodies are disappearing and being reanimated as horrible undead ghouls! Who could be responsible? The undercover Air Force investigator? The burlesque dancer? The local mad scientist who has sworn revenge on a society that has forsaken him and even has his own personal Igor? Uh, probably the last one. Why was this even a question? Reuniting Tom “The Kid” Pace with his Girl in Gold Boots director Ted V. Mikels, Astro-Zombies are neither zombies nor the dog from The Jetsons. The film also stars John Carradine, who aged approximately 92 years in the 28 years between The Grapes of Wrath and this movie. Astro-Zombies is the type of schlockfest that will have you gasping “Wait, how long has this lab scene been going on? They just showed the assistant turning that dial. Wait, now they’re showing it again??”
You asked for it, now it’s here: the relentless, all-devouring horde that is our riff of The Walking Dead! This is a riff of the very first episode. It’s a good time for fans of the show to revisit, as the new season is just about to start, and 3 or 4 more prequels and spinoff series are presumably being prepared. And for non-fans, it’s a good time to watch for the first time and wonder why all those fans are such fans! Unlike other zombie stuff you’ve seen, the zombies in The Walking Dead… hmm. Uh… well, they walk. They’re dead. There’s some kind of virus, probably. Oh, someone wakes from a coma to discover the world has changed, that’s new, right? No? That’s also not new? Hm. Well there is a lengthy discussion of why women don’t turn off light switches at the beginning of the episode, that part’s probably new, at least! Pick up a 2X4 with a nail in it, boil that copy of the Zombie Survival Guide you never actually read for stew, and shut yourself inside with Mike, Kevin, and Bill as we all try to survive The Walking Dead!
Matt Murdock was blinded in a tragic accident so now he’s really good at kicking guys. Evidently the blindness isn’t really much of an issue, because he lives in Hell’s Kitchen, a neighborhood where 95% of the buildings permanently have their lights dimmed to a cinematically noirish level. Murdock will never be able to see another sunset, the faces of his loved ones, or the terrible Ben Affleck version of Daredevil, so things are looking up. He has no choice but to become The Man Without Fear in order to take out The Kingpin, a villain so sinister he does not actually appear in this episode. Instead you get Foggy. Maybe you should blind yourself too. Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill as they Marvel at Daredevil! Additional contributors: Conor Lastowka - Senior Writer Sean Thomason - Senior Writer
Honor and Glory - they’re not just Mike’s brand new knuckle tattoos, they’re the subject of this 90s martial arts movie that’s so magically inept it borders on the surreal. It’s like a child’s finger painting of what a big 90s action movie should be, except with much less innocence and way more hair grease, unmotivated rage, and “dime-store pimps” involved in major nuclear arms deals. In short, we really love this movie. The story, as far as we can tell: two sisters, one an FBI agent and the other a news reporter, both way into kicking and punching - don’t worry, they go out of their way to clarify which sister is Honor and which one is Glory - are out to take down the villainous Jason Slade. Jason Slade is the richest, most powerful man in the world, despite the fact he looks like a buff 14-year-old and does business from an office that an HR manager at a regional bottling plant would find insultingly small. On his side is the world’s greatest bodyguard, who is such a blatant imitation of Beverly Hills Cop-era Eddie Murphy you’ll find yourself waiting for that song to kick in every time he’s on screen. All that, and so much more to love. We didn’t even mention the hammock-jumping! Treat yourself right, sit back with Mike, Kevin, and Bill and savor the glory that is, well, Honor and Glory!
They say you can never go back again. Jurassic World proves that you can, as long as you go there in a Mercedes-Benz SUV, prominently feature that SUV in several shots, and generally keep your expectations lower than the hanging belly of a CGI stegosaurus. Jurassic World pays homage to the original Jurassic Park by constantly reminding you that you are not watching Jurassic Park, and that you sure wish you were watching Jurassic Park, or even the 90s ABC family sitcom Dinosaurs, instead. Fortunately, we are here to help! And so is Chris Pratt, doing his best to fill the complicated role of Running Guy. And Bryce Dallas Howard, doing an admirable job as No-Nonsense Businesswoman Who Has Apparently Never Even Heard Of Children And Gosh Does She Have Some Big Lessons To Learn About What’s Important In Life. There are also a couple of little boys you will forget about 5 minutes after the movie ends. Hold onto your butts, say a quick prayer to Goldblum, and laugh the crimes against nature and film away with Mike, Kevin, and Bill. It’s Jurassic World!
Mike Danton took out the garbage. Now it’s time to take out the trash. (Please note that right after he took out the garbage, he was abducted by a paramilitary group who intends to hunt him down like a dog for a training exercise. It’s the only way our Cool 80s Tagline makes any sense.) Danton must stay alive by any means necessary, which mostly means whittling twigs into projectiles capable of piercing bone when lobbed from a short distance. He also eats worms, has a few bazookas lying around the house, and occasionally bludgeons an enemy with their own severed arm. He’s essentially every member of The Expendables rolled into one guy, stripped down to short shorts, and then whacked over the head with a sand wedge until he couldn’t remember any words longer than two syllables. Deadly Prey is the kind of budget badassery you’ve come to expect from the guy who donned a mesh belly shirt to play David Carradine’s son in Future Zone. Align your desk grenades properly, then join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for 80s action cheese at its ripest.
Who is Superargo? He's an Italio-Spanish superhero whose main powers are that he used to be a wrestler and now he drives a car! Also, he can blow up small vases with his mind, but that doesn’t come up very often. Superargo’s super-heroics wouldn’t be complete without his turban-wearing, 1960s-style sidekick, based on the usual vague turban-wearing, 1960s-style sidekick ethnic stereotypes. And who are the Faceless Giants? Why, simply the world’s greatest athletes, kidnapped and reprogrammed to be giant clumsy robots. Their mission? To rob banks, of course! If you can think of an easier way to rob a bank, we’d sure like to hear it! Even if your favorite cheese isn’t the vintage European superhero type (like Supersonic Man, or that Puma fella), you and your face will have a blast with the meandering, low-impact heroics of Superargo and the Faceless Giants!
Our Christmas special this year stars Whizzo the Clown. Whizzo’s not one of your big, flashy, Hollywood clowns who relies on clichés like “scripts” or “coherency.” Whizzo’s got huge, gross feet, a terrible catchphrase, and he’s ready to fly some kids to the North Pole on his streamer-powered magic carpet. And yes, for this movie, that qualifies as a plot description. After thirty seconds with Whizzo, you’ll find yourself thinking, “Yeah, I can see where The Grinch was coming from.” Or maybe, “You know, Mr. Potter had some good ideas…” In fact, it might just be the movie to turn your coulrophobia into pantophobia! RiffTrax Christmas Circus also features a short about Christmas trees that have human faces and communicate psychically with houseplants before dying and going to tree heaven. It is by far the most normal, sane part of this Christmas special.
The Wizard of Oz is one of the most beloved movies in the history of cinema, but don’t you think it was missing a little something? Namely, the deft directorial touch of Barry Mahon, whose other films include Fanny Hill Meets Dr. Erotico, The Diary of Knockers McCalla, and a little movie called Santa and The Ice Cream Bunny? The Wonderful Land of Oz takes everything you loved about the original Oz movie and coats it in a slippery, weird, filmy substance. Scarecrow and Tin Man are back, looking like Yugoslavian knockoffs of Russian knockoffs of the original characters. There are also new characters, like the Wogglebug, and the Purple Cow. Sound pretty crappy, right? Well set your expectations even lower! It’s the Barry Mahon way!
The bar is impossibly high, but Replica might just be the strangest of the Nguyen trilogy. Yes, we’re using the term trilogy, because there is no term for “set of 3 movies with the same basic nonsense plot and characters but slightly different Hitchcock-inspired science fiction premise each time.” All the tropes are here: cars gradually pulling out of a very familiar driveway, office meetings about business deals with large round figures, dates between charmless humans who seem to be learning to speak for the first time. But this time, instead of birds angry about global warming or virtual reality romance snafus, the issue is CLONING. Human organ cloning, whole human cloning, all handled with the scientific accuracy and moral sensitivity we’ve come to expect from this film auteur. And happening on digital “sets” less realistic than a Lisa Frank Trapper Keeper. Complete with performances by some of our favorites in the Nguyen repertoire of actors, like Nathalie’s mom, that one business guy, and footage of Tippi Hedren playing on a TV during a scene!
Oh hai, direct-to-video prequel to C-list 90s horror movie franchise! Greg Sestero, who you might know from such roles as Mark from The Room and Retro Puppet Master, stars in Retro Puppet Master! Learn the answers to all your burning Puppet Master questions like: “Where did he get the puppets?” (He already had them) and “What kind of drugs, Denny?” (It doesn’t matter) To top it all off, Mark tries to pull off a French accent for the entire movie that somehow ends up sounding even faker and weirder than Tommy Wiseau’s. You know those videos where a dog is holding a huge stick in their mouth and trying to get through a doorway, but they can’t because the stick is too big? That’s what it’s like watch Mark attempt to act while simultaneously maintaining a “French” accent. Fear not! No prior knowledge of the Puppet Master series is required. No, not even Puppet Master vs. Demonic Toys. Join Mike, Kevin, Chris R, and Bill for Retro Puppet Master.* *Chris R was arrested before he was able to record. Mark assures us that “It’s clear.”
Miles O’Keeffe, everyone’s favorite Cave Dweller from the MST3K episode of the same name, is back, and he’s Cave Dwell-ier than ever! Miles reprises his role as the dopey well-coiffed warrior Ator, which is pronounced all different kinds of fun ways depending on which chopped-up segment of dubbed Italian cinema you happen to be looking at. This installment gives us Ator’s origin, and boy is it creepy! Suffice to say the first thing we learn about Ator is that he wants to marry his sister, and, uh, everybody is pretty much fine with that. Everybody except the evil spider priest, who is mostly focused on gently caressing spiders in the abandoned community college amphitheater he calls home. Does the evil spider priest call to mind the evil snake priest from the popular Conan the Barbarian, released shortly before this movie? No! Of course not! What a strange question! Ator goes on a quest to save his sister-wife and continue their morally questionable marriage, with the aid of a bear cub who is sometimes there but a lot of times not there, for unexplained reasons. Also unexplained: why the movie is called Ator, the Fighting Eagle or what a “Fighting Eagle” is. The phrase seriously never comes up at all. Strap into your animal skin hang glider and soar to new depths with Mike, Kevin, and Bill. It’s Ator, the Fighting Eagle!
Pollution has left the ozone layer severely depleted, and we all know what that means: eagles start commanding mountain lions to attack hapless campers! It’s basic science people! Day of the Animals has a premise that will be familiar to anyone who’s ever mispronounced the word ‘solrpnls.’ But it has one thing going for it that Birdemic does not: shirtless Leslie Nielsen. Frank Drebin himself descends into madness as members of his expedition are picked off one by one by vicious wolves, hungry bears, and ground squirrels that make a sort of annoying screeching sound. Eventually he removes his shirt and beats up a kid. We’ve all been there. A film that saw the glut of 70s ensemble disaster movies and thought “I could do that for way cheaper!” Day of the Animals is guaranteed to delight both fans of animals and twenty four hour intervals of the earth’s rotation. Pull up a chair alongside Mike, Kevin, Bill, and a bunch of spruce bark beetles in a trench coat!
Some movies are labors of love, the product of a singular vision and a lifetime of hard work. And sometimes, a guy just says “Make Jaws, but with a bear.” A rogue bear is attacking campers! This means that the director films a bear, then a camper in a completely different state, then cuts back and forth between them until a shot where a fake bear paw swats an even faker severed arm in front of the camera. That’s filmmaking baby! Despite this vicious animal running amok, the head of the park refuses to shut it down? Why? Because he’s bitter he doesn’t get to wear a sweet anchor jacket like Murray Hamilton! Starring Bart The Bear’s mother, last seen duking it out with Leslie Nielsen in Day of the Animals, Grizzly will make you say “Smile you son of a sow*!” *a sow is a female bear
For years, most movies that came out were not about the Death Star. Lots of people were OK with this, it meant we got movies like The Godfather, Point Break, and The Stoned Age. This evidently changed in 2015 however, and now every movie must relate in some way to the construction or destruction of a Death Star. This has led to a few odd choices, like the 2016 sequel to The Adventures of Milo and Otis, which critics called “tonally baffling” and “supposed to be about a puppy and kitten, why?” It’s worked out slightly better for The Force Awakens and Rogue One. Rogue One tells the story of a plucky band of upstarts who bring us the long awaited answer to one of the deepest mysteries in the Star Wars universe: what exactly was Jabba the Hutt’s toilet situation? As they seek out the answer to this disgusting riddle, they stumble across the plans to the Death Star and set in motion forty years of wildly disposable Star Wars parodies and tributes. Mon Mothma plays a major role for some reason. Mike, Kevin, Bill, and the reanimated likenesses of several actors who signed the wrong thing before they died team up to riff the latest chapter in the neverending Star Wars saga: Rogue One!
Star Games! If you’ve ever asked what it would be like if Greydon Clark, the infamous director of Final Justice and Angels' Revenge, tried his hand at a science fiction movie… well, then maybe your question somehow willed this movie into existence. And maybe you owe the universe an apology. But, since you asked, what IS it like when Greydon Clark makes a science fiction movie? Here are some highlights: --A holographic clown that runs a spaceship in the style of knockoff Robin Williams --Tony Curtis as a space emperor with a New York accent --Greydon’s two non-actor sons in the lead roles, because why not --The most fearsome alien in the movie is a bear hanging out in the woods --Yeah that’s right, there’s a bear --We only do movies with bears in them now All that, plus a major plot revolving around a boy’s insulin schedule! Star Games really pushes the boundaries of the genre, and the boundaries of child labor laws in regard to casting your own children in a movie. Go to infinity and beyond (or at least, a forest) and join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for some Star Games!
A nuclear missile has been stolen! The fate of the planet hangs in the balance! There’s only one thing to do: send an aging Peter Graves to Iran and imply that beautiful women half his age are somehow attracted to his lumbering! The stolen missile has been transported to a Tehran Casino where the bad guys are storing it in a room next to the craps tables. It sounds ridiculous, but in fact The Luxor had a nuclear missile room too. They eventually converted it into the theater for the Blue Man Group. Defying all odds, the lead mad scientist is played by John Carradine, who in a shocking twist occasionally seems to be vaguely aware of where he is. Or perhaps he just had a little too much metamucil that day. Regardless, critics called it his finest performance in decades.
Uninvited is a horror movie written and directed by Star Games and Final Justice mastermind Greydon Clark, so it’s not surprising that Greydon Clark put himself in the movie. What is surprising? Pretty much everything else. There’s a killer cat on the loose, but only sort of on the loose, because the killer cat lives INSIDE of another, larger cat. That fuzzy tabby escapes Greydon’s lab into the world, where it occasionally barfs out the killer cat within to deliver nasty low-budget feline death. Meanwhile, a sleazy rich criminal lures some Spring break college babes and their friends onto his yacht for a voyage. The voyage is to complete a big high-risk criminal deal, so why does he want random college partiers along for the ride? Because he likes watching girls do Jazzercise. No, really, that’s the whole reason. Also along for the ride? GEORGE KENNEDY! Yes, Oscar winner George Kennedy is here, because no great character actor wants to retire without a Greydon Clark film under his belt. Oh, and the killer cat is on the yacht too, along with the bigger cat it lives inside of like a Russian doll. It’s terror on the high seas, Garfield style, and no lasagna or human is safe. Wondering if any of Greydon Clark’s family show up in this movie, like in Star Games? If you know to ask that question, you already know the answer. Invite yourself along and yacht away with Mike, Kevin, and Bill, it’s Uninvited!
The Little Unicorn is a tale of whimsy, fantasy, and extremely generous definitions of the word “little.” Turns out making CGI little unicorns is way more difficult than strapping a horn to a regular horse and shining a blue spotlight on it, so the unicorn in question remains little for maybe fifteen seconds of screen time. When reports of a regular-sized unicorn surface in the English countryside, all the local scumbags are seeing dollar signs. Evidently a completely normal in stature unicorn is something that could make a regional circus owner a millionaire, instead of being the type of thing your average person glances at and goes “Huh” before heading to the concession stand to see if circus peanuts are still as gross as they remember. (They are.) And since your pre-teen daughter is no doubt pulling on your sleeve and demanding to know, YES, OF COURSE George Hamilton is in this movie!. He stars as the unicorn’s leather saddle. Join Mike, Kevin, Bill, and a whole bunch of those sparkly puffy unicorn stickers you get for a quarter from the machines after the checkout stands in the grocery store for The Little Unicorn!
Weddings are a joyous occasion, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t without annoyances! Travel is expensive, figuring out seating can be awkward, and sometimes the host ritually executes the entire family of the groom. Yes, it’s the Red Wedding, the episode of the series that is famous for killing off a bunch of characters that shocked viewers by killing off a bunch of characters. More people might have seen it coming, but they were too busy saying “Hey, isn’t that the guy who played Filch?” Join Mike, Kevin, Bill, Old Nan, Hot Pie, Reznak mo Reznak, Marvin K. Mooney, The Bear, and The Maiden Fair for Season 3, Episode 9 of "Game of Thrones" - The Rains of Castamere!
Joe Don Buckle your Joe Don Belts, it’s Joe Don Baker in Final Justice! A brand new riff of the classic film that put the “chubby Deputy Sheriff from Texas goes on an adventure in Malta” genre on the map! Meet Joe Don. Goes by Geronimo. He’s got a shady past and a need for justice burning a hole inside of him. Also, a need for donuts. His sleepy small town life of being pestered by his partner Greydon Clark gets interrupted when some mafia guys kill his partner, Greydon Clark (yes, Greydon Clark is in it, which answers the question “did Greydon Clark direct this movie?”). It all leads back to a major matter of international crime, so naturally the government sends the CIA to Italy to take care of the -- what’s that? They send Joe Don Baker? All by himself? In his western wear? Well, uh, sure, why not. Don’t mess with Texas, I guess? Speaking of Texas, if you are worried that at any point in the movie Deputy Sheriff Geronimo will let you forget he is from Texas, ease your mind, he will not. He’s a real fish out of water, or a chocolate-glazed cruller in a pile of spaghetti. Either way join him and Mike, Kevin, and Bill for this brand new riff of Final Justice!
It’s the story of a group of explorers who travel to a remote island, kidnap two tiny women, thereby inciting the wrath of a giant (albeit adorable) larvae which then swims the ocean, cocoons itself in downtown Tokyo, emerges as the titular Mothra and destroys everything in its path. Yes, it's a tale as old as time, but Mothra does it best! Join Kevin, Bill and Mike as they roast one of the most beloved (and bizzarre!) of the Japanese monster classics, Mothra.
It's the same script from one of our favorite live shows, without the crowd and occasional shots of the lovely mugs of Mike, Kevin and Bill! If you put everything about the 80s in a blender, then somehow ran the resulting smoothie through a translator that only speaks languages from another dimension, what you’d wind up with still wouldn't be half as hilarious, weird, and oddly charming as Miami Connection. It's 1987, and the Biker Ninjas behind the Miami drug trade are finding themselves facing the newest heroes in town: the Taekwondo-loving rock band Dragon Sound! They'll focus all of their black belt skills, alongside performing their hit songs "Friends" and "Against the Ninja" at a popular Orlando night club - to end the threat of Ninja Biker violence once and for all! For the first time riffed in the studio, it's Miami Connection!
Merlin, the legendary wizard is stuck inside a terrible nether dimension. Meanwhile, the former stars of Wayne’s World, Highlander, and The Young Ones are stuck in a terrible movie about Merlin, the legendary wizard. Merlin wants to escape the nether dimension, which makes sense because the nether dimension looks like a black light barfed glo-sticks all over a Spencer’s Gifts. Unfortunately, his arch foe Mordred wants to leave too. Assisting him is Tia Carrere who has built an interdimensional portal. (She was hoping to be able to travel into Mike Myer’s house to beg him to make Wayne’s World 3.) Eventually, King Arthur, Lancelot, Merlin, Mordred, and all their armies wind up in modern day… Uh, England? America? South Africa? Wherever it is, they have what is undoubtedly the fakest Stonehenge in film history. There are ghost-skeletons in this movie that look more realistic than this Stonehenge and ghost-skeletons aren’t even a thing!
A surreal journey into the trippy world of, uh, being a barber, it’s Psychotronic Man! What does “psychotronic” mean, exactly? Well, we’re not sure, and neither is the movie. But it seems to be the result of being a barber, and drinking too much of your liquid barber products, which leads to weird dreams, which leads to telling people about your weird dreams. And then killing them with your mind, as if telling them about your dream wasn’t bad enough. Also, to be truly psychotronic, it’s important that all this take place in a Chicago suburb rich with some of the thickest accents you’ve ever heard. Make sense yet? No, no it doesn’t. Floating cars, shampoo drinking, endless stretches of silent sweaty driving, they’re all part of the eerie psychotronic-ness that have made this movie a cult favorite. Strap in for a buzz cut of the mind, and join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for Psychotronic Man!
It’s Cowboys & Aliens in the Wild Wild West! How could a sci-fi western about either of those things possibly be bad? A sleepy western town has been overrun. Not by varmints, but by D-list actor cameos! No amount of fame is too minor or fleeting to warrant disproportionate amounts of screentime! Issac Hayes! Julie Newmar! And of course a rarely seen acting appearance by professional meme sharer George Takei! Standing in their way is the evil alien Redeye, who has fallen on hard times after his successful southern gravy campaign. He’s in a bad mood, possibly because whatever his cheap lizard mask is made of is itching like hell, maybe even causing a lifelong skin condition. At the very least it certainly can’t smell very good. All this, plus sexy cyborgs, steampunk sidekicks, some actually pretty cool stop motion effects, that creepy guy from Twin Peaks, (no, not that one, the other one), and zero, we repeat ZERO huge robot spiders! Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for Oblivion!
Hey! It’s not Kill and Take The Afternoon Off to Catch Up on Reading, it’s Kill and Kill Again! So get off your lazy duff and back to work! Who’s doing all this killing and follow-up repeat killing? Mostly Steve Chase, the world’s greatest martial artist. You wouldn’t know he’s the best from seeing his martial arts, but the movie tells you several times he’s the best, so he must be. The South African government needs him to rescue a scientist who’s been kidnapped and forced to create an army of martial artists to conquer the world. And if you can think of a more efficient way to conquer the world, you can just keep it to yourself! Steve Chase and his long, shiny hair get the old ragtag crew together for this one last job. And they truly are the ragtaggiest of ragtag crews, the “recruiting a guy who rents a box at the junkyard” scene is not to be missed. Oh, and also? The entire plot centers around making fuel from potatoes. So yeah, it’s your standard South African martial arts extravaganza based around root vegetable gasoline. You’re gonna love it, and love it again, with Mike, Kevin and Bill!
In a remote bunker in the desert, unthinkable experiments are taking place. Experiments where horror legend Wes Craven sells his name and credibility to a movie in exchange for a writing credit for his son Jonathan! In a slightly less terrifying experiment, some guys are also reviving a corpse. It does not go well. Sure, it’s your standard affront to decency and all that is holy, but it also has this gross long tongue that occasionally it’ll shoot into your brain. Hopefully it goes without saying that this abomination is named Thor and looks like Fabio. It’s up to Lance Henriksen and his family to display complete ignorance of the situation, split up in defiance of all logic, and gradually get picked off one by one. Er, we mean, save the day! Join Mike, Kevin, Bill, and fortunately, no egregious nepotism for Mind Ripper!
Sebastian Dellacourt is leading a double life: he tells his wife that he’s a humble systems analyst. But he’s actually a D-list actor starring in films by the director of Time Chasers and Radical Jack! When an assassination attempt fails in a part of Chile that looks suspiciously like Vermont, Sebastian is thrown under the bus by his government. A shadowy group springs him out of prison, but it turns out that they want to blow up Congress. For some reason, Sebastian decides that he should stop them. It’s a race against time, budget, and the limits of plausibility! Asahi Guy and Nick My Boy co-star. Can Sebastian clear his name? Can he stop the bad guys? Will he be mistaken for a middle school gym teacher? Find out as Mike, Kevin and Bill riff Pressure Point! Head Writer Mike Nelson Additional contributors: Conor Lastowka - Senior Writer Sean Thomason - Senior Writer Contributing Writers: Molly Hodgdon, Jason Miller, and Mike Schuster
Cowboys! Robots! Sex! Sex with cowboy robots! How could a show about all this be received as a prestige drama, and not just more trash TV? Simple: it’s not TV, it’s HBO, you uncultured swine. Wise up with Westworld! HBO’s Westworld is based loosely on the Simpsons episode written by Michael Crichton in which malfunctioning Itchy & Scratchy robots take over Itchy & Scratchy Land (pretty sure we got that right). It’s a theme park, a vicious playground for the ultra-wealthy to get their jollies doing the one thing rich people have always wanted most… to, uh, be a part of a mediocre Western? Whatever the reason, Ed Harris is there, and Thandie Newton, and so is Anthony Hopkins, taking a rare break from Odinsleeping to Odinwalk through this performance. Who’s a robot and who isn’t? What does it mean to be truly human? And didn’t Battlestar Galactica handle a lot of this already? For answers to none of these questions, and more, join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for Westworld!
That’s right, it’s a RiffTrax of Batman v. Superman! Specifically Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, not one of the several other Batman v. Superman movies out there. As you may have heard/seen/wept, this movie is catastrophically bad. From Ben Affleck’s “tired heartburn sufferer” take on Batman to Jesse Eisenberg’s Jolly Rancher poppin’ millennial caricaturin’ Lex Luthor to SO MUCH MORE BAD STUFF, we realized we couldn’t do it alone. We had to call in some backup, some heavy-hitting friends to break this thing down into sections and defeat it as a team. So, as they say in the Justice League, let’s Assemble some Avengers! Along with team leaders Mike v. Kevin v. Bill, we’ve got riffing powerhouses: Mary Jo Pehl v. Bridget Nelson! Frank Conniff v. Trace Beaulieu! Janet Varney v. Cole Stratton! Matthew Elliott v. Ian Potter! And, in their riffing debut, Rifftrax Writer/Producers Conor Lastowka v. Sean Thomason! Join the team, call your mom Martha, no matter what her real name might be, and let’s take on Batman v. Superman together!
Okay, now that we’ve got that out of the way, grab your stovepipe hat and favorite murder implement for Jack Frost! A truck carrying a vicious serial killer crashes into a truck carrying some non-specific chemicals, and, instead of just dying horribly, the serial killer becomes a serial killing snowman who loves making corny quips! Stan Lee would be proud. Jack is out for revenge against the small-town sheriff who put him away years ago, and he’ll stop at nothing to get it - again, before you forget, this is a story about a snowman, the big round carrot-nosed kind. He moves around by melting and re-forming through a very slow process, he is made of LITERAL SNOW, and yet people have a hard time stopping him. People including pre-fame Shannon Elizabeth. Actually, it’s probably safe to refer to everyone in this movie as “pre-fame.” Put a little horror in your holiday. Get the coal and corncob pipe and join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for Jack Frost! Head Writer Mike Nelson Additional contributors: Conor Lastowka - Senior Writer Sean Thomason - Senior Writer Contributing Writers: Molly Hodgdon, Jason Miller, and Mike Schuster
Do you ever stop to wonder what it would be like if Canadian Ed Wood directed Star Wars with a bunch of pages from The Happening randomly inserted into the screenplay? You do??? Please seek help immediately! Now that those parties are receiving the medical help and/or electroshock therapy they need, the rest of you can enjoy Starship Invasions. The action starts when an obese septuagenarian farmer is abducted so a seductive alien can harvest his bodily fluids, and it barely lets up after that! By “barely lets up” we of course mean “many characters communicate via telepathy because it was way cheaper to shoot without worrying about lip sync.” When the abducted earthlings start offing themselves in increasingly comical ways, The Intergalactic League of Races grow frustrated with the leader of the aliens, played by Christopher Lee with his head stuck in one of the arm holes of his leotard. Will war break out somewhere in the stars? Is the League of Races underwater pyramid the crappiest set we’ve ever seen?? Will Lemon Drink be eyed??? Find out when Mike, Kevin, and Bill riff Starship Invasions!
Mario Lopez takes his dimples to space military school in The Journey: Absolution! A movie that contains no journey and even less absolution. But it does contain dialogue like this, an actual conversation in the film: "What time is it?" "9:22." "9:22, that's about what I thought." Speaking of time, the movie finds us 30 years after some sort of vague apocalypse that has led to some sort of vague future military base where Mario Lopez, Richard Grieco, and Jaime Pressly can vaguely act. One thing that isn’t vague: the movie is mostly about shirtless army guys doing shirtless things together, shirtlessly. Think the beach volleyball scene in Top Gun but with even fewer shirts. Also it turns out later that some of the shirtless guys are aliens. Or monsters from another dimension, or something. It’s not totally clear, but the important thing is, it’s exactly 9:22. If that’s not enough, this film was made by the same director who brought you A Talking Cat!?! (he released that one under a pseudonym, but put his own name on The Journey: Absolution, so make that of what you will). This one is a lot of fun, we hope you’ll join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for The Journey: Absolution. No shirts required! Head writer Mike Nelson Additional contributors: Conor Lastowka - Senior Writer Sean Thomason - Senior Writer Contributing Writers: Molly Hodgdon, Jason Miller, and Mike Schuster
Berserker: Hell’s Warrior (not to be confused with Berserker: The Squeakquel) takes your standard Viking movie and adds a unique twist: total narrative incoherence! This comes as a shock if you’ve seen any of the director’s previous work, such as previous RiffTrax Merlin: The Return (not to be confused with Merlin: Port of Call New Orleans), which is widely used in film classes to teach the arts of storytelling, cinematography, and how to humiliate actor Craig Sheffer. Berserker: Hell’s Warrior tells the tale of two brothers who betray each other in the quest to win the love of the Valkyrie Brunhilde, thereby incurring the wrath of Odin, not to mention Irwin Troll and Gaylord Buzzard. What follows is a time-travelling mishmash that's the cinematic equivalent of reading a "Choose Your Own Adventure" book directly from front to back without actually choosing an adventure. Will Boar remain a cannibalistic Berserker for all eternity? Will Barek encounter delightful fish out of water antics in modern day situations? Can Odin please just get thirty damn minutes of Odinsleep, he had a very long day hanging from Yggdrasil! Find out all these answers and more in Berserker: Hell’s Warrior!
What do a furry monster terrorizing Lapland, a wrecked spaceship, John Carradine, and a beautiful skiing star have in common? Very little, as it turns out! Nonetheless, you’ll find them all in Invasion of the Animal People! It’s fitting that a monster movie like this be stitched together, Frankenstein-style, from the parts of other films. Films that should have been left to rot in peace. A spaceship crashes in Sweden -- or maybe it’s Zurich, the piecemeal movie is pretty consistently inconsistent about what country we’re supposed to be in. Suffice to say, the less you know about Scandinavian geography, the more things will make sense. Anyway, the crashed spaceship kills some reindeer (that’ll teach them to taunt Rudolph) and so some people go to investigate it, and talk a lot, and occasionally we cut to John Carradine, the narrator, who talks even more. But do we ever finally get to the titular Animal People? Yes! Well, no. But we do get one Animal Person, a hilarious monster straight out of the leftover inventory in the back of the Halloween store that sets up shop in your local abandoned Blockbuster every year. Spooky! Strap on some skis and rip up your map of Western Europe, it’s time to join Mike, Kevin and Bill for Invasion of the Animal People!
At some point, Howard Hughes found time in between meticulously cataloging his urine jar collection and forcing Smithers into the Spruce Moose at gunpoint to produce a film about the Son of Sinbad! It stars, well… a guy named Sinbad! His son is nowhere to be seen! We are told that his father is also named Sinbad, but he does not make an appearance! Would it have been easier to just make the character Sinbad instead of the Son of Sinbad? Perhaps! But maybe this is the kind of confusion that arises when your executive producer is distracted with his many, many jars of urine. Also appearing in the film is legendary Persian poet, astronomer, and mathematician, Omar Khayyam, who is of course played by noted Missouri native Vincent Price. We believe Price was only available because he’d foolishly turned down the role of T’Challa. It’s a Sinbad movie, but unlike Shazaam, it’s very real, so join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for this RiffTrax of Son of Sinbad!
Remember how the first one ended? If you do, you’re ahead of us. But the important thing is, all our favorite sci-fi space western characters are back! Like Lizardface Jim Carrey type guy, or maybe it’s his brother! The Librarian-ish Cowboy! Bondage whip lady! Just-here-for-the-paycheck Isaac Hayes! Laura Ingalls Wilder! Cat Prostitute! And, last but also absolutely definitely least, Snarling Drunken Embarrassment George Takei! This time around the gang is after a rare valuable space mineral in them thar space hills, while on the run from a new character, the Vaguely Dickensian Assassin. And, naturally, they wind up facing off against a giant space turtle. Throw it all together and you got yourself some Oblivion, baby! Saddle up with Mike, Kevin, and Bill for Oblivion 2: Backlash, the movie that’ll have you saying “Maybe I should’ve given Cowboys & Aliens more of a chance.
At its heart, this is really a movie about the importance of branding. The Mutated Sheep Embryo That Kind of Lurches Around Draggling a Vestigial Leg and Screeching of Indian Flats? Not interested! But the Godmonster of Indian Flats? Now you’re talking! When a shepherd wakes up after getting the crap kicked out of him behind a brothel, he’s disgusted to find that he’s cradling what appears to be a hunk of raw mutton. But it turns out that if you put that mutton in an incubator and bombard it with mysterious Mine Vapors, you can turn it into a gross creature entirely unworthy of the name godmonster. And this would be a spectacular bad movie even if it DIDN’T have scenes like: a funeral for a dog, but the dog’s not really dead, they’re just faking its death because they are racist. Think that will make any sense once you actually see the movie? You do??? How long have you been watching out stuff!?! The Godmonster of Ybor City? Please. The Godmonster of Walla Walla? Go to hell! Mike, Kevin, and Bill will only accept the authentic, original, extra vestigial Godmonster of Indian Flats. Join them for one of the weirdest movies we’ve ever done.
Imagine a world… a twisted world… a world where, against all odds, Greydon Clark is allowed to make movie after movie in genre after genre, all while going somehow unpunished for his serious crimes against audiences and the idea of film itself. A terrifying prospect indeed. Fortunately, we at RiffTrax are here to bring swift (perhaps even, Final?) justice for these misdeeds. Or at least, y’know, some jokes. Dark Future sets up a rich and complex post-apocalyptic world with only one flaw: it makes absolutely no sense. The few remaining humans are kept alive in a pleasure theme park. Who uses the pleasure theme park? Robots, naturally. Because robots are famously all about physical pleasure, specifically in Wild West-themed saloon settings. That’s right, it’s an inverted Westworld! But there’s more: some shadowy figures known only as The Patrons keep sending the robots to the human pleasure world, instead of going themselves. Why? No idea. But hey, whatever you’re into is your business, Patrons, no judgment. If Star Games was Greydon Clark’s Flight of the Navigator, then Dark Future is his That Episode of The Simpsons Where the Itchy & Scratchy Robots Attack. Don’t disappoint The Patrons, head straight into the Dark Future with Mike, Bill, and Kevin!
Fairy King of Ar is a delightful journey into the magical land of fairies. It starts with Grandma dropping dead and dad contracting emphysema. And once you get a look at the fairy “special effects”, we think you’ll agree it gets even more depressing from there. When former leading man Corbin Bernsen discovers an ancient gold mine on his family’s property, he thinks it could be his ticket out of doing movies like Fairy King of Ar. But the mine is said to be inhabited by goblins and the townspeople fear that entering it could unleash a terrible curse. So Corbin does what any real American dad would do: send his kids in first! Meanwhile, Malcolm McDowell continuously trespasses on the family’s property, literally assaults the children, and tries to bash a fairy’s head in with a shovel. This is the comic relief character. At this point it should be obvious that Grandma got off easy. Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for goblins, fairies, giants, and perhaps the longest bike chase scene in any movie since Time Chasers in Fairy King of Ar!
Every now and then here at RiffTrax we like to feature an obscure little indie movie that went by unnoticed. Just to make sure everybody gets that we’re real film buffs, y’know? So, to that end, here’s an underappreciated gem known as Star Wars: The Last Jedi! We’ve seen Star Wars movies with Luke Skywalker. We’ve seen Star Wars movies with weird space milk. But now, finally, we have a movie with Luke Skywalker drinking weird space milk straight from the teat of a… a something. His wife? It’s probably his wife. Hopefully they’ll get around to clearing up that relationship somewhere around Episode 52 or 53. It’s got a scum-filled casino (NOT a scum-filled cantina, how dare you suggest it’s anything like a cantina). It’s got a flyboy making catastrophically bad decisions, but everybody is still okay with him because he’s cute. It’s got space-texting AND space-Skyping. But who are we kidding? You’ve seen this movie, maybe more than once. It’s time to see it again, the right way, the way Mon Mothma and the blessed St. Jek Tono Porkins would’ve wanted you to see it. Many Bothans died laughing to bring you this riff. We’ve got Porgs on the grill, come on over and join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for Star Wars: The Last Jedi!
Whereas most slasher movies choose elderly, saggy retirement community members as their victims, The House on Sorority Row turns the genre upside down by instead murdering a bunch of attractive sorority girls! When the evil and poorly dubbed house-mother Mrs. Slater discovers that her sorority girls are planning a party, she’s quick to cancel it. The girls respond in a perfectly reasonable manner: they force her into a swimming pool at gunpoint and pretend they’re going to murder her. (In their defense, the band they had hired had a non-refundable deposit.) You’ll be surprised to learn that such a well thought out plan goes awry, and before you can say “I know what you did last summer” the girls are being picked off one by one by a mysterious killer with a clown obsession. Will any of them survive the night? Is Mrs. Slater really dead? And are we really meant to believe that a 23-year-old woman had a Garfield poster hanging up in her sorority dorm room? Find out when Mike, Kevin, and Bill riff the cult classic The House on Sorority Row!
Do you take your Gammera with one M or two? It’s two for Gammera the Invincible, the (sort of) first movie featuring everyone’s favorite big spinny turtle! Gam(m)era’s first appearance was in Gamera, the Giant Monster, released in Japan in 1965. A year later, American filmmakers added a few unnecessary scenes with Americans, an M to the name, and Gammera the Invincible was born! With a large audience of “people who probably thought they were going to a Godzilla movie” the series went on for years, as anyone reading this probably knows. And all the hallmarks of the series are right here in the original: A weird child with a powerful affection for an irradiated turtle. A turtle who was born to spin and fart fire. And of course, everybody’s favorite, long scenes of rational argument among government officials concerning how to deal with the crisis! Will Tokyo survive? Will a boy be forced to part with his pet turtle? Will Mothra ever get around to helping out? Take a flame-farting spin with Mike, Kevin, and Bill aboard Gammera the Invincible!
Are you afraid of The Dark? You should be. Not because it’s scary, it most certainly isn’t, but because it will rattle your brains if you try too hard to understand what it’s about. Is it a 70s cop drama about a serial killer? Or a monster movie about a demonic alien creature zapping people with its laser vision? The answer is somehow both, but also neither. William Devane, currently starring in commercials where he convinces older folks it’s a good idea to put all their money in gold, is a “sexy” former cop turned novelist (sure, why not) out to avenge his daughter’s death in a battle against… whatever is happening in The Dark. Really, we spent a lot of time with this movie and we’re still not sure, we’d love your help. Rounding out the cast of stock 70s character actors who appeared in multiple episodes of Columbo, we’ve got “voice of Shaggy from Scooby-Doo” Casey Kasem as a grim police coroner, Cathy Lee Crosby, and Richard Jaeckel, who keen-eyed Rifftrax fans may recognize as the scientist who got yelled at by shirtless Leslie Nielsen in Day of the Animals. So yeah, there’s a lot to love in The Dark. But not a lot to see, because it’s dark. Step into the murk of the late 70s with Mike, Kevin, and Bill, and savor the darky darkness of… The Dark!
The surest way to tell you’re in for a really crappy movie, (other than “Written and directed by James Nguyen”) is the word Cop appearing in the movie title. We’ve covered Samurai Cops and Cyborg Cops and now we turn our attention toward whatever the hell an Omega Cop is. Seriously, we’ve watched this movie a bunch and are still not sure. We have learned that Omega Cops A) Take orders from Adam West B) Have to avoid solar flares that turn you into black-faced zombies and C) Are surprisingly reliant on crotch kicks as a way of dispatching enemies. Spanning exotic, post-apocalyptic locations such as The City Dump and The Bleachers at the Local High School After Field Hockey Practice Lets Out, Omega Cop is truly a feast for the senses, in the same way that an invasive pest who burrows into your nasal cavity will proceed to feast on your senses.
Who is the Cat who Talks? None other than Eric Roberts! Director David DeCoteau (who directed the movie under the alias Mary Crawford, can’t imagine why) famously admitted that Eric Roberts recorded all of his lines in 15 minutes in his own living room. Which you’d never believe, hearing him in the movie! Because it sounds much worse than that, like he’s speaking from inside a tin can deep in a garbage truck in another dimension. Or maybe Eric Roberts’ living room IS a tin can deep in a garbage truck in another dimension? We may never know. There’s way too much good weird madness going on in A Talking Cat!?! to unpack in this blurb. But basically, he’s a cat sent by some mystic force with a magic collar that allows him to speak out loud, but only once to any given person, and always in a sarcastic tone of voice. He also thinks in a sarcastic tone of voice, like Garfield, but it takes a while to figure out when he’s talking and when he’s just thinking. Also, he’s there to set up a tech millionaire with a single mom who’s a caterer. Her catering business is apparently based 100% on her “top notch” cheese puffs. She’s all about cheese puffs, and you will never find a movie where the phrase “cheese puffs” comes up more often. Cheese puffs should honestly be mentioned in the title. And that’s just the beginning. This dish of lasagna just gets weirder with every layer you pull back. Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for this insane riff of A Talking Cat!?!, which they may or may not have recorded in Eric Roberts’ living room.
Is there anything more unsettling than an ice cream truck? Driving around slowly, playing a tinny recording of a song that was popular a century ago, trying to lure children with crude hand-painted knockoffs of cartoon characters on the side of the truck? Yes, it turns out there is something more unsettling, and that’s if the ice cream truck is driven by a serial-killing Clint Howard. Ladies and gentlemen: Ice Cream Man. The kids in this sleepy little town are concerned their ice cream man might be a murderer who puts human parts in his ice cream, which is a fair concern because he basically tells everyone he meets that he is a murderer who puts human parts in his ice cream. Also a fair concern because, again, he’s Clint Howard. Traumatized by seeing gangsters murder the previous ice cream man when he was a boy (this is his actual origin story, not a joke), Clint grew up to somehow take over the business and add murder to the menu. From Jan-Michael Vincent as the world’s most bored cop to David Naughton as the world’s horniest rich guy, the movie is packed with bad adults doing bad things. So hey, who are THEY to judge the Ice Cream Man, really? Just kidding, they are right to judge him, he and his ice cream are beyond disgusting. He’s goofy, he’s gross, but at least he doesn't charge extra for a waffle cone. He’s the Ice Cream Man, join Mike, Kevin and Bill for three scoops of him today!
The year was 1983 and volleyball was everywhere! Beaches! Family reunions! Multiplexes (provided you were there on the single day that the awful volleyball movie Spiker probably ran in theaters!) Spiker tells the story of the men whose dream it is to represent the United States in the Olympic volleyball championship. It’s a lofty goal that requires sacrificing your career, enduring brutal training, and forsaking personal relationships. These men are, of course, idiots. But it’s all worth it for the shot to compete on the highest stage in something that dozens of people consider a legitimate sport. You’ll meet all the volleyball hopefuls: Sonny, Newt, Catch, and several more who presumably also have terrible names. You’ll marvel as Spiker morphs from a dumbass Top Gun ripoff into a hamfisted cold war parable. You’ll wonder how on earth one movie can possibly contain this many scenes set in regional salad bar buffet restaurant Souplantation and—OH MY GOD, are they really going BACK to Souplantation?? They were just eating there!! I thought this was supposed to be about volleyball!!! Grease up, crank “Playin’ With The Boys”, and join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for Spiker!
Bela Lugosi! An ugly robot! The power of invisibility! A military intelligence officer romancing an ambitious reporter! All of these exciting-sounding elements are undeniably contained within the runtime of The Phantom Creeps! Originally released as 12 serial episodes - some of which were riffed on MST3K - The Phantom Creeps was later stitched together into this feature-length film. Taking a big story like that and compressing it into something much shorter would take a lot of artistry and skill. It sure would. Fortunately for us at RiffTrax, that is NOT what happened here! Bela Lugosi plays Dr. Zorka, a mad scientist who has taken on a few too many projects at once. Robots, invisibility belts, picking up hitchhikers and then immediately driving them off cliffs, he’s a busy guy. Fortunately he has help from his beefy henchman Monk. Fans of the Batman serial we riffed will remember Gabe, another great henchman. If you liked Gabe, you’re gonna love Monk. The fact Monk and Gabe never got their own spinoff is a real shame, as all serious film scholars would definitely agree. The Phantom Creeps is full of mysteries, chief among them, exactly what element of it is supposed to be the phantom, or the creeps, or what? Puzzle it out with Mike, Kevin, and Bill!
Hey gamers, strap into your X1 boot suit with microfiber crotch inlay and get ready to gunt. And remember, “a fanboy knows a hater!” NOTE: Everything in the preceding two sentences is straight from Ready Player One, we didn’t have to exaggerate anything, it’s really that gross. This alleged movie is an epic feat of fan service, assuming as a “fan” you feel “served” simply by seeing things you recognize flash by on screen. Watching it feels like being stuck in an unplayable cut scene from a video game, a video game you never get to play, and quite frankly wouldn’t really want to play if you could. But hey, gotta cut some slack for the novice director, probably their first time doing a big movie like this, let’s just check and that name, looks like it’s someone called -- STEVEN SPIELBERG?!?!? It’s a big messy sandbox, but it’s the perfect kind of mess for a RiffTrax, and this one is not to be missed. Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill and howl into the void of empty nostalgia that is Ready Player One! Written by: Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett, Sean Thomason, Conor Lastowka Contributing writers: Jason Miller, Zachary Shatzer
Terror in the Wax Museum is a redundant title. Obviously, there has never been a movie wax museum that wasn’t swarming with unimaginable terrors, just as there has never been a John Carradine movie where he didn’t dodder around a secret laboratory full of Bunsen burners and dry ice. (Many people forget that during the famous “I’ll be there” speech in Grapes of Wrath, John’s in the background getting his tongue caught in a beaker.) When bodies start turning up in London, there’s only possible explanation: the various wax dummies have gained sentience and started murdering people. It’s actually a lot more plausible than the actual twist the movie serves up. Along the way you’ll get to watch people gawk at history’s greatest monsters: Jack the Ripper, Genghis Khan, Lizzie Borden, and the local lounge singer who, though she technically never killed anybody, really needs to improve her vocal range or at the very least learn another damn song! Mike, Kevin, and Bill all hope to one day be enshrined in Madame Tussauds. Until then, they’ll be setting for this riff.
If the old dusty carousel of audio cassettes at a truck stop could be distilled into a movie, this would be that movie. From the title to the fashion to the hair to the faces, one of the most 70s things you will ever experience is Trucker’s Woman! It’s a classic tale: a middle-aged man drops out of college when his trucker father is murdered by trucking mobsters, then immediately becomes a trucker himself so he can get to the bottom of things. Because there’s obviously no other way! Along the path to vengeance, the titular Trucker makes time to make time with various truck stop ladies at various truck stops and other trucking-based locations. Which one of these women is the Trucker’s Woman from the title? Not clear! All that, plus a nice role for Doodles Weaver! Don’t know who Doodles Weaver is? You will after this. He’s easily one of the top five most famous people with the name “Doodles,” after all. This movie is so 70s that it’s basically the Guy From Harlem of trucking movies, and that’s high praise indeed. Hop in the cab with Mike, Kevin, and Bill, and tune the CB radio to Trucker’s Woman!
Flying in the face of Die Hard Law, Stranger Things is NOT a sequel to a show called Strange Things. It is, however, a sequel to just about everything else that came out in the 80s. And this is the episode where it all started, “it” meaning America’s vague awareness that there was a kid out there named “Finn Wolfhard.” Stranger Things gave us many exciting cultural touchstones such as The Upside Down, spelling words with Christmas lights, and a newfound appreciation for Eggo waffles. None of them will be appearing in this episode. But there is plenty of that guy from the commercial for those things you’re not supposed to eat! (Burger King’s Chicken Fries) Join Mike, Kevin, Bill, and Barb for the very first episode of Stranger Things! Written by: Mike Nelson, Conor Lastowka, Sean Thomason Contributing Writer: Zachary Shatzer
When a mysterious fog (fog FX not depicted) reroutes their resort shuttle, a group of tourists find themselves stranded at an elderly couple’s house. They don’t realize that it’s actually Santa’s Summer House, perhaps because the old man looks nothing like Santa and doesn’t even have a beard, and the home decor remains unchanged from A Talking Cat!?! (We assume that the house still smells like waffles.) Voluntarily returning to the mansion where A Talking Cat!?! was filmed may seem as reckless and irresponsible as Wendy Torrance returning to the Overlook Hotel. And while there are no axe-wielding maniacs, there is a trademark DeCoteau catering subplot! Speaking of eating, you probably shouldn’t eat anything that fell on the floor of this house, you don’t know what kinds of movies they’re shooting here after hours... Santa is played by Hollywood legend Robert Mitchum’s son Chris, who may just be the biggest paternal disappointment since Oedipus. Santa attempts to fix his guests' relationship problems; for some reason, this plan involves the longest croquet match in cinema history. To be honest, they might have been better off stranded in The Overlook with no TV and no beer. Mike, Kevin, and Bill may have been better off at Pirate’s World, but they invite you to join them for Santa’s Summer House!
Strap on a vest and your smirkiest smirk, it’s time for Solo! The first Star Wars title that tells you exactly how high to set your expectations. It’s also the first Star Wars movie that’s officially a Star Wars Story. It turns out those other Star Wars movies weren’t stories at all, they were cinéma vérité documentaries. Which is really the only explanation for those long C-SPAN style Galactic Senate meetings. But there’s none of that dullness here! Well, okay, there is, lots of it. But it doesn’t feel like dullness! It’s an action-packed slog to the finish that dutifully checks off Star Wars trivia boxes like “the Kessel Run” and “meeting Lando” and “Han Solo’s famous lucky dice, you know, the dice that he definitely always had and have always been really important to everyone involved.” It’s got romance, a train chase, endless double-crossing, someone from Game of Thrones, and someone from Cheers. Also, fun new Star Wars facts like “Chewbacca has eaten people, like, a lot of people.” Gotta love him! Solo: A Star Wars Story proves once and for all that, before he became Harrison Ford, Han Solo was just a young guy doing his best Jack Nicholson impression. Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill and see how it all happened! Written by: Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett, Conor Lastowka, Sean Thomason Contributing Writers: Jason Miller, Zachary Shatzer Guest Riffs written by our Drip contest winners: Nick Pranger and Kurt Storm
For the first time in this or any other galaxy, the RiffTrax crew is delighted to take on the sci-fi fantasy classic Krull. Directed by Peter Yates, who also made Bullitt, The Dresser, and Breaking Away comes this thrilling, swashbuckling space opera. Travel to the magical planet Krull, where people travel freely through time and space, and yet everything is still lit with torches. Here Princess Lyssa and Prince Colwyn plan to marry and rule the land. But wait! The fair kingdom is invaded by a beast, appropriately named The Beast, and his army of Slayers, who slay a LOT. Princess Lyssa is kidnapped and it’s up to Colwyn to rescue her. Naturally he assembles a rag-tag band of misfits to help him. A wizard! A cyclops! Another wizard! A Robbie Coltrane and a Liam Neeson! Will Colwyn save his Princess from the clutches of dark magic? Probably! And he’ll do it with the help of his magical throwing toy, the Glaive. Join Bill, Mike and Kevin on their epic joke-fueled journey to the land of Krull!
It’s the future! Dinosaurs have made a comeback, whereas pants have gone the way of the dinosaur! At the center of it is a man named Yor, who is here to kick ass and hang glide on giant bats, and fortunately he’s not out of giant bats because boy is that scene where he hang glides on a giant bat hilarious! Yor is of course played by RiffTrax favorite Reb Brown, a Green Bay Packers Cheesehead Hat Who Assumed Human Form. In this film, Reb defies expectations, portraying Yor as a sensitive-yet-brilliant poet, who through articulate calls to reason—we’re just kidding, he punches dinosaurs and horns out on cave-babes. With an over-the-top theme song, cheesy creatures fx, and a ridiculous final act that will truly surprise anybody who didn’t finish reading the title, this flick is truly an 80s cheese connoisseur’s delight. Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for Yor - The Hunter from the Future!
When an atomic bomb test triggers the arrival of invaders from another planet who command an army of mutated lizards and insects, one thing is clear: some hack director has combined the dumbest plots of about a dozen b-movies into a single film! There’s one thing standing in the killers way: a square-headed, big-faced guy who, since this is the fifties, we assume is named Steve or Bill. Steve or Bill can’t remember how he got the mysterious scar on his chest, which means we’re in for many long scenes of men in drab rooms looking serious. Sometimes they invite a woman into the drab rooms and graciously allow her to occasionally indicate that she is concerned. But when the killers finally appear, all is redeemed! Because they’re wearing prosthetic eyes (this is a fancy way to say “ping pong balls cut in half”) that make them permanently look like a cartoon wolf who has just noticed an attractive lounge singer. Join jarringly unnecessary closeups of Mike, Kevin, and Bill for Killers From Space! NOTE: Contains brief old-timey racism at the very beginning.
No, it’s not the terrible Sorcerer’s Apprentice movie with Nicolas Cage, come on, we wouldn’t do that to you. It’s something MUCH WORSE than that! The Sorcerer’s Apprentice comes from the same childlike-whimsy mill that brought us The Little Unicorn and Merlin: The Return. Speaking of Merlin: The Return, Merlin returns in this movie, too. There’s just something so compelling, and public domain, about that character! But this time, he’s played by the endlessly magical Robert Davi. And evil sorceress Morgana? None other than Kelly LeBrock, here to finally settle the question posed by Ghosthouse: who’s more popular in Denver, her or Kim Basinger? We’ll find out at last! We’ll also find out if the little blonde boy who’s in all of these movies fits in at his new school, reconnects with his father, and impresses a girl with his card tricks (okay, we all know that last one’s not happening). Okay, Merlin has returned three more times since we started this paragraph, so hurry up and join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for The Sorcerer’s Apprentice!
The Girl From Rio, as you might guess, is about the island nation of Femina, which is inhabited by scantily clad superwomen intent on conquering the world. At some point, one of them goes undercover as a nail salon worker in Rio. In retrospect, the marketing department realized that they should have put more emphasis on the machine gun toting babes and less on the manicures. Also deserving less emphasis? The movie’s leading man, Jeff, a spy who on a scale of Jason Bourne to James Bond rates somewhere around the level of bathtub mildew. He’s come to Rio to kick ass and wear size fifteen sport shirts and fortunately the hotel is well stocked with size fifteen sport shirts. It must be a Rio thing. It’s Carnival time, so grab your beads and join Mike, Kevin, and Bill before the Girl From Rio pulls a Guy From Harlem and moves to Miami.
The atomic bombs have fallen, and a plucky brigade of… well, let’s face it, morons, are all that remains of humanity. For reasons unexplained, they go into town. Why do they live in out in the desert instead of town? This is also not explained. When it turns out that the building they’ve chosen to spend the night in is infested with rats who begin to pick them off one by one, why do they not leave? Not explai—Hey, you’re already ahead of us! Rats: Night of Terror delivers an abundance of the first word of its title, and pretty much none of the last word. You’ll meet characters such as Video, Chocolate, Lucifer, and Rat Victim #2. You will wonder how someone gets a job dumping buckets full of live rats onto willing actors, because honestly, it seems kind of fun. And you will encounter a titanicly idiotic plot twist that we really wish happened earlier in the movie. Please join Mike, Kevin, and Bill (all apprentice rat wranglers) for Rats: Night of Terror!
Zombie, AKA I Eat Your Skin, the movie so nice they named it twice! Or, if you’re more into “facts,” the movie they renamed for a re-release in 1970 to be paired with I Drink Your Blood. It was an interesting move to change the name to I Eat Your Skin, though, since the movie contains absolutely no skin-eating at all. Not even an earlobe nibble! A more accurate title would have been I Occasionally Chop Off Heads With a Machete Because I’m The Voodoo Kind Of Zombie, Not The BRAAAAINS Kind. See how snappy that would have been! Our hero is an oversexed pulp novelist who gets swarmed by women everywhere he goes, like he’s a Beatle or something. This time, he’s going to an island, and, we’re not kidding about this, the island is called Voodoo Island. What could go wrong? Well, plenty, because the island is home to a scientist who’s trying to cure cancer with snake venom, which keeps turning people into zombies instead. Big Pharma strikes again! Will the novelist, his new girlfriend, and his alcoholic publisher friend get away with their lives? Will a novel be written? Will any skin be eaten? (The answer to that last one is a definitive NO). Join Mike, Kevin and Bill for a weekend jaunt down to Voodoo Island for Zombie, AKA I Eat Your Skin!
Every time the Blood Theatre has opened for business, someone has died. But this time, the most incompetent theater owner in town has a good feeling about his chances! After all, he’s the brains behind such innovations as the totally necessary “movie theater employee locker room” and the enormous PA system that’s constantly blaring announcements to people who have already bought their damn tickets. So it will come as no surprise that things immediately go wrong and people die. But at least their theater uses real butter instead of that gross artificial stuff! One thing the Blood Theatre has going for it? It doesn’t show movies directed by Hobgoblins auteur Rick Sloane. Unfortunately, this huge plus is immediately negated by the fact that Blood Theatre itself is directed by Rick Sloane. It’s up to you if you wanna join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for the riffing; the rest of us are gonna watch a nice, safe Neil Breen movie instead.
You know that feeling when you’re being chased by a murderous re-animated giant, and you’re like, “Where’s he FROM? What middle school did he go to? I wonder what he’s all about?” but there’s no time for small talk because he’s a murderous giant trying to murder you? Well, good news, we’ve found a movie that tackles this awkward situation head-on: Giant from the Unknown! A sleepy mountain town called Pine Ridge has a big problem: someone’s been mutilating their cows. Ah, it must be the giant from the title of the movie, you’re probably thinking. Spoiler alert: nope! Who IS mutilating the cows? Another spoiler: we never find out! It’s just one of the many confusing joys of this movie, with its unlikeable sheriff who seems like a villain but isn’t, and its Giant from the Unknown who is quite clearly a Giant from Spain, as the archaeologists searching for him make extremely clear over and over again. WILL we find out where the Giant is from? (Yes, Spain). WILL the mutilator of cows be brought to justice? (No, that storyline won’t be resolved in any way). WILL the hunky archaeologist hook up with the blonde or the brunette who are the only women in town? (We’re not telling you that one, tune in to find out!) Don’t miss the Giant from Spai-- er, sorry, Giant from the Unknown, with Mike, Kevin, and Bill!
It seems like every time a movie character unearths a mysterious idol from an ancient ruin, some cursed demon ends up imbuing them with a psychotic need to kill. But the characters in The Power have a pretty good feeling about this mysterious idol from an ancient ruin! When some teens bring a ouija board to a graveyard, they’re immediately arrested by the cliche police. Here to help them is Jerry, who’s in town visiting his...Sister? Ex? Daughter? We’re not exactly sure. What is certain is that nobody has ever been less of a leading man than Jerry. (This includes the teens’ Ouija board.) When The Power seizes control of Jerry, it’s all the teens and his sister-girlfriend can do to resist. Resist the urge to laugh at the laughable prosthetics they use to make Jerry look evil, that is. Join Mike, Kevin, Bill, and a harmless little tiki idol that Kevin brought back from Hawaii for The Power!
Once upon a time, way back in 1996, the stars aligned and gave us Yesterday’s Target, a TV movie starring LeVar Burton, Malcolm McDowell, and a Baldwin brother! No, not Alec, too famous. No, not William, too handsome. No, not Stephen, too “funny.” The other one. No, come on, there’s another one, you just don’t remember. Think. THINK. Okay, fine, we’ll tell you: it’s Daniel. Yes, Daniel Baldwin! No we didn’t make him up; he’s real, he’s in Yesterday’s Target, and he’s travelled time to save us all, or something - so you should show him a little respect! In this world, unexplained eleven-month pregnancies are bringing on a new generation of people with psychic superpowers - one might call them “mutants,” or “X-Men,” if one weren’t too afraid of litigation. Daniel Baldwin, who can sorta move stuff with his mind, and a couple of his psychic pals have been sent back from the future to do… something? We’re not really sure; it doesn’t quite add up, but they do get a lot of headaches and grimace a lot. Perhaps the strangest choice the movie makes is casting LeVar Burton, the world’s nicest and most likeable actor, as a heartlessly cruel bad guy. Sometimes casting against type really works! Sometimes, it really doesn’t. To paraphrase the Reading Rainbow theme song, “Take a look, it’s in a book, it’s a bad moooovie.” If all this sounds kind of strange and nonsensical, that’s only because it is. Strap in for a psychic time-travel romp of Baldwinian proportions, join Mike, Kevin and Bill for Yesterday’s Target!
The year was 1990. Milli Vanilli began their unstoppable march up the pop charts. The Church Lady was the favored impression of dorky dads everywhere. And evidently The Bronx was a wasteland overrun by gangs with really lame themes. There’s a tapdancing gang! A rollerskating gang! Presumably there’s a gang who only wears Zubaz pants (it being 1990). MST3K fans may recognize the sweet, lovable hero Trash from the Season 7 offering Escape 2000, the kind-of sequel to this film. Trash just wants to get to the other side of the Bronx. We think his goal is to evade The Warriors' copyright attorneys. If you’ve read this far, you’ve probably already guessed that former NFL star-turned-B-movie-king Fred Williamson is in this movie, and you would be correct. Also mentally cashing a paycheck throughout the production is Vic Morrow, who plays the era-appropriate Hammer. All things told, you could do worse for entertainment in 1990. Exhibit A: "Shiny Happy People." Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for the only movie more 90s than Cool As Ice, 1990: Bronx Warriors!
Oh, Kill or Be Killed, where to begin? It’s a cornucopia of wonders, specifically South African martial arts wonders. If the title and long-haired karate hero seem familiar, that’s because we already riffed the sequel to this movie, Kill and Kill Again. Why did we riff them out of order? That’s a good question. Another good question would be, why were either of these movies made? The answer to both questions is “who knows, but enjoy!” The plot of Kill or Be Killed is somehow even more whacked-out than the sequel. Back in the 1940s, a Nazi officer disgraced himself when his German karate team lost to Japan in a tournament attended by none other than Mr. Adolf Hitler. Um, embarrassing! Now, 30 years later, the Nazi has built a castle hideout in the desert, where he challenges his Japanese karate rival - who is named, no joke, Miyagi - to a redo of the tournament he lost decades ago. But this time, there will be no audience, and also no purpose, other than trying to soothe the Nazi’s hurt feelings. Quite frankly, this Nazi is kind of a weenie. Both teams try to recruit our hero, karate legend Steve Hunt - played by none other than James Ryan, who you might recognize as the villainous MacPhearson from Space Mutiny (he does much less karate in that movie). But Steve isn’t really interested in the pointless tournament, he’d rather hang out with his girlfriend, who also does karate, naturally. All that, plus Chico! Chico is the Nazi’s wisecracking sidekick, but he’s so much more than that. We don’t want to give too much away, but Chico is without a doubt the real star and hero of this movie. Get Chico fever, and join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for the vague revenge saga that is Kill or Be Killed!
An international cabal of sexy ladies has set their sights on the world’s richest and most powerful men. There’s only one thing that can stop them: a middle-aged guy who wears his pants hiked up maybe three inches below his nipples. Typically this would not present a problem for such an advanced organization, but they didn’t count on one thing: this idiot is the star of a sixties movie and they are therefore required to fall in love with him despite the fact that he looks like someone who might have unsuccessfully tried to sell Don Draper flood insurance on Mad Men. Assisting our hero is Frankie Avalon, who, despite not being Frankie Vallie, still sucks big time. They’ll also encounter Klaus Kinski, who apparently was able to embarass himself in B-movies on the rare occasions he wasn’t shrieking at Werner Herzog. There’s also statue rays, army guys in tiny shorts, and killer nuns because hey: that’s Sumuru’s vision, and she’s the one with the million eyes. Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for The Million Eyes of Sumuru, and then stick around for the next film in the SCU (Sumuru Cinematic Universe) The Girl from Rio!
“Hadouken!” “Shoryuken!” Perhaps the two most iconic special moves from the classic video game Street Fighter II. Will you see or hear either of these moves in Street Fighter, the film adaptation of that game? No! Were 90s kids disappointed by this movie? Very! Apparently the makers of Street Fighter decided the basic structure of the video game - a fun, colorful martial arts tournament - would NEVER WORK as a movie. Instead, they plugged the game’s characters into a storyline about M. Bison - played by Raul Julia in his final role - trying to take over the world as a military dictator. Who needs karate-fireballs and exciting monsters when you could watch General Bison lay out his plan for a new currency, right kids? Opposing Bison is Guile, played by JCVD himself, Jean-Claude Van Damme. Guile is the leader of some sort of Allied Nations military group because sure, why not. Joining him is Chun Li, except now she’s a TV news reporter, and E. Honda, who is now a Hawaiian sumo wrestler and part-time news cameraman. Also Ryu and Ken are there, as gun smugglers dispensing lame quips instead of the aforementioned Hadoukens and Shoryukens. See the movie that had kids everywhere saying “Mommy, is that sickly looking guy really supposed to be Blanka? Can I go sit in the lobby and cry?” Smash a car with a lead pipe in the bonus stage and join Mike, Kevin and Bill for Street Fighter! Written by: Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett, Conor Lastowka, Sean Thomason Contributing Writers: Jason Miller, Zachary Shatzer
The Subspecies movies chronicle the growth and evolution of the lifeforms developing on the vegetable ingredients behind the sneezeguard at a major sub sandwich franchise. Oh, sorry, that’s wrong, it’s vampires, the movies are about vampires. Either way, it’s probably a good idea to take some antibiotics before digging in to Subspecies IV: The Awakening! Now, don’t worry if you haven’t seen the first three films in the series, we haven’t either. You’ll have no problem getting up to speed, because roughly 30% of Subspecies IV is just flashback footage reused from the previous movies. Convenient AND cost-effective! Subspecies IV tells the tale of some very whispery, ancient, and deeply unappealing vampires fighting for power and ownership of an artifact called the Bloodstone. The story is set in a vaguely Transylvanian town full of vaguely Transylvanian people. Basically, the movie feels like a group of goth teens improvising a vampire LARP, but with lower production values. What are you waiting for, these Subspecies ain’t gonna Awaken themselves! Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for Subspecies IV: The Awakening, and get ready to drink a few precious drops from the Bloodstone.
John Travis (Ron Marchini) is back! Who? You know, the guy from Omega Cop? Played a cop, possibly the Omega Cop? Well he’s back! Of course, he probably never left the studio lot. He didn’t seem to have a lot going on. Always changed the subject when we asked about his wife, borrowed money but wouldn’t say what he needed it for. You could hear him crying in the bathroom in between takes. But hey, now he knows karate! And it’s possible that he plays the Karate Cop! Omega Cop had Adam West and it’s hard to fill his shoes. So the producers didn’t even try and instead just nudged David Carradine awake. (He had passed out on top of a pile of rags that they were going to try to assemble into a passable Adam West dummy, but once he was awake he seemed sober enough and they figured they’d just cast him in the movie instead.) There’s also teleportation, jackyrabbit stew, a prominent spiral staircase, and a guy who paints his face like a cat who is named, you guessed it: Snake. You might notice we have not mentioned Karate. There is not too much of it. Considering the talent they were working with, that’s probably a good thing. Please join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for Karate Cop.
Delivered straight from Mars to a mysterious abandoned boat to the sewers of New York City to your very own home, it’s a big steaming pile of Contamination! Emphasis on the “big steaming pile” part. This is some high-grade Italian shlock cinema, full of sci-fi thrills, horror chills, and long-scenes-of-planning-and-administration spills! A large ship full of corpses and strange green eggs shows up in the New York harbor, and it’s up to Colonel Stella Holmes and a washed-up drunken astronaut to save the world. Save the world from what’s inside the eggs, you might ask? No, no, it’s just the eggs themselves. Just laying there, all big and gross and unable to move without help. But don’t get too close to the eggs or they’ll explode and make a mess! It shouldn’t be too hard to avoid them, actually. And really, as long as you don’t pick the eggs up, you’ll be fine. Still, the entire Earth is at risk! From the very scary eggs! With a score by “The Goblin” (better known for better movies like Suspiria) and an opening credit for “The Alien Cyclops” you're in for a real strange treat with this one. Get your disinfecting wipes ready and join Mike, Kevin and Bill for Contamination!
Fried chicken is delicious. So is butterscotch pudding. Ditto a tall, frosty IPA. A dozen freshly shucked oysters, yes please. Veal picatta? Mmmmm! Now, put all them all in a blender and hit puree. That’s the equivalent of The Visitor. Here’s a straw! The Visitor’s got ambitious cinematography, big name actors, and a score that makes The Goblin sound like they barfed on their Casio. But when you add them all together, the result is a baffling mess, as incoherent as it is unintentionally funny. When a young girl begins to manifest her latent psychic abilities, viewers will undoubtedly be reminded of dozens of movies with similar plots. But The Visitor introduces a twist that RiffTrax fans will never see coming: poorly rendered killer birds attacking! Why it’s all John Huston can do to not fall asleep in terror mid-scene. Join Mike, Kevin, Bill, several bald children, a basketball team who can only score by dunking, an evil cabal of satanist businessmen, and the most unfortunate movie mom since Bambi for The Visitor!
Feeders is the kind of movie that you’d find in the part of the video store you weren’t allowed to go in, in a video store you also weren’t allowed to go in. It is directed by The Polonia Brothers, who have been called “The Coen Brothers of Horror” by fans of terrible comparisons. They have directed over forty movies, many of which have been introduced as evidence at The Hague. Feeders is one of them. When a poorly rendered UFO lands on Earth, the aliens immediately seek out our best and brightest. That is of course a lie. They encounter shut-ins, alcoholics, and two men who are heading to spring break despite the fact that they are clearly in their mid-thirties. The aliens proceed to feed on them, mostly by waggling around in short enough bursts so as not to reveal the hand of whichever Polonia brother was currently shaking the puppet. The late 90s was one of the very finest vintages for Direct to Video Swill, so please join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for Feeders!
Yes, believe it or not, they made another one of these - the film series about how it’s a bad idea to keep digging up old things continues failing to learn its own lesson. Buckle up and continue holding on to your butts, as you have since 1993, it’s Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom! We'd hoped the title was Jurassic World: FALLON Kingdom and would focus on what happened with that safety video with Jimmy Fallon they played in Jurassic World, but we were sorely disappointed. You’d also be disappointed if you had expected this sequel to remember much else about what happened in that movie. Remember how Bryce Dallas Howard’s character built a relationship with her nephews in that one? Seemed pretty important to the story? Well, in this one, they don’t come up at all! There’s a new kid, though: the granddaughter of a rich guy who was important to the original Jurassic Park project… who also, somehow, never came up before. It’s a rich film universe, folks! There’s a lot to love/hate in this movie, but maybe the finest/lowest moment is the illegal underground dinosaur auction. Watch in amazement as the handful of rare dinosaurs left in the world, and all the invaluable genetic information they contain, get sold for less money than Chris Pratt was paid to be in this sequel. Join Mike, Kevin and Bill for Jurassic World: How to Make a Billion Dollars Without Really Trying, er, sorry, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, available now!
Martial Law: It’s the film that Nepotism Enthusiast magazine deemed “Movie of the Year!” Steve McQueen’s son Chad (of course he's named Chad) stars as Sean “Martial Law” Thompson, who has achieved a high rank on the police force despite having the raw charisma of a collectible spoon from the birthplace of Millard Fillmore. His partner and lover is Cynthia Rothrock, who must have been tricked into thinking she was acting alongside Steve. She shows off the Kung Fu skills that would later land her the coveted role of Mrs. Claus. Together they will take down evil businessman Dalton Rhodes (played by David Carradine, on one of the rare days in the late 90s he wasn’t filming a movie where he wore a stupid radio-controlled glove.) Carradine is running an illegal luxury car dealership out of a karate studio and has mastered The Touch of Death. Good luck reading a dumber sentence today. Please join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for Martial Law.
Did the world really need another vampire movie? After all, we know all the tropes: they hop around like they’re on invisible pogo sticks, their leader is a gorilla who wants to marry a ghost-witch, and they love heroin. Okay, so maybe Robo Vampire takes a few liberties with Mr. Stoker’s original mythos. But what it lacks in tradition it more than makes up for in utterly incoherent madness. There’s not even a Robo Vampire and that’s like the thirtieth most crazy thing in the movie Robo Vampire. Robo Vampire foregoes the blood, and just wants to suck. Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for Robo Vampire!
Feeders, the extremely homemade alien attack schlockfest, warmed our hearts and melted our minds when we riffed it earlier this year. Everyone who saw it, and all the bloody alien destruction it brought, was left with one obvious question: did the Polonia Brothers make a Christmas-based sequel??? We’re here with tidings of comfort and joy and globs of fake blood around the mouth, because it’s time for Feeders 2: Slay Bells! The movie picks up right where the first one left off… except not really, because one of the actors is playing the same character he was in the first Feeders, while the rest are all playing different characters who nonetheless look exactly the same as they did in the first movie. Confused? Don’t worry, they recap the first movie and re-use some footage from it, which really… doesn’t clear things up at all. However, there are a LOT of scenes in basements, and the best angry boss character we’ve seen since Samurai Cop. We don’t want to give away too much, but we can tell you this: there are new Feeders puppets, somehow even cheaper than the puppets in the first one (those puppets are still around too, inexplicably). And if you ever wanted to see the Feeders take on Santa Claus and his reindeer - well, that’s a very strange thing to want, and you should reflect on that a little - but you’ll be very happy! Get ready for the bloodiest holiday season since your dad gave your mom an exercise bike she didn’t ask for, join Mike, Kevin and Bill for Feeders 2: Slay Bells!
When stop-motion dinosaurs meet anime superheroes, only one thing is certain: things are about to get dumb as hell! Mad Ruler Emperor Tyrannous lives beneath the earth and commands an army of supermonsters by shouting at them like late-career Al Pacino. Despite being gigantic fire-breathing dinosaurs, their main strategy is to hypnotize substantially smaller animals like dogs and bats, into attacking humanity. It’s not a very good strategy, but then again, this is not a very good movie. Standing in their way is Gemini Command, which consists of two siblings and two idiots. The siblings, Jim and Jem, can bond to form the all-powerful Gemini, whereas the two idiots, Jerry and Wally, at one point lose track of their pet sloth. Can they save humanity? No, many people die horribly. Well at least they were just cartoons! Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for one of the most unique movies we’ve ever done, Attack of the Super Monsters!
Sunset Strip is a classic Hollywood tale, in the sense that 1985 is now long enough ago to technically be considered “classic.” And it is VERY 1985. The protagonist is a breakdancing photographer - meaning he photographs breakdancers, not that he takes photographs while breakdancing. He rides around the Sunset Strip on a motorcycle, and he’s trying to help a friend keep his sleazy nightclub open in the face of organized crime. And just in case that still ain’t 1985 enough for ya, they threw in some hair metal and gratuitous background stripping! More fun details: there’s a bar band who will make you pine for the Jeff Healey band of Road House fame. There’s a major character named Moran. Actual British music legend John Mayall is inexplicably here. And our photographer hero has a horny landlord who’s constantly trying to jump his bones. See, like we said, classic! Grab a Members Only jacket, cue up a slimy saxophone solo. and join Mike, Kevin and Bill for the pure 1985 power of Sunset Strip!
he Shape of Things to Come! No, it’s not a harrowing follow-up to our classic thrill ride short Drawing for Beginners: The Rectangle, it’s a space thing! Specifically, it’s a space thing “based on” a book by H.G. Wells. Even more specifically, it came out in 1979, two years after Star Wars, yet still feels like a B-movie from the 50s that someone accidentally colorized. The titular Things to Come are a future in which mankind has laid waste to the Earth - which is, just, CLASSIC mankind - and lives on moon bases filled with boxy robots who can teleport, but only sometimes. Danger has emerged on a distant planet in the form of none other than Jack Palance, rocking a gold jumpsuit and purple cape combo, and chewing through scenery like a shark through tissue paper. Also, his name is OMUS. Jack Palance / Omus is out to rule the galaxy from his very dull space office, and our only hope is - who else? - some scientists in slightly-different jumpsuits. One of them is played by a guy from Space: 1999. Y’know, for the kids! Choose your jumpsuit wisely and get on board with Mike, Kevin, and Bill for a geometrical taste of The Shape of Things to Come!
Lorenzo Lamas stars as a Bounty Tracker in the movie Bounty Tracker. Bounty Trackers are like Bounty Hunters, except there were presumably already ten thousand other direct-to-video movies called Bounty Hunter (most of them also starring Lorenzo Lamas.) Tragedy strikes early on when Lorenzo’s brother is murdered in cold blood. The tragedy is that the brother was still alive during the scene in the movie where Lorenzo attempts a Harvard accent. The fact that Lorenzo often resembles the lead in a Lifetime movie about David Foster Wallace only adds to the unspeakable tragedy of his brother surviving for a half hour of Bounty Tracker’s runtime. Lorenzo must Track the ultimate Bounty: revenge. The previous line is unfortunately not nearly as stupid as any of the actual dialogue in Bounty Tracker. But as a plus, a lot of bad guys in pleated A.C. Slater pants are gunned down mercilessly. Long before his hosting gig on Are You Hot? was deemed the nadir of civilization, Bounty Tracker made a respectable claim to the throne. Join Mike, Kevin, Bill, and thousands of rounds of spent ammo for Bounty Tracker.
Here’s the good news: Hijacked: Flight 285 will still make sense even if you haven’t seen any of the previous 284 movies in the Hijacked: Flight series. The bad news? The series has experienced a sharp decline ever since Hijacked: Flight 92 - What Do You Mean You’re Out of Ginger Ale, No, Diet is Certainly NOT OKAY. Made for network TV in the mid-90s (a fact that will come as no surprise once you see that the dad from "Family Ties" gets second billing), Hijacked is a good example of the commercial-interrupted delights that awaited people who were fans of crap but too cheap to buy a ticket to Dante’s Peak. The all-star cast will leave you full of questions: Will James Brolin ever leave the cockpit? (No.) Can noted dweeb Anthony Michael Hall pull off a convincing terrorist? (No.) Where do I recognize that one guy from? (Police Academy.) Ha! No, I’ve certainly never seen a Police Academy movie... (You don’t have to lie to us. It was the 80s. We were all dumber.)
Who is Velvet Smooth? A no-nonsense 1970s blaxploitation heroine, or a new yogurt brand full of decadent dessert flavors? It’s the former, baby, so put down your spoons and get groovy! Velvet Smooth is a detective in Harlem - unlike the detective in The Guy From Harlem, who lives in Miami. Here’s hoping the two of them will meet up in some future Avengers-type supergroup movie, maybe when The Guy returns to Harlem to pick up some of his old stuff from a storage unit. Velvet Smooth is just minding her own business, lounging and generally being a foxy far-out chick, when she gets hired by a crime boss with the world’s most upsetting rat-tail. The rat-tail guy is in trouble because some masked goons keep robbing the shoeshine stands and magazine salesmen that make up his less-than-impressive criminal empire. Can Velvet help him out? You bet your bellbottoms she can. Can anyone in this movie full of martial arts action do convincing martial arts at all? No. No, they cannot. Enter a world of wood paneling, basement casinos, and hideous sectional sofas. Join Mike, Kevin and Bill for Velvet Smooth!
Ninja Warlord delivers exactly what we expect from a Kung Fu flick: Pink Floyd music and fish taxes. When the Japanese enact onerous fish taxes (no, that part was not a joke) the Chinese have two options: rally grassroots support to overturn the taxes through vigorous legislative debate, or punch them. They opt for choice B, but to be perfectly honest, A may have made a better movie. Our hero? A boxer who killed a man in the ring and was so overcome with grief that he started dressing like Rudyard Kipling. He must take on the ninja warlord, or perhaps he is the ninja warlord? It doesn’t matter because you’ll be on the edge of your seat wondering if the county assessor will tax the fish on a volume basis or a weight basis! Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill, none of whom can have their pudding because they didn’t eat their meat, for Ninja Warlord!
Lovely But Deadly starts off fairly straightforward: a logger suffers an accident in Idaho so he sends his son to live with his wealthy aunt in California, where he succumbs to the temptation of drugs and swims into the ocean in search of a tuna, causing his sister to also move from Idaho and enroll in his high school to get revenge on the drug dealer by shoving his mouth full of homemade drugs at the prom, which does not kill him but somehow causes him to hang himself once he gets to the hospital. From there it gets kinda weird. For example, there’s Javelin, the teenage coffeehouse troubadour who is also a worldwide shipping magnate. There’s also George’s boss from Seinfeld acting all horny, a boat chase involving colorful dinghies, and a dude named Gomorrah. All in all, it’s your standard 80s high school drug movie made by people who have never heard of high school, drugs, or the 80s. Please join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for Lovely But Deadly!
Ever since the original premiered in 1977, Star Wars fans have waited to see how the Skywalker saga would end. Sure, the decades were challenging, with plenty of highs and lows along the way. But finally, at long last, we all got to see the big conclusion we’d been waiting for! And afterward, the world cried out as one, “...Oh. Huh.” But now’s the time to dig in with RiffTrax and remember the perhaps most forgettable installment in the saga, Star Wars Episode 9! Hey, not even Police Academy made it to 9 movies, and Police Academy is the high bar against which all other cinema should be measured. Also, how are there only 9 Episodes when we’ve riffed at least 47 Star Wars movies? Sci-fi is so confusing! No matter how you feel about it, it’s clear that Star Wars will never die. And neither will any of the actors, if Disney’s CGI artists have anything to say about it. Everybody’s back, nobody’s ever really dead, you already know what happens and if you don’t, we’re definitely not gonna spoil the stirring conclusion for you now! Fill a glass with that green milk Luke likes so much and settle in with Mike, Kevin and Bill for Star Wars: Episode IX -The Rise of Skywalker! Written by Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett, Conor Lastowka and Sean Thomason Contributing writers Jason Miller and Zachary Shatzer
The Most Dangerous Game encounters problems right out of the gate when it turns out to NOT be about playing Twister nude with an angry badger. In its defense, it appears to have been filmed during the Monroe administration, so Twister, and quite possibly badgers, had not been invented. After a heavy storm and some even heavier foreshadowing, a shipwreck victim finds himself on a mysterious island. He’s soon at the mercy of an evil count. You can tell he’s evil because he has one of those sinister pointy goatees. Oh, and he also hunts human beings for sport. Please join Mike, Kevin, and Bridget for The Most Dangerous Game!
Right off the bat, there’s one thing you should know about the Suburban Sasquatch: his nipples are huge. Huge, detailed, and poorly sculpted. He barely comes near a suburb in the entire course of the movie, so it should probably have been called Big Detailed Nipples Sasquatch instead. But hey, hindsight is 20/20. (20 is also roughly the diameter of the sasquatch’s nipples, in inches). It’s an extremely homemade horror film in the vein of Feeders. Speaking of veins, the ones in this movie are all full of cheap digital blood that squirts out like a “violent” computer game from the 90s. And the cast of characters full of that cheap digital blood is rich: schlubby reporter guy, the cops with thick Pennsylvania accents and floppy hats, and the Native American huntress who shows up with a bow sort of magically, whenever, and lives in a mystical tent from the bargain bin at Dick’s Sporting Goods. There’s too much arm-ripping blood-chugging goodness to describe here — this is a special one. Be warned: at one point in the film, a stuffed toy dog is ripped in half. It’s, uh, “gruesome”? Head to not-really-the-surburbs with Mike, Kevin and Bill for Suburban Sasquatch!
Long before there was a terrible Disney live-action version of Aladdin, there was a terrible Disney live-action version of Aladdin! This one came out two years before the classic animated version, and has been rightfully scrubbed from history. In fact, Disney was so eager to suppress it that the guy who played Aladdin never acted again! Or before! This was his only role, and after ten seconds of his performance, you will realize it was one too many. The role of the Genie is played by Barry Bostwick, who appears to be doing an impression of the ventriloquist dummy Madame if she were operated by Charles Nelson Riley. The music fares no better, possibly an effort by director and noted Monkee Micky Dolenz to make the movie Head look better by comparison. Also the whole thing takes place in China. We know this because the cast of midwestern white people repeatedly reminds us that they are in China, often with a sensitive gong sound effect for emphasis. Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for a whole new world of crap as they riff Aladdin! Written by: Mike Nelson, Conor Lastowka and Sean Thomason Contributing writers; Jason Miller and Zachary Shatzer
When a boy and a girl spot strange lights in the sky, nobody could predict that thirty years later they’d reunite and fall in love, because that is very stupid. But then again we’re talking about Greydon Clark, who gave us the movie where a cat barfs out a slightly more evil cat, so maybe we should have been expecting it. Yes, long before Joe Don Baker wolfed down a triple cheeseburger on the set of Final Justice Clark decided to tackle a different form of cattle mutilation. This time it’s caused by aliens, or rather their human puppet, played by Vincent Schiavelli (presumably because he looks more like and alien than any FX Greydon could have come up with.) Standing in his way are Cybil Shepherd, whose expression of bored indifference is perhaps the only relatable thing in the movie, and Jan-Michael Vincent and his three first names.
Satan walks among us and he’s a… sassy grandma?? When a mysterious old lady shows up at a quiet boarding house, many of us consider putting on something more exciting, like one of those YouTube videos where a creepy unseen adult unwraps a Kinder Surprise egg. But stick around! Because every guest has their own dark secret and Beelzebub’s going to punish them the only way she knows how: by turning them into paper dolls. Evidently this is what went on in the tenth circle of hell that Dante never got around to writing about. All this takes place in the late 90s, or perhaps the Revolutionary War. We’ve seen it a dozen times and we’re still unclear. Please join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for Stitches!
With a title like Vengeance of the Dead, you might assume it's an Italian zombie flick from the 70s, or the placeholder title for the first draft of a George Romero screenplay. But you’re in luck, because it’s much stranger than that: Vengeance of the Dead is the bone-chilling tale of a young man visiting his grandpa, and several other grandpas! Young Eric returns to the sleepy farming town of Harvest to see his grandfather, but spends most of the trip alone in a dark bedroom, making this one of the most realistic depictions of a teenager ever put on film. Eric is visited in his sleep by the ghost of a little girl (the spooky “la la la la laaaaa la’s” are implied) who leads him to dig up a corpse and burn it. Kind of grim, but she also helps him find a spoon, so it all evens out! As it turns out, this town is full of drunk grandpas, and they all look like Eric’s drunk grandpa. There’s Drunk Driving Grandpa, Disturbing Horny Grandpa*, and School Bus Grandpa, the grandpa who lives in a school bus. These drunk grandpas have a disturbing past, and it’s up to Eric and his ghostly friend to figure it out. It’s straight-to-video horror magic, kinda like Feeders but with fewer aliens and more grandpas. Dig your best spoon out of the backyard and join Mike, Kevin and Bill for Vengeance of the Dead!
Scoreboards: usually all they do is let you know who is currently humiliating the Mets. But terrorists have harnessed the latent evilness of the humble scoreboard and are now using them to LIGHT BLAST people!!! Light Blasting, as we all know since it’s a totally real thing, involves melting someone’s face using budget special FX. Think the Raiders of the Ark nazis if they were all played by claymation icon Mr. Bill. It’s cool though, because the filmmakers clearly used all of the FX budget on the bonkers stunts in this movie. They’re honestly as impressive as anything we’ve done in a RiffTrax movie, even if most of the money probably went to a legal fund for stuntmen widows. Starring Erik Estrada and directed by the guy who gave us Warriors of the Wasteland and 1990: Bronx Warriors, Light Blast is an 80s fever dream of explosions, car chases, and of course, Light Blasting. Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill and whatever you do: watch out for scoreboards!
Back when there was a box office, Avengers: Endgame became the biggest movie of all time. This was very important to a lot of people for some reason. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has been building to this moment for over a decade, and all your favorite heroes are here to take on Thanos: Captain America. Thor. Black Widow. The Iron Shiek. Dr. Octagon. Gritty. Mrs. Doubtfire. Queequeg. The Meat Puppets. The delivery guy from Setting Up a Room. Handsome Pete. Dril. Funky Kong. The Human Stain. Three Finger Brown. Commander Keen. Princess Tomato. Merlo the Magician. Professor Layton. Billy “White Shoes” Johnson. Sir Hiss. Okay, you know what, this started as a joke but now we totally want to watch this film. Why are you still reading this?! Avengers: Endgame is eight hours long! Get started! Shoo! Go! Mike, Kevin, and Bill are waiting, so make with the riffing!
Lycan Colony takes everything you know about werewolves and asks “But what if it were dumber, cheaper, and the aspect ratio occasionally got all squished up for no apparent reason?” When a brain surgeon shows up to work drunk and kills a patient on the operating table, he’s forced to move to a town inhabited by werewolves. This is not a conventional punishment, but Lycan Colony is not a conventional movie. It dares to ask questions such as, “How many Boston accents are too many for a movie that does not take place in Boston?” and “Can you convincingly add a neck tattoo via CGI?” Among the many other innovations it brings to the table are: furry costumes, sudden unexplained monkeys, sudden unexplained pigs, slams on the Amish out of nowhere, and visible cue cards. Every man appears to have received charisma lessons from Rod from Birdemic, and the SFX guy appears to have received SFX lessons from the SFX in Birdemic. It’s spectacular, or as 75% of the characters in Lycan Colony would pronounce it, “wicked awhsuhm”. Crack a silver bullet (or five) and join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for Lycan Colony!
Many haters thought it would be impossible to keep the Martial Law series going after lead actor Chad McQueen decided to pursue the more dignified career path of trying to get his dad to return his phone calls. But Martial Law 2: Undercover proves that having an anonymous charmless dope wear a trenchcoat while Cynthia Rothrock kicks people is a winning formula! When Detective Sean Thompson’s ex-partner winds up dead, all eyes are on the main suspect: the town’s evil karate billionaire. Does he have a ponytail, you ask? Have you ever seen a bad action movie, we reply? Our heroes must go undercover as bartenders to bust his arms dealing operation, which means we get all the thrills of a high octane SWAT team mixed with cutting lime slices and hosing down the bathroom stall after a bachelorette can’t hold her liquor. Also, noted mummy-resembler Billy Drago plays the chief who (in possibly the most unrealistic movie moment since Bruce Willis rode on an airplane wing in Die Hard 4) has sex. Please join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for Martial Law 2: Undercover!
Beaks! Sure, everyone agrees they’re the tastiest part of the chicken, but as this movie shows, they can also be dangerous! Beaks! goes by a few alternate names, like Birds of Prey (sans Harley Quinn) and Falco Terror (an objectively cool title), but of course we had to go with the version that provides its own thrilling punctuation. It’s an Italian/South American/heavy-on-the-dubbing production, and it’s an eye-plucking delight. Seriously, there’s a lot of eye-plucking. Whether you’re hang gliding, enjoying coffee on your balcony, or sitting in a small country church, the birds in Beaks! are more than ready to pluck the heck out of your eye. Don’t get plucked! We know what you’re probably thinking: how can they riff a bird attack movie that features no coat hangers, songs about hangin’ out with your family, or slrpnls? Well, when you see this film try to be scary with a flock of pigeons just minding their own business, or a happy little family of ducks floating in a pond, you will understand. This is truly a new level of bird based non-terror. Watch a local news team soar around the globe on a seemingly infinite budget to report this goofy story. But while you watch, don’t forget to also cover your eyes, on account of all the plucking. Throw on some goggles and join Mike! Kevin! and Bill! for Beaks!
What's this, Mike and Bridget riffing what is generally considered a good movie?! It's true: there was just so much about it that echoed their own relationship. The age difference (Bridget is a few weeks older than Mike), the fact that Mike is a mysterious stranger with a murky past (how long did he work nights at that cheese factory, you can never lock him down on that?), and Bridget someday hopes to be wearing Givenchy on the slopes of Gstaad. Join Mike and Bridget and Carey and Audrey (and George Kennedy and James Coburn!) for Stanley Donen's Charade!
Back in the glorious era before Hollywood discovered irony known as "The '80s", some coked-up lunatics decided that what action movies were missing were world class gymnasts. The result was "Rambo on a pommel horse" and its name is Gymkata. The country of Parmistan is known for two things: its annual life-or-death obstacle course, and not actually existing. The U.S. Government has determined that it is an ideal location for a new communications satellite, and wisely decides not to focus on that insanely boring plot point for very long. To achieve their goal, they recruit gymnast Kurt Thomas, who manages to simultaneously pull off genuinely impressive feats of strength and agility while being a total dweeb. He’s assisted by a mute-when-it’s-convenient Princess and her father, the cruel despot leader of Parmistan who has more of a "guy putting on a free puppet show at the library" vibe. If it were any more '80s they’d have given Mary Lou Retton a bazooka. Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for Gymkata!
What was your favorite Halloween tradition? The candy? The costumes? Or visiting some middle-aged guy’s Haunted Garage? Jack-O strongly posits that the last one was a formative part of many childhoods. Sadly, this particular Haunted Garage happens to have offended a scythe-wielding undead killer with a pumpkin head! Maybe he was offended by the oil stains on the garage floor? Or he was distressed by the lack of a tennis ball on a string providing proper parking guidance? We’ll never know! The killer is the titular Jack-O, and he rises from the grave to take out his frustration on the usual horror movie suspects: drunk teens, horny teens, and cable news obsessed adults who are fortunately very much not horny. The only person who can stop him is a witch who uses all her ungodly powers as you’d expect: by helping take tickets at the Haunted Garage. As the bodies pile up faster than 3 Musketeers wrappers we’re left to wonder: Will they stop Jack-O before his head rots and caves in on itself like your neighbor’s pumpkin that is somehow STILL on his doorstep?? It’s the week before Thanksgiving! Get rid of the damn thing, Tony or we’re alerting the HOA!!! Please join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for Jack-O!
When Harry Trent runs afoul of some Rent-A-Cops, he escapes in the most sensible way: by blasting off into space in a stolen ship. There’s just one thing he didn’t count on: he can’t return for five years! It’s unclear why, something about elliptical orbits or something. Who are we, Galileo Brahe?? Fortunately, Harry uses the unforced time to better himself as a person, teach himself new skills, and broaden his mind. We are just kidding, he paints a face on his space-pillow and humps it. When Harry finally returns to Earth, it’s a vastly different planet than the one he left behind. For one, everyone points at him and says “Hey there’s the sicko that has sex with his pillow!” and “Don’t get that pillow anywhere near me!” Also, some Pig-Men nuked the planet then enslaved the survivors. It’s up to our hero, a vaguely British woman who’s required by movie law to fall in love with him, a guy named Mad Dog, and the elderly version of our hero who occasionally narrates from the future, to stop the Pig-Men and restore order to the lost planet! Fluff up your favorite pillow and hunker down with Mike, Kevin, and Bill for Battle for the Lost Planet!
It was the mid-90s and parents everywhere were FREAKING OUT about Mortal Kombat. “Think of the children!” they wailed. “They might wander into an arcade, innocent and wide-eyed, pop a quarter into Mortal Kombat machine, and the next thing you know they’d be… SPELLING THINGS WITH UNNECESSARY K’s!!!” Well, that never really came to pass, and the so-called “violent” video games of the 90s are now quaint relics. We think we saw somebody get throttled with their own intestines in a Paw Patrol mobile game the other day. But hey - at least we got this dumb-as-hell movie out of it! Shang Tsung is having a tournament and has invited all your favorite characters: Johnny Cage, Sonya Blade, Liu Kang, and some guy named Art. Raiden was unable to attend, so Christopher Lambert was the natural choice to fill in as the Japanese Thunder God. Everything that kids liked about the game is here. Except for the blood. Well, and the gory fatalities. But there’s plenty of jokes involving luggage! Those must have only been available on the Atari Jaguar version… Please join Mike, Kevin, Bill, and Noob Saibot for Mortal Kombat!
Everyone can agree that It’s a Wonderful Life is one of the most famous Christmas movies of all time, nearly on par with Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny, Spunky the Snowman, and Feeders 2: Slay Bells. We at RiffTrax have known and loved It’s a Wonderful Life for decades: we’ve enjoyed the amazing, classic performances; we’ve wept and prayed at its beautiful message. So now it’s time to make fun of it! ...But not all of it. This RiffTrax special edit features most of the original movie but not ALL of the original movie. As some of you know, It’s a Wonderful Life was in the public domain for decades, then back out again — it’s a complicated history. The main copyrighted stuff comes down to 1) material from the short story "The Greatest Gift" that part of the film was based on, and 2) some musical rights for background songs. Well, since we wanted to offer this Christmas treat to you as a video on demand, we have meticulously excised all such parts. Which leaves... quite a bit, as it turns out! One hour and forty-six minutes worth, in fact. You may not even notice any difference at all — unless you’re a big fan of depressing Pottersville. And it turns out that there’s more than one way for Clarence the Angel and his weird old-lady underwear to help George Bailey have a Wonderful Life. We had a great time roasting this justly beloved movie. So enjoy! Merry Christmas to all you wonderful old buildings and loanses!! In jail!!! We will not say "hee-haw!"-- aww crap we just did!!!! Something you should know: This film has been modified from its original version (so we could riff it)
Merlin: if he’s in a movie, it’s almost certainly going to be terrible. What’s the reason for this lack of quality? Is it the character’s complex and tragic backstory? The difficulty of capturing the emotional arc of someone cursed to age in reverse? The fact that he’s in the public domain, so any idiot with a camera can slap him onto two unrelated movies he was never actually part of as a frame story? You know what, it’s probably the last one. Merlin’s Shop of Mystical Wonders tells the heartwarming tale of Merlin and his wife who run a small town antique store. It’s very much like a Hallmark movie, but with slightly more hexes, death, and eternal damnation. We’ll hear the tale of a small town newspaper critic who evidently wields Ozymandis-like power over the local economy. And there’s also a father who buys his son a toy monkey and regrets it immediately because it’s one of those damn wind-up toys that makes noise. Oh, it’s also trying to kill him and everyone he loves. Tying them all together is the all-powerful, doddering wizard Merlin. His shop may be more full of Unholy Jinxes than Mystical Wonders, but frankly, it’s like the 78th most egregious thing this movie got wrong, so we’ll let it slide. Please join Mike, Kevin, Bill for Merlin’s Shop of Mystical Wonders.
When a movie was shot in 1975, never distributed to theaters, and eventually released eight years later on VHS as part of a two-pack, you KNOW it’s gonna be good. That’s the Frozen Scream promise! Allegedly a zombie movie, Frozen Scream is mostly about cultists in black robes chasing people around with needles and then sticking them in freezers. Like the undead, the film feels stitched together from lots of different pieces that have nothing to do with each other. The most prominently bizarre result of this is voiceover narration busting into scenes where it doesn’t belong, running over character dialogue in a technique that can only be called “absolutely maddening.” Ever wanted to hear a detective being interrupted by his own narration, and also his voice in the narration is different from his voice in the scene? This film’s for you! It’s pure chaos, but we kind of love it. Another high honor: when it was released, Frozen Scream was one of the first films the UK government added to its “video nasty list”, which was a real thing that existed! Video nasties! Freezer zombies! What more could you want? Put your shrieks on ice and join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for Frozen Scream!
A nuclear bomb is about to explode in a maximum security prison! And it’s brand new so there’s only five prisoners. And they’re all guilty of terrible crimes, so nobody’s going to be too upset if they get blown up. Okay, maybe it’s not the best plan. But the bad guys worked really hard to… sneak the bomb into the prison? Really? They killed a bunch of guys to get it in there? Seems like they could’ve just brought it to a stadium! Or the beach? Are we sure these guys are really trying to maximize their revenge? Mace Richter (named at birth by the Action Movie Guy Consortium) is currently one of the five prisoners. The charges? Being shirtless on an airplane. And he shot a couple of guys while he was shirtless. But in his defense, he was fairly certain they were bad guys when he took his shirt off. It’s up to Mace to save the day with help from a local TV reporter who appears to have recently won a local Emmy for her work on The Hustler Channel. Will Mace get Maximum Revenge? Or are the bad guys the ones attempting to get Maximum Revenge? Maybe it’s the sexy reporter? One thing’s for certain: an empty prison is just about the dumbest place you could possibly threaten to set off a bomb. Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for Maximum Revenge.
Ah, The Last Man on Earth. Of all the adaptations of Richard Matheson’s novel I Am Legend, there’s no denying that this was the earliest. And the Vincent Price-iest! Our man Vincent has come a long way from the House on Haunted Hill where he made a skeleton dance with puppet strings. Now he lives in a much smaller house, nowhere near a hill, battling madness and endless swarms of vampire-zombies. He’s living a life of isolation after a global plague carried through the air has infected the world’s population - can you even imagine??? (Yeah, don’t answer that.) Now The Last Man on Earth spends most of his time gathering mirrors, garlic, and wooden stakes, because this disease is courteous enough to follow the rules of classic Transylvanian vampires. When he’s not barricading himself against the inevitable or hurling bodies into pits, he likes to sit down with a projector, watch old home movies and cry-laugh himself to sleep. Kind of like how we spend our time at RiffTrax!
The beloved arcade beat ‘em up is now a movie! Kind of! The video game Double Dragon had a complex plot: “Bad guys punch girl so good guy punches bad guys.” Not exactly the kind of thing that fills 90 minutes of screen time, unless you punch really slowly. But this thin gruel allowed for the director to include many deep cuts, references, and easter eggs, such as the touching subplot where Billy Lee eats an entire roast turkey that he found in an alley to refill his life bar. Billy and his brother Jimmy are two martial arts whizzes with IQs on par with Harry and Lloyd from Dumb and Dumber. When an evil guy with evil guy facial hair played by Terminator 2’s Robert Patrick, steals their family Macguffin, they undertake a quest: to find out who his personal stylist was and make sure they never harm anyone again. Standing in their way is Abobo, who, while not an attractive man in the video game, at least did not resemble a schnitzel made from a barnyard animal’s infected genitals. Fortunately, Jimmy and Billy have the help of Alyssa Milano, who is the daughter of the world’s dumbest police chief, based on his inability to tell that his daughter is always wearing a ridiculous wig. It all comes down to a Final Fight where the Lee’s Fatal Fury will be tested on the Streets of Rage of the… uh… River City Ransom? Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for Double Dragon!
Putting the fun back in -gicide, it’s Fungicide! From the director of Suburban Sasquatch, who also plays three different characters in this movie through the magic of cheap wigs. And if you thought Suburban Sasquatch was odd, inexplicable, the most homemade movie ever, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet! Fungicide centers on a quaint little bed and breakfast run by a hippie named Jade. Jade’s B&B brings together a cast of unforgettable characters: a pro wrestler who takes pills to prevent his “spontaneous combustion” disorder, a sleazy real estate developer, a military survivalist who may or may not be part of a reality show, and a young scientist who’s supposed to be a college professor but lives in his parents’ basement and spends most of the movie muttering to himself like Beavis. That spooky little scientist spills science goop on some mushrooms, and next thing you know the peaceful forest B&B is besieged by giant walking sharp-toothed mushroom puppets. They’re out for blood, because as we all know, mushrooms love to kill and eat blood. Evil mushrooms, puppets straight out of a remedial art class, and Pennsylvania accents galore. It’s a truly unique fungal film experience, don’t miss Fungicide with Mike, Kevin, and Bill!
From the golden age of green zipper-suit aliens and know-it-all scientists who are never wrong about anything, it’s Invaders from Mars! They’re here to conquer the Earth, but really mostly just this one little sleepy town. And actually not even the whole town, pretty much just one family’s backyard. Still, it’s an invasion! David is a plucky 1950s lad who enjoys watching the skies with his telescope and being able to trust local authority figures. But all that is upended when Martians land in the sandpit in his family’s yard - every yard has a sandpit, right? The aliens begin replacing everyone in the town with synthetic mutants (pronounced mu-TANTS) starting with David’s very own parents! David heads straight to his town’s surprisingly grand police station, and quickly gets help from a local doctor, an astronomer, and even the U.S. Army. Because, unlike most movies about a kid trying to convince everyone that something weird is going on, all the adults believe him immediately. For a movie about invasion paranoia, there sure is a lot of trust. It all builds to a climactic confrontation with the Martians in, you guessed it, David’s backyard. Can David save his parents in time? Will they increase his allowance? What’s with the Great Gazoo head in the glass fishbowl? And, again, why does the yard have a sandpit? All those questions will be answered, plus a twist ending sure to make you say “oh, come on!” Join Mike, Kevin and Bill out in the sandpit for Invaders from Mars!
When three teenage boys are gunned down in the street and a creepy old man saws their heads off after the funeral, you know you’re in for some wacky hijinks and misadventures! Tommy, Bill, and Freddie are three comic book loving boys who return to life as Shrunken Heads thanks to their local shopkeeper / voodoo man, Mr. Sumatra. Mr. Sumatra used to be in the Tonton Macoute, which is a little like finding out that Sesame Street’s kindly Mr. Hooper used to fly in the Luftwaffe. Through the well-known, traditional Shrunken Head powers of “flight” and “shooting lasers from their eyes” the boys embark on a mission of revenge (Cool!) and seduction (Disturbing!) The decade is indeterminate, the tone inconsistent. And you’ll never look at Whizzo The Clown the same way again! Maybe that’s a good thing…? Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for Shrunken Heads!
When a couple of city workers stumble upon an Ancient Indian Burial Ground, they complete their Bad Movie Cliche Bingo Card, thus unleashing The Minion. Mankind’s only hope is Dolph Lundgren, who fortunately has a Cool Spikey Glove. You might think that you need more than that when facing off with a thousand-year-old body-swapping servant of The Antichrist, but nope! Just a Cool Spikey Glove! A journey ensues that will transport you to exotic locations such as a municipal nuclear waste disposal facility, as well as “Jerusalem” that is very obviously being played by Canada (Unless they recently put up a Tim Horton’s at the Dome of the Rock?) Actors and props change from damp to dry with alarming speed. And all the while we fear what will happen to humanity if The Minion is able to get a Cool Spikey Glove of its own! Set your clocks back to Y2K and join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for The Minion!
The plot of Gumby: The Movie is fairly straightforward: an Alien creates Gumby and Pokey out of a slab of Moon-Clay, then sends them to Earth, which is populated by the country of Gumbasia, which builds casinos and colossal statues in Gumby’s image, despite the fact that we just saw him come from the moon. Pokey is involved in a tragic accident that causes him to merge with a clay dinosaur and a blue demigod. This three-headed ball of clay has to be separated by a doctor performing a risky experimental procedure. Meanwhile, Gumby is somehow already in a band (despite just coming from the moon) and he washes a firetruck. Our apologies, this only describes the first three minutes of Gumby: The Movie. We regret to inform you that it doesn’t make a ton more sense after this. You’ve got predatory farm loans, dogs who cry valuable jewels, robot doppelgangers, infringing lightsaber fights, groupies, manure piles (a major plot point actually hinges on manure piles), not one but TWO songs about how great Gumby is, and bending the laws of reality by warping into various books and VHS cassettes (OK, maybe they were Betas, do not email us about this!) Beloved children’s entertainment should not be this trippy or surreal, but it turns out to be great riffing fodder when it is. Join noted Blockheads, Mike, Kevin, and Bill for Gumby: The Movie! Written by: Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett, Conor Lastowka, and Sean Thomason Contributing writers: Jason Miller and Zachary Shatzer
For years, horror fans have wondered what Night of the Living Dead would look like if it were a dinner show in Branson, MO. Well wonder no more, deeply weird people we just made up! When a meteor lands in the Florida swamp, hillbillies start turning up with missing limbs, an insatiable desire for brains, and walking in a slow, zombie-like shuffle. The locals know who to blame: alligators. Turns out it’s zombies, which may not be so bad a fate when you were planning to have possum for dinner. A local reporter has to stop the zombie hoard before the unthinkable happens and the concert by the surviving members of Lynyrd Skynyrd on the speedway infield is cancelled. Starring noted Aquatic Champion Buster Crabbe as a sheriff who refuses to do a second take, The Alien Dead may be the only film in the nascent Chicken-Fried Zombie Flick genre, and that’s probably a good thing. Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for The Alien Dead.
Cage. Travolta. Faces. Off. Need we say more? Okay fine, we will say more. Woo. Gershon. CCH Pounder. Margaret Cho. And many other people you may have forgotten were in Face/Off. It was a big movie! A major culmination of 90s action film extravagance, big exploding setpieces, and enough gun ballet to make John Wick blush. John Travolta is a hard-nosed FBI agent who’s committed to avenging his son while being as whiny as possible. Nic Cage is the terrorist / sniper / party animal responsible for his son’s death, in a deeply disturbing opening scene that doesn’t exactly scream “summer blockbuster.” The movie is kinda weird, folks! It’s easily the best film in which Nic Cage asks someone to suck his tongue, and we’re very happy to riff it at last. Release some doves, slap on some gravity boots in a secret oil rig prison, and join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for Face/Off!
Look, when you name your kid Max Havoc, you can’t be too surprised when he grows up to kill a man in a kickboxing ring. The incident is so traumatic that he retires to become a famous sports photographer, which of course brings him to the epicentre of the professional sports universe: Guam! There he meets his love interest, Dancing With the Stars Season 9 fourth-place finisher Joanna Krupa. She’s a triple threat: Maxim Cover Model, Real Housewife, and Breasts Haver. Her sister is on spring break studying to become a heart surgeon, something her patients will be relieved to learn she mostly did in a bikini. When they come into possession of a stolen dragon that contains a Yakuza’s ashes, things get crazy very quickly. In fact, you might just say the havoc gets cranked up to… a level far above the standard level of havoc.
A menace stalks the streets of San Francisco. Shirt untucked and tie loosened like someone who’s just been ejected from a dog track, it lures you in with its resemblance to a more famous actor, only to disappoint when it hits you up for spare change when you ask “Hey, weren’t you in Apocalypse Now?” Its house decorated with bottles of vermouth, its office with various jugs of bleach because, why not - you gotta put that abundant police department bleach somewhere. Neighbors close their windows when it passes, lest its powerful schlub energy causes them to somehow become thrice-divorced, even if they weren’t even married in the first place. It has a flip phone. Its name is Joe Estevez.
Universal Soldier 2 was straight “II” to television - specifically The Movie Channel. The original Universal Soldier featured characters played by Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren - and they’re back! Oh, not Jean-Claude or Dolph, sorry for any confusion there, the characters are back, played by other people. And that’s what you really loved Universal Soldier for, right? The, uh, the characters? Not to worry, because the story picks up right where the first movie left off, with a heaping helping of Gary Busey as the rogue government agent bad guy. And on top of that, we’ve got Burt Reynolds as the even badder rogue government boss guy! Well, about 25% of Burt Reynolds’ face, in some shadowy phone call scenes. Still, 25% of Burt Reynolds’ face is more Burt Reynolds than most movies have! The story centers on a creepy government program that turns dead soldiers into killing machines, a plucky reporter who’s dating one of the killing machines, and a lot of Labatt Blue beer. Seriously, this one does for Labatt Blue what Radical Jack did for Asahi dry lager. This movie was removed from the canon when theatrical sequels starring Jean-Claude Van Damme came out, so you KNOW you’re in good hands. Get your undead robot on with Mike, Kevin and Bill for Universal Soldier II: Brothers in Arms!
Picture a luxury yacht: helipad next to the hot tub. Gorgeous waitstaff. Laboratory full of unholy experimental sea monster hybrids. Top shelf bar. We all know the drill! Fortunately, the unholy sea monsters are being kept in a state of suspended animation. (Fortunate for the producers, because it’s much cheaper to not have the sea monster puppets move.) Unfortunately, there’s one thing that awakens them: horny college students. And WOW does this boatload of drunken college students who just stowed away qualify! And who can blame them? The yacht has an erotic talking fish clock! It’s never explained or even questioned, but its sensual charms are clearly impossible to resist, even once the seamonsters start slashin’ throats and jammin’ ovipositors places where ovipositors have no right to be jammed.
We’ve reached the hot, sweaty, uncomfortable peak of The Summer of Joe Estevez. This time, Joe is an exasperated family photographer in a bow tie. He takes pictures of rude kids, so he probably works in some kind of mall kiosk, right? No, oddly enough he has a room in a massive office building. Only two or three other people seem to work in the giant tower, almost as if this movie was made overnight in a building with no film permits? Nah, couldn’t be, we’re just getting cynical. Phone psychic Madame Zora does work in the building, along with an hostile security guard and a sleepy maintenance man you might recognize from Plan 9 From Outer Space. But the building’s most important resident is, of course, the Baby Ghost. Is he the ghost of a baby? Wouldn’t that be sad? You’d think so, but he spends the whole movie giggling happily. Oh, the giggling. So much giggling. Will the giggling have you begging for the incessant guitar noodling from Rollergator? There’s only one way to find out!
Here’s the basic premise for Savage: a totally jacked rural farmer opens the door one night to some evil tech-lords who murder his family because they want his land. Like old-timey cattle barons with a Silicon Valley twist. The farmer finds himself in the desert with no memories, also now he’s a caveman, and so naturally he wanders into a cave where some “ancient Cro-Magnon technology” converts him into… well, something. From there, he and policewoman Jennifer Grant (daughter of Cary Grant, no joke!) are in a fight against a villainous tech corporation and the doofus in charge of that corporation, a man who tries to be scary but comes off like Pee-Wee Herman doing a Dr. Evil impression. Who will win, the mystic caveman powers of the desert, or rich dweebs in suits? And why does ancient alien technology appear to run on Windows 95? Only one way to find out, join Mike, Kevin and Bill for Savage!
Mirror Mirror on the wall, what’s the lamest monster of all? A mirror, of course!* Does the mirror do something cool, like create an evil doppelganger of yourself that goes out and commits murders that you get blamed for? Nope! It’s just kinda generally evil, and just kinda makes people do generally evil things. Y’know, classic mirror stuff. Our story centers on Megan, a goth teenager moving into a new house with her yuppie mom who finds herself drawn to dark supernatural forces within the home. Yes, just like Lydia from Beetlejuice, which came out a couple years before this. But just in case the connection wasn’t clear enough, she dresses exactly like Lydia from Beetlejuice as well! Her yuppie mom is played by Karen Black, who gets into character with a blonde wig. The movie also stars Yvonne De Carlo, who unfortunately doesn’t wear her Lily Munster wig. This movie has it all: demonic forces, vintage store shopping, and plenty of intense high school water polo action. Join Mike, Kevin and Bill for MIrror Mirror... or else you won’t be able to look at yourself.
Soaring above us at 30,000 feet is a plane. A plane full of money. And somewhere, probably in a self-storage shed converted into an office on the outskirts of Hollywood, somebody said “Make that movie!” After being double-crossed, Jack Reese is pulled back into the game for one last job. He’ll have to assemble a ragtag group of characters, each with a quirky personality trait, as they attempt to check every box on the TV Tropes page for “heist movie”. Standing in their way is Darius Emmanuel Grouch III, aka "The Rumble", aka “Settle the hell down, Money Plane screenwriters.” The Rumble is played by Kelsey Grammer, a man who won six Emmy awards and then evidently decided “Let’s see what the opposite of industry-wide respect is!” You can bet on anything aboard the Money Plane. And if you were to place a wager that buzzwords like “crypto” and “SSD” will be tossed around with abandon, you’d be a wealthy, wealthy person. Mike, Kevin, and Bill however, lost all their money betting on the alligator. It’ll make sense after you watch Money Plane.
In the mid-80s, an Iranian architect named Jahangir Salehi Yeganehrad decided he wanted to write, direct, produce, edit, score, and presumably cater and best boy his own movie. First, though, he had to change his name, and he picked a bitchin’ one: John S. Rad. We’re sad to report that he’s better at picking a Hollywood name than any of those other tasks we just listed. This is the part where we typically tell you what the movie is about, but that hinges on us understanding what the movie is about. As best we can tell, here’s what happens: After her fiancé is murdered, a woman becomes a prostitute who goes on a murder spree. At this point, John S. Rad must have realized that this plot was a total rip-off of Paw Patrol: The Movie, so the plot switches gears and tells the story of a cop who infiltrates a biker gang using unconventional techniques such as “also disappearing from the plot with no explanation.” Then an old guy fights a guy named Black Pepper. Dangerous Men was shockingly not nominated for a single Oscar. Along the way, bald guys punch each other, cars explode, belly buttons get licked, and the use of the ass-knife is pioneered. There is absolutely nothing else in the RiffTrax catalog like Dangerous Men, and even after spending all this time with it, we’re not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.
Long before Nature Called or Harry Met Lloyd, Jim Carrey was just another Canadian. And as we all know, most Canadians spend their free time vacationing with Alan Thicke. The fellas decid to ignore their glaring age difference and hit the slopes at Copper Mountain. What follows is a mountain retreat that goes about as well as Jack Torrance’s did, but with more annoying* Sammy Davis, Jr. impressions. The whole thing was intended as product placement for a resort chain, but it’s pretty subtle. In fact, we don’t even think you’ll CLUB MED notice! Although considering how much of the movie is devoted to not one but two cover performances of CCR’s “Lodi” by Ronnie “The Hawk” Hawkins, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Copper Mountain was sponsored by one of their competitors. What’s important is: the resort in question is no longer in business! Get your skis shined up, grab a stick of Juicy Fruit, and join Mike, Kevin, and CLUB MED Bill for Copper Mountain! *Experts agree this is the only type of Sammy Davis, Jr. impression
Inside the ruins of Chernobyl, a ragtag group of stereotypes attempts to fend off a horde of Nazis. They’re both after something called Atomic Eden, which sounds like the name of a scrapped David Lee Roth solo album, or perhaps a strain of mid-grade weed. It could be either, because the movie never really gets around to filling the audience in on what Atomic Eden might be. But WOW, a lot of people sure are willing to die for it! So actually, it probably isn’t that David Lee Roth album… Leading the good guys is Stoker, played by B-movie legend Fred Williamson, who kicks ass and takes names despite being the same age as John Carradine was when he died. Watch any of the approximately 782 John Carradine movies we’ve riffed to understand how stunning/incomprehensible that is.
Pig sleds, murder trees, Russian children left in the woods to freeze to death: Father Frost may just be one of the greatest love stories of our time! Nastenka is a beautiful teenage girl with one weird quirk: she can literally control the passage of time. In a just world she’d be given a mediocre Marvel show for people to wildly overrate, but in Father Frost she’s cast out into the woods by her evil stepmother. Meanwhile, after dissing a human mushroom, the proud Ivan finds himself sporting the head of a bear. From here, the movie starts to get kind of kooky. Not only does Nastenka reject Ivan, he also has to fend off hordes of weirdos who worship him as the first communist furry.
For decades, moviegoers have loved to watch people dance. But there was always an unanswered question lurking: was It, in fact, On? But finally, a movie slithered out of “This film was not screened for critics” slop heap and delivered an unambiguous, if confusingly punctuated proclamation: Dancin’: It’s On! Let’s not bury the lede here: This is a Teen Dance Movie from the guy who directed Space Mutiny. Turns out choreography was his true passion, in the same way that “freezer-space optimization” was Jeffrey Dahmer’s. But now that whole hula hoop dance sequence in Space Mutiny makes a lot more sense, right? It does not make it better, sexier, or less mortifying, but it at least makes more sense! Now, we could just hit you with a lot of “Grind Twerkhard!” jokes here, but we should probably tell you what the movie is about. Seen a Teen Dance Movie before? Well it’s like that! But it’s the Teen Dance Movie from the dumbest timeline in the teenverse. The cast mainly consists of a bunch o
It’s an ancient Zen riddle: If a Fred Olen Ray movie does not have the word “bikini” in its title, does it even make a sound? The answer is yes; the sound is “BANG BANG oof [assorted alluring catfight noises] Ka-Pow [shower water running] BANG [general premium cable channel sexiness] Kablooie!” Fugitive Rage starts as any good family movie does: with the hero gunning someone down in cold blood. In this case it's a mafioso named The Gucci Goomba, who killed the hero’s sister, presumably by just standing there as she ran into him at the start of World 1-1. Unfortunately, the Goomba survives, leaving our hero with no choice but to bravely break out of prison (by accepting a deal with the government that lets her go free). So there are no fugitives OR bikinis in Fugitive Rage, but it is spiritually full of both of them. Not to mention double crosses, barroom brawls, and, we can’t emphasize this enough, a villain named The Gucci Goomba. Put on your best “Ross Hagen needs a paycheck” face
Winterbeast is a real gem, in the RiffTrax sense of the word “gem.” It’s got that rough, homemade feel of a movie made over the course of several years, including actors with different haircuts from one shot to the next, and possibly even the actors themselves changing from one shot to the next. On top of all that, it’s got claymation monsters who look nothing alike and all seem to come from different universes - or at least, different art rooms in different abandoned asylums. Which one of these monsters is the Winterbeast? It’s pretty hard to say. But it’s up to some hapless park rangers to figure out what’s killing people on their mountain. And for some reason, they have to answer to a sadistic old lodge owner who wants to keep the mountain open, “Mayor from Jaws” style.
Tom Cathral is trying to publish a book. There’s just one thing standing in his way. No, not reduced adult attention spans contributing to the overall decline of print media — we’re talking a secret paramilitary group that will stop at nothing until Tom is dead and every copy of the book is destroyed. Audiences have one question: Why couldn’t this have happened to Dan Brown? Tom joins a covert organization known as The Retrievers. When it turns out The Retrievers are more about “killing people” than “fetching tennis balls in the park and being told they’re a good boy,” Tom quits. But not before obtaining a shocking manuscript written by a former Retriever that will bring down the entire gang. That manuscript? Diary of a Wimpy Kid #7: The Third Wheel.
The phrase “worst movie we’ve ever done” comes up at RiffTrax, usually followed by some disagreement. Like, “Oh sure Fungicide was bad, but did you forget about Baby Ghost?” Friendly arguments follow, only occasionally coming to blows. But this time… Things time… there is no disagreement. It’s definitive, universal… the worst movie we’ve ever done.
Yes, Maximilian Hierynomus Havoc is off to Seattle, a city that appears in the MLB playoffs about as often as Guam. He very quickly runs afoul of a hotel magnate played by former “Guy Who Stood Near Teri Hatcher” Dean Cain. Here at RiffTrax, we understand that “bulldozing an orphanage” is often used as shorthand to describe how big a villain someone is, but Dean Cain’s plan here is to literally bulldoze an orphanage. Helping him along is Karate Kid 3’s Martin Kove, who apparently loves to play wingman to cartoonishly evil rich guys with oh-so-punchable hairstyles.
Submarines and sealabs, ahoy! Packed with all the straight-to-video action and bland mustachioed guys you’ve come to expect from a Fred Olen Ray joint, it’s Rapid Assault! A terrorist builds a world-ending biological weapon in an abandoned sealab at the bottom of the ocean - presumably for tax purposes? - and threatens to release it if the U.S. military won’t pay him a relatively low, Rod-from-Birdemic amount of money. So the military does what any reasonable force trying to prevent human extinction would do: they call in one agent. A guy named Decker (no, as far as we know Tim Heidecker had nothing to do with this) with an occasional Southern accent and a penchant for kicking guys slowly. Can Decker and a dead scientist’s daughter save the world? Will a submarine deploy nuclear weapons for no good reason? Will anyone notice the sealab sets look an awful lot like a factory from any other Fred Olen Ray action film? Join Mike, Kevin and Bill for the Rapid Assault and find out!
The dead have risen and they’re drinking Tim Hortons! Rock ‘n’ Roll Nightmare’s Jon Mikl Thor is undead, Canadian, and wearing a tanktop that’s at least three sizes too small. When his baseball career ends in disturbing fashion (he’s traded to the Marlins), he’s forced to unleash a Zombie Nightmare! To be fair, most encounters with Zombies can be described as "Nightmares." What with the brain-eating and the rotting flesh and all. Where this one differs is that the zombie is the hero! Don’t get us wrong, he still kills plenty of people in a variety of gruesome ways. But one of them deserved it! Also featuring the most culturally sensitive depiction of Voodoo since Shrunken Heads, and Adam West, who agreed to appear provided he never had to get out of his chair. Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for the “Eh of the Dead”, Zombie Nightmare!
It’s the beach that makes you old, in the movie that makes you “huh?” Old is a… thriller… from M. Night Shyamalan, the master of twists. The twist? He keeps getting money to make movies with half-baked concepts! Thrill as a family checks into a fancy resort! Beverages are served! Exposition is deployed, to the max! The family accepts a special invitation to a secluded beach, joined by a crew of Familiar Archetypes. The cold, indifferent doctor and his young, bikinied wife. The therapist who only talks about therapy. The kids. And of course, the rapper named Mid-Sized Sedan. Is that name a joke? Just like everything else in this mysterious world, it’s hard to be sure!
Steven Seagal, the Seven Mary Three of 90s action stars, has spent the past twenty years carving out a nice little niche releasing movies shot in countries that no longer exist, to direct-to-video formats which also no longer exist. One of these movies is A Dangerous Man, an oafish slurry of wet roads, attempted catchphrases, squinting has-beens, and far more gratuitous gun violence than you’d expect from a martial artist who also claims to be a devout Buddhist.
There are so, so many shark movies. That’s probably because audiences keep going for them like a shark after a fresh bucket of Richard Dreyfuss. Big shark movies, little shark movies, expensive shark movies, cheap shark movies, tornado-and-irony based shark movies… and people still want more! It might even inspire you and your friends and your home video camera to say “Hey, what if we made our own shark movie?” And folks, that line of thinking is exactly how you get Jurassic Shark. Set on a remote island (ordinary lake) with an advanced research facility (abandoned garage), Jurassic Shark kicks off with an explosion that releases an ancient megalodon (dinosaur for “CGI shark”). Then, naturally, it settles into a long scene of women splash-fighting each other in the water before being eaten. But from there, it really picks up with… well, more shark attacks, and more women in bikinis. There’s a crew of college students (in bikinis) and a team of art thieves (mostly not in bikinis) who
Clearly, the saga of Universal Soldier was so epic that it could only be told over the course of three movies, or perhaps three Snapple caps. But now Universal Soldier III: Unfinished Business is here to chew bubblegum and finish business, and the budget’s too low to afford bubblegum. The Universal Soldier program has branched out and is now growing baby soldiers in jars under the direction of Burt Reynolds. We suspect that this baffling new corporate paradigm may be because nobody understood what Burt Reynolds was saying, given that he delivers most of his lines in an Irish accent that’s even less convincing than his toupee. Returning to light up the screen (with the light from your phone screen when you check to see if they were cast in any movies after this) are the reporter and cyborg guy from the last one. From the way they look at each other, they’re falling in love, or maybe just ate some bad oysters.
When RiffTrax last paid a visit to the Bronx, it was a festering heap of violence, filth, and burning barrels. And now they’re saying we have to leave??? The government is clearing out the Bronx, promising people a better future in enchanting New Mexico. But there’s something about the way those goons are roasting innocent citizens with flamethrowers that seems a little untrustworthy… Fortunately some brave souls have gathered in the sewer to amass explosives while dressing as Xanadu background dancers. They are led by Trash, and not in the sense that the Twisted Brown Tucker Band is led by Kid Rock. This is an actual guy named Trash, and he was radicalized when gentrification turned his favorite bodega into a Banana Republic. Oh, and also when goons roasted his parents with flamethrowers. Can Trash fight off a Bronx full of rival gangs, death squads, worst of all, Red Sox fans in town for a four game series? Find out when Mike, Kevin, and Bill RIFF THE BRONX!
When you make a movie about an evil kid, they’re usually the unholy spawn of the devil, or grappling with terrifying newfound psychic powers. But not Mikey! This little whippersnapper just loves killin’! Yes, whether it’s tossing a hairdryer into a bathtub, or a savage beating with a baseball bat, there’s nothing Mikey enjoys more than murdering people who show him affection and kindness. Adopt him? You’re on his hit list! Teach him math? Better watch it! Simply live next door? Not for long you won’t! He’s such a scamp! But he’s not just out for blood and allowance money. He’s also surprisingly horny for a ten year old! Boys will be boys! Mikey is a hilariously overwrought coming-of-age slasher movie, sort of like Home Alone meets Jason Goes to Hell. You can totally see why Steven Spielberg would have watched it and thought “I have GOT to cast that weird neighbor kid in Jurassic Park.” Please join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for Mikey, before Mikey kills them.
It’s Day of the Assassin, and all the 70's guys are here! Our suave leading man and seductive international man of mystery: a leathery wizened Chuck Connors (of The Rifleman and Tourist Trap.) Detective John Shaft himself, Richard Roundtree! Full time bad guy from Megaforce and Escape From The Bronx, and about a million other things once you start noticing him, Henry Silva! And several other brown-haired guys who are really difficult to tell apart! The movie is called Day of the Assassin, so naturally it’s about several elite assassins converging on a beach town in Mexico in order to… steal some treasure. Chuck Connors is a painter who just assassinates on the side, but like, it doesn’t define him, y’know? He spends most of his time flirting with women a quarter his age, and wearing baseball caps from several different teams. Most incredibly, there’s a scene where he tries to impress a woman by playing jazz flute. Yes, it’s like Anchorman but sincere! It’s packed with weirdly impres
There’s a vicious monster roaming the streets of London, eating victims’ internal organs. When this guy orders steak and kidney pie, he says “Hold the steak and.” There’s only one man who can stop it: Harley Stone, who dresses exactly as ridiculous as you should with a name like Harley Stone. Stone’s job is not made any easier by the fact that London is flooded due to Global Warming. This mainly means that the streets are kind of wet. Stone’s apartment is also a total mess, infested by pigeons, and he probably tries to blame this on Global Warming as well. The fact that when you hit the “Previous Channel” button on his remote it goes to scrambled Spice Network? Global Warming!! Helping him out are his partner, Dick Durkin, whose name sounds like an embarrassing medical condition, and Kim Cattrall, who is fortunately played by Kim Cattrall. They’re forced to descend into the London sewers to confront a monster who the movie may eventually get around to showing for more than eight fra
Cannibal World, the brand new theme park that’ll cost you an arm and a leg! Okay, it’s not really about a theme park. It’s about some rich explorer types who keep bothering this village of people who are just trying to do their own thing. Sure, their thing is sloppily devouring everybody they see, but still! Naturally, the tribespeople in the film are depicted authentically and with full cultural sensitivity - just kidding, it’s an Italian horror movie from the 70s. They’re depicted as “white guys in facepaint hooting and hollering and chewing on raw arms.” Specifically, the arm of a family man whose young daughter is kidnapped after he inexplicably brings her on his cannibal exploring trip. Honestly, these cannibals are teaching him an important lesson about parenting. Years later, the man works up the nerve to go back and try to find his lost daughter. Well, it’s years for her, because she’s aged into a teenage cannibal goddess worshipped by the tribe. Meanwhile the dad only seems
You demanded it. you monsters, and now it’s here: CATS! The film adaptation of the musical that clumped up Broadway’s litter box for eighteen years, riffed for your viewing pleasure. It’s the movie that launched a thousand "digital butthole" jokes. You’ve probably seen some images, skimmed some memes, but nothing really prepares you for the full experience of CATS itself. It’s rare a movie can make you feel sorry for so many respected major actors, and also James Corden. Thrill as these stars of stage and screen struggle to sing through digital faces that slide out of place like Snapchat filters! It’s almost certainly the first T.S. Eliot adaptation we’ve ever done (not counting Suburban Sasquatch, an odd turn in his career). Its legacy will be trivia questions like, “What’s the only movie to feature Dame Judi Dench, Sir Ian McKellen, Jason Derulo, and Taylor Swift?” But before that, its legacy is to be riffed by Mike, Kevin, and Bill! Join them for CATS, and finally learn the differ
You’ve tried everything to get The Blood of Fu Manchu out of your clothes, but nothing works! You need something to cut through those tough Fu Manchu stains. Fortunately, our new short will explain… wait, sorry, nevermind, this isn’t an old short about washing your clothes in gasoline, this is something else! Something VERY else. When a movie has a title like Blood of Fu Manchu, and it’s from the 60s, you just know Fu Manchu will be played by, yes, a white guy. But not just any white guy: this Fu is Saruman and Dracula himself, Christopher Lee. He played the nefarious Mr. Manchu in a series of films based loosely on Sax Rohmer’s novels (similar vibes: The Million Eyes of Sumuru). In this installment, Fu has equipped a squad of foxy ladies with poisonous lipstick to go seduce and kill everyone on his enemies list. Oh yeah, Fu Manchu’s got an enemies list! Just one of many qualities he shares with Richard Nixon. After the poison blinds Fu Manchu’s old rival, Detective Nayland Smith, it
Many movies feature clowns, but Blood Harvest carves out bold new territory by making the clown sinister and creepy! Of course, the clown is played by Tiny Tim (ukulele & adult diaper enthusiast, not the little wiener from A Christmas Carol) so he’d be creepy even without the makeup. When Jill returns from college to find her house vandalized and her parents missing she does what anybody would do in this situation: invite her boyfriend over to get busy! He seems pretty chill with The Marvelous Mervo constantly lurking about the premises, so it’s no surprise that he winds up dead faster than you can say "Now he’s got that to worry about.” As the bodies stack up, Jill confronts subtle signs that she might be the next victim, such as when the killer places an enormous jug of blood in her fridge. This is one clown who won’t cram it, unless “it” is a knife he’s cramming into your chest! Directed with all the nuance and tact you’d expect from the man who gave us The Giant Spider Invasion
When it comes to horror movies from the 80s “Satanic panic” era, Hack-O-Lantern’s got it all. Hack-O-Lantern’s got promiscuous teens. Hack-O-Lantern’s got a hair metal band with dry ice and lasers. Hack-O-Lantern even has actual Satanists, including a Satanic grandpa who lectures his progeny about not being into Satan enough, saying folksy stuff like, “You’re enough to try the patience of Satan!” The one thing Hack-O-Lantern doesn’t have is an evil jack-o-lantern, or even an evil pumpkin, or any clear reason to be called Hack-O-Lantern at all. Still, catchy title! The movie centers on a deeply creepy family, living on a farm in California with a spectacular view none of them seem to appreciate. There’s the troubled teenage son (or grandson? or a little bit of both?) of the local neighborhood Satanic cult leader. There’s his exhausted mother, who gives the mom from Carrie a run for her money. There’s a nice sister, and a nice little brother who’s a sheriff’s deputy despite looking twe
There should not be so much to laugh about in a movie where seven billion people die. But you gotta admit, when the extinction of humanity is perpetrated by a guy in a rented gorilla suit who owns a bubble machine: that’s pretty darn funny. That furry rascal got us good! The gorilla is Ro-Man, and he’s managed to pull off a pretty impressive feat: killing all but eight people on Earth. Most of us would probably kick back and call it a day at this point, but like a determined Twitch streamer, Ro-Man’s determined to 100% this genocide before returning to his home planet. Unfortunately, he didn’t plan on one thing: two of the remaining people still being shockingly horny despite all the death, suffering, and mutant lizards that occasionally roll around biting each other. Alice agrees to marry Roy, despite him possessing what can generously be described as only 60% of a shirt. This enrages either the Robot or the Monster part of Ro-Man, and it’s probably the Monster part since not a si
When attorney Jeff Wincott is framed for a crime he only sort of committed, he’s forced by a loan shark, who is also his childhood best friend, to participate in underground kickboxing / capture the flag competitions. You may want to take notes because this doesn’t get any less complicated, and it certainly gets a lot more dumb. Being forced to pit fight would be a problem for most lawyers, but fortunately Jeff is a former marine, amateur kickboxer, and also an occasional participant in the shirtless war games put on by a local tribe for which he does pro bono work. As his life spirals out of control, he finds himself fired, evicted, and penniless. Along the way he helps a prostitute beat one of his former clients up with a baseball bat and seduces the loan sharks girlfriend. We don’t have a degree in Street Law, but we have to assume this is all pretty standard stuff. Study up for your LSATs (by kicking guys), call a few surprise witnesses (kick more guys), and join Mike, Kevin, an
Project Eliminator is a David Carradine movie that features a flying robotic weapon, but somehow isn’t part of the Future Force series? We’re as confused as you are. And David’s not the only Carradine involved in this one; the credits are jam-packed with Carradines. A Carradine feast for the senses! It starts how most action movies about the fate of the world do: with a twelve-minute sequence of a drifter trying to shave in an abandoned building next to a gas station. A lot of people get hurt along the way, some even die, but he does eventually manage to shave. From there he gets picked up by his old pal David Carradine, a warm presence with fun catch phrases like “I’m a piece of s***!” You don’t want to miss the scene where David sits down at a restaurant piano and starts singing. Even more so, you don’t want to miss the scene where David… well, we won’t give it away, but… wow. Oh, and there’s also a whole plot about international terrorism and weapons or whatever. But let’s be re
When we say that our new feature is a fantasy adventure tale full of strange creatures, with a small but brave hero who quests across dangerous terrain, including a volcano, all while showing off the grand landscapes of New Zealand, obviously there’s only one movie that comes to mind: The Monster’s Christmas! The hero in question is a little girl named “Girl.” Oh, those wacky New Zealanders and their zany names! On Christmas Eve, she falls asleep reading a children’s book called The Monster’s Christmas (not an actual book, we checked) and goes on to dream her way through an adventure that’s about 95% monster and maybe 5% Christmas. The girl named Girl befriends some disturbing H.R. Pufstuf style beings, who spew smoke and goop pretty much constantly. The monster costumes are honestly pretty impressive, and pretty gross! The monsters can’t talk or sing - yeah, they want to sing - because a witch stole their voices. The girl named Girl embarks on an epic journey to get them back.
Meet Paul. His mommy thinks he’s super special! Carving out a bold new path in sci-fi plotlines, Paul might be the chosen one. Hopefully it goes better than the last time House Atreides picked a chosen one and went with Ryan Leaf. Paul’s main qualification for being a Kwisatz Haderach (translation: Webelo Scout) appears to be that he has a lot of dreams about a hot chick, in which case his mom would be wise to knock before barging into the Kwisatz’s bedroom. Paul’s life is upended when his dad gets transferred to Arrakis, a desert planet infested with giant worms and Duncan Idahos. Paul finds all the sand coarse, rough, and irritating, but at least he has the good sense to keep these idiotic thoughts to himself. All is overdramatic and bagpipe-y until the evil Baron Harkoness emerges from his signature Black Goo Tub to betray House Atreides, which frankly, they should have seen coming as soon as they noticed he owned a Black Goo Tub. The drama builds until ending, as you’d expect if
Before we go further, let’s clarify: you don’t need to seek out a movie called In the Line of Duty to enjoy In the Line of Duty II: The Super Cops, because it’s not really a sequel to anything. You also don’t need to see SuperCop, because it’s not connected to that movie. Except that Michelle Yeoh is in both of them, but don’t let that confuse you. If it helps clear things up, this movie was originally released in Hong Kong as Yes, Madam! That doesn’t help clear things up? Yeah, it doesn’t. Once you stop worrying about the dozens of confusing titles it’s had in different countries and releases, there’s a lot to love about In the Line of Duty II: The Super Cops. First of all, it’s got young Michelle Yeoh and young Cynthia Rothrock kicking lots of ass. A likely Oscar nominee and our pal Rothrock, doing roundhouse kicks together! Speaking of Cynthia Rothrock, she comes to this movie equipped with a posh British accent. It’s dubbing, sure, but kinda makes you wish she’d had the same vo
Unspeakable horrors lurk deep beneath the surface of the ocean. Namely, middle-aged 1960s schlubs changing into too-tight scuba gear. You may think we’re weird for leading off with that, as it’s not really a selling point for a movie. Well, tell that to the makers of Destination Inner Space, who evidently thought it was compelling enough to devote roughly a quarter of the movie’s runtime to! The crew of the undersea Marine Science Institute is alarmed when they detect an unidentified vessel on their sonar, and also realize that their sealab is very obviously just an aquarium decoration. When they finally set foot on the alien ship, they do the only sensible thing and bring the most sinister object they can find back with them. Very soon, a horrible creature that looks like Blanka from Street Fighter grew scales starts wreaking havoc, and even the most adorable lil’ submarine may not be enough to stand in its way.
Meet the Nightwishers! They’re four students of varying attractiveness studying the exciting field of [mumbles indistinctly]. They’re led by a professor who occasionally requires that they get semi-nude in order to run experiments whose ethics make Stanford Prison seem like a mere Milgram. One weekend they pack into a van driven by a guy who looks like Matt Damon got really into creatine instead of crypto, and plan to spend the night at a rundown former mental institution. For the first time in movie history, this goes poorly. There are bloodthirsty caretakers, alien pod people, and an ectoplasm anaconda that will make you glad the Red Hot Chili Peppers never released a song called Ectoplasm Anaconda. Things start off unhinged as one character eats plain, dry corn flakes straight out of the box, and it just gets crazier from there. Make like Sir Lancelot found a genie lamp and join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for Nightwish! Written by: Mike Nelson, Conor Lastowka, and Sean Thomason
It’s rare that a mere number could be so terrifying, so unsettling, so deeply wrong. But a simple “2” following the word “Hobgoblins” is… well, it’s almost more than sanity can bear. Brace yourselves for a doozy, folks: it’s real, it’s here, it’s Hobgoblins 2! If you’ve always loved the original Hobgoblins… WHY?? Was it the horny army guy, the horny nerd, the horny dancing girl, or the bookish girlfriend who refuses to be horny? Don’t worry about answering that, but good news, they’re all back for the sequel! Except, they’re played by different actors, and despite being the same characters they don’t seem to remember the events of the first movie. Only one returning character does: McCreedy, the old security guard who kept the Hobgoblins locked up in a film vault. McCreedy’s back, but also played by a new actor, who’s impressively even more confused than the original, and perhaps not totally aware he’s in a movie.
What do a group of tourists on a glass-bottomed boat, passengers on a plane with the most hideous 70s seats imaginable, some guys on a fishing boat that’s vaguely hunting “treasure,” and a little dog named Christmas have in common? They all have the misfortune of finding themselves in a René Cardona Jr. movie called Cyclone! René Cardona Jr. was the filmmaker behind Beaks, The Bermuda Triangle, Treasure of the Amazon, and Zindy the Swamp Boy. So Cyclone being one of his movies is a mark of… well, it’s a mark. The titular storm strikes early in the film, and from there it’s a tale of survival at sea for all kinds of unlikeable characters. There’s the beefy tour boat captain, the rich woman with the little dog, and the upsetting red-faced capitalist who’s more cigarette than man (played by Lionel Stander). Trapped with few resources and little hope for survival, will they learn that the most dangerous storm of all is… themselves??? (Yeah, they will.) Fair warning: as you might expect
Every elite crew of mercenaries put together to do a job has to include the classic character types. The brawler. The sniper. The driver. The quirky explosives expert. The tech wiz. And of course, the guy who wears a Confederate hat for no explained reason despite living in contemporary Los Angeles. Of course, that guy is the leader, and of course, he’s played by Robert Davi. Meet The Bad Pack. When a small border town in Texas is terrorized by a white supremacist militia, there’s only one thing for the peaceful citizens to do: call the cops, or some other authorities, because this is America and a large evil militia is committing murder out in the open? Nah, too obvious. Instead, they find a classified ad posted by some mercenary guy in Los Angeles, scrape together all the money they can, and go to L.A. in hopes they can find him. What could go wrong? They do find him, in a downtown diner, Confederate cap and all (and remember, he’s not a member of the racist militia - he fights th
Nyah, see? It’s a world full of gangsters, see? But the gangsters, they’re all robots, see? Nyah, bleep blorp bloop, nyah, robots, see? Take a gander at Gangster World, it’ll be a gas, see? If you couldn’t decipher that pitch-perfect 1930s gangster slang, our new release Gangster World is about an adult theme park full of robotic gangsters, rumrunners, and vintage floozies. Maybe because the robot store ran out of cowboy robots after Westworld. The whole diabolical operation is run by David Leisure, aka Joe Isuzu, aka the neighbor from Golden Girls spinoff Empty Nest. Intimidated yet? Against all odds, things go wrong in the park themed on murder and crime, and it’s up to a plucky engineer and a fellow employee he has an uncomfortable workplace crush on to save the day! Oh yeah, there’s also a hunky fighting robot played by a European martial arts expert with a thick accent, because it’s a 90s action movie and you have to have a European martial arts expert with a thick accent.
It’s spring break in Southern California and the beach is abuzz because The City Bros just dropped a hot new track! Also, dead bodies keep washing up on shore. Police suspect a shark, but this overlooks just how powerfully bad a song The City Bros have unleashed. You think you know the drill: “We have to close the beaches,” “We can’t, this is our biggest weekend,” etc. Well, you know nothing of the drill. There are “bad” movies, and then there are bad movies that show you an uninterrupted sunset for more than a minute of screen time, and folks, this is very much one of the latter. Though it may be impossible to comprehend, there’s a very good case to be made for this being the worst shark movie we’ve ever done. Though it may not actually qualify, based on one big technicality… Grab a coveted plate of all-you-can-eat popcorn shrimp, find one hell of a dolphin to watch with, and join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for Apex Predators!
If you thought iron lungs were a good time, wait ‘til you get a load of Ironheart! Also if you watch the movie and can tell who or what the title is referring to, please let us know, because we’re not sure! It’s the story of an L.A. cop who’s very skilled in martial arts but not very skilled in charisma, delivering dialogue, or having more than one facial expression. He does, however, have a cool red convertible. And if you enjoy looking at cool red convertibles, this is the movie for you, because he spends an extraordinary amount of the movie’s runtime in the car, usually parking it. Yes folks, we’ve got parking scenes. And he’s not the only one parking in this movie, it’s a total parkfest!
When you create two franchises as iconic and grunty as Rambo and Rocky, you can do whatever you like in Hollywood. Sylvester Stallone chose to cut his pizza with scissors in Cobra. This unconventional behavior may shock you, until you learn that this particular cop does not play by the rules! In fact, much to the consternation of his colleagues, he makes a habit out of it! We can’t believe it either! Like any good Cobra, our hero has it out for a mongoose* by the name of The Night Slasher. If you wanted to be polite you could call the Night Slasher’s goals “unfocused.” Whereas The Slasher himself spends most of his time sharpening and then using his elaborate knife that was almost certainly advertised on late night cable TV as being “Tactical military grade”, his henchmen spend most of their time in an undisclosed warehouse-y location clanging axes together. The purpose of this clanging is never clarified...
Daniel Baldwin. Claudia Schiffer. Coolio. Together at last! What’s the occasion? No, it’s not a rerun of I Love the 90s, it’s an action-packed legal thriller called In Pursuit! Daniel Baldwin is an attorney on the run after being accused of murder by way of car explosion. Daniel was having an affair with the victim’s wife, none other than supermodel bombshell Claudia Schiffer. He’s caught pretty quickly. But it’s not so bad being in prison, because Daniel Baldwin is friends with the prison guard, Coolio. Now, this is already sounding pretty implausible. 1) Daniel Baldwin as an attorney. 2) Daniel Baldwin running anywhere. 3) Daniel Baldwin with Claudia Schiffer?? 4) Daniel Baldwin has a friend??? 5) And the friend is Coolio???? But that’s just the beginning. What should be a pretty straightforward The Fugitive knockoff is so impossibly convoluted, you’d need a surgeon to dissect the plot. At one point, Daniel winds up in a truck with a mountain lion. At another, Daniel is suddenly i
Guess who? It’s Fu! Yes, Fu is back, and this time he’s got real estate. The Castle of Fu Manchu sees the extremely British legend Christopher Lee return as the extremely NOT British Fu Manchu. This time, Fu and his daughter have developed some sort of fizzy crystals that can be dropped into water to make it freeze in specific, diabolical, and confusing ways. It breaks a dam, it sinks a ship that looks like the Titanic – a ship that looks so much like the TItanic, they used actual footage from a Titanic movie, A Night to Remember. Despite featuring in the title, the castle actually has very little to do with the plot, it’s just where he happens to live at the moment. Did he buy, rent, or sublease the Castle of Fu Manchu? You’ll have to watch to find out! The only heroes with any hope of stopping Fu Manchu from world domination are, of course, two stuffy middle-aged British gentlemen. Yes, it’s Detective Nayland Smith and Dr. Petrie, truly the Kirkland Signature versions of Holmes and
It’s just a typical day of Dynamite Fishing on a rural Wisconsin lake when something shocking happens: the yokel fisherman DOESN’T blow his hand off! But then he’s quickly eaten by a bog monster, so his afternoon is a wash. Awakened by the dynamite blast, the monster terrifies the community by cutting off their supply of cheese curds and occasionally drowning somebody. Fortunately the Sheriff has a plan: enlist the help of the local Bog Hag! What, your town doesn’t have a Bog Hag? Well, it was either that or deputize a drunken posse, and actually, he does that too. (It does not go well.) It’s the most terrifying thing to come out of a 70s bog since the rabbit that attacked Jimmy Carter, at least when the movie eventually gets around to showing it. Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for Bog!
It’s just common sense: when you want to cast Sherlock Holmes, you scope out the actors in the London’s West End. And when you want to cast a famous Chinese detective, you get a guy from Missouri. Sydney Toler stars as Charlie Chan in a performance that Mickey Rooney called “way too subtle.” Dispensing Eastern wisdom that’s as authentically ancient as a Calgon ad, he’s called into action when a bank robbery leaves a man dead and thus unable to take advantage of low, low rates on financing. In order to bring a falsely accused man to justice, Charlie must infiltrate the jail where he’s being held, which results in what we can confidently say is the most exciting scene ever set inside a prison hay baling shed. Charlie Chan once got nice with Ad-Rock, but now it’s Mike, Kevin, and Bill’s turn. Join them for Charlie Chan: Dark Alibi!
An eccentric billionaire is ripping off The Running Man, but he didn’t count on one man ruining the party: John Stoneman. No, not John Ryan, that’s a character played by the same actor in Street Law. And not John Stone, he’s from Stone Cold. John Stoneman is a professor of “Warriorism.” This sounds like something a glistening oaf you’ve never heard of would talk about while Joe Rogan nods for three hours, but evidently it’s a valuable set of skills that involves kicking people, then having deep, philosophical conversations about topics such as “Why do we kick people?” After a series of encounters in parking lots, John is kidnapped and taken to the Arctic Circle, played ably by a mid-Atlantic sledding hill three days after it snowed. There, he’s forced to compete in a series of brutal cage matches, many of which involve a hovercraft for some reason.
An intrepid crew of astronauts is headed to Mars when they encounter a hidden menace: spores. Fortunately, the spores quickly realize how dull of a villain they are and decide to mutate into the terrifying rubber kaiju known as The X! The X, who resembles what the offspring might look like if Gonzo ever sealed the deal with Camilla, turns out to be named Guilala. NASA's top scientists figured this out when they looked The X up on Facebook and found his profile, which also indicated that he matriculated at “The School of Hard Knocks,” majoring in “Your Mom.”* It turns out the only way to defeat Guilala is a substance called Guilalalium. At this point it may start to dawn on more astute viewers that this movie is kind of silly. The X runs amok, doing a variety of general flailing that looks unimpressive until you realize how hard it must have been to see for the guy inside the Guilala suit.
When we say we’re riffing a movie called Truth or Dare your mind might go to the black & white documentary full of naughty images of Madonna and her backup dancers. Hey, get your mind out of the gutter! And into the totally different gutter that is THIS Truth or Dare. The truth is, this is the kind of movie most people would only watch on a dare. It’s grimy, puzzling, and accidentally pretty damn funny. However there is at least one person who’s happy to watch it of his own free will: superstar actor Elijah Wood! He has loved this movie ever since he somehow saw it at age 5 – we’re not kidding, there are interview clips about it. Look ‘em up! The hallucinatory story begins when Mike Strauber comes home from work to find his beloved wife cheating on him with his best friend, who is also her boss. He reacts the way any man would: running away and playing a bloody game of Truth or Dare with an imaginary hitchhiker at a family campsite. You see, Mike Strauber had some kind of childhood t
Naturally, we wanted to pick something special and grand for our first foray into the genre, so we went with a TV movie from the 1980s. The production values may have you thinking it’s from the 60s, until you see a young Daniel Stern facing off against Philistines. Yes, before he was a Wet Bandit in Home Alone or a reflective baby boomer narrating The Wonder Years, he was a Biblical soldier guy! The movie also features the legendary Max von Sydow as a Philistine general, certainly the role he’s remembered most for today. Daniel Stern’s friend is a guy named Samson, a big dumb chunk of muscle with a ponytail that gives him superpowers. Samson has a tendency to fall for women who betray him in complicated ways, starting with his wife and continuing with the seductive Delilah. Samson also has a tendency to fight his foes with unusual tools, including the jawbone of an ass and a bunch of foxes with their tails set on fire. Resourceful, maybe - but pretty weird, Samson!
When that guy in the movie said “I’d buy that for a dollar!” he was talking about the show’s effects budget. RoboCop’s wife and son think he's dead, and he doesn’t want to tell them that he’s not, because have you seen how many games youth soccer teams play these days?? He can’t be driving all over town to drop the kid off every day! Not with all that RoboCopping he has to do! Meanwhile, a mad scientist is attempting to take over Motor City by using a Siri-esque virtual assistant to control the town’s elevators. His mission? To make it very clear to audiences why we never got a fourth movie. Helping him out is “Pud Face Morgan,” who must have slept through his alarm on the day they assigned gangster nicknames. RoboCop has to stop the evildoers before the Shareware Expo, which the bad guys intend to ruin, possibly by deploying a gigantic Keygen. It might be Detroit’s lowest moment since Barry Sanders retired, and that's really saying something.
Hundreds of years ago, a shaman in a remote village took all the evil impulses out of his people and put them into a clay “piñata” shaped like a demon. Then the villagers sent the clay piñata floating down a river. If the piñata is ever smashed, all that evil will be released upon the world and cause endless destruction. So hey, what could go wrong? The answer, as always: COLLEGE KIDS. Specifically, fraternity and sorority kids who go to the titular island for an underwear scavenger hunt. Thrill as Jaime Pressly and the guy who played Xander on Buffy the Vampire Slayer struggle to provide romantic tension in this pseudo Spring Break adventure. But then, whaddaya know, a couple of stoned sophomores find the ancient clay demon - which they somehow recognize as a piñata - and smash it open, releasing all kinds of adorable heck.
Dad has spent the past ten months building a house all by himself, and it should surprise nobody that it kind of sucks. And that’s before evil spirits start lighting fires and making giant rats appear! Now, the house itself is not evil. Instead (try to keep up here), there’s an evil dollhouse in a shed in California that resembles the main Amityville evil house. This allows it to do a wide range of things from “turning the fireplace on” (lame, not that evil, probably just something Alexa can do) to “making a dead guy turn up in a boy’s closet” (terrifying, very evil, call Amazon support if your Alexa does this.) Also a stepmom gets real horny for her stepson, which makes us wonder what type of websites this evil dollhouse has been spending time on. We do end up in another dimension, but never get anywhere near Amityville. But that’s okay, because the next evil object could be anything! Ward them off by joining Mike, Kevin, and Bill for Amityville Dollhouse!
Some “Unspecified Bad Guys” are building “Something Very Bad” in a “Country That Shall Remain Unspecified So As To Not Harm Foreign Box Office Receipts.” If they’re able to complete this device, many people will die, and more importantly, the Navy’s shirtless volleyball game could be interrupted. Tom Cruise is determined not to let this happen, despite the fact that he is now as old as Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau combined were when they filmed Grumpy Old Men. Thankfully, there are some youthful pilots whose main training at the Naval Academy appears to have been re-enacting all your favorite moments from the original Top Gun. Maverick has to take them under his wing to make sure they master the fine points of aerial combat, such as “clearing rights for songs that appeared in the original movie” and “picking a really stupid code name.” You’ll spend most of the movie pointing at the screen like that DiCaprio meme, but that’s OK because the good guys go pew pew and the bad guys go
The Paradise Motel is brought to you by some of the same folks behind the shark-free shark movie Apex Predators. Including Mel Novak as a creepy motel manager who reads human taxidermy books for fun. And the one and only Dawna Lee Heising, who can best be described as “if Weird Barbie from the Barbie movie was really, like really, weird.” Dawna stars as a woman on the run from her awful marriage to a man who’s furious she won't return “this crap” to the store, without ever specifying what the “crap” actually is. From there, she picks up a couple of the world’s most annoying hitchhikers on a deranged, low-budget Lynchian trip that brings her to the town of Paradise and its eponymous motel. Beyond that, you’re gonna need a corkboard and a whole lot of string to sort out the timeline of the plot, who’s who, and why they’re doing any of the things they’re doing. Almost forgot to mention, the movie soundtrack includes original songs sung by the director, who also acts in the film.
The Christmas Martian, a French-Canadian movie that’s sure to become a beloved holiday tradition right up there with that VHS of Christmas With The Kranks you discovered your older brother recorded over with an episode of Red Shoe Diaries. Poo Flower, (that is his name, we’re all gonna have to deal with it) is the titular martian. He does not come from Mars, and that’s honestly way down on the list of things that concern us about this movie. He shows up in Canada and proceeds to endanger the hell out of the two children who discover him. Fire, heavy machinery, horse manure, and a whole pile of alien pills are but a sampling of the delights these kids encounter at the hands of, say it with us now:, Poo Flower. As you’d expect this ends with a violent mob chasing down the poor alien on Christmas Eve. That’s when he’s forced to unleash the full force of his Martian powers to… well, you wouldn’t even believe us if we told you.
Your first indication that this version of The Little Mermaid might be different from the one you’re used to comes when it opens with several minutes of live action tourism footage of Denmark. Come on kids, time to watch men in sweaters purchase cheese! From there, you’ll meet a young mermaid princess named Marina, with a clingy dolphin friend named Fritz. There’s no fun singing crab, but there are crab policemen ready to enforce martial law. Yippee! It’s oddly serious and sad. Marina falls in love with a statue of a prince, and even more in love with the actual prince depicted in the statue. Despite the endless tears and protestations of Fritz the emotionally erratic dolphin, Marina goes to a sea witch (no, not THAT sea witch) and makes a bargain to get a pair of feet. Even the sea witch tries to tell her it’s a bad idea, but Marina won’t hear it.
It’s time for GrimTrax! For the first time ever, we’ve assembled five shorts about death, loneliness, and dismemberment into one big, old-fashioned yukfest. On their own, they would have been too depressing to put out into the world. But together, they form into a Voltron of hilarity, if Voltron was eventually going to die facedown in the snow, sad and alone. GrimTrax has it all: Old women. VERY old women. Factory workers getting maimed so badly it would make Chuck Hamlin blush (if he wasn’t already dead. From maiming.) Alcoholic NBA fans. Kids who get ignored to death. And a short that we actually recorded way back in 2012 and decided not to release until now because WE DIDN’T KNOW IF YOU COULD TAKE IT! So please ignore any jokes in that one about Linsanity or Gangnam Style, trust us, they were hilarious at the time! Featuring host segments from Mike, Kevin, and Bill to guide you through the gloom, GrimTrax is the perfect entertainment for a dark winter evening. Watch it with your
Put on your favorite action beret, because Terminus is one of the most European action movies we’ve ever encountered. It’s a French/German production, sort of a Euro Mad Max full of big ideas that don’t really come together, kind of like Euro Disney, or a Coca-Cola served at room temperature. The least European part of the movie by far is Karen Allen of Indiana Jones fame. Instead of bantering with Harrison Ford, she spends this movie in the company of an intelligent truck with a realistic mouth. We’ll let you read that again. Yes, the focus of the movie Terminus is a self-driving truck that speaks with a huge, fleshy, human mouth. On top of that, the Mouth Truck speaks in what we can only describe as the French idea of “urban slang.” The Cybertruck wishes it could be this off-putting. Karen Allen and the Mouth Truck are part of a big game, designed by a creepy little blonde boy and his team of pretentious scientists.
When a giant evil floating brain arrives on earth, everyone has the same question: does it come in peace? It responds by blasting people, taking over bodies with psychic powers, and lunging at women. Yep: it’s a close encounter and the third kind is horny AF The evil brain shows up at a place called Mystery Mountain, which sounds like the name of a ride at a traveling carnival that has a handwritten sign on it that says “Closed pending trial outcome.” Our hero is played by John Agar, who does not appear to have any discernible charisma, but at least Wikipedia informs us married Shirley Temple when she was 17 years old. Wait, maybe we should be rooting for the giant evil brain…? Fortunately, accompanying the giant evil brain is a giant good brain. At least it tells us it’s good. And if you can’t trust a giant floating brain that looks exactly like the giant floating brain who just attacked your wife, who can you trust?
The first thing to know about Spy High is that it should probably be called Hacker High, because these kids are totally radical hackers to the extreme. They know their way around an iMac and a Zip Disk, that’s for sure! The second thing to know about Spy High is that it’s the kind of movie that seems to have recently suffered a concussion. The story doesn’t quite track, the characters get smarter or dumber depending on what’s needed for any given moment, and the best actor in the movie, hands down, is a dog. Seriously, the dog’s name is Rocky, and he can do no wrong. Rocky makes Air Bud look like a… well, like a dog who can’t play basketball. Rocky and the irritating teenagers he’s saddled with are inexplicably recruited by a government agent who can’t keep his hands out of his armpits. The agent wants them to take down a video game company that’s secretly making a mind control weapon to unleash on the internet… so, basically, TikTok.
Kaan Woo is about to retire and his co-workers are sad to see him go. Thing is, his co-workers are evil kung fu monks and when they get sad, they kick you. So Kaan does what any of us would do in this situation: transfers his consciousness into the body of a hobo that passed out in a nearby alley. As you’d expect, the bum wakes up knowing how to do kung fu (related), a thirst for malt liquor (unrelated), and an inability to speak in a consistent accent from scene to scene (we’re not sure). He’s played by one of the guys who stole the Big Lebowski’s rug so maybe he just has unprocessed guilt about the room being no longer tied together. It’s like The Legend of the Drunken Master if Jackie Chan was getting hammered off a bottle of warm Robitussin that he kept in his car’s trunk.
Hangmen was Sandra Bullock’s first movie, and it’s exactly what you’d expect: a spy thriller involving a lot of schlubby guys and a commando named Dog Thompson who lives in a junkyard, played by someone named Dog Thomas. No, seriously. There’s also an actor named Kosmo Vinyl, and a role played by legendary boxer Jake LaMotta. Rarely has an opening credit sequence been so bountiful with surprises! Hangmen centers on a college student whose deadbeat dad just happens to be an ex-military assassin on the run from some real bad dudes. Dad visits his son at college, promptly gets his roommate killed, and puts the boy and his girlfriend Sandra Bullock in mortal danger. Oh, Dad, stop visiting me at school, you’re so embarrassing! From there, the middle-aged men are off to the races. Car chases, abandoned warehouses, barely intelligible phone calls with extreme close-ups of the actors’ faces, they do it all!
Zack and Ashlee are outcasts at school. We’re not sure why, perhaps because their singing voices sound like waterfowl being fed into a paper shredder. They bond because they are both seeing visions of a superhero with a purple mullet named Rem Lezar. Rather than do the sensible thing and inspect the town’s water supply for lead, they decide to drag some old mannequin parts into a shed and bring Rem to life. Rem Lezar is determined to teach the kids the true meaning of friendship. This is quite ironic, because not only would you switch seats on the city bus if Rem sat down next to you, you might swear off vehicular transport in general. Standing in his way is the evil Vorock, who might be the first supervillain whose origin story involves MS Paint. He is played by the movie’s writer and director, and the caliber of his performance, frankly, explains a lot.
For years, people have been asking us to riff The Amazing Bulk. And for years, we have hidden under a bed hoping those people won’t find us. Well, at last, it’s happened. The big purple grainy digital hand of The Bulk has smashed our hiding place. It’s infamous, it’s unbelievable - but decidedly NOT Incredible - it’s The Amazing Bulk! How to describe this movie? First of all, it may not be a “movie.” It seems like it was assembled by pressing “random shuffle” on a piece of video software from the '90s, then pouring the results into a blender with a “superhero movie” button. The core premise may sound familiar: a scientist becomes a giant colorful monster after a lab accident, complicating his relationship with his girlfriend, whose father is an Army general who wants him destroyed. And, of course, there is a maniacal supervillain with a vaguely European accent and a monocle. Sounds simple enough! The twist is, all of these characters inhabit some forgotten back corner of the uncanny
Talkin' Rifftrax with Mike, Kevin, and Bill
Talkin' Rifftrax with Mike, Kevin, and Bill
Rifftrax tested some new web streaming equipment by holding Bacon Cam! Live!, a celebration of America and bacon!
To premiere "Rifftrax: The Game" to the public, the Rifftrax guys played teh game over Zoom.
Yule Log featuring over 45 minutes of walking and driving scenes from James Nguyen films.
It’s time for GrimTrax! For the first time ever, we’ve assembled five shorts about death, loneliness, and dismemberment into one big, old-fashioned yukfest. On their own, they would have been too depressing to put out into the world. But together, they form into a Voltron of hilarity, if Voltron was eventually going to die facedown in the snow, sad and alone. GrimTrax has it all: Old women. VERY old women. Factory workers getting maimed so badly it would make Chuck Hamlin blush (if he wasn’t already dead. From maiming.) Alcoholic NBA fans. Kids who get ignored to death. And a short that we actually recorded way back in 2012 and decided not to release until now because WE DIDN’T KNOW IF YOU COULD TAKE IT! So please ignore any jokes in that one about Linsanity or Gangnam Style, trust us, they were hilarious at the time! Featuring host segments from Mike, Kevin, and Bill to guide you through the gloom, GrimTrax is the perfect entertainment for a dark winter evening.
FIELD TRIP! The good news: you’re all excused from school. The bad news? We’re going to Golden Corral. Yes, that’s right. After years of crafting extremely respectful new slogans, we’ve finally sent Mike, Kevin and Bill to the source itself, in search of the true Gold that can only be found in buffet form. Somewhere at the corner of a strip mall in the wilds of Minnesota, on the grayest day known to man, the guys enjoyed the meal of their lives. Was it also the last meal of their lives? You’ll have to tune in to find out! Thrill as they try it all: the brown food group and the yellow food group. From the Smokehouse to the Grillhouse to the Outhouse, join the guys for a dining experience like no other (hopefully) as RiffTrax Goes to Golden Corral!
Water... the most dangerous of the elements. Except for fire. Or earth, if you happen to get caught in a landslide. Then, there's air, too. Remember that Gary Larson cartoon where some poor bastard is skydiving, pulls the ripcord and a grand piano comes out instead of a parachute? And let's not forget lightning. Actually, lightning might not be one of the elements. Let me check on Wikipedia and get back to you on that. Sorry, drifted a little there. Where were we? Oh, yeah – water. Deadlier by far than your regular water, it seems, is Dark Water. It can make people act in strange ways, such as encouraging Hollywood executives to greenlight far too many remakes of superior Japanese horror movies. Just as well, then, that this version of Dark Water is packed to the seams with today's top acting talent. Talent such as... that chick who won the Oscar for that movie... that guy who looks like he was grown from one of Ned Beatty's scabs... that English guy who always plays Americans... and that other English guy who always plays Americans. Anyway, it's a quality product, and you're guaranteed to walk out of the movie theatre humming.* RiffTrax is proud to present Matthew Elliott riffing on Jennifer Connelly’s wettest and darkest opus. *Provided you took your iPod with you.
Continuing in the fine tradition of aftermarket sci-fi Series accessories, Rifftrax Presents is proud once again to jump into the fan-licious world of Star Trek Phase II – or Star Trek New Voyages, which appears to be the series’ maiden name. It’s the amazing all-volunteer fan-created continuation of Star Trek, the Original Series but has better sound, cornier corn, pointier Vulcans, paunchier paunches, Scottier Scotties, and it riffs like a dream. This time around, Riffers Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy pitch their pith at the episode To Serve All My Days, the story of a waitress in love with – no wait, that’s Waitress. This one features the character Pavel Chekov, who after a freak accident becomes the actor Walter Koenig, an affliction for which there is no cure. You get dueling Chekovs, pre-head-bulge Klingons, and a surprise ending that’ll have you standing up and shouting, “Well-it-they-what-the-hunh?” What are you waiting for? Beam it down, Snotty! Riff long and prosper!
Ladies and gentlemen, the Future has been pushing us all around long enough. We here at RiffTrax think it's high time we fight it! And who better to join our battle against That Which Is To Come than two maladjusted, mumbling FBI agents from a cancelled TV show? Yes, in anticipation of this summer's decade-later sequel, RiffTrax Presents takes on this first X-Files movie... which evidently had little success in fighting the future, since, you know, we're IN that future. And this future still contains Hot Pockets. (...Yeah, real ace work, future-fighting 1998 people!) Bill Corbett (a.k.a. Burrito Eating Man) is joined by former MST3K colleague and current Cinematic Titanic diva Mary Jo Pehl (a.k.a. Nap Taking Woman) in their attempt to decipher just what the hell Duchovny is saying. Does this man's contract stipulate that he be allowed a mouthful of porridge on set, at all times? Join us and find out!
Stop anybody on the street and ask them what their favourite Paris Hilton movie is, and chances are they'll say: “Is this a real survey? Why don't you have a pen or a clipboard? Oh my God, are you mugging me? Please, take everything, just don't hurt me!” Or they might, just might reply: “House of Wax”. I'm pretty certain Vincent Price is dead, so I can say with tolerable confidence that this remake of his 1953 classic would cause him to turn over in his grave. I'm not sure why, it's just something the dead are supposed to do when they're ticked off – when Bill O'Reilly finally throws a seven, he'll most likely come close to perpetual motion. But the sight of the insufferable, uber-spoilt heiress being stalked by a raving psycho intent on ramming a metal pole through her skull isn't the only reason for watching this movie. OK, it is the only reason, but damned if it ain't a good one. If they could've found a way to work it into Norbit, I would've watched that, too. In fact, it'd make the basis of a terrific reality series. Excuse me, I have to put in a call to Fox...
Rifftrax is boldly going where no Rifftrax has gone before, and it’s not just a hokey cliché, we really mean it! Rifftrax Presents veteran riffers Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy, beaning on (or is it “beaming?” I can never remember) the most ambitious exercise in fan fiction since that really good Civil War reenactment! These are sumptuously produced “new episodes” of the original Star Trek series, authentically detailed and produced by Trek fans, yet with the beefy swagger of a roomful of Shatners. Rifftrax Presents: Star Trek: Phase II: World Enough and Time! A title that has more colons than a gastroenterologist’s waiting room, and also contains more delicious hamming than Smithfield, Virginia at Easter. Original Series veteran George Takei reprises his role as Sulu, but as an older Sulu, due to a spontaneous fluctuation in the space-time…Okay, it doesn’t really matter, does it? It has Sulu, pretty women, pretty men, time-warping, and enough wigs to fill Phyllis Diller’s closet.
Not since Beckett’s immortal Waiting for Godot has the drama of two men locked in a filthy bathroom and brutalized by a crude ventriloquist dummy on television captured the hearts of audiences everywhere. RiffTrax Presents Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett riffing on the original, jaw-splitting, skull-drilling, Danny Glover-ing, fat naked dead man-showing movie that started it all, if by “all” you mean a five-movie franchise that’s now as tired as Bruce Willis at the end of 16 Blocks. PARENTAL ADVISORY!!!: The Movie Saw is rated R for its extremely graphic and grisly violence and excessively foul language. This RiffTrax is intended for Mature Audiences only. Parental discretion not only is strongly advised, it just makes plain good common sense.
Hey you young whippersnappers -- you thought that "Alien" was just Predator's sparring partner, didn't you? Not so, Padawans. "Alien" (who, in a series of HUGE coincidences, happens to BE an alien, AND stars in the movie ALIEN! Weird!!) first took Hollywood by storm during the heady, Jimmy Carter-filled days of 1979....back when a long, long pan over a hot-glued spaceship miniature made the first generation of geeks wheeze in delight, and reach for their inhalers. ALIEN starred a pair of plain white underpants worn by a young, little-known actress named Sigourney Weaver.... who later went on to start in ALIENs 2 though 37. (The underpants retired to Sedona, AZ. shortly after filming.) It also featured a pre-Hobbit Sir Ian Holm, a pre-wand-wizard John Hurt, and a pre-Mormon Mafioso Harry Dean Stanton. And you'll never forget Bursty, the impish-but-loveable little chestbursting alien baby! Join Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy as they riff on this sci-fi / horror / underpants classic.
Of all the movies made in the last eleven years, only one could bravely fill the gap between Spider-Man and Spider-Man 3. That film, of course, is The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing. However, in order to satisfy the purists in the audience, Rifftrax Presents presents our very special riff on Spider-Man 2. This time, young Peter Parker must choose between the brave yet thankless life of a shadowy crime-fighter in a groin-crushing leotard, or the life of a relentless, uncle-killing failure who makes Jonah Hill look like Stone Cold Steve Austin. Alfred Molina co-stars as Doctor Octavius, AKA Doc Ock, AKA a man who ought never ever be seen with his shirt off. Kirsten Dunst returns as the pale ginger werewolf MJ, and Rosemary Harris sizzles as the sassy, sexy Aunt May. Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy welcome special guest-riffer Josh Fruhlinger, the legendary Comics Curmudgeon, author of one of the web’s most irreverent and popular blogs (check him out at http://joshreads.com). Josh has made it his life's mission to survey, and hurl invective at the daily comic strip page, and he knows more about Mary Worth than any living soul, a thought which ought to send chills down your spine. Join us as Josh brings his rapier wit and encyclopedic comic strip knowledge to this favorite of the Spider-Man series, and we promise you'll never have more fun watching a man jump around in tight clothes.
Leave your Prius in the garage and cash out your carbon debts! It's time to watch the end of the world, which is our fault of course, as RiffTrax Presents Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy's razor-sharp political analysis of The Day After Tomorrow - which, by my reckoning, at least for today, may also be called Friday (day of the week may vary in your area; check your local calendar). Director Roland Emmerich lends his usual subtle style to this story of a world in which we should constantly feel guilty for driving to get the pizza instead of walking. Dennis Quaid stars as hard-driven scientist Harrison Ford, who discovers that a humble meteorologist, given enough power, can kill us all. Jake Gyllenhaaaal sizzles as the guy they get when Toby Maguire is busy, and his congenital smirk lights up the screen. Ian Holm adds the weensy bit of English charm that makes the other performances go down like overdone rump roast. An ethnically balanced mob of nobodies rounds out the cast, but a special mention is merited for Kenneth Welsh, who plays a Cheney-esque Vice President so bilious, so bitter and acrid, that his performance actually eats a hole in the floor.
Ah, the summer of 1963—and what better place to spend it than with your family in the Catskills, dancing with the guy from Road House to pop songs from the 80’s! An oily Patrick Swayze, naïve Jennifer Grey and Jennifer Grey’s old nose star in this beloved(?) musical dramedy choreographed by Kenny “High School Musical” Ortega. Also starring Law & Order’s Jerry Orbach (who’s around so much dance murder he should be on the case) and a pre-Seinfeld Wayne Knight, this is the film that will make you think twice about putting your baby in ANY corner. You’ll have the time of your life (or at least be glad you have one) watching this 80’s classic that holds up about as well as a paper mache bridge with Kirstie Alley crossing it. Join Cole Stratton (Who?) and Janet Varney (Wha?) as they try to look on the bright side* and deconstruct this celebration of dance and watermelon-carrying. *film could have been Mannequin or Freejack.
Only one film dared to confront the twin menaces facing America during the 1980s—terrorism and aggressive male-pattern baldness—and that film is Die Hard. So it's fortunate that I'm writing about that particular movie, or something would seem to have gone terribly, terribly wrong—like an emu wearing a Stetson, or anything involving Tom Green. This fearless fly-on-the-wall documentary charts the everyday struggles of vest-wearing cop John McClane, a man who swears like a longshoreman with tourettes and who, we imagine, has real problems getting insurance coverage for any aspect of his life, since he can't seem to walk across the street to use the automatic teller without becoming involved in some sort of automatic weapon-related unpleasantness. When Alan Rickman takes John's annoying big-haired wife hostage, only one response is appropriate. But instead of sitting on the couch in his underwear, scratching himself and watching Phil Donahue, McClane improbably decides to rescue her. And the surprises don't end there! Unless you've seen any action movie made since Die Hard, in which case, they pretty much do.
Have you ever wondered what the inside of a computer looks like? So did Disney, and it’s pretty clear they didn’t do any research when they made Tron. RiffTrax invites you to join internet superstar Jonathan Coulton and less-famous-but-still-kind-of-funny comedy/music duo Paul and Storm on their adventure through a luminous blue world of phallic helmets, light-up Frisbees and tight white unitards. A pre-Dude Jeff Bridges stars as a hotshot video game programmer who gets laser beamed into the world’s dullest rave by David Warner’s evil supercomputer. Cindy Morgan, fresh from the Denise Richards school of unlikely scientists, maybe has a thing for Bruce Boxleitner, who I think is really good at playing this one motorcycle game or something? We can’t say for sure, there were a lot of flashing lights and Casio synth music and we kind of fell asleep for a little while. One thing is certain: beneath the silly costumes and bad CGI there’s a powerful message about humanity, communication and freedom, not to mention a studio executive whose creative judgment was impaired by a bad case of Pac-Man fever. Insert coin to continue.
If messy wet clay and the brothers Everly are your idea of foreplay, look no further than this Jerry Zucker-directed (yes, THAT Jerry Zucker) surprise smash hit of 1990. Test your credulity as our beloved Patrick Swayze trades in his dirty dancin' shoes and his blue collar bartending meat hooks to give a turn in the role he was destined to play: an intelligent, educated, high-powered account executive. Feel his pain when he is prematurely ripped away from Demi Moore while she is upstaged by her own Hobbit haircut. Drown in misery as you discover that the only way he can communicate with her is through a scenery-gnawing con woman. But cheer up! You also get to feast your eyes on some of cinema's worst special effects in the form of crudely animated shadow demons.* Cole Stratton and Janet Varney return for another Swayze classic with Ghost, a movie cloaked in profound questions about the existence of an afterlife, whether the living can communicate with the dead, and how in the world Whoopi Goldberg ended up with an Oscar. *We are not referring to Tony Goldwyn.
Are you ready for running? LOTS of running? Running done by…a man? Then you’re ready for The Running Man, the 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle, a movie so powerful that it launched the political careers of two of its stars! Yes, I’m talking about Yaphet Kotto and Professor Toru Tanaka. Didn’t know they were governors, did you? Welcome to the many surprises that The Running Man has in store for you. It’s 2018 and helicopter pilot and ESL language coach Ben Richards has just been framed for a crime he refused to commit. He escapes from prison, gets captured again and is forced to participate in a sadistic game show where he must fight for his very life! It’s pretty dystopian. Thrill! – as Arnold outwits and overpowers various cartoon-like stalkers with names like “Dynamo” and “Buzzsaw”. Squint! – as you try to understand the barely-comprehensible gibberish that spews out of Maria Conchita Alonzo’s mouth. Laugh! – as Jesse Ventura minces around in what is surely the gayest role of his career. The Running Man has something for everyone. Plus it has Richard Dawson playing the villain, a performance that can only be described as “Regis-esque”. Come join us as Matt, Aaron and special guest Chad Vader riff on this 80s sci-fi classic. Why is Chad Vader riffing a non-star-wars movie, you ask? Well, he’s got a lot of free time.
Have you ever worried that your favorite super hero might be nothing more than a passing fad? Well, Joel Schumacher is here to put your mind at ease with a film that he based on a slogan he once heard some kids shout after leaving Tim Burton's Batman film: Batman Forever*. A movie so terrible that we still don't understand why people were surprised at how bad Batman & Robin was. Val Kilmer, fresh from his declining career, dons the pointy-eared rubber man suit. He's aided by Chris O'Donnell, fresh from his separate, but equally declining career, as Robin, the "not quite a boy, not quite a man" wonder. Nicole Kidman surprises everyone by proving she doesn't need Tom Cruise to make bad career choices and somehow actually having a career after this film. Tommy Lee Jones follows up his Oscar winning performance from The Fugitive as the scenery-chewing Two-Face, playing him as though he were a Dick Tracy villain. And finally, Jim Carrey appears as crossword puzzle writer Will Shortz, affectionately known around the office as "the Riddler". RiffTrax Presents is proud to bring you this riff by the team from THATGUYWITHTHEGLASSES.com. The GUY himself: Doug Walker, his brother Rob and perpetual hanger-on: Brian Heinz. Join them as they prove that Batman Forever isn't just a bad idea, it's also a bad movie. *Batman Forever does not, in fact, last forever. Effects typically last anywhere from one and a half to two hours; if effects last longer, please consult a physician. Batman Forever has not been approved by the FDA, and should be used only as directed.
If the movies have taught us nothing else—and plainly, they haven't―then they've at least shown us that astronauts and evil supercomputers are similarly cursed with a stunning lack of imagination. Just as Skynet can't seem to come up with a better plan than to repeatedly send a Terminator back in time to eliminate John Connor before he gets fat, starts wearing a checkered shirt and marries Roseanne, so, with all the planets in an infinite Universe to choose from, NASA's best and brightest only seem capable of crash-landing on the Planet of the Apes (which turns out to be Earth all along, by the way). Chuck Heston began this trend in 1968, demonstrating his right to bear arms as effectively as his right to bare chest. So, if you've ever felt the need to rail against unnamed maniacs who blow “it” up, this is your big chance to do it alongside the guy who played Jason Colby. Also Moses.
Let’s hear it for the boy! What boy? Why, Ren McCormack (Kevin Bacon, at his Baconiest), an outspoken, rebellious lad with anger dancing issues and feathered hair that would make Sally Jessy Raphael jealous. The small town of Beaumont, Texas isn’t ready for his skinny tie ways—certainly not the tall, awkward town preacher Shaw Moore (played by John Lithgow, in a…tall and awkward performance), who spearheaded a law banning dancing after a fatal accident. Can Ren bring some joy to the youth of Beaumont, like Carrie Bradshaw-in-training Sarah Jessica Parker? Can he bring any emotion or semblance of acting to romantic interest Lori Singer, literally the last actress in Hollywood to be offered the role of the Reverend’s daughter Ariel? Can he teach Chris Penn a myriad of ridiculous choreography all the while sharing a walkman blaring Kenny Loggins “music”? And what the heck is Dianne Wiest doing in this? Skewering this celebration of beat-up pickup trucks, mom jeans, shameless Coca-Cola product placement, and illegal rug-cutting are RiffTrax Presents regulars Cole Stratton (who was in Around The Fire with Stephen Tobolowsky, who was in Murder In The First with Kevin Bacon) and Janet Varney (who was in Catwoman with Sharon Stone, who was in He Said, She Said with Kevin Bacon). Everybody enjoy, everybody enjoy…everybody enjoy, everybody enjoy…everybody enjoy, everybody enjoy, everybody…everybody enjoy Footloose!
Let us start by saying that Ghost Rider is the greatest movie ever made. The acting, direction, top-notch storytelling and awe-inducing special effects add up to what can only be called the most amazing achievement in the history of cinema. Please note: we are being forced to say this by Satan. You see, a few years ago we sold our souls to the devil so that Chad Vader would become famous. The Dark Lord kept his promise…but the Devil always gets his due, and we are now forced to reap the bitter fruits of our infernal alliance by watching and riffing the unholy turd known as Ghost Rider. Did I say unholy turd? Sorry, I meant the greatest movie ever made. Joining us is Nicolas Kage, a man who bears a striking resemblance to Nicolas Cage. Same person? A spawn of the underworld sent to torture us? Only Peter Fonda knows for sure.
1982 Tobe Hooper-directed/Steven Spielberg-produced supernatural tale in which the Freeling Family deals with some seriously messed up/crappily-rendered spirits that ghost-nap their young daughter Carol Anne, who communicates with them through a television set (unlike text messaging, which is all the rage with the kids nowadays). A pre-Coach Craig T. Nelson and a pre-, um, Poltergeist JoBeth Williams star alongside Beatrice “I got an Oscar for a 5-min and 40 second performance” Straight, a creepy bedside clown, a ravenous tree, buckets and buckets of Star Wars product placement, and everyone’s favorite lil’ clairvoyant, Zelda Rubinstein. Running towards the light to provide RiffTrax commentary are Janet Varney and Cole Stratton, who previously underwhelmed you with their RiffTrax Presents of Dirty Dancing, Ghost and Footloose. We promise it will be more entertaining than The Bounty Hunter (since everything is). Which dictionary did this definition come out of, anyway? Am I right, people?
So many important historical events would have turned out so differently if people had only thought to voice their concerns when it really mattered. For example, the Amok Time episode of Star Trek would have had a running time of about 20 minutes if Kirk had said: “Listen, before we get started... this isn't to the death, is it? Similarly, just think how much happier we'd all be today if, back in the 1990s, Adam Sandler had said: “You will be honest, and tell me if my movie is an utter piece of crap, appealing only to the lowest common denominator, won't you?” And what if a giant asteroid were heading for the Earth, and the likelihood of the extermination of the entire human race was 100%, don't you wish someone at NASA would speak up and ask: “Look, I know we've got our hearts set on sending some obnoxious, illiterate roughnecks into space in the hope that they'll be able to drill a hole in it and detonate a nuclear weapon on a fault line the screenwriters neglected to mention 'til three-quarters of the way thru the movie... but does anyone agree that we should stop for just a millisecond and ask ourselves whether this is a remotely good idea??!!” This important question remains unasked during Armageddon's absurdly inflated running time*...until now. So join That English Guy(TM) as he considers this and other issues. And probably makes fun of Ben Affleck, too.
Let’s get one thing straight: Vampires don’t sparkle in the sun; they burst into flame. Yes, they sleep all day, party all night, wear dangly earrings, ride motorbikes on the boardwalk and enjoy concerts by long-haired shirtless greasy saxophone players, but they JUST. DO. NOT. SPARKLE. Joel “Can we please stop talking about how I put nipples on the Batsuit?” Schumacher’s 1987 teen vamp flick The Lost Boys is everything Twilight wishes it could be and then some. SWOON over pretty boy Michael (Jason Patric) and his vamp nemesis David (Kiefer Sutherland, peroxided beyond recognition)! LAUGH at those wacky comic-book collecting vamp hunters The Frog Brothers (Corey Feldman, who probably doesn’t remember making this movie, and Jamison Newlander, who probably doesn’t get remembered for making this movie)! SCREAM at Corey Haim’s horribly dated wardrobe! And SIGH wondering why Dianne Wiest and Edward Herrmann signed on to be in this thing. Oh…and… something about Jami Gertz. Returning to the RiffTrax booth are Cole Stratton (who seriously loves this movie) and Janet Varney (who seriously loves that Cole seriously loves this movie). They hope you’ll give it a download…since they have so much at STAKE. Get it? Stake?* *Janet Varney wishes that it be known that she strongly disapproves of that last joke and that Cole takes full responsibility for it.** ** Cole Stratton is wearing sunglasses indoors and thinks it’s hilarious.
Et Tu, 3-D? What was once a fairly harmless novelty now seems to have taken over multiplexes across the country. Flying houses, animated dragons, Ga’hool Owls and unleashed Krakens are spilling off the screen, fatiguing our eyes and migraining our headaches. Waaaay back in 1983, audiences experienced a whole new kind of headache with the third installment in the should-never-have-been-a-franchise Jaws film series, in which a baby shark and its pissed-off momma spend more than one afternoon in SeaWorld and thus start eating people (I think we can all relate). If the effects department can’t stop them (and they try), then Dennis “Crap…I’m in this?” Quaid, Lea “Thank goodness Back to the Future is just around the corner” Thompson, and Louis “I JUST won an Oscar and chose to do this next” Gossett, Jr. will. And, yes, it’s all in eye-poppin’ THHHHHREEEEEEE DDDDDDDDDDDDDDD! Except…that it’s not. Not on your home DVD. But shhhhhhhhhh…it still thinks it is! Waiting ‘til it’s safe to go back in the water are frequent RiffTrax Presenters Cole Stratton and Janet Varney, who are going to need a much bigger boat to get through this not-so-great-great-white-flick that makes them long for the days of shirtless Patrick Swayze and dancin’ Kevin Bacon.
Three is the magic number—Three Musketeers, Three Blind Mice, three trained marksmen stationed at different points in Dealey Plaza.* Jurassic Park III follows the great tradition of movie trilogies where the person or persons responsible for the success of the first two decided to do something else while they still had a career, leaving whoever happened to be available at the time to finish the job—for further examples, see The Mummy, Scream and The X-Men series. British guy Matthew J Elliott wishes the world at large to know that, in preparing this commentary (the first in history to mention vajazzling.**), he agonized over every single riff. Now it's your turn. *As outlined in my forthcoming book, How Elvis Killed JFK—check Amazon for further details, unless it's suppressed by Government Forces or poor advance sales **At least, I assume so. Hell, I can't watch 'em all. Maybe there's something about it in Casablanca or The Star Wars Holiday Special. But I sure as hell hope not.
The English—inventors of the internet and the language you're reading right now. But what have they ever done for us? Well, stretching a point, there's the famous English detective Sherlock Holmes (who was created by a Scotsman, but what the hell). Holmes has been depicted onscreen more times than any other fictional character, with the possible exception of the Wilhelm Scream Guy. For a hundred years, filmmakers have taken a reverential approach to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's beloved creation. Welcome to the 21st Century. Join Sherlockian Film Expert* Matthew J. Elliott as he guides you through Guy Ritchie's epic without the aid of a magnifying glass. This commentary is also available in 2-D for those who get a headache wearing the special glasses. *Yes, really. Who knew there was such a thing? Or that “Sherlockian” was a word?
Is there life after death? That's what sexy, sexy, sexy med students Nelson, Rachel, Joe, David and Randy* want to know. Through a series of medical experiments, they put each other under to see what's out there—and what follows them back. A growling Keifer Sutherland, permy Julia Roberts, non-dancing Kevin Bacon, testosterone-y William "Billy" Baldwin and foppish Oliver Platt team up with director and fan of the crane shot Joel Schumacher to bathe us all in constant blue light and test our collective patience. Yes, the film that we all remember was nominated for an Academy Award for BEST SOUND EDITING finally gets a RiffTrax ribbing from previously flatlining riffers Cole Stratton and Janet Varney (Where the heck have we been, anyway?). Today is a good day to die—from laughing? (We hope!) *Not so sexy. He's played by Oliver Platt. But...um...brains are sexy, right? RIGHT?
It's kind of tough for me to differentiate between movies and real life, but I'm pretty sure it's historical fact that the Nazis dug up the Ark of the Covenant, and when they opened it, their faces melted off (wow, Indiana Jones sure messed up not letting it get to Hitler – nice work, genius). The moral to this tale: some things are best left buried and forgotten. That being the case, here's Sly Stallone, Dolph Lundgren, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Eric Roberts in The Expendables. I no longer have a DVD of this movie – it's being examined by top men. Top... men.
The Deadly Mantis showed us that the life of a palaeontologist is one of intrigue, romance, and unstoppable monsters. Horror Express does nothing to dispel this notion, so that presumably means it can only be true. Here, Christopher Lee plays Professor Alexander Saxton who, never having been told by his mother that he shouldn’t play with dead things, unearths a frozen ape man in Manchuria because…well, what else is there to do in Manchuria? En route to Moscow by train, the ape man comes back to life, and starts killing off passengers, all the while whistling a haunting tune, in spite of the fact that he doesn’t have any lips. Oh, and Peter Cushing is on the train, too. And Telly Savalas shows up, presumably in order to pay off a gambling debt. Nowadays, there are really only two things to be concerned about when traveling by train: lateness, and sitting too close to the stubbly guy who smells like urine and crazy. Compare that with two movie legends, a homicidal caveman and a bat-poopy insane Telly Savalas, and you'll see that the Horror Express is a ninety-minute ride not to be missed.
Guns, girls, grappling, gorillas, slightly gray looking greenery! This film has it all! King of Kong Island is the action-packed tale of a scantily-clad jungle girl, some people who speak English without seeming to understand it and sometimes without bothering to move their lips, a mad scientist friend of theirs they’ve lost touch with a bit and their very many cigarettes. It seems almost impossible for these many disparate elements to fuse together into one coherent and gripping narrative, doesn’t it? Well, that didn’t stop the makers of this bizarre Italian adventure story giving it a go anyhow. Hey, it was the 60s, a lot of people were experimenting. In this case they were experimenting with planting radio spares in apes’ brains so they could be controlled remotely. Everyone needs a hobby, don’t they? Our square-jawed and trapezoid-chested hero, Burt, is drawn into a world of intrigue, stock footage of wildlife, terrifying disco-dancing and advanced brain surgery in this extraordinary film that everyone claims features a relative of King Kong. With the help of your intrepid riffers, Matthew J Elliott and Ian Potter, you will be able to join those happy few who have made it through to the end to find out if that’s actually true. You may not be quite as happy as them when you get there, but you’ll laugh a lot along the way and you’ll never make it through Kong Island without us. Wherever it turns out that is…
Was there ever a more seminal film than Scared to Death? You heard me, seminal. It's a word. Look it up, it's not what you think. By kicking off with a body in a mortuary narrating the story, this classy horrormystery served as the blueprint for Sunset Boulevard over a decade later. Granted, Sunset Boulevard was an alltime Hollywood classic while Scared to Death wound up being mocked by a couple of English guys, but that wasn't the only time it served as a basis for other more notable pictures. For a start, there's a reporter in it... just like Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford in All the President's Men! Coincidence? Well, possibly, but consider this – you've also got Bela Lugosi (in his only color movie) playing a foreign guy! Now ask yourself how many films made after Scared to Death feature foreigners? Hell, foreign films are full of 'em! Can you really afford to miss this, the wellspring from which all modern motion pictures draw their inspiration?
You’re a citizen of the world, right? You know about Japanese cinema. You remember Ringu - that horror film you accidentally rented because you thought it was a kids' show about a penguin. You enjoy the majestic historical spectacles of Akira Kurosawa, even though he clearly ripped all his best bits off westerns. You’ve devoured the melancholy, dream-like animations of Studio Ghibli, waiting for a rude bit with tentacles. You’ve watched all the Godzillas - even the good one and Samuel Beckett’s disappointing Waiting for Godzilla. So why haven’t you seen Warning From Space? Eh? Hmm? What‘s not to love in a film bringing together a group of giant one-eyed alien starfish, the nail-biting drama of scientific research1, a rogue planet set on a collision course with our Earth, a lavish song and dance number, and a game of tennis with an alien duplicate? It’s dubbed into English. You won’t need to read or anything. If that wasn’t enough, you can now experience the movie with the added benefit of two Brits talking in the gaps between the weirdly dubbed Japanese people. Amazingly, many of their bits make more sense than the actual story2, and occasionally manage to be funnier than the alien starfish costumes3. 1 There is less drama in scientific research than you may have been led to believe. 2 Not a huge claim. 3 Massive claim. Your money back if you’re prepared to take us to court in an attempt to dispute it and manage to convince the jury.
If you die in your dreams, do you die in real life? That's, like, the conceit of this Sci-Fi classic(?) from 1984 in which a young psychic played by Dennis Quaid (who really shoulda seen his brother Randy's weird behavior on the horizon) works with a sorta-understandable scientist Swede Max Von Sydow to go inside people's dreams. See Kate Capshaw's mega-80s hair! Listen to a barely-awake Christopher Plummer as a steely government agent! Watch David Patrick Kelly creepily eat a sandwich! And throw in George "Norm!" Wendt in a bar no less! Oh, and did we mention claymation special effects?
September 29, 2015 – NASA scientists announce the discovery of water on Mars, entirely failing to acknowledge the far more significant discoveries made by a team of dedicated scientists (and Cameron Mitchell) made on their flight there in 1951. Water? Check. Grapes on walls? Check. No pants for ladies? Oh, hell yeah. David Bowie's query has finally been answered – there is life on Mars! OK, technically his query was answered decades before he recorded that song, but life on Mars there is, be-robed, pants-less life, and it's the job of these intrepid travelers to explain “What is kiss, Earthman?” Flight to Mars represents everything you could possibly want in a sci-fi movie, provided you don't ask for eye-popping CGI effects you'll remember in your dreams, or anything not featuring the guy from Supersonic Man.
It’s Bridget and Mary Jo’s first feature film! Riffing-wise, that is. A routine trip to the moon runs amok when the astronauts encounter a race of women with feline tendencies, such as teleportation and wearing leotards. They are the last survivors of an ancient civilization, and they only have a couple of boxes of breathable air left. Desperate to migrate to Earth, the Cat-Women have been telepathically controlling Helen, the ship’s navigator (and girl) to aid them. Then the crew -- ooops - sorry, no spoilers! Starring Marie “The Queen of the Bs” Windsor, and urban legend subject and Laugh-In guest Sonny Tufts, Variety magazine wrote about the film, “...the cast ably portray their respective roles." So take THAT!
Don't Let Go! But the thing is - Commander Matt Kowalski (George Clooney), helming his last mission before retirement, does let go! And much much too early as far as Bridget and Mary Jo are concerned. It sorta seems like he wanted to die. Anyway, the point is he leaves Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) on her own with nothing but the keys to a Chinese space ship. And guess what? It’s a stick shift! Kooky chaos ensues! Join Bridget and Mary Jo as they riff their very first Hollywood blockbuster!
Beautiful sisters compete for the attentions of a charismatic hypnotist but Hollywood actor Richard Carlson senses something sinister (in a bland sort of way). Ravens, crystal balls, cocktails and ….MURDER! Run, don’t walk, to your computer screen and prepare yourself for The Amazing Mr. X. Sometimes also known as The Spiritualist, this film boasts the cinematography of John Alton, who won an academy award for An American in Paris, and features Virginia Gregg, the voice of Mrs. Bates in Psycho.
Take off your bra, perm your hair, and shine your love! Bridget and Mary Jo take you back in time to riff the 1979 classic Angels' Revenge. If you like slapstick crime dramas starring girls in bikinis with feathered bangs AND cast members from "Gilligan's Island," then this is the riff for you! Don’t have crisis of confidence - invest in RiffTrax and laugh your way to 1980.
Now the truth can be told! Wait, not quite now, give it another couple of seconds. OK... now. Hangar 18 tells the story of a vast cover-up involving a crashed UFO, the Man From UNCLE, Kolchak the Night Stalker, and lots and lots of mustaches. In fact, this may be the mustachiest film outside of full-blown 70s porn. Please take our word for that, and do not type "full-blown" and "porn" into Google. Your internet searches are no longer safe. I'm talking to you in particular, Tim. We know what you do, alone, in the dark. Everyone knows: us, the government, and especially your dead Na-Na, who is weeping in Heaven right now. So make it up to her, and enjoy Hangar 18 instead of - you know - that other stuff.
via https://www.rifftrax.com/deadly-instincts A meteorite has crashed in the quad of a women’s college in the faraway land of Boston/Scotland. Its passenger, an alien monster, mates with the student body to carry on his hideous species. Only the art professor, his star student/girlfriend, and the monster’s girlfriend (who’s been trying to break up with him) can save the campus before the big homecoming dance! Also known as Breeders, Deadly Instincts is just another fine example of weird, sci-fi schlock. Plus, lots of college! Join Bridget and Mary Jo as they navigate Deadly Instincts!
The Bridget and Mary Jo Christmas special is a full length movie! Beyond Christmas. The ghosts of three elderly industrialists killed in an airplane crash return to Earth to help reunite a young couple whom they initially brought together on Christmas Eve. It’s sorta like Ghost meets It’s a Wonderful Life... oh, and some Russians. A sweet Christmas love story with jolly riffing from Bridget and Mary Jo.
Come with us now, into the future. Actually, most of us were planning on getting there anyway. Slow going, isn't it? If only we could get there faster, like incompetent dirigible pilot "Buck" Rogers, and his young buddy, "Buddy", who manage to sleep through most of the 500-year trip. Still too slow? What if someone had edited that future down from serial length to one more or less movie-sized lump? Still not convinced? What if we got two Brits to yack over it? It's your future, squander it wisely. Remember when Reader's Digest published those books that whittled novels down to manageable length by removing all that bothersome atmosphere and character? Maybe they still do that. Hell, maybe there's still such a thing as Reader's Digest. I wouldn't know, I haven't been to the dentist in a while. It's not a big deal. You don't lose all that much blood from your gums, it's cool, I just get a little light-headed toward the end of the day. Planet Outlaws is the Mirror Universe version of one of those Reader's Digest books. Yes, it's cut down from something much longer, but instead of keeping the bits that made sense of the story, they put together a movie from all the other stuff, but not before holding a ballroom dancing championship on top of the partial reels of film, just to ensure that they could never be reconstructed in a coherent order. These are the adventures of Buck Rogers, who may or may not be a planet outlaw!
Bridget and Mary Jo enjoy this 1946 “drama” (according to Wikipedia), which was the first of Monogram Pictures’ The Teen Agers series, way back before compound words were invented. Junior Prom follows the trials and tribulations of said teenagers as they navigate post war America in the microcosm of their high school.
Temptress of Pleasure or Mistress of Murder? Bridget and Mary Jo investigate as they riff Sherlock Holmes and The Woman in Green! Originally in black and white, the woman The Woman in Green was difficult to identify — but because of the wonder of colorization, Bridget and Mary Jo figure out who’s wearing green almost immediately! The rest of the mystery is elementary.
For thousands of years, mankind has wondered: were we visited by ancient astronauts? Was Stonehenge a UFO refuelling station? Were the Nazca lines of Southern Peru designed to guide their craft in to land? Are the pyramids proof of alien involvement in human development? Snowbeast answers none of these questions. I don't even know why I brought them up, quite frankly. No, Snowbeast is more of a 1970s TV-movie-of-the-week, detailing what happens when Bigfoot goes on vacation. Sadly, the big galoot didn't remember to take any snacks with him, and he's forced to make do with the guests at the nearby ski lodge. If you're one of those people who gets an almost indecent thrill from seeing lots and lots of snowmobile footage, then please get some help. But before you do that, settle in for the evening and enjoy Snowbeast. You'll be glad you did.
SHE: it’s not just a singular nominative pronoun - it’s the latest RiffTrax from Bridget and Mary Jo! Based on H. Rider Haggard’s novel, the eponymous She holds captive a group of explorers who have stumbled into the subterranean ancient civilization of Kor. One of the explorers might be her true love from a previous life. Another is a potential rival for his affections. And what about the third member of the group? Find out in this exciting adventure film starring Helen Gahagan, Randolph Scott, and Nigel Bruce, and excitingly Production Associated by Shirley Burden!
A super uptight type-A alien (Devil Girl) en route to London makes an emergency landing in the Scottish moors. While her spaceship is in the shop for repairs she reveals that all the men on Mars have been nagged to death so she has been sent to earth to collect new ones to cuddle and sometimes breed with. Who will she choose? The old scientist? The poor man's Sean Connery? The escaped convict? Pour a glass of scotch and join Bridget and Mary Jo as they riff this Sci Fi classic. P.S. The robot is awesome!
Regular High school student Freddie is mistaken for the most famous radio singer in the country who happens to be missing. Misunderstandings stack up, sardines are involved, and nobody knows who the baby belongs to! The chaos ensues until the big dance number puts everything right. This is the second installment in the (middle aged) Teenager series.
Rescue Me - from this movie, amirite? Woooot! High five! Rescue Me is a coming-of-age film about a high school loser, Frazier, who sets out to rescue his secret crush, Ginny, from a couple of thugs who have abducted her as collateral in a stamp deal gone bad. He meets up with war vet Mack, who wants his stamps back, and together they set out on a cross-country adventure from the Oklahoma region of Southern California all the way to Venice Beach. Join Bridget and Mary Jo for a journey of self-discovery, motorcycles, photographying, love, and laughter!
Someone is trying to crash the economy of Great Britain! Can the world's greatest detective solve the mystery before it’s time for tea? When an old friend of Dr. Watson named “Stinky” gets hit on the head during a robbery attempt, Sherlock Holmes suspects more than petty theft. His suspicions prove correct and lead him to a diabolical plot involving three identical music boxes, Samuel Johnson, and an evil but well-dressed adversary. Warning: Extensive talk of biscuits.
Death comes in many colours: Black, which isn't a colour, Red (which was just wearing a mask), Green which at least recycles, and of course the colour Purple which takes two and a half hours but feels like more. Listen, this Purple Death isn't just from Outer Space either; it's dusty death as well. It gets everywhere and in black and white too so you can't even tell it's being purple. Who can save us from this monochromatic interstellar menace? Why Flash Gordon, Professor Zarkov and (to a much lesser degree) Dale Arden - that's who! Thrill to mustachioed men in tights who sound more British than your riffers! Swoon as sparky space ships swing through the stars like some things on strings! Gasp at the actually comprehensibly edited story that makes this serial turned movie almost 97% not just flying back and forward from Space committee meetings!
A hurricane strands spoiled rich girl Jeri and crewmates Fred and Sammy when their yacht runs aground on a remote island. They soon discover a tribe of beautiful women held captive by Nazis, led by mad scientist Col. Osler. Osler is conducting experiments to transfer the women's beauty onto his disfigured wife - and the lovely Jeri could be next. As if things couldn’t get any worse, a volcano is about to blow and the U.S. Air Force is test bombing the island. Join Bridget and Mary Jo as they take on the worst kind of demons - She Demons!
A bio-engineered monster is crawling the sewers of Los Angeles, feeding on human spinal fluid. Hot-headed novelist and former police detective, Ted Lonergan is the only man who can stop the monster. Despite his girlfriend’s life being at stake and the animosity of his former boss, Lonergan is as useful as if he’d never been brought in on the case!
Bridget and Mary Jo leave it all on the field with yet another Teen-Agers film, High School Hero, featuring zero actual teenagers. Freddie wants his big break in show biz, Whitney High wants to win a football game, Betty wants a big story for the school paper, Miss Hinklefink wants Owen, and Bridget and Mary Jo just want to go home. There are hijinx and shenanigans aplenty, and - spoiler alert - a totally different Tiny!
Wwhat we have here, as well as the first major example of transatlantic movie mockery, is the very British Sir Christopher Lee, taking time off from leading starship invasions to play Sherlock Holmes in a very German movie concerning the theft of Cleopatra's Necklace and—well, a lot of stuff, quite frankly. People die, things explode, cars crash. You won't understand it (even though it's been dubbed into English), but you definitely won't be bored.
Medical student Larry has lost his scholarship! Or has he? Desperate to pay for his last semester, he resorts to a heinous crime. But did he? And he’s falling hard for local waitress Eileen. But is she really who she says she is? A tenacious detective is determined to catch the criminal. But does he have the wrong guy? Join Bridget and Mary Jo as they find out the answers to these and other questions in Fear!
This one goes out to all you completists! It's the fourth of eight Teen Agers films, and the gang has graduated high school - and it just so happens Miss Hinklefink has inherited a ranch out west. Come for the antics, tomfoolery, and mixups - and stay for a surprising change of heart.
Once in every generation, a film comes along that truly lives up to its title. Had the people who dubbed Seddok the Heir of Satan from Italian into English not decided to rename what resulted in Atom Age Vampire, this could have been one of those movies. But they did call it that, despite the fact that there are no vampires, and nothing particularly connected to the Atom Age, and that's something we all have to live with. What we have here is a sordid tale of a not-really-hideously-deformed nightclub dancer, a horndog scientist and his bespectacled girlfriend or maybe wife, who maybe dies or maybe doesn't (it's all in how the movie's edited). People are then subsequently murdered by something that could fit into a variety of categories, but most definitely IS NOT a vampire of the atom age. It's all connected to the deformed dancer, who, honestly, is not that badly deformed - if she just styled her hair a little differently, not even her own mother would know. But how? Only you and the editor will know for sure.
The washing's piling up, you're drinking beer, talking nonsense and forgetting what day of the week it is. It's probably Friday, because you're having fish again. Have you ever felt that awkward atmosphere after your partner failed to notice your new hairdo? An atmosphere so awkward, in fact, that it's suffocating everyone not wearing scuba gear? Well, Ev's having one of those days, which also happens to be Doomsday, because the vaguest apocalypse in movie history just struck, leaving behind only Ev, her wife, Harold, and Harold's H.P. Lovecraft lookalike lawyer Martin. It's the end of the world as we know it, and Martin feels the gaze of the infinite void This is the spellbinding drama of an eternal triangle featuring three compelling figures and also Matthew J Elliott.
“Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night, nor for the arrow that flieth by day.” So it is said-ith in the Bible. This movie has absolutely nothing to do with that quotation. Instead, here are Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, back again as Holmes and Watson, investigating a series of murders committed on a train bound for Scotland. None of the murders are done with an arrow that flieth, but they do all take place at night, so that's got to count for something. Holmes is customarily unruffled, Watson is ruffled pretty much all the time, and there are a bunch of interesting accents on display. So jump on board, for the greatest murder mystery ever to occur on a train and not involving a finicky Belgian detective.
Nora is a brilliant and beautiful scientist on the verge of an important scientific breakthrough. Unfortunately, she’s also a Female Lady Girl Woman, and the pressure mounts for her to abandon her career before her man falls for the ineffectual-but-available lab assistant. Enjoy mystery, mayhem, and mistaken identities with Bridget and Mary Jo in Strange Impersonation!
Susan Lucci is once, twice, three times a lady - mobster, that is! Multiple Daytime Emmy also-ran Lucci stars as the orphaned Laurel, who is adopted by a mobster family after her parents are murdered by hitmen. But being a high-powered attorney with a fine 80s wardrobe isn’t enough for this little lady. When the crime boss dies, Lucci steps in and organizes crime - her own way.
It’s double-ya double-ya two and Sherlock Holmes once again faces Professor Moriarty - with nothing less than the future of England at stake! Holmes must crack a secret - but cute - code to prevent Moriarty from selling an extremely accurate bomb site to the Nazis (we hate those guys). Bridget and Mary Jo join in a race against time in Sherlock Holmes And The Secret Weapon. (Hint: it ain't Watson.)
She’s a bride. He’s a gorilla. What happens when they meet and fall in love in the jungles of South America? Murder and mayhem, that’s what! Raymond Burr is a plantation foreman who kills his employer, then has at his boss’s hot wife. But the neighborhood witch just happens to witness the murder and puts a curse on him, which has him roaming the jungle doing a lot of things not on the honey-do list. (Bridget & Mary Jo)
It's the not-too-distant future of the not-too-distant future and mankind has breached the boundaries of space. Space armadas, hyper-dimensional anomalies, green-skinned ladies who demand to be told “What is kiss?” Assignment: Outer Space features none of these sci-fi staples; instead, we follow the adventures of journalist Ray Peterson - played by a guy who was Felix Leiter in that one James Bond film, and who may or may not be dubbed with his own actual voice for a change – as he makes it his business to piss off just about everybody in the cosmos. It seems like a Herculean task, but somehow, he's equal to it. But when an out-of-control rocket threatens life on planet Earth, our boy is looking at the story to end all lifetimes. Can he fearlessly report about it while other people do the actual hero work?
Scientist Carter Morton and his assistant, Oliver Frank, are working to create a medicine that will eliminate all disease among mankind. Little does Carter know that Frank is a descendent of Victor Frankenstein and has a secret project all his own. Then Carter’s niece Trudy and her boyfriend, played by cinematic vacuum John Ashley, start having suspicions about the Female Monsters in the neighborhood. Could it be curtains for Frank? Find out with Bridget and Mary Jo and Frankenstein’s Daughter!
There are enough plots and characters for everyone in this made-for-TV movie! It’s a who’s who and who’s not of ‘80s celebrities, like Michael J. Fox, Nancy McKeon, Anthony Edwards and more. Grab your bingo card and dauber, and play along with Bridget and Mary Jo in this hard-hitting look at life after middle school in these United States of America.
They come out at night, they feast on human blood, and they can only be repelled by a crucifix or the odor of garlic. They are, of course, vampires. But nobody ever made a movie about a vampire in a girls' dormitory, so there's this instead. A lycanthrope is mutilatin—okay, not really mutilating. He's kind of savaging—All right, he's not exactly savaging them. The werewolf just kind of nuzzles his schoolgirl victims (none of whom are of schoolgoing age, but not yet ready to retire to Florida, either) until they die in a nonspecific fashion because werewolf. But who could the werewolf be in his downtime? Is it the creepy teacher? The other creepy teacher? The other other creepy teacher? Or could it be the creepy janitor? Grab a round of silver bullets, then join the Brit-Riffers and find out! Something you should know: Contains a brief scene of simulated animal harm involving a dog.
Amanda is an aspiring artist Gen-Xer who works two jobs while being ignored by her parents and two-timed by her loser boyfriend. Amanda, played by Nicole Eggert’s midriff, is an aspiring artist and Gen-Xer who works two jobs while being ignored by her parents and two-timed by her loser boyfriend. Amanda’s whole world is turned upside down when she meets a hot alien and helps hide him from ruthless government agents trying to track him down. It’s Bridget and Mary Jo Go Time!
Do you lay awake night after night, tossing and turning, wondering... What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?? Sure, we all do! Bridget and Mary Jo bring you up to speed with the 1991 redux of the classic - this time with real live sisters: the Redgraves Lynn and Vanessa! This Grand Guignol of sibling rivalry is updated to feature modern inventions like VHS, stairlifts, physical therapy, and Billy Korn! (Is he a grass? We may never know.) Tune in, drop down the stairs, and find out whatever happened! (And be sure to hang around for the credits.)
It’s the bonkers-est Christmas Eve ever for the Becker-Hix clan! When last we left them, elder bride Margaret Becker had just married a much younger man, much to the dismay of her four grown children. In the second from the “...of the Bride” oeuvre, Margaret discovers she’s pregnant shortly after returning from her honeymoon. Her kids are aghast anew, including Mary, who’s just left the nunhood and is preggers herself. And yep, we all gotta go to Midnight Mass - and that’s when all holy heck breaks loose! Happy holidays from Bridget and Mary Jo and the whole Baby of the Bride team, featuring Rue McClanahan, Kristy McNichol, Ted Shackleford, and that guy who won two back-to-back Daytime Emmys!
Imagine Invasion of the Body Snatchers crossed with The Stepford Wives. Okay, now imagine it bigger, with extra nudity and making less sense. Now add honey. You're still a little way off imagining this extraordinary movie from the pen of Nicholas Meyer and the mind of a teenage boy. Thrill to the story of a conspiracy of wild women with bee enhanced DNA set on ruthlessly orgasming a small number of unattractive middle-aged men to death! Gasp at the nylon underpants! Weep as your brave riffers face more gratuitously exposed breasts than they've ever seen outside a STARZ mini series or outdoor music festival.
We've all been there: it's 1962 and you're a prom queen on your way to the big dance with your hot-head jerk of a boyfriend at the wheel when you meet your demise in a car crash! Voila, you’re an apparition whose only chance at redemption is to return to Earth and set things right. This means playing matchmaker for the high school friends you left behind, who seemed to have moved on just fine and never mention the traumatizing event. It’s Bridget, Mary Jo, and Earth Angel! Together with strange acting bedfellows Shakespearean actor Roddy McDowall; TV stars Erik Estrada and Cindy Williams; Miami Vice’s, 21 Jump Street’s, and Otis Elevator’s Rainbow Harvest; and Mark Hamill as the nerd whose heart was broken by Earth Angel lo, those many years ago.
In 1958, Hal Roach – the man behind Laurel and Hardy's greatest comedies – decided to make a horror anthology series starring Boris Karloff. That series then remained in a vault for the next thirty years, because it was exactly as good as you think it was. Now, RiffTrax Presents is somewhat proud to bring you three of those episodes, all of them with basically the same moral: that women are bad news, and you're best steering clear of them. See the guy from All Creatures Great and Small witness a premonition of his brother's murder, skilfully edited to remove the important detail that his own fiancée did it. See a creepy lounge lizard become improbably obsessed with a woman he almost runs over while driving at speed. And see Boris Karloff himself as a salty old sea dog who carries venomous snakes in his luggage while the rest of us pack sun tan oil and a John Grisham paperback. The Veil... Be warned, there's more of it.
It’s the be-spandexed and be-mulleted 1980s, and Diana Prince, AKA Wonder Woman, is living anonymously among mere mortals. Filmed entirely in ChaosVision, WW84 finds Diana gigging as a curator of antiquities, and in her spare time saving pedestrians from oncoming cars. Her new work bestie, Barbara Minerva, discovers a Dreamstone among the ancient tchotchkes, which grants the holder one wish. When it falls into the hands of Babs’s oleaginous crush Max Lord, anarchy and mayhem rain down throughout the world. Oh, and Barbara transforms into Cheetah. Join Bridget and Mary Jo and find out if WW can stop moping about Steve Trevor long enough to become the Shero the world needs!
Larry "Buster" Crabbe, Sam J Jones... These are the actors one automatically thinks of whenever "Flash Gordon" is mentioned. But the name Steve Forrest is always said in hushed tones... or maybe not at all, since you probably never heard of him. Now, it's time to join him on his adventures in the post-war TV series as his ship, the Skyflash, blasts off for the far-flung planet... Earth. The series was filmed in post-WWII West Germany, which means that most of the bit-players don't speak English, they just phonetically mime an English-speaker reading their lines off-camera. So there's that to look forward to, along with Flash, Dale and Zarkov battling aliens so crappy they make the special effects in Plan 9 look like CGI. Place your trust in Ian and Matthew to guide you through the unfamiliar territory of Flash Gordon - West German Style!* *Remarks to the effect that Hollywood icon George Segal is still alive are demonstrably false. Thoughts with his family.
When last we left the titular Bride, she’d married a younger man and had just given birth to a new baby, adding to her family of grown children. In the third of the made-for-TV dramas, the family is planning the wedding of unlucky-in-love daughter Anne, while former nun daughter Mary is falling for a biker dude. All goes haywire when their long-gone deadbeat father shows up, and tries to woo Margaret back. But all’s well that ends well - and it does end for somebody. Content warning: spontaneous “fun” dance sequence occurs.
Gregarious, whistling courier Bill has gone missing - and under suspicious circumstances. Nora, an aspiring actress and Bill’s friend, starts sleuthing. Whether it means reciting an elaborate story to exercise her Method chops, shrieking at the cops, grimacing at her accountant/novelist husband, or complaining that “Bill is missing” in every single scene, Nora will stop at nothing to find him. Hang on tight, because Lucky Day takes viewers on a thrill ride like no other in a TV movie adaptation of one of the thousands of novels by prolific novelist Mary Higgins Stuart Masterston Louise Parker Clark!
Nell McDermott’s mysterious husband has been killed under mysterious circumstances in an even more mysterious boat explosion. Now the search is on for who done it - and why. Joining forces with another widow, Nell (Sean Young, in her clenchest jawest performance ever) braves safe deposit boxes, an attempt on her life, and pressure from her grandfather to run for public office - and a nosy detective who seems to take an inordinate interest in her jogging schedule. Say "Hello" to another Mary Higgins Clark riff! Join Bridget and Mary Jo as they tackle Before I Say Goodbye!
This cautionary tale about youth and hormones finds high schoolers Tommy and Helen crossing state lines on a whim to get married by a justice of the peace. They’re grounded for life when their parents find out, but still somehow manage to find themselves involved with a gang of car thieves. Come for the gripping mortgage subplot, but stay for the Thelma and Louise denouement! With special guest appearance dialogue by Ed Wood!
A grateful world thanks Romania for its cereal and stuffed furnishing exports. And now: Teenage Space Vampires. ilmed in a housing development somewhere in Europe’s twelfth largest country, Bill is a nerdy high school student who discovers a UFO has landed in the neighborhood. Then, in the local abandoned mine, he and his friends discover their fellow students in the thralls of a vampire creature who is planning to take over the world by obliterating the sun. Bill, his friends, and a team of scientists must keep the sun shining for the good of all mankind! And interestingly enough, “Vlad” was one of the top ten baby names of 1998.
"Some might call this preposterous, but many still more extraordinary phenomena have oftimes been recorded by exemplary, trustworthy and upstanding individuals. Might such a thing be true, might I even, mayhap, be paid by the word? We may never know... this side of the gossamer veil that separates truth from utter bullcrap." - Boris Karloff, probably Those fellas from BritTrax semi-proudly present another three episodes of the 1958 anthology series that redefined television by not being shown on it for decades. First, Boris plays a beloved Italian doctor with a distinctive British accent, who's probably a ghost or something. Next, he's a horny French uncle with a distinctive British accent, whose nephew is peeping on his ex via a crystal ball. Remember, it's not stalking if it involves magic. Finally, Boris is back as a kindly American family lawyer with a surprisingly convincing American accent. Nah, just kidding, he's British again, and there's some weird stuff going on as usual. Will any of those stories provide, once and for all, definitive proof of the supernatural? The only way to be certain is to watch this riff! But, no. They won't. Sorry.
You demanded more Higginses Clarkses - and we heard you! He Sees You When You’re Sleeping is a Christmas fantasy based on the selfsame novel by mother/daughter team Mary and Carol. Self-centered and ambitious bad golfer Sterling Brooks is killed in a freak accident, ruining absolutely no one’s Christmas. On the way to the afterlife he’s accosted by Joe (B.J. and The Bear’s very own Greg Evigan), a guardian angel who gives him a chance to get to heaven. All he has to do is reunite a preteen girl with her mother, who’s run afoul of the mob after invoicing them for her singing gig at their holiday party.
The “Bride” that begat them all: Children Of The! Long divorced from her philandering husband, Margret Becker is about to remarry. Only problem is, the groom-to-be is barely older than her grown children - making them even more dysfunctional. It’s another Becker trainwreck as all four kids land on Margret’s doorstep for the nuptials with lots of baggage. The usual dramatis personae of Rue McClanahan, Kristy McNichol, and Anne Bobby are here, along with Patrick Duffy as the OG John, and the trailblazer Jack Coleman, the giant on whose shoulders all the subsequent Dennys would stand.
Brace yourself for four more thrilling adventures of Flash Gordon that will take you only as far as the budget will permit! See Flash's girlfriend Dale repeatedly strapped down! See Flash face off against an army of androids dressed as beekeepers, galactic criminals in relentlessly absurd headgear, and underground beings sporting trashbag haute couture! Can Flash prevail against technical and economic restraints, as well as some fairly impenetrable accents? He's just a man, with a man's courage... Join Matthew and Ian to find out!
Mary Higgins Clark has done it again. And we're so sorry! Frederica Dumay loves her new handsome husband. Even though he knows nothing about wine or business, she puts him in charge of her half of a Canadian winery. On the night of the new vintage launch her business partner's wife is found dead in a fountain. Freddi thinks her partner's new, hot, wine-guzzling, bikini-rocking girlfriend with a weird accent did it, so she enlists the help of an old computer geek boyfriend who suggests looking into her new husband's background instead. Everyone seems guilty except the loyal maid! Freddi is not sure who to trust or where to turn, but most importantly, whether to pair Burgundy or Sauvignon Blanc with poutine!
How do you tell a coherent story featuring Cuban mercenaries, a secret agent, a budding romance between individuals from entirely alien cultures, and a fearsome monster? Don't ask anyone who worked on this movie, because they don't know either. Legend has it that not everything filmed for Last Woman on Earth ended up on screen (let that sink in), and so Roger Corman, with his impeccable artistic eye, saw there was real potential in the excised footage that less bold filmmakers might have just thrown in the trash. So, using actors recycled from Last Woman on Earth, a plot and title recycled from Beast of the Haunted Cave, and a monster recycled from some recycling, Corman exquisitely knocked together this motion picture over he course of seven days, and still somehow had the weekend off. RiffTrax Presents is proud to RiffTrax Present this masterwork, lovingly recolored by unhappy people, and talked over by two guys with weird accents.
Dr. Bill Cortner has been busy defying the medical community's cautions by unsuccessfully trying to transplant stolen limbs onto his lab assistant. On a weekend getaway he drives too fast, rolls his convertible and decapitates his girlfriend Jan. As luck would have it he is able to wrap her head in his sportcoat, jog back to the lab and keep it alive in a shallow sauce pan. Now all he has to do is troll nightclubs and find her a new body! Most girls would be grateful - but not Jan! She does nothing but complain, nag and make everything about her! She thinks Dr. Bill is “unethical” and eventually convinces the closet mutant to turn against him and help her by saying, “I'm only a head, and you're whatever you are. Together we're strong. More powerful than any of them!" It’s enough to make you question Science!
Janet Varney and Cole Stratton riff this mess of an ‘80s fantasy film directed by Richard “Goonies” Donner and starring Matthew Broderick (Ferris Bueller-ing his way through medieval times with a Yonkers accent) as a young thief who aids cursed lovers Michelle Pfeiffer (just a few years away from sitting on chairs backwards in Dangerous Minds) and Rutger Hauer (acting the minimum required from a replicant).
Spoiler alert! In this mysterious thriller, a woman comes back! Specifically to Eben Rock, the site of long-ago witch burnings instigated by a preacher who got a little carried away. When a neighbor girl loses a doll, Woman starts to believe she, too, is a witch - yet a rekindled romance makes for a pleasant distraction.
Based on the Mary Higgins Clark novel of the same name and bearing .000001% resemblance, a woman is asked to identify a dead body and discovers it’s her exact double. From there it’s a half-thrill-an-hour, stopped-roller-coaster of a ride that makes absolutely no sense as she unravels her father’s mysterious death - and tries to avoid her own. In other words, standard Mary Higgins Clark.
All good things must come to an end, and so must the post-war, German-based adventures of Flash Gordon. So strap yourselves in, and know that Dale is already way ahead of you. See Flash and his pals turn entirely negative under the orders of yet another evil witch queen (this show has a selection). See one of the cast of I Was a Teenage Werewolf not being eaten by a werewolf this time! See Flash turn back time in order to save Dale from another evil witch queen! Join Ian, Matthew, and, who knows, maybe another evil witch queen as they guide you through the last ever space adventures of Flash Gordon!* *The early '50s TV version, we mean. It'll be a crime against riffing if Mike, Kevin and Bill don't eventually do the Sam J. Jones movie.
The Scarlet Claw takes Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson to the exotic locales of Canada (none of which we ever see) where they’re attending the Royal Canadian Occult Society Conference in Quebec City. Before they've even had a chance to attend any breakout sessions or pass out their swag, they’re tasked with investigating a murder. The nearby village of La Mort Rouge is beset with mysterious killings, which locals believe is the work of a monster who lurks in the surrounding marshes. But Holmes suspects the killer walks among them. (Bill Cartledge fans, you’ll want to keep your eyes peeled for his uncredited-yet-brilliant portrayal of Hotel Bellhop.)
Scientist Dr. Howard Denker gets the big idea to bombard an artificial radioactive isotope with alpha particles. We’ve all been there. But this causes the element, called serranium, to create matter out of energy and thus grow exponentially. Enter Dr. Jeffrey Stewart (Hollywood Actor and Minnesotan Richard Carlson), who realizes the isotope could become so enormous it could throw Earth out of its orbit which might cause some issues. With his sidekick Dan - played King Donovan, known for Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Mr. Imogene Coca - and the reluctant assistance of Canada, Earth is saved. (Spoiler alert: There was no monster.)
The Louisiana swamp lands: a rural community living on strong liquor and baked beans with pork in predominantly wooden housing. A community living in fear of one deadly spark... Oh, and the local werewolf, yeah, some of them are scared of that. But it's not all wood, ham, chewing the furniture and not following through emotionally; there are other types of acting on display, too. There's the magnificent "stoical sheriff who can't quite believe he's ended up in a horror-themed TV Movie" work of David Janssen. Then we have the exemplary "disreputable local doctor with a secret even bigger than his combover" characterization from John Beradino. And who can forget the incredible "being really annoying" performance of Barbara Rush in a role that surely only looked "faintly annoying" on paper? We can't, and, to be honest, it's making forgiveness harder. However, all of this pales into insignificance when set against some of the finest "incomprehensible Deep South accent" mumbling you'll ev
Winnie Cooper is all growed up and now a suburban mom who just can’t help herself when it comes to solving local crimes. The Wonder Years’ Danica McKellar is Maddie Monroe, a former newspaper reporter now raising her children in a deceptively bucolic neighborhood - but philandering, Mary Kay parties, and murder abound. And her very own husband could be a "person of interest.” Peanut Allergy Warning: this movie was prepared in a factory with various nut products.
A wealthy businessman discovers he has a brain tumor and seeks medical help. What should he do next? 1. Contact the Mayo Clinic? 2. Connect with family and friends? 3. Seek out a scientist who along with a lovelorn assistant is experimenting with transplanting monkey heads, then, fly to France to dig up the body of noted astrologer Nostradumas, cut off his head, put it in a carry-on bag and fly to London in hopes of having a full head graft? If you answered "Three!" and are wondering if insurance covers that sort of thing, this is the movie for you! Directed by Billy Wilder's brother and starring the head of Nostradamus, The Man Without A Body makes The Brain That Wouldn't Die seem like… um, well, a better movie.
A classic Romeo & Juliet situation that brings blandness to a whole new level! The Careless Years is the story of two high schoolers from opposite sides of “the track” who wash dishes together. Minutes later, they’re planning to elope, so they can have socially acceptable marital relations. Arthur Hiller’s directorial debut features Dean Stockwell, Barbara Billingsley, and little separate beds for the married parents.
Once upon a time, horror legend Boris Karloff hosted a supernatural anthology show that rightfully earned its place as a television classic. That show was called Thriller, and it ran from 1960 to 1962. You should check it out. Anyway, here are the final four episodes of The Veil, and the magic word is “problematic.” Gasp in astonishment at George Hamilton in brownface as a Hindu named Krishna! Grit your teeth in discomfort, as a series of real-life murders are recreated with little to no regard for historical accuracy! And for those of you who thrive on familiarity, there's the plot that makes up 90% of The Veil's episodes, with two different guys having two different (but at the same time, quite similar) visions of the future, or possibly the past. Maybe both, but definitely not the present. So brace yourselves for excitement – and for George Hamilton in brownface – as Ian and the other one pierce the veil one more time!
Lisa Monroe is a lady woman female cop who returns to the small town of her youth to take a job as a police detective. Just like Jessica Fletcher, people immediately start getting knocked off upon her arrival. All evidence points to the slimy, recently paroled townie who killed her best friend years ago and vowed revenge on those who testified against him. Featuring Scent of A Woman's Gabrielle Anwar, exciting shopping mall locales, and an old-school detective who pooh-poohs Lisa’s investigative abilities - and a shocking twist ending!
It’s the mid-aughts and ballroom dancing is all the rage. How will Maddie Monroe squeeze in lessons between her weekly newspaper column, her pilot hubby, and all the inspecting and momming? In this episode of the short-lived Inspector Mom series, it’s somewhat concerning that the neighborhood gals are getting kidnapped and held for ransom one by one. But when her bestie Sandra disappears, Katy, bar the door — our intrepid minivan driver and peanut butter monster is coming for ya.
Susan Lucci is the conniving and calculating Isabelle Collins, who cycles through husbands like tubes of lipstick. First, she manipulates her lover into offing her rich and handsome hubby (the rich and handsome John O’Hurley). Then, in her grief, she marries said lover, who is subsequently nailed for the murder. What’s a serial wife to do? Why, she beguiles the new husband’s lawyer into framing him for the crime. Then it’s off to a foreign country with her pre-teen daughter to heal from the Major Life Events!
Barbara Stanwyk is Kathy Ferguson, an ambitious, shoulder-padded dame of an advice columnist. Until a coupla dicks from the El Lay P.D. stop by the newspaper on a tip about a local murderess. Despite vowing never to marry, she falls in love with flatfoot Bill Doyle and moves to Angel Town, baby - but soon learns she ain’t cut out for the homemaker lifestyle. To keep busy between coffee klatches, she becomes obsessed with Bill’s career - even if it means bloodshed and hanky-panky for a coveted promotion.
Alias St. Nick is a vintage Christmas cartoon. It’s from the golden age of animation, when all toys were required to come alive and just kind of bounce up and down, and all character voices sounded like a helium balloon that’s very sick. This one belongs to the “Happy Harmonies” series, the forgotten loser in the war with Merry Melodies and Silly Symphonies. Alias St. Nick is basically Itchy and Scratchy meets Home Alone. A hungry cat finds a tree full of little mouse children and decides to eat them. So he stuffs a balloon down his pants and pretends he’s Santa to make his way inside for mousey murder. But the adorable mice see through his upsetting costume and put him through the ringer with a series of whimsical, deadly traps. It’s not the holidays without a little mouse and cat cartoon violence, throw on your creepiest Santa suit and join Mike, Kevin and Bill for Alias St. Nick!
This was a proof-of-concept created to test Rifftax's video-on-demand system. The complete short was never recorded.
(1963) Just in time for the holidays, RiffTrax presents our take on A Visit to Santa, a Christmas short of unknown origin that most probably was the result of Santa's short-lived collaboration with the producing team of Screwtape and Wormwood. Rather than being a right jolly old elf, Santa here is depicted as the Dark Prince of a vast slave empire made up entirely of children under 10 - it's Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom with less dignified clothing. Or put another way it's Manos: The Hands of Fate without the elephantiasis.
(1949) Young Jim is caught in a shocking act of pencil-based vandalism, leading him to look deeply into the core of his soul and come to the inexorable conclusion that he is kind of a weenie. A classic of the late '40's, "authority figure shames a student" genre, Act Your Age is a window into the soul... of Jim. And it makes a great RiffTrax!
(1959) Meet Phil. Like all children from the fifties, he enjoys playing ball, building soapbox racers, and taunting his non blond-haired, blue-eyed classmates. Things are going great for Phil until a puppet shows up in his class. The Puppet, Ichabod Dorian Bungle III, or "Mister" to his friends, delivers a powerful lesson about lunch room safety, that no matter how much Phil tries, he is unable to forget. Soon our hero is haunted by the omnipresent demons of Mister Bungle, and begins a descent into madness that has him endlessly washing his hands, and nerdily saving his dessert for last. Mike, Kevin and Bill team up to riff "Beginning Responsibility: Lunchroom Manners" and hopefully stop the classroom menace that is Mister Bungle, once and for all!
(1951) Heroin, it turns out, is bad. The Terrible Truth lays waste to the all-too-common myth that regular heroin use is a healthy part of a balanced diet. Professional scowler Judge William B. McKesson guides us through a case study of Phyllis Howard (no relation to Curly) who tries marijuana and quickly begins vacuuming up Charlie Parker-levels of Mexican black tar heroin. Kevin, Mike and Bill ride this pony for all it's worth
At long last, the question of the ages is met head on. No facet of the issue is left unexplored. The philosophical, eschatological, teleological, epistemological, and cosmological aspects are all given a thorough exegetical going over. Just one viewing of this ground breaking short will see you fully prepared to engage the weighty issues and answer confidently and with authority when someone asks, Why Doesn't Cathy Eat Breakfast? To further expand your mind, RiffTrax is proud to offer you the weirdest thing ever - weirder than a million Crispin Glovers starring in a million remakes of The Wicker Man - a short subject called Petaluma Chicken. If you have any interest in omelet making history, you owe it to yourself to see this. Mike, Kevin, and Bill will be your guides through this hugely important double feature
(1969) The youth of today, no longer content to roll a hoop with a stick, play endless hours of mumbly peg, or work a lathe at a factory 14 hours a day for just pennies, need something to occupy them. Crime sprees are not the whole answer. No, they need a place where they can rap, just let it all hang out, encounter one another, preferably over terrible boiled coffee. The short Coffeehouse Rendezvous makes a strong case that what these kids need is a coffeehouse rendezvous. Mike, Kevin and Bill remain unconvinced.
(1974) Your home is crawling with hazards! You are not safe! EVERYTHING WILL KILL YOU! In fact, never mind, because you're already dead; killed by your stupid house. That, at least, is the heartwarming message of the short Safety: Harm Hides at Home. "But RiffTrax," you say, "many shorts have already exposed the obvious truth that my home is a deadly, sinister trap, ready to spring at any moment. What's so great about this one?" Aha! Do other shorts feature the groovy safety dominatrix Guardiana? Well, one other one does, but then so does this one! So buy it and laugh* along with Mike, Kevin and Bill. *A thin, strangled laugh designed to cover up your growing panic as you realize your house is trying to murder you.
(1947) It's time to face the question head on, to stop pretending that the crowds of people following you, jeering, throwing rocks and half-eaten burritos are there because of your charm and animal charisma. You've suspected it for some time, from the moment you were rejected by CompuServe because you just weren't cool enough. The short Are You Popular? will help you solve the question once and finally: the question, "Are you popular?" There are no easy answers, friends (that is, the answer is "no", of course, which is not always easy to hear) but Mike, Kevin and Bill are more than happy to be your guides.
(1976) Cruel self-assessment is given a new twist as vulnerable grade-schoolers are forced to look into the deep blackness of their own souls only to reach the inevitable conclusion that they are unloved and they will spin out their meaningless years on this drifting rock before dying alone and afraid. And there's clowns! The affable John is our tour guide through this carnival mirror nightmare, and at the end, as we babble on cold and terrified like Nietsche's madman ("Do we not stray, as through infinite nothingness? Does not empty space breathe upon us? Has it not become colder? Does not night come on continually, darker and darker?") we're just glad that Mike, Kevin and Bill were there to mop up the despair!
(1963) Do you find that you're sleeping a little too well as of late? That your dreams are of the innocuous stripe, i.e., old friends turning into llamas and eating your baseball hat, rather than full out, scream-yourself-awake nightmares followed by 15 minutes of sweating and shallow breathing interrupted by occasional anxiety-induced "whale flips" that rip the covers off your significant other? Well, then we've got a short for you! One Got Fat is the real deal - a concentrated dose of lab-purified nightmare fuel. To give away too much would be to blunt the surprise of your upcoming trauma... but here's a hint: A teeming sea of pre-adolescent ur-monkeys are murdered one by one, all to the whimsical narration of the lubricious Edward Everett Horton! Yay! Mike, Bill and Kevin are there with you, shivering in terror in the dark.
(1979) There are so many things to which drugs can be compared that to even attempt to catalog them would be an act of incomprehensible madness. Yet in this pastel colored, 1970's nightmare, two hard-of-hearing, loggorrheic pre-teens are up to the task! Have you always wondered, Are drugs like pumpkins? Like small willow saplings? Like those bags of cotton candy you can buy in gift shops? Find out as Mike, Kevin and Bill go once more unto the breach!
If you like your safety shorts served with a heavy dose of groovy, then this is for you! Down and Out lays out a litany of dangers inherent in your every move from one location to the other, no matter how small. Bone-shattering death awaits around every corner. Every surface, every object, every molecule conspires with all others on earth to kill you dead! See your own tragic fate played out again and again, all backed up by a smooth drum-based soundtrack. You WILL die in an accident, but Down and Out will make the few moments until you do all the more pleasant. Mike, Kevin and Bill share the pain.
When you hear the word "patriotism" what's the first name that pops into your head? Wrong! The answer is Bob Crane. And not "Hogan's Heroes" Bob Crane, but rather creepy, post-"Hogan's Heroes" Bob Crane, home video, um, "pioneer". There is no one - NO ONE - better equipped to imbue America's youth with a sense of pride in their magnificent country - you know, once you get past the overwhelming, suffocating creepiness. Fear not, feelings of discomfort soon turn to laughter thanks to true patriots Mike, Kevin and Bill.
Snoopy, Lassie, Cerberus, Rin-Tin-Tin: lovable canine companions are a dime a dozen. Which makes Skipper: The Racist Dog such a breath of fresh air! Tired of "PC" dogs who "like" children and "accept" other mutts without passing judgment? Well then, Skipper is the dog for you! He humps the leg of intolerance and takes a good long sniff at bigotry's...er, tail! Will Skipper's titular lesson be learned in time to redeem him in the eyes of his fellow dogs? Or will he be condemned to sit alone on his porch, muttering about the way things used to be? Find out, in Mike, Kevin and Bill's hilarious riff of Skipper Learns a Lesson.
Buying food - how hard can it be? You go to a store pick out a few items, and start mashing them into the side of your head, right? WRONG! That's a common misconception, but as Buying Food clearly demonstrates, buying food is a very, very dangerous and complicated affair, fraught with hazard, the path to success Byzantine and arduous. To even attempt it without instruction is to court heartbreak and, most likely, violent death. Lucky for all of us there is Buying Food. Kevin, Mike, and Bill take it very seriously.
Right or Wrong tells the gritty story of Harry, a boy who doesn't vandalize a warehouse and suffers the consequences for it. Harry, who resembles a younger, less handsome French Stewart, undertakes a philosophical journey, where every character he meets routinely pauses mid-conversation in order to deliver a 30 second internal monologue about Right and Wrong. (This was normal in his community, they eventually traced the problem back to the nearby Play-Doh factory offloading into their water supply.) Parents be warned: This being an educational film about vandalism, some minor breaking of windows may occur. Mike, Kevin and Bill riffing this short: Right or Wrong? (Answer: Wrong, but fun, therefore Right)
Women - what the hell, man? I mean, what's your problem? Thankfully, for all of us non-women, some very smart people have put their best be-crew-cutted minds into coming up with a solution to the trouble with women (to avoid a conflict of interests, no women contributed, thank goodness). The Trouble with Women doesn't give us the definitive answer, but it does give us some very useful tools for dealing with... them. Mike, Kevin, and Bill (themselves NOT women) are your guides through this indispensable short.
Bill Duncan had it all until the day when he discovered that his garbage cans had been deemed unfit for use by the city sanitation committee. The deep shame of this incident drove him into a spiral of despair and nearly claimed his life until he realized the great truth of suburban America: His problems were the fault of his neighbor. The rats in the lumber pile, the pestilence breeding in standing water pools in the backyard, his sure thing horse breaking its leg coming out of the gate, resulting in the pawning of his sons bicycle: They weren't his fault! It must be the neighbors! Take a journey of neighborly blame with three of the finger-pointingist, buck-passingist neighbors you know—Mike, Kevin and Bill!
“Each Child Is Different” goes the saying, and no truer words have ever been spoken. Take Miss Smith's fifth grade class for instance. While Elizabeth is withdrawn and silent because of parental neglect, Ruth is withdrawn and silent because her mother died soon after the birth of her brother. Yes, just like Wes Anderson's latest, each character has a delightful quirk! Go in depth with five unique misfits, in a wonderful comedic stew of bullying, dyslexia, fire starting and bean-feeding. Our own three unique misfits are on hand for riffing.
Years in the spotlight had left Kitty with fame, riches, and a drug habit to rival all but the Busey-ist of addicts. Hooked on catnip, Kitty quickly found herself alone on the street, fishing quarters out of the gutter in hopes of landing her daily fix of The 'Nip. It seemed as if she had hit rock bottom when she shot a delivery man in cold blood, only to find out that he was unloading crates of oregano, not catnip. Kitty knew she needed to get Cleaned Up, and she enrolled into the finest 12 step program in the country, hoping to patch her life back together. Kitty Cleans Up...is not that story. It's about some creepy kid with the voice of a forty year old who decides that good hygiene practices are best learned by imitating a cat. Mike, Kevin and Bill have of course known this for years, and help get the message out in one of the oddest RiffTrax shorts to date
Why Vandalism? It's the one question that kept parents in the fifties up at night. Why would my boy turn to vandalism for thrills when they could be listening to Burl Ives 45s or campaigning for Adlai Stevenson? While they were pondering this, their boys were out vandalizing things. This short follows three boys—Jeff, Ron & Burger—who spend all their time hanging out together, complaining that none of them have any friends. Their positive attitude, combined with Burger's poverty, Ron's overbearing parents, and Jeff's bone-crushing stupidity, ensure that their descent into a vortex of vandalism will be a rapid one. If you've ever asked yourself "Why Vandalism?" or even just "Why?", you owe it to yourself to watch this short and get the answers you deserve! Mike, Kevin & Bill are on hand to riff this classic short from the wrong side of the tracks
If you were told you were about to see a film that contained turtles bigger than men, cliff-diving Mexicans and a family that eats Thanksgiving dinner underwater, you'd probably complain "But I don't like David Lynch!" Wrong you would be! You'd actually be all set to watch the 100 percent Lynch-free Aqua Frolics, a short from the 1950's whose message is clear: here is a partial list of things you can do that involve a proximity to and/or immersion in water. No doubt a response to the Land Council's propaganda film "Dryness: Stay On Land to Achieve It", Aqua Frolics will have you itching to strap on a life preserver and tuck into a drumstick in your neighbors swimming pool. Known frolickers Mike, Kevin and Bill are on hand for their dampest riffing session yet.
Washing your hands after using the restroom - most of us only do so because a fellow co-worker is in the bathroom with us, and we wonder if he'll tell other people if we don't. But evidently, we should be doing this even when a co-worker isn't there.
For many of us, Good Eating Habits boil down to a simple rule: avoid any food whose name ends in "-ator" or "-o-rama". But fifty years ago, in an era food historians refer to as "Pre GoGurt", what constituted a Good Eating Habit wasn't as widely known. Was cleaning your plate always necessary? When was the proper time for snacks? And did Johnny Miller really see the lunch lady’s glass eye fall into the casserole when he went to the bathroom during Social Studies? These questions and more are answered in classic "Do the Opposite of This Guy" mode by Bill, a young child whose eating habits were the inspiration for the Tasmanian Devil cartoon character. Mike, Kevin and Bill are on-hand to riff the appetizing, food-like loaf of a short that is Good Eating Habits!
You think you don't have syphilis, but how do really know? Has anyone you trust told you you don't have it? Have you been in contact with anyone from a big city in, say, the last year? Then you almost certainly have it! Talk to your doctor immediately, or at the very least, a silver-haired white guy with an authoritative voice. He will put your shame under a microscope and make you look at it and if that doesn't change your ways, than I don't know what! Or you can just watch RiffTrax latest hilarious short subject Know For Sure.
Can't anyone tell me what Christmas is all about!? an exasperated Charlie Brown once asked. Well, pace Linus van Pelt, the true meaning of Christmas—according to Christmas Toyshop—is a criminally incompetent father, a drug-dispensing demon of the night, and a bored and detached Santa who spins magic mushroom induced fables to two captive children. Other beloved Christmas themes include war, a killing spree, and an attempted murder suicide by an arachnid—in easy-to-view cartoon form!
Shyness—for years it has prevented boys from becoming men and girls from landing men. How can shyness be conquered? By imitating those who are better than you: the popular children. This is the advice that the New Kid in School receives from his father: alter who you are to make people who don't know you like you more. It must be good advice; after all, the man is wearing a suit. Watch TV’s Dick York—the first Darrin from Bewitched—try to overcome his shyness by putting on a sweater in Shy Guy, riffed by Mike, Kevin and Bill. (Dick Sargents need not apply.)
Do you find yourself in a constant state of niggling self criticism, e.g., "I bet everyone is laughing at me just because I have a waffle stuck to my back", or "I know it's the right thing to do, but will people look down on me because I jar, meticulously label and store my urine in the root cellar?" If so, may I call you "Self-Conscious Guy" or would that make you feel self-conscious, you ugly, over-sensitive little self-conscious guy?! (Don't cry, it's part of your therapy.) Learn to deal with your freakishly abhorrent personality disorder by watching, along with your life coaches Mike, Kevin and Bill, Self-Conscious Guy.
Fear: Most of us rejected it in the mid-90s by wearing trendy t-shirts emblazoned with slogans such as "Second Place is the First Loser." This national "No Fear" campaign almost single-handedly eradicated Fear from our streets. Unfortunately, one day America woke up and realized just how gut-wrenchingly lame those t-shirts were. The shame quickly gave way to a much more powerful emotion: Fear. Yes, Fear has returned to our society, which makes the message of the 1950 educational short Overcoming Fear all the more important. It teaches us that your Fears are irrational, and are best confronted head-on. It features the greatest locker room confrontation scene since a be-toweled Iceman called out Maverick, nerds standing up for what they believe in, and a dog so terrifying, it makes Cujo look like the Beverly Hills Chihuahua. What better way for Mike, Kevin and Bill to Overcome their Fear of Overcoming Fear than by riffing the short Overcoming Fear!
"You would like to play with Donny and Duncan." So the narrator for Playing Together confidently tells us, and we have no reason to doubt him. But as the minutes pass it becomes clear that he may have been overselling Donny and Duncan just a bit. Donny, as it turns out, has trouble navigating life, from the smallest things (he's confused and frightened by the rules posted at a public pool) to larger problems, including the question of evil (his favorable reaction to aquatic clowns makes it clear that his moral compass is broken and he may even be a dangerous psychopath.) Duncan tries, he really does, to curb Donny's dangerous habit of clinging to every stick he finds like a lab monkey clings to his wire mother, but Donny is too far gone, and Duncan's helplessness and rage is beginning to show. But what makes it all work is the constant, tuneless piano noodling. Because of it, the narrator wins in the end: Kevin, Mike and Bill would like to play with Donny and Duncan.
It's a question we ponder every time we tip the pizza guy: How much affection? Is it necessary to set the box down before embracing him? How long do you hold him, knowing that he has other deliveries to make? Can lower tips be compensated for with more affection? How Much Affection? sadly touches on none of these issues; its Pizza Guy advice comes from the "30 Minutes or Free" era and is therefore quite out of date. What you will find in this short are dates that end in tears, sandwich making and a stern reminder of the potential Gerber-eating consequences of Too Much Affection. Riffers Mike, Kevin and Bill differ wildly in their estimates of How Much Affection, but mostly because Bill insists on measuring affection using the metric system.
What happens when a public television studio realizes that it has to spend $2,000 of government grant money before Wednesday in order to qualify for full funding for the next fiscal year? You get Your Chance to Live: Technological Failures! Obviously thrown together in a matter of hours, Your Chance to Live rails against modern man's dependence on technology with the vibrant coherency of a raving street corner derelict. This may have something to do with the fact that the producers hired an actual street corner derelict to do the raving, or as they refer to it, the "narration." Among the pearls of wisdom he imparts along the way? "Without electricity, there could be no electrical fires." The point is emphasized by showing stock footage of "Pioneers" baling hay. Surely, the producers of this film were on a higher plane of consciousness, or maybe just really wanted to get off work in time to catch the tail end of happy hour. The whole thing makes for an experience that is as surreal as it is hilarious. Mike, Kevin and Bill seize Their Chance to Riff!
Pop quiz hotshot: Your father tells you that your grandmother has fallen and badly hurt herself. What do you do? Like most of us here at RiffTrax, you probably answered "Call an attorney to jump start the inheritance process." Well, this self-centered attitude is what separates regular guys like us from Understanding Your Ideals star Jeffrey Moore. When Jeffrey hears this tragic news, his first thoughts are not of himself, but instead of others. Specifically, of the girl that he was supposed to take to the dance that night. He had hoped to pick her up in the family car, which is instead speeding towards Grandma's prone, frail person. How disappointed this young girl will be when she learns she has to take the bus! OK, it actually turns out that Jeffrey is just as bad, if not worse, than most of us. Why? He is lacking "ideals", which if we understood the short correctly, are like headlights on your car, in that if you accidentally leave them on while you're at work, you have to get a jump from the last guy to leave the building, usually the creepy guy from IT who breathes really loudly in the elevator. After watching this short, Mike, Kevin and Bill are no closer to Understanding Their Ideals. They do, however, Understand Your Ideals, and frankly, are very disappointed with how you've turned out.
Ah, beer. Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course, chief nourisher in life's feast! (We think that's what the Swan of Avon was referring to...) Beer provides everything the human body needs—if anything, what little it lacks can be made up with regular doses of loaded potato skins, an occasional pickled egg, or several handfuls of pub mix (if you can get it before the loud guy with Pat Riley hair picks out all the peanuts.) Yes, beer is perfect and holy, but lately it has been maligned by dark forces. Envious, beady-eyed, sober little creatures who resent that the rest of us have a way to actually have fun playing softball, or going bowling. That we have a beverage that makes encounters with our family almost bearable, enhances our powers of seduction and gives us the courage to jump over a too-high park bench when goaded on by our fun-loving friend. (The fact that we didn't make it and shattered four of our teeth in the process is immaterial to the argument.) Thank goodness As We Like It puts these horrible little busybodies in their place using sound reasoning, gentle persuasion and a few tall frosty ones. Mike, Kevin and Bill belly up and tap into As We Like It.
It's the most important decision you'll ever make: should I eat the rest of this BK Stacker, or just trust my vague feeling of nausea and quit while I'm ahead? But put that aside now and let's talk about the third most important decision you'll ever make*: should I go steady? The answer, of course, is no. But the short Going Steady doesn't settle for such easy answers. Instead it probes the question through the tortured angst of Marie, an insecure girl with "offbeat" good looks who can't shake her Jeff habit. Jeff, for his part, is a flannel-clad Lothario, prowling the high school hallways and leaving nothing but the shattered husks of broken-hearted bobby-soxers as his terrible toll. Otherwise, very polite young man. In the powerful third act, Marie confronts Jeff, and the reaction is as explosive as anything Judson T. Landis has ever done! Mike, Kevin and Bill learned everything they know about life, about love...and about laughter....from Going Steady. *The 2nd is "should I take advantage of the zero percent financing on the hedge trimmer I want to buy?"
Carnivorous Plants! Like Wii Boxing, they're one of those things that instantly becomes 1000X less cool the moment you bring it home and try it out. Rather than quickly earning their keep and chomping down on your neighbors annoying labradoodle, your carnivorous plant instead sits on your window sill, vowing that he'll get to work tomorrow. You show off their opening and closing ability to disinterested friends who suddenly realize that Wii Boxing wasn't that bad after all, while your housefly population triples in size and begins to plot a coup. Soon after, the plant dies when you go to visit your grandmother in Sarasota. Yes, Carnivorous Plants are a big let down. Which is why it's a good thing that the short Carnivorous Plants deals mainly with stock footage of transportation and discussions about mousetraps. We believe the plants do not make an appearance until the short has actually ended. The whole thing is tied together by a narrator who babbles his way towards an irrefutable conclusion: Carnivorous Plants are way cooler in the movies. Mike, Kevin and Bill declare this their finest Carnivorous Plant-related riffing not containing a character named Seymour Krelborn.
You and Your Family. Much like gunpowder and an open flame, combining the two is not recommended (especially if mom's been drinking.) But every now and then a scenario arises where you must remove your iPod’s ear buds, emit a contemptuous, full-bodied sigh and actually interact with your family.* You and Your Family is the must-have guide to how to handle these situations with a minimum involvement of municipal services. Each scenario in You and Your Family plays out in several different ways, and you the viewer are left to decide which would be the most effective course of action. It's like a "Choose Your Own Adventure" book, except that instead of reading about The Lost Jewels of Nabooti**, you decide whether to help mom with the dishes. Imagine Rashomon with slightly more Room-Storming-Off-To, and you've got You and Your Family. Riffers Mike, Kevin and Bill each assume the "You" in You and Your Family is referring to one of the other two guys. *These situations include holidays, birthdays and everybody pretending that you're taking grandpa to the Baseball Hall of Fame when you're really dropping him off at a home.
The follow-up to the smash hit "Primary Safety: In the Three Mile Island Cooling Tower", Primary Safety: In The School Building starts with a catchy name and builds from there. Personal injury lurks everywhere in our nation’s schools, and while any hipster with an ironic "Runs With Scissors" t-shirt can identify the most famous way to hurt yourself, fewer can pinpoint the dozens and dozens of more obscure ways that you can lose an eye in music class alone. Primary Safety: In The School Building has an answer. A cumbersome, ineffective answer. It involves giant "stop" and "go" signs, a dimwitted child, and lots of trial and error. It is the same system that now powers our nations DMVs. Head dimwit Bill mans the signs, a responsibility he earned by amassing the most experience, having repeated kindergarten for a third time. After a morning with Bill, you may be no closer to surviving a school day in one piece, but you'll probably have eaten enough paste that you just won't care. Mike, Kevin and Bill kept their fingers crossed throughout this entire short hoping for a Mr. Bungle cameo.
Surprisingly, not a biography of Björk, Damaged Goods is a cautionary tale about a couple of young men who go on a harmless adventure in search of beer and girls and end up finding exactly that! Unfortunately they are lured off that wholesome path by the seductive siren song of something called a "Coolie Cup". Inspired, apparently, by the jockstrap of an Asian worker, this evil rum drink causes our hero, Hercules-like (Kevin Sorbo Hercules, just to be clear), to be led astray. The result, a stern lecture by a silver-haired doctor—oh, and some horrible communicable disease affecting the genitals. We weren't really paying attention, as someone had just whipped up a pitcher of Coolie Cups. Mike, Bill, and Kevin: damaged goods and your guides through Damaged Goods.
Mario Batali. Emeril Lagasse. Thomas Keller. What do they all have in common? Besides having seen Julia Child naked? That's right, they are all masters of Cooking Terms! Cooking Terms are the first step toward becoming a master chef. Because how can one properly prepare Duck Foie Gras with a Confiture of Meiwa Kumquats and a Balsamic Glaze if you don't know what "boiling" means. Cooking Terms And What They Mean follows a newlywed named Margie through her first day of housewifery. Margie evidently spent her childhood in a vegetative coma, because she somehow made it to her wedding day without knowing what "bake" means. We observe Margie as she learns the terms she will need to prepare the Culinary Institute of America's four basic dishes: Meat, Cake, Jelly and Scalloped Cauliflower. Will she successfully cook her husband a delicious meal? Or will her spiral of failure expand so rapidly that it consumes our entire known universe? Mike, Kevin and Bill now understand the difference between braising and blanching, and as a result their Hungry Man frozen dinners have never tasted better.
It can happen to any of us: we fall in with some free-spirited youths, get a few lime phosphates in our system, and before you know it we're rolling up our blue dungarees to impertinent heights, styling our hair into an ill-mannered pompadour and beating up our own fathers and rolling 'em for spare change. Such rash acts can lead almost directly to juvenile delinquency. What About Juvenile Delinquency is not afraid to ask the tough questions, none of which, surprisingly, is, "What about juvenile delinquency?" Rather it takes on the abstruse but no less important questions such as, "How close can we can get to an acne-scarred teen's face before it's too close?" Mike, Kevin and Bill answer the question What About Juvenile Delinquency with a hearty, "Sounds good!"
The 50's are back with a simple message for you—Snap Out of It! "But," you protest, "I only—" Hey, the 50's are gonna stop you right there. Don't say another word. Doesn't matter what mealy-mouthed, limp- wristed, it's-somebody-else's-fault bull crap excuse you were about to offer, the 50's are gonna say the same thing: Snap the hell out of it! And in Snap Out Of It, when laconic high schooler Howard starts in with some garbage about how he should have got a better grade on blah-blah whatever whatever, the answer was the same. Hey, H-man! Snap out of it! And Howard knew to slick back that hair, hitch up the dungarees and get down to the business of snapping out of it. Mike, Bill and Kevin snap out of their own funk, and into a Slim Jim, to take on Snap Out Of It.
Featuring the beautiful but volatile Sally, a girl who loves Hank with all her heart one moment, and the next wants to cut him into thin slabs with her fencing épée and feed him to her dog. Along the path to maturation, Sally must learn to control her emotions, and, in one terrifying scene, put down a violent riot of her fellow students, the likes of which makes a Pistons/Pacers game seem like a Friends' Meeting. Mike, Bill and Kevin move toward—toward, mind you, not near, or close to, or anywhere within several hundred miles of—but Toward Emotional Maturity.
When a short entitled Alcohol Trigger Films turned up at RiffTrax HQ, we jumped at the chance to riff it. After all, everyone who works here is a big fan of the subject matter: trigger films. Alcohol we can give or take. But a chance to watch even one Trigger Film, let alone a collection of three Trigger Films, back to back to back…We were so excited we pulled the bottle of Wild Turkey out of our desk drawer for a little early-afternoon celebration (we lied, we're actually pretty fond of alcohol, too.) Alcohol Trigger Films explore three different booze-related scenarios. The general theme seems to be that alcohol is the only way to explain the horrible 70s fashion choices that each character is sporting. Amazingly, for a film about the consequences of drinking, the issue of vulgar, slurred wedding toasts never arises. Instead, we witness a series of mundane alcohol-related events, where nothing really all that bad happens. In fact, the one party that the seventh graders throw looked like a pretty sweet time.
Yes, it's that's time again—time to go back to school. And when it's time to choose with whom you'd like to go, the options are nearly limitless: your uncle Barney, Richard Simmons, that guy who sits in front of you at church and occasionally cleans his ears with his keys, Pruane2, Jewel, or possibly one of the Baldwins. Well, the idea that you should return to school accompanied by Joan Miller is given a fair and compelling hearing in the colorful short Back to School with Joan Miller. Yes, Joan Miller, designer extraordinaire, creator of dresses and suits that span an extraordinary range from conservative, plaid two-piece suits, to conservative plaid two-piece suits complemented by a hat. And BtSwJM offers not just two or three examples of her work, but rather a seemingly endless march of them, by the hundreds they come, one after another, modeled by strange-eyed shapeless women, driven relentlessly on by the sting of Joan Miller's whip. Take notes, because there will be a test as Mike, Kevin and Bill go Back to School with Joan Miller.
Sometime between the invention of pyromania and the discovery of Beatlemania, the country suffered a frightening outbreak of Highway Mania. Accounts of the disorder are sketchy, but if the film Highway Mania is to be believed, it involved shaving your head, scarring your face with a good, strong liter or two of muriatic acid, and then climbing in your car and driving like Lizzy Grubman while—and this is very important, critical, even— cackling like a community theater actress in a bad production of Hansel and Gretel. While you did this a team of three different narrators described in purple prose the horrors you were visiting upon the land. You, however, remain singularly focused on your cackling. (Don't be too hard on yourself; highway mania is a disease, just like alcoholism or embezzling.) Somehow hurricanes and cruise ship sinkings are also involved and probably your fault. Join Mike, Bill and Kevin as the catch the fever that is Highway Mania.
It seems that forty years ago, one out of every three instructional films was about The Bill of Rights (the rest were about either syphilis and/or Mr. Bungle.) So it was only natural that we'd finally get around to riffing a short focused on the Bill of Rights, and we had just the one in mind! Unfortunately, that episode of Schoolhouse Rock where the bill becomes a law proved far too expensive to acquire, and we had to go with Plan B. Plan B turned out to be The Bill of Rights in Action. It proved far more exciting than The Bill of Rights Takes it Easy and is a veritable thrill ride compared to The Bill of Rights is Feeling Kind of Hungover, So Could You Put On the 'Saved By The Bell' Marathon and Pick Him Up a Gatorade and a Breakfast Burrito. And even though we wish it would focus more on our favorite amendment (#9, Protection of rights not specifically enumerated in the Bill of Rights, booyah), it makes the admittedly more populist choice and focuses on the granddaddy of all rights, Freedom of Speech. It's a delightful romp where a pale Nazi goon rants outside of a synagogue and gets his ass handed to him by an enraged mob. So all things considered, it is far less creepy and disturbing than the episode of Schoolhouse Rock would have been. Mike, Kevin and Bill exercised their freedom of speech by getting tattoos of the "Conjunction Junction" conductor. They're not telling where.
The world of Safety Instructional Films breaks down into two distinct categories: Shake Hands with Danger, and everything else. If you like your hair feathered, your glasses huge and your moustaches grown at an eighth grade level, this is the short for you. Narrated by a guy who was rejected from the Dukes of Hazard narrator job for sounding too much like a cotton-pickin' bumpkin, Shake Hands with Danger explores the terrifying world of construction work. Sponsored by the Caterpillar heavy machinery company, it chronicles the myriad of ways you can hurt, dismember, maim or kill yourself using Caterpillar brand heavy machinery. No action is free from potentially life-ending consequences! Even if you stay home and lock yourself indoors, the bulldozer will just barrel your house over before seeking out the rest of your family!! Nobody is safe!!! Nobody!!!! Yes, riff fans of all ages will enjoy this lighthearted timecapsule of the 1970s, set to one of the catchiest Industrial Safety-based jingles we've ever heard. Mike, Kevin and Bill have never shaken hands with Danger, but they did give Danger that "fist bump then explosion" thing, and then Danger called them all "Bro-seph."
When we think back on the list of the great entertainers of the past century, a few names universally come to mind: Sinatra. Carson. Lohan. And Jimmy. No, not Jimmy Walker. And not Jimmy Stewart, (Really? You guessed Jimmy Walker before Jimmy Stewart?) We're of course talking about Jimmy the Raven, sparkplug of the glorious ensemble cast of Wing, Claw and Fang. Yes, despite sounding like a sleazy Nevada law firm, or perhaps items from a LARPer's daily checklist, Wing, Claw and Fang is actually a cavalcade of Hollywood's animal stars. Jimmy leads the way, with his hilarious signature bit of stealing freshly laid eggs and devouring them in front of the distraught hens. But there's also a heapin' helpin' of tricks form Pete the Penguin, who wows as he "Goes Down the Stairs" and Jesse the Lion, who "Appears to Maul his Trainer Quite Severely." Yes, Wing, Claw and Fang proves once again that there's no better way to entertain humans than humiliating animals for our amusement. Mike, Kevin and Bill gave up on stealing their eggs straight from the hen house after Farmer Dan installed a particularly effective scarecrow.
Ladies and gentlemen: Moose Baby. Think of Howard Carter as first he gazed upon the freshly unsealed chamber of the tomb of Tutankhamen; that should give you some sense of the awe and wonder we felt as we sat in a nondescript screening room poring over a series of colorless and uninteresting shorts only to discover the rare and precious gift that is Moose Baby. To try to describe it would be to rob it of some of its magic. He is Moose Baby. "But what is it about?" you quite reasonably ask. It is not about anything. It is Moose Baby. "Who made it? Where did it come from?" No one knows. There are no credits, no markings of any kind. It is untraceable. It is a beautiful mystery. It is Moose Baby. He is Moose Baby. Drink it in, and you will be one with Moose Baby.
Flying Stewardess takes us for an airborne jaunt through the wild blue yonder. Hop on board a spacious plane, where you'll be treated like a king. Enjoy a delicious steak dinner, served to you by a smiling stewardess. After that, treat yourself to a complimentary cocktail before retiring to your own bed in the sleeping cabin. You'll arrive at your destination refreshed and relaxed. Yes, Flying Stewardess is one of the most chilling science fiction shorts we've ever seen. Set in the bizarro realm known as "The 1940s", it is not—as you may have guessed—a tale of a Stewardess who gains the power of flight after a freak tray-table accident. It is actually a biting satire of the airline industry as a whole. (WARNING: Satirizing the airline industry may not be a wise idea. A sharp uptick in sitting next to shrieking babies, Bluetooth headset guys and people requiring multiple seat belt extenders may occur as a result.) Mike, Kevin and Bill were all chastised repeatedly by their stewardess for pointing out that their seats did not properly recline during the recording of this short.
Where should one turn when looking for beauty advice? To the fashion magazines that litter our grocery store checkout aisles, with their fresh-faced starlets with perky bods and millions of dollars? Hardly! Instead, refer to the comforting, matronly advice of Constance Bennett, an actress you've never heard of from the 1930s. Yes, despite being dead for well over half a century, Constance Bennett's Daily Beauty Rituals remain as relevant as ever, for girls of any age. Husbands, boyfriends and homecoming dates everywhere will issue a contented sigh as they see you descend a staircase, having followed Constance Bennett's advice and applied a coat of makeup thick enough to bury a small cat in. Then they will hastily remember that they left something on the driver’s seat of their car and excuse themselves. Completing the "Rituals Trilogy" that also includes Constance Bennett's Daily Voodoo Rituals, and Constance Bennett's 45 Minute Long Hand-Washing Ritual, Constance Bennett's Daily Beauty Rituals will leave you wondering how you were ever beautiful without it!
Someone has to be on trial. It may as well be teenagers. And they deserve it, too, what with their shenanigans, the hell-raking, their common thuggery, rough manners and unkempt flat-top haircuts. I don't think it would be overstating things to say that teenagers are the largest threat facing this great nation, causing more destruction than the boll weevil and potato weevils combined! Teenagers on Trial does not shrink from showing us the hard truth, which is that your average teenager would knock you off your bike and take it just as soon as look at you. (That is, if he wasn't currently at his Model United Nations meeting.) Thankfully they get what's coming to them, and that's a darn good trial! Kevin, Mike, and Bill, two of them former teenagers, give the teenagers a stern, but sympathetic hearing-out in the thrilling new short Teenagers on Trial!
If there's one thing that a small niche of people like, it's car racing! It's all there: the drama, the passion, the guy who for some reason shouts "Boogity Boogity Boogity." But we understand that for some people, sitting for hours and watching cars do five hundred laps around a track can be a bit too much excitement to handle. For them, Cork – Crashes & Curiosities provides a thrilling glimpse into a time in racing when the stakes were much lower, and cars were not capable of going nearly as fast. And when you think of the great hotbeds of car racing, such as the American South and Further Down In the American South, no doubt third on your list would be Ireland. Yes, the land where they grow Lucky Charms cereal is the setting for this short, and a babbling Irishman provides a narrative that at times can actually be considered moderately coherent. May the road rise to meet you as you take a manic jaunt in your jalopy through Cork – Crashes & Curiosities!
In 2009, if you ask someone What It Means To Be An American you'll get a simple response: a willingness to deep-fry anything and everything. But back in the fifties, before anyone had invented deep-fried cigarettes, it wasn't as clearly defined. School children, construction workers, zoo keepers, cosmonauts-in-training, gaffers, carnies, unemployed janitors, First Lady Eisenhower, TV Clowns, drifters, tight ends, falconry enthusiasts; none of them had any idea What It Means To Be An American. Nowhere was this more clear than with the producers of the short, What It Means To Be An American. Clearly the recipients of a Brewster's Millions-esque financial windfall that they were forced to spend within a certain amount of time or else lose it, they created the most incoherent and rambling testament to American-ness since the inaugural address where Grover Cleveland asserted that leprechauns were controlling the world's supply of tea. Falconry enthusiasts Mike, Kevin and Bill team up to riff Part One of What It Means To Be An American, despite its appalling lack of falcons.
This extraordinary film dares to do something no other safety short has ever dreamed of: killing its 9-year-old title character and sending him to hell; a hell run by two doughy, charisma-free demons wearing sensible jackets. Yes, Tommy Tucker, our protagonist, is a whiny, friendless little twerp who devotes himself to the petty hectoring of his fellow citizen. His dream of transforming his local institutions into an all powerful nanny state is cut short, however, when one fed-up individual decides to polish his bumper on Tommy's midsection. And so Tommy goes to hell (which would have been a fine and fitting end to the matter, but alas, it's not to be), and instead of reacting with horror and regret at his eternal separation from God, Tommy sizes the place up and finds it not half bad, but all things considered, he'd rather be home bothering folks. Kevin, Bill and Mike try their best to find a reason, just one reason, that Tommy shouldn't, in fact, spend a nice long eternity in hell.
Several of us were left frustrated when What It Means to Be An American: Part 1 ended without answering the titular question. In fact, many of you noticed that it did not in fact appear to address the question, or even show the faintest hint that it was aware that it would later be titled What It Means to Be An American. But lest you grow so disgusted with the WIMTBAA series that you decide not to show up to find out how the saga ends (See: The Matrix Reloaded), rest assured that What It Means to Be An American: Part 2 provides adequate* closure** to the series, answering*** all of your questions.**** Mike, Kevin and Bill stand at attention to riff Part 2 of What It Means to Be An American, truly the Godfather***** 2****** of Shorts Sequels.
When last we left Tommy Tucker he had died and was just beginning an eternal stint on Safety Island, a particularly dull outpost in the vast Hell empire. The demon in charge of enslaving his soul (a big-chinned guy, as most evil people are) had been extolling the virtues of the dead Tommy Tucker, while Tommy himself was making noises that, all things considered, he’d rather be home pestering his fellow students and occasionally snacking from the paste jar.
Women in Blue tells the tale of one of baseball's most storied franchises, the Los Angeles Dodgers. Actually, that's not true. We just have an Oakland A's fan on our staff who remains incredibly bitter about the 1988 World Series. In retrospect, it was a poor decision to let him write this description's opening sentence. No, Women in Blue does not tell the tale of Kirk Gibson, Orel Hershiser and the rest of the Dodgers squad that shocked the nation and cost our mailroom guy thousands of dollars in "sure thing" bets. It is instead a peek behind the scenes at the "WAVES", an all female division of the Navy during World War II. Take a look around the exciting life of a WAVE which involves marching, calisthenics... trips to the dining hall... bed making... zzzzzz. Wait! They also shoot guns! And not just pistols, we're talking GUN guns. Guns that make the Guns of the Navarone look like super-soakers! Then several more hours of classroom studies, but, hey! Guns! Mike, Kevin and Bill attempted to dress as women and enlist in the WAVES but were denied admittance for violating rule 106-F, "No 80s comedy movie clichés shall be allowed."
Contrary to what many of you are thinking, A Circus Wakes Up is NOT a wrenching adaptation of a short story by Philip Roth that recounts the heartbreaking tale of Bernard Circus, a Classics professor at Columbia, who is forced to confront his shattered marriage, his failure as a father, and a decidedly lackluster academic career. No, it is in fact a rather bizarre little behind-the-scenes short that very quickly confirms what we’ve always suspected: the dizzying revulsion we all feel when confronted by a circus is entirely—ENTIRELY—justified. The inhuman stunts, the macabre animal acts are, in fact, performed by exactly the type of twisted outcasts you cross the street to avoid (of course your choice gets tough when that guy from Radio Shack is on the other side…) And if you think you can get through this without being very, very disturbed by a clown, then you need to seriously reset your expectations vis-à-vis being very, very disturbed by a clown. Mike, Kevin and Bill don their shiniest top hats, their most resplendent red cutaway jackets, and their tightest bun-hugging jodhpurs and say, “Oh, we’re riffing A Circus Wakes Up today? What an amazing coincidence.”
American Thrift is a touching tribute to the “Woman American”, brought to you by Chevrolet. Just who is the Woman American you ask? Why, she is the one that those who sell and manufacture what is sold know is the one who decides what we come to buy of what is sold and manufactured. From budgeting the purchase of puppy dogs, packs of pens, and canned eel at the local Food Giant, to planning trips to Nassau, the Woman American is the solid rock on which the home is built. Unfortunately, one power the Woman American does not seem to have is the ability to prevent the Man American from driving around endlessly until he runs out of gas looking for parking meters with time still on them. In fairness, she did try, but he clobbered her with a tirade of saliva-spewing expletives that the laws of decorum do not allow us to reproduce here. Of course, that was in the Martin Scorsese director’s cut which is unavailable for riffing. We assure you this version is safe viewing for the entire family—except maybe for a disturbing scene in which a room-full of young Ron Howards get naked and exchange their pants. Mike, Kevin and Bill are joined by the definitive example of the Woman American herself — Veronica Belmont — co-host of Revision3’s tech-centric show Tekzilla, and Qore on the PlayStation Network.
Fortunately, Call It Free brings all your grease monkey fantasies to life. A Dizzy Dame, whose husband affectionately nicknames her Hank (due to her resemblance to the legendary country musician, Waylon Jennings), has car trouble. How will the local gas station manager treat her? With respect and helpful advice? Or will he nickel and dime her for repairs she doesn't need on parts her car doesn't even have? If you have to ask these questions, it's quite obvious that you are a visitor from a foreign planet. You might have luck finding employment at a nearby gas station.
George Bailey running down the streets of Bedford Falls. Linus explaining to a hushed audience what Christmas is really about. A desperate Arnold suiting up as Turbo Man for the Christmas parade. In no specific order, these were our top Christmas movie moments. But we think that after watching Christmas Rhapsody, you will agree with us that the scene where the The Forester's family sings an off-key version of "Silent Night" to their Christmas Tree has to belong in our top three. So goodbye George Bailey! Happy new year to you—in jail!!! Or just not on our list, whatever. Yes, Christmas Rhapsody, the latest entry in the Rhapsody series, comes fresh on the heels of Thanksgiving Rhapsody and Cyber Monday Rhapsody. And though Webster's defines Rhapsody as "A highly emotional utterance or literary work", most of us know that the true meaning of Rhapsody is a depressed sentient Christmas tree, bemoaning its own "No Account" status in the world. If Charlie Brown's Christmas Tree and Eeyore the Donkey had a baby whom they denied the prozac it so desperately needed, it would still be more fun to talk to than the tree in Christmas Rhapsody. Yes, we just created a donkey/tree hybrid baby who is evidently able to talk and has been prescribed Prozac by a medical professional. We need help. You, on the other hand, just need a dose of Christmas Rhapsody!
Santa Claus, famous fat Saint, is best known for his advances in forced deer flight and his work as a firm-but-fair elf foreman. But the man is even more gifted than his great big sack (*cough*), as we learn in the supernatural thriller Christmas Dream! Call him Professor X-mas, as his telepathic powers will awe and terrify you. (Did you call him Professor X-mas yet? No? Fine, whatever.) One Christmas Eve, a foolhardy young girl discards a toy she is no longer interested in upon seeing her new, less-horrible toys. Never mind that the forgotten toy was little more than a hot dog with hair, this is a transgression that the patron saint of creepiness cannot forgive! While the girl slumbers peacefully, like the total selfish jerk that she is, St. Nick enters her dreams to give the monstrous doll life. It proceeds to torment her with its special brand of high-pitched Christmas horror. Will she learn her lesson and accept that change is always bad, or crack under the pressure and find herself in an asylum for children, gnawing on her own hair? Either way, this doll is gonna break a lot of her stuff! Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill as they dance the mad carnival dance our dark lord Santa demands in Christmas Dream!
The story of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer has been told and retold countless times, in film, TV and song. All of those other versions are better than this one. Even the cold war-era East German version "Rudolf van der Schlittenfahrt", which features far more marching and distant machine gun fire than a Christmas special ever should. The short begins with the bold step of having a song which relates the entire story of Rudolph to the audience, rendering itself redundant. It then takes the even bolder step of completely disregarding the well-established Rudolph canon to tell its own twisted version of the tale. A version that involves ice skating reindeer and provocatively-dressed reindeer moms. A version where Santa and the reindeer deliver presents to other reindeer and rabbits. Where are the human children? What kind of vengeful god created this world? Why is Rudolph's luminous nose referred to as being "twice as bright as a beet" multiple times? Why? WHY!? These questions are best pondered over a warm mug of eggnog, with the assistance of Mike, Kevin and Bill. (Please refrain from adding your own "Like George Washington!" at any point in time during the short.)
It’s the sunniest Night Before Christmas yet. Not a creature is stirring, not even the stuffed, mummified mouse that’s lovingly stapled to the floor. Sugarplums dance in the heads of children, causing the children to wonder, what’s a sugarplum, and why would it dance so suggestively? At the heart of it all is a man with one simple goal—a long winter’s nap, uninterrupted by any sort of clatter. Boy is he in for a surprise! Hold on to your stocking cap (or, as we know them today, sleeping hat) and prepare for a holiday home invasion the likes of which you’ve never seen. Unwantable toys will be given, boys will wear dresses, and the reindeer will test all limits of tiny-ness! It’s a story as fresh and timeless as that 4th of July egg salad you’ve been meaning to take out of the trunk. So check out The Night Before Christmas now, before Disney adapts this half-page poem into a 4-hour epic next year.
Have you ever been on the Disneyland ride, "It's a Small World After All"? Wait, where are you going! Come back! This short isn't about that ride. It contains no references to that ride. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have brought it up so abruptly. Here, breathe into this paper bag. Stop muttering to yourself, it'll be alright. But seriously, the song from "It's a Small World After All" is going through your head now, isn't it? Well Three Magic Words features a song that is twice as catchy! What keeps it from making you want to rip the Hammer, Anvil and/or Stirrup out of your ears using needlenose pliers? It's about Pork! Yes, Pork, the delicious substance we've been known to indulge in every now and then here at RiffTrax. And since we buy it using the titular Three Magic Words, we'll always know we've got the best pork. What are the Three Magic Words? Quality, freshness and flavor! How do we remember these? Because they are repeated approximately 837 times during this ten minute short! Join Mike, Kevin and Bill as they are serenaded about the joys of quality, fresh, flavorful pork. Over...and over...and over again.
Aquatic Champions. For years their achievements went largely unnoticed, mainly due to the fact that everyone can quickly come up with a list of dozens of things they would rather do than watch someone swim competitively. Five just sprang to your mind while reading this sentence alone. But in 1948, on a warm summer day in Beverly Hills, the world stood up and took notice for the first annual Parade of Aquatic Champions. The world then quickly realized why they had never thrown one before or ever would again. Abandoning many of the traditional parade conceits on the grounds that in water, floats tend to sink quickly and cause mass death, the Parade of Aquatic Champions instead focused mainly on introductions. One by one, the breathless narrator introduced the chlorine-bleached heroes, whose names spring readily to mind even over sixty years later: Norman Spear Jr. Stubby Kruger. Anita Lowez. To call them mere cultural icons would be to spit in their faces. Instead, the participants in the Parade of Aquatic Champions transcend greatness itself. Especially when they're demonstrating something called the "Trudgeon Stroke". Take a belly flop with Mike, Kevin and Bill into the sea of tedium, bacteria and greatness that is the Parade of Aquatic Champions.
For the past four months, there has been a gaping hole in Thrift-related RiffTrax content. After the release of American Thrift Part I, Thrift lovers everywhere were high and dry, left to wonder, much like Lost fans, whether or not the show's creators had an ending in mind the whole time, or whether they were making it up as they went along, a panicked narrator struggling to piece together the seemingly random footage whizzing by in front of him, first a woman trying on shoes, then a parade of red-headed children and now...a lighthouse?! Seriously, a lighthouse? You just spring a lighthouse that can see into the past out of nowhere?! There's only like a dozen episodes left, you had better make some progress towards a resolution quickly or els... Sorry about that! The previous copy writer has been assigned to full time duty on the 4815162342.com forum. Meanwhile, we're happy to report that American Thrift Part II easily joins Three Ninjas Kick Back and Superbabies: Baby Geniuses II on the short list of the greatest sequels of all time. Everything you loved about the first one is back. Yep, that's back! That too! I know, it's great, isn't it?! OK, we admit it. We have no idea what American Thrift is actually about, and we doubt anyone involved with its production did as well. But it's the special kind of enthusiastic incoherence that makes it a joyous short to riff. And as far as "Tributes to the Woman American" go, it sure as hell beats "My Humps" and "Cougartown." Mike, Kevin and Bill did their part and drastically reduced their lottery ticket spending, just to be able to bring you part II of American Thrift.
There are some conversational topics that most men will avoid at all costs. Guessing a woman's age, Barbra Streisand's Yentl, and the appeal of Justin Bieber rank high among them. But there is one subject that rises above even these, one issue guaranteed to turn even the proudest male into a red-faced, mumbling fool. And that particular health concern is...well, you know. With the discomfort, and the products...come on, don't make me. Lunar cycles, and that thing you hear about girls living in the same dorm--oh YOU KNOW WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT!! Go to your room. Molly Grows Up is the story of a girl asking the tough questions. Like most children, she can't wait to become an adult, despite all evidence that it's really not all it's cracked up to be. When will it be her turn? When will she finally get to be encumbered by a cruel monthly beast hell-bent on her misery and embarrassment? There are plenty of women in her life ready to provide ambiguous information that hardly qualifies as "advice". There's the school nurse, who is far too interested in Molly and probably smells like cats. Then, Molly's mother, who seems to be sedated with those "nerve pills" they used to give unsatisfied housewives. And of course, Molly's sister, the middle-aged teen. Will Molly learn the horrible truth? Will her father successfully avoid the conversation altogether? Join Mike, Kevin and Bill as they try desperately to be excused from Health Class before the showing of Molly Grows Up.
Call It Free Part 2 continues the madcap service station antics that viewers of Call It Free Part 1 demanded More, More, More* of! All of your favorite characters are back. Herb (not a woman). Jerry (not a woman). Hank, (astute viewers will recall that Hank is a woman.) But the second half of Call It Free also introduces a new character: Captain Jinx. Captain Jinx is, (and we are not trying to oversell him by any stretch of the imagination), the greatest cartoon character the world has ever seen! Morbidly obese, bright red and nude, he lives in the engine of your car, and has a big bag of rust that he spreads around if the engine if not properly maintained. This is how former Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda spends the offseason. This spreading of "Rust", combined with the complete absence of any substance known as "Jinx", makes one wonder why his name is not simply Captain Rust. Seems like that would make a great deal of sense. But when you're dealing with a woman named "Hank", you sort of let the suspension of disbelief carry you where it will. Captain Jinx is wreaking havoc on Hank's engine, and Hank's beloved husband speeds off to the mechanic to see what can be done about it. Will punches be thrown? Will Jinx junk Jerry's jalopy? And for all that is holy, what, who or when will be called free?! Find out these answers and more, when you join Mike, Kevin and Bill for the exciting conclusion to Call It Free! *The shrugged shoulders and confused expressions of Call It Free Part 1 viewers has been interpreted as them "demanding More, More, More"
Lindsay Lohan's meteoric rise to fame, and subsequent collapse in the glare of its harsh spotlight, is just a recent iteration of a tale as old as time. Many are quick to judge her, but in a world where the lines between tabloid news and honest journalism are increasingly blurry -- excuse me? Say what now? Who? Oh, my mistake. Yes, I see. The Story of a Teenage Drug Addict is the story of a teenager with plenty of reasons to become a drug addict. Everyone insists on calling him a teenager and making him attend high school, despite his obvious age of 40. He lives in a shoebox of a tenement apartment with his corpse-like mother, trading stories about why dad left in their constantly-shifting New York-ish accents. And, perhaps most damning of all, he has a unibrow that would make Captain Caveman blush. Unga bunga, indeed. With circumstances like these, what chance does our protagonist have against the temptations of dope, H, uppers, downers, sidewinders, lefties, righties, Betty Boopers, flim-flam-dongs and other fake drugs of the past? Will he turn back from the brink in time, or be consumed by a life of late night jazz parties with unfortunate-looking teens? Where on Earth are his tweezers? Learn the answers to these questions and try to achieve a contact high with Mike, Kevin, and Bill as they turn the grim pages of The Story of a Teenage Drug Addict!
Kids love to play games. It is an indisputable fact, much like the existence of former Yankee outfielder Oscar Gamble. But for a while, the only two games kids had to play were "Push a Hoop with a Stick" and "Hide Benjamin Franklin's whiskey." For obvious reasons, (in order: "This game blows" and "Getting sat on by a furious Benjamin Franklin"), kids eventually needed new games to play. Enter Hungry, Hungry Hippos. For centuries, it was rightly regarded as the pinnacle of game-dom and children the world over entered the "Race" (and/or "Chase") to "hurry up and feed their face." However, recent revisionist history has begun to shift this perception, and a challenger to the throne is now regarded by some academics to be the greatest game of all time: The Following Instructions Game. "How do you play," you ask? Simple..you do what adults tell you. "But wait," you say, "that doesn't sound like a game at all. It sounds like a thinly veiled scheme to get our stupider children to shut up and do what we want." And you would be right. But that didn't stop the makers of The Following Instructions Game from spending their substantial budget on a short film to convince children that Following Instructions could be just as fun as actually having fun. And oh what fun it is, as our hero, a dimwitted lad who is prone to coming into contact with wet paint, takes a clock to a repair shop before buying a loaf of bread! And there's an odd old man who speaks in rhyme! (Note: It is not Slick Rick, though that would have been awesome.)
For years the skunk has been the butt* of many a joke in pop culture. Due to our society's inherent anti-skunk bias, roles for these malodorous mustelids have been hard to come by. Pepe Le Pew is the go-to guy if you need a skunk in your picture. This is in spite of the fact that he is A) a shockingly offensive stereotype and B) a touch rapey. And for a while in the 80s, Stinkor: The Evil Master of Odors was getting a lot of buzz, before his secret Febreze addiction was discovered. But before either of these skunks ever skittered down a red carpet, one pioneering stinker broke the stench barrier, paving the way for all future Hollywood skunks and/or cats who accidentally got a white stripe painted down their back. That skunk was Gregory, the star of Little Lose Scent. Gregory comes from a time when men were men, women were broads and our president was bald. Feisty and fetid, he's a putrid pugilist who won't back down from a showdown, be it with man, beast or heavy industrial machinery that at one point in time really looks like it comes about three inches from killing him. Dogs? Gregory lays the smack down, Old Yeller style. Cats? Forget Cheezburgers, Gregory can has their asses. Two grizzly bears? Yes, Gregory fights two grizzly bears at once. You have to watch this short!
Aquarium. Translated literally from the original Latin, it means "boredom box". Every day, thousands of aquariums are completely ignored by passersby in our nation's dentist offices and Chinese restaurants. They are also popular suicide destinations for little plastic scuba men. Aquariums are mainly known for making homes smell funny and, sooner or later, winding up empty out in the garage. An Aquarium In Action seeks to change all that. A rallying point for aquarium owners, or aquarists*, the film demonstrates just how exciting these bacteria farms can be. It does so by simulating the experience of staring at an impressively ordinary grade school aquarium for an extended period of time. Shiver at the intense action as the children struggle to save baby guppies from certain death in the maws of their own parents. Then watch the children wonder why they bothered saving these ugly little things in the first place, when seeing them devoured would have been much more awesome. Join Mike, Kevin and Bill as they see who can lick the most scum off the sides of An Aquarium In Action!
Without knowing who Mr. Moto* is, you're probably slightly confused about why you would want to watch him take a walk. "I can watch Mr. Jensen, the bald guy four doors down, take a walk anytime I feel like it," you say. Yes, we all know Mr. Jensen. He carries a miniature baseball bat and the neighborhood kids (mostly Bobby) started a rumor that he uses it to hit dogs with. While the holes in Bobby's story are numerous (Why a miniature bat Bobby?), there is one thing that is indisputable. Watching Mr. Moto take a walk is far more entertaining than Mr. Jensen. For starters, Mr. Moto takes a walk through the zoo. So right off the bat, you're seeing some crazy stuff. Second, a somewhat attractive lady accompanies Mr. Moto on his walk. Those of you who have seen Mrs. Jensen are now strongly in the Moto camp. But finally, sealing the deal firmly in favor of Mr. Moto is this: Mr. Moto is a monkey. On his walk, Mr. Moto (who is a monkey) undertakes the demented quest of traversing the entire alphabet, from A to Z, seeing one animal for each letter. Why he has chosen to spend his day this way is a mystery, especially seeing as he is a monkey. But it's an action packed journey full of mischief and exotic animals. And did we mention that he is a monkey?
Do you hate stuff that's designed to save your life? Does the inconvenience of having to flip the safety off your handgun before you use it to open a beer bottle drive you INSANE? Do you snicker and point at children wearing bicycle helmets, contemptuous of their willingness to believe "The Man"? Do you wiggle your way out of roller coaster restraints so you can raise both middle fingers boldly in the air? If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, you're going to absolutely hate Seat Belts: The Life-Saving Habit. This plea for reason provides a snapshot of some anti-seatbelt sentiments from the early 1980s. For example, "I've never worn one, but they look uncomfortable," "Hey, I'm a busy guy, I don't have time for this," and "Children are invincible." The film confidently (or, more often, passive-aggressively) debunks these powerful straw-man arguments in a noble attempt to save lives and subliminally advertise the safe, luxurious Audi sedan. One assumes the filmmakers went on to champion other controversial stances, such as "you probably shouldn't let your kids swallow broken glass." Climb into the back of a pick-up truck with Mike, Kevin, and Bill and ride down a bumpy road to a destination called Seat Belts: The Life-Saving Habit!
Can genius be taught? It is one of the great philosophical questions. With enough time, patience, and dedication, can the next Van Gogh be created? Or is the mastery of an artistic discipline something that only a few people are born with the inherent capacity for? The producers of the series Drawing for Beginners believe that a great artist lurks inside all of us, and with the proper attention and guidance, it may one day emerge like a beautiful butterfly, to bestow artistic gifts unto humanity the likes of which the world has never seen. Step one? Rectangles! Four lines, four right angles. Sounds easy right? WRONG! Improperly drawn rectangles are the second most common mistake witnessed by elementary school art teachers, right behind birds in the shape of lower case m's which most biologists agree make no evolutionary sense. It turns out rectangles are the foundation of all art. Don't believe us? What do the Mona Lisa, American Gothic and The Scream all have in common? Innovations in painted light, aerial perspective and irony? WRONG! The answer is rectangular frames! The next time you're in the Sistine Chapel, why don't you look up at the ceiling and tell us what shapes you see up there. Hint: not rhombuses. Still don't believe us? Pull a DVD off your shelf. Yeah, that one will do. Wait, is that...you own What About Bob? on DVD? No, no, I'm not saying it's bad, it just doesn't seem like the kind of movie you'd really want to watch repeatedly. Well, saying it's a gift doesn't exactly explain it, the person who gave it to you would still have to assume that you would want to - LOOK, the point is, what shape is the box? A rectangle! Art! Rectangles! They just go together! It therefore goes without saying that if you want to create art, you better damn well learn to draw your rectangles. And Drawing For Beginners: The Rectangle is as good a jumping off point as any...for weeding out the dullards who actually need instruction about drawing rectangles and who c
Cats have a come a long way lately. They "hung in there", indeed, on the wall posters of America's cubicles. And now they are widely acknowledged as the foundation of the entire internet, and thus all modern culture. Remove the cats, and you're left with nothing. If not for the existence of confused-cat-dressed-like-Napoleon videos, people would have to send each other links to articles about inconsequential matters like foreign politics, science, or even discuss and examine their own feelings. In a word: ew. But little is known about where cats come from. Are they advanced alien beings, here to exploit our obvious delight at seeing them barf on our stuff? In exchange for pointedly ignoring us, they are given food, shelter, and an open-air toilet right in our living rooms. Cats form emotional bonds with humans so strong that they will wait 5, maybe even 10 minutes, before nibbling on the ear of a beloved owner after she has choked to death on a heart-shaped box of chocolates she bought for herself. What is the origin of these marvelous, sophisticated creatures? Kittens: Birth & Growth answers this important question, and teaches kids valuable lessons about getting excited for, and then immediately neglecting, adorable new pets. Watch and learn now, because you can rest assured the cats are watching and learning everything about us. Mike, Kevin, & Bill can has kitten short nowz?
Reading. Like it or not, (and as a people, we've cast a resounding vote for 'not'), it's something most of us have to do every day. Whether it's selectively combing news stories for the portions of them you agree with, figuring out what your $1.14 in change can buy you from the Wendy's drive-thru window, or trying to decipher the unspeakable, misspelled profanity left on the youtube video of your infant son laughing, reading is a part of our daily lives. But more and more often, people are starting to ask themselves Reading: Who Needs It? Granted, most of these people are biased against reading having just finished reading a Dan Brown novel, but it's still a question worth debating. Reading: Who Needs It? The Short attempts to address Reading: Who Needs It? The Question. We witness the daily lives of three illiterate High School students. The short intends to cast these kids in a negative light, but truly the achievement of progressing into your junior year of High School while all the while A) being illiterate and B) somehow keeping that a secret from everyone is quite remarkable in itself. We are told that these students are just three of "hundreds" of illiterate students in this high school. It is clear that this high school must be located in [insert part of the country you do not think highly of.] Will the illiterate actress learn to read in time to snag a role in the big school musical? Will the mechanic put down the socket wrench and pick up the books? Will the burgeoning basketball star continue doing things exactly as he was before, while still making more money for one game than most families earn in a year? Tune in to Reading: Who Needs It? with Mike, Kevin and Bill to find out!
The Families series of shorts is a beloved franchise with many proud, vital installments. Some other favorites: Families: Food and Failure, Families: Lies & Videotape, and perhaps most popular of all, Families: Dead and Loving It. But true connoisseurs, those with the complete Criterion Collection set and no friends to speak of, know that Families: Food and Eating was the creative pinnacle; if you ask them about it at a party they will not leave you alone until you agree. Then they'll awkwardly inquire if your younger sister is single and you'll leave the party so quickly you forget your jacket. The film presents, in vivid detail, what a "Family" might do with some "Food" (no spoilers here). Shockingly, it seems there was a time when family eating consisted of more than choosing individual Hungry Man dinners to devour in front of separate bedroom televisions. We've come so far! Further, people in faraway countries like Japan, Mexico and "San Francisco" eat dinner in very different ways. Do you feel guilty about the ease with which you procure fine foods at your local supermarket? No? Well you should. Try to remember that next time you spend five minutes crafting a Facebook post about how irritating it is when Facebook doesn't load your Farmville statistics immediately, won't you? Mike, Kevin and Bill will take away that stupid PlayStation if you don't come down here RIGHT NOW for some Families: Food and Eating!
We all have a certain summer memory. One that we find ourselves fondly reminiscing over as the days get longer and hotter. A memory of a different time, when we still retained our childlike innocence, but possessed a desire to stretch our wings and explore the world around us. These days, even though we are very different people, we still watch the sun go down, and our thoughts drift, however briefly, towards that moment when the world was so much simpler, and yet boundless with possibility. Ours is the time when we got a Bubble O' Bill pop from the ice cream man, then threw a tantrum when our mom wouldn't buy us a second one, then opened the second Bubble O' Bill pop our mortified mother eventually bought for us as tears continued to stream down our face and people stared, then throwing it on the ground in disgust because the bubble gum nose was kind of smooshed and proclaiming that we wished we had never been born. Yes, the summer of 2007 was a heady time. The point is,Summer Is An Adventure. And whether your summer involves speedboats, hiking, or mostly just ice cream related petulance, you can certainly agree. The two young protagonists of Summer Is An Adventure are slightly better behaved than we were, (despite the bathing outfits they are forced to wear.) They even tolerate a narrator who occasionally lapses into speedboat-based poetry! But we know that deep down inside, the forced nature walks and firefly collecting of Summer Is An Adventure will eventually unleash a sweaty, sandy, sunburned hellbeast of a child, one that even the sweet, sweet allure of Bubble O' Bill's candy nose cannot tame! But they might be willing to listen for a Choco Taco... Mike, Kevin and Bill are always willing to riff for a Choco Taco
Every now and then you meet a child who forever changes your perception of how stupid a child can be. There's your second cousin's boy, Leon, who spends summer afternoons black-widow-huntin' in the woodpile. Or little cross-eyed Margie, with her affinity for drinking liters of pond water. And of course Stephen, the kid who insists Notes from Underground is Dostoevsky's finest literary accomplishment when it's clearly one of his mid-level works. I mean, honestly, Stephen, grow up. But all of these little morons are blown away by the force of Reggie, star of Beginning Responsibility: Taking Care of Your Own Things. Reggie sleepwalks through life. He's perpetually confused and overwhelmed by his bedroom full of toys, which are all in such sorry shape Goodwill employees would spit in your face if you attempted to donate them. Since his parents have given up on Reggie long ago, it's up to this deranged menagerie of busted junk to come to life and teach him threatening lessons. Yes, it's Toy Story on acid! But not the fun kind of acid, more like battery acid that spills out of an old remote control dog toy you haven't picked up in twelve years. Mike, Kevin and Bill try to keep little Reggie from swallowing their keys while they watch Beginning Responsibility: Taking Care of Your Own Things!
Reading: for now, it is the only way to experience the approximately four remaining books that have not been made into movies (three, after this summer's CGI heavy adaptation of Frog & Toad are Friends. Sam Worthington will play both title roles.) So you'd better be sure that your Basic Reading Skills are not lacking! How can you be sure? We've prepared a simple test. Just identify the subject of the following sentence: "Totally grape ape, should our snorkel rubadub the two step, moon for sure." Ready? The answer was: Chester A. Arthur. First of all, if you got that wrong, SHAME ON YOU. But there is hope (amidst the SHAME!) The hope comes in the form of Reading Growth: Basic Skills which provides several helpful strategies for mastering reading, most of which make about as much sense as our example. Also, there is a frog, but it's not played by Sam Worthington. He is, however, much more successful at masking his Australian accent. Mike, Kevin and Bill identify the subject of this sentence as hilarity! And then feel deep SHAME because it turns out it was actually Chester A. Arthur again...
Many times we find ourselves mocking the content of the educational shorts we feature here at RiffTrax. Most of the time it is quite deserved; if you will recall, not too long ago we did a short entitled Buying Food. But occasionally we'll stumble across one like Geography of Your Community and think to ourselves, "Well done Coronet Films. Geography is an important thing for young minds to learn, and what better way to teach it to them than by making it relate to them using their own community as a learning tool. Then we saw the short. Geography of Your Community contains about as much Geography as the Transformers movies contained taste, wit and coherence. And by "Your Community" the makers meant aspecific community with specific features, such as an ice cream factory that many students will be unlikely to identify with, and much more likely confused and scared by. The creators don't stop there! Throughout the short, they pose questions to the viewer without answering them, with a vague promise that they will address the answers to them down the road, when instead there are only more questions. A Warning: This short may hit too close to home for fans of a certain TV show which just ended its six season run on ABC. Yes, Geography of Your Community is another short which falls spectacularly short of its admittedly modest goals. But educational failure is humor's gain, and Mike, Kevin and Bill are on hand to speculate along with the viewer why there is an ice cream factory in this town? Why the factory was built along the river? And who the hell named their child "Farmland"?
Parts. We all have them. Some of them are public, like elbows and unibrows. Some of them are private, like thigh pimples or the complete set of Bob Seger CDs that you pray your new girlfriend doesn't stumble across. But did you know that people aren't the only things with parts? Since we can't hear your answer, we'll assume you said, "No, that's surprising, please proceed with the comedic description." You got it, friends! It turns out the English language* is made up of several components, all laid out in The Parts of Speech. Some of them might be familiar, but if you've always struggled to define exactly why an adverb can modify not only verbs, but also adjectives and other adverbs...well, this short will be of no use to you. But it will dazzle you with its majestic beach scenes, featuring a boy far too old to be wearing that diaper, playful near-drownings, and the contemptuous monster of a narrator, Dr. Dwight L. Burton! Also, a beach towel is subjected to extreme homophobia. Join Mike, Kevin and Bill as they head to the ocean, the most logical location for confusing grammar lessons courtesy of The Parts of Speech!
Consider: a young boy, growing up in an urban setting with seemingly absentee parents, purchases a special plant from a quirky man who has assumed the moniker "Papa Nikolai". The boy goes on to guard his new greenery from others with a fervor that borders on the paranoid, lashing out at those who question his behavior. It may sound like a new PSA regarding a certain California legalization initiative, but in fact it's just our newest short, Watch Out For My Plant! If there's one thing little boys love, it's... baseball, or comic books, or hurting animals, or really ANYTHING but plants. But this kid is different. He's willing to spend hours hovering over a sprout that probably requires nothing more than a weekly watering and some sunlight, and we get to go along for the ride! We don't want to give away more than that, because frankly there's nothing more to give away. Mike, Kevin and Bill will do their very best to Watch Out For My Pl-- oh they crushed it. Really stomped all over it. Kevin, there's no need to set it on fire... well, great. Just great
One of the great questions ethicists have pondered over time has been "what is the right thing to do?" Meet Mr. Carson, who has never answered this question correctly. He's the man who puts the "wretch" in "eking out a paranoid, wretched existence living in filth off of disability." Mr. Carson hobbles through his neighborhood, finding items in various stages of disrepair that the honest, hardworking citizens have rightfully chosen to discard. Mr. Carson takes up these items that, while neglected by his fellow man, a subhuman shell like Mr. Carson can surely find some sort of use for. In the right hands, even something like a flat wagon wheel could be recycled into something useful, or at the very least, transformed into unappealing art. But Mr. Carson, trembling and unshowered, can't even be bothered to use the items he scavenges. He just throws them in a pile in his yard, and plasters up another "Keep Out" sign, though the idea of even slowing your gait while strolling past Mr. Carson's grim property, let alone trespassing on the blighted premises, is a prospect no rational man would entertain. There is one group that finds Mr. Carson endlessly fascinating: eight year old boys! And peering in through his brittle, dusty venetian blinds, the spectacle of Mr. Carson eating store brand beef stew directly out of the can proves to be the perfect summer day activity for one particular group of scamps. Everything changes, though, when the boys decide to intrude on Mr. Carson's solitude, and a deadly accident occurs. And by changes, we of course mean, "Gets a whole lot funnier." You know what? Strike that earlier sentence. There are two groups that find Mr. Carson fascinating: Eight year old boys, and Mike, Kevin and Bill, who riff with rapt attention, and the vague, unspoken unease that they are looking into their own near future.
Do you ever stop to reflect on what an ungrateful, useless little puke you were as a child? Like when your father came home after his 60 hour work week with the new lunchbox he thought you wanted, and you threw a red-faced tantrum because it was Go-Bots, not Transformers? Or the time your mother served the stuffed turkey she spent the whole day perfecting, and you flipped it on the floor, shrieking that you wanted McNuggets and didn't love her anymore? Yes, children are terrible. And Family Teamwork gleefully drives that point home, with help from a brain-drilling theme wonderfully reminiscent of the music from Nintendo's Bubble Bobble. One boy turns sour when he learns his family's newfound poverty means they can't afford the trailer-tent he had his heart set on. Selfishly, he never thinks to ask how his family feels, or what the hell a trailer-tent might be. In this, and other scenarios, Family Teamwork serves up a heaping helping of shame, teaching kids important lessons about the joys of responding to passive-aggressive guilt. For the team! Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for Family Teamwork...as soon as they get off those dang skateboards...wait, they STILL haven't washed the car? Of all the no-good...great, there goes my ulcer
Join the middle-aged drummer as this thrilling documentary follows his exploits during Rush’s 2009 Asian tour. Leaving in his wake several bottles of FiberCon, completely unnecessary drum kit pieces, and pulp 1950s Sci-Fi novels with highlighted passages marked “use for lyrics”, the man....what’s that? Oh, this isn’t Neil Peart of the Orient? My mistake. The makers of Pearl of the Orient set out to make a positive, uplifting piece about life in the heavily-bombed Philippine islands during the aftermath of World War II. And, if you consider third world poverty, rat-smashing, and utterly joyless wedding ceremonies “uplifting”, the filmmakers succeeded admirably! The tourism dollars surely flowed like a debris-tainted waterfall into the island nation after the world saw delightful images of villagers breaking their backs all day to harvest a half-cup of rice. Think about that next time you feel the urge to post on facebook “Stupid supermarket out of whole wheat linguini so had to settle for regular. FML!!!” Yes, it’s a nice reminder of how much we suck. There’s also a cockfight. You should buy this. Tag along with Mike, Kevin, Bill, and their newly-acquired Filipino wives for a trip to the Pearl of the Orient!
Meet Roy, elementary school student. Some children learn with more ease than others. Every child learns with more ease than Roy. He wants nothing from life except to be left alone: shy, silent, whittling off pieces of his desk in hopes that he’ll eventually find one that tastes good. But his ill-tempered, hatchet-faced teacher (we’ll call her “Howard”) will have none of that. She goes out of her way to make an example of his dimness in front of the class, in order to teach valuable lessons to the other kids. These lessons primarily consist of new and exciting ways to make fun of Roy. She especially likes comparing him to his golden-boy older brother, George. Oh, you know George? Yeah, he is great, isn’t he! Just so smart, and strong, but still humble and decent...sorry, got lost in a “George” moment. It’s hard not to when he’s so much better than Roy. Roy really is the turd in the punchbowl of that family. You have to wonder what happened in the gene pool there...I mean, uh, being different is cool! Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill as they ponder the horrors of Individual Differences! And don’t forget a bag of rotten fruit to throw at Roy’s piano recital!
For years, The Weather has been the go-to topic for nervously discussing with your co-workers whenever you end up sharing an elevator with them after you fail to see them pull into the parking lot at the same time as you, leaving you unable to adjust your route on the fly. "Some weather we're having" you'll say, and they will grunt their assent. A few seconds later you'll notice that neither of you have pressed the floor button, and you'll lunge for it at the same time, then retract your fingers cautiously, before finally poking it with a vigor that instantly seems inappropriately emphatic. It would probably be less socially awkward for you to just kill and eat the co-worker right there, but instead, you chat about the weather. God forbid they end up leaving at the same time as you that afternoon. Yes, The Weather has been discussed to death. And yet somehow, Whatever the Weather manages to bring a fresh new angle to the topic. Of course, in order to find a fresh, new angle, they just made up some crazy analogy regarding weather and hats. You're not really even sure it was intentional until they hamfistedly try to tie it together in the final seconds. M. Night Shyamalan movies operate under the same principal. If you're a fan of weather, you probably don't get invited to too many parties, seeing as how that's an extremely boring thing to be a fan of. So while you're sitting at home, not partying, why not cue up the latest RiffTrax short, Whatever the Weather, with Mike, Kevin and Bill playing armchair meteorologist next to you? Forecasts call for a 60 percent chance of infectious laughter. Hang on, I'm being issued a correction. That should read 60% chance of severe thunderstorms. Take cover immediately
The bartender says "I was talking to the duck!" And, so it was finished, before it had even begun. She was a dark and stormy dame. Really, that's a badger? "Over there, behind the fake tree," she said. The record scratched at midnight, as it always does. That, ladies and gentlemen, is a terrible paragraph. If only it were possible to build a better one! But surely, a topic as pedantic and uninteresting as Building Better Paragraphs has never been covered by the dynamos at Coronet Films, has it? It has! Fans of crappy paragraphs, run and hide because Building Better Paragraphs is here to pummel your putrid paragraphs into submission! Building Better Paragraphs tells the tale of Susan, whose dog Major wins a prize at a dog show. Actually, it tells the tale of three children telling the tale of Susan & Major. While the rest of the class presumably learns important life skills such as the capital of Delaware, these three toil away at the back table, shaping their initial failure of a paragraph into something vaguely coherent. Can they build it into a better paragraph? Let's hope so, the bar was set awfully low. Can they shape it into an interesting paragraph? We're going to be honest, we have our doubts. Is one of the children in this short one of the strangest looking kids we've ever seen? We answer that with a hearty "Gahhhh!" Mike, Kevin and Bill have each built a better paragraph only to later find out the assigned topic was The Teapot Dome Scandal, not bacon
Teaching kids about the evils of racism in a clear, culturally-sensitive manner is a difficult task. Fortunately for us, it’s something the makers of educational shorts from decades past were woefully inept at! Are People All the Same? takes an interesting approach. In order to illustrate that people are all fundamentally the same, they go to great lengths to help you differentiate people based on race. This includes side-by-side comparisons of Japanese and Chinese children (no, really!) presumably so that kids can sort people out, and be sure to only use “pee pee in your Coke” based insults at the appropriate time. It’s a methodology that noted sensitivity expert Mel Gibson would support, saying “It’s [expletive deleted]-filled [expletive deleted] [expletive deleted], oh hey there sweetheart.” After building its argument, the film comes to a logical conclusion: a bunch of kids gather for a scream-filled, parent-free birthday party in an abandoned hovel. Proving that, ultimately, it doesn’t matter if people are all the same, because life is a chaos-filled nightmare with no one in charge. Are People All the Same? Mike, Kevin, and Bill sure hope not, because that would mean that we are all roughly equivalent to Kevin Federline.
You may think you know your Mealtime Manners, but much like the recent Kevorkian biopic that, despite starring Al Pacino, was sadly neither unintentionally hilarious nor full of rapid fluctuations in vocal volume, You Don't Know Jack! Mealtime Manners & Health posits the radical notion that your observing proper manners while eating can have a positive effect on your health. Wait, that's not really so radical...Oh, that's right, the radicalnotion it puts forth is not that good Mealtime Manners can make you happier and healthier, but rather that Mealtime Manners can occur at any given part of the day. Playing a little league game? Better have good Mealtime Manners! Parked outside a tardy coworker's house, waiting for them to join the carpool Don't forget your Mealtime Manners! Just finished dinner and won't be eating another meal for roughly twelve hours? Mealtime manners, dammit!!! Yes, Mealtime Manners apply to virtually any social context. This may sound like a clumsy, even baffling point to you. We concede that this is most definitely the case. When they're on, the good people at Coronet Films could make a short that most people would generously describe as "dull yet coherent." When struggling to spend the last two hundred dollars of their state derived funds before a fiscal quarter deadline however, madness tended to be the prevailing theme. This short is joyously one of the latter. Mike, Kevin and Bill enjoy practicing Mealtime Manners in any number of situations, "while riffing a short" being right near the top of their list.
In honor of our new short, Things Are Different Now, we’d like to list some things that are different now. In 2004, Mel Gibson was featured in Time’s “Man of the Year” issue for the success and spiritual impact of his film The Passion of the Christ. Things are different now. In March 2010, you could take a swim in the Gulf of Mexico and emerge without looking like a cast member of The Jersey Shore. Things are different now. Prior to the release of The Last Airbender, critics and anyone else who was paying attention had written M. Night Shyamalan off as an overhyped egomaniac whose best work was well behind him. Things are...well, some things haven’t changed. The point here is, any kid who’s seen an after-school special or two knows that when an adult says “Things are different now,” what they really mean is “Things are now significantly worse.” Young Joey, the hero of our short, could attest to that. His voice has begun to crack, and his father has taken the Daniel Plainview approach to parenting - that is, to abandon one’s BO-OOOOY, to abandon one’s CHII-IIIIILD. Joey’s only source of comfort is his best friend, who is a creepy fat schmuck. Will Joey weather the storm and come out happy and well-balanced? Will the short bring these complicated, emotional issues to a satisfying and helpful resolution? If you’ve seen any of the educational shorts we present, you know the answer to that last question already. In the spirit of things being different now, Mike, Kevin and Bill will riff this short completely sober.
It's every parent's nightmare: You're woken up at 3AM by a knock at your front door. When you open it, there's a somber looking policeman standing there, his hat in his hands. He avoids eye contact with you, and his voice quivers as he begins to speak. Before he even gets a word out, you know what he's going to say. "Sir," he quivers. "Your son...wants a doll." The producers of William's Doll want you to believe that a boy with a doll is perfectly normal. For some reason, they made a film that convinces everyone of the exact opposite. We here at RiffTrax are as open-minded as they come regarding childhood toys. Some of us even grew up playing with a toy called Stinkor: The Evil Master of Odors, and we turned out alright.* But by the time the train wreck of William's Doll comes to its unspeakable conclusion, you'll be taking to the streets with your fellow Doll Party members, seizing and burning every doll you find just so they never end up in the hands of a boy.** The twisted minds behind William's Doll made their defense of boys playing with dolls by combining two of the most loathsome things our planet has ever known: warbly 60's folk music and senior citizens. The guy who sings the William's Doll Theme sounds like Donovan singing Hurdy Gurdy Man after several months of gender reversal hormone treatment and a kick from a mule in what remains of his nads. But even that pales in comparison to William's grandfather, who walks in the door looking like the sun-dried corpse of Larry David and immediately begins his fiendish doll-enabling. Bright spots include William's Dad, a grown, presumably employed man who wears a red mesh hat with a Goofy patch, who would rather let his son play with a Super Soaker Oozinator*** than a doll. If you can find one of these hats, please let Mike, Kevin and Bill know. They'll trade you an Oozinator for it.
As any dorm poster covered in photographs of shots that no adult would actually order at a bar could tell you, “Life is full of difficult decisions.” Tommy, the hero of Decisions, Decisions, would surely agree. His life has recently been rocked, as he was forced to move to a decrepit farm in the middle of nowhere for the sake of his remarkably effeminate father’s “good job”. Tommy will get little support from his mother, a dazed, gin-soaked woman who would probably tell a stranger at the library about her favorite handkerchief for 30 minutes before nodding off between some plants (you know the type). One gets the feeling this is a family hiding from a dark and shameful past. Given this background, Tommy is ill-equipped to handle even the most basic decision. In this case, the decision is whether or not to hang out with Joey, the most horrible boy on the planet. Whiny, irritable, ugly, unpopular, and obsessed with painting his grandmother’s chicken coop, Joey is the kind of kid who wouldn’t even be welcome in a World of Warcraft community. Joey, with his offer of apples in exchange for friendship and coop-labor, distracts Tommy from the more important decision he should be making: to run far, far away. Mike, Kevin, and Bill decide, decide, to riff, riff, this short, short.
School's out, and this summer, there's only one place to find elementary school children. No, not the basketball courts. No, not the movie theater. No, not the swimming hole, they cut down the rope swing after Tommy broke his leg. No, not the mall. No, not skateboarding in the parking lot. No, not knocking over a casino. No, not freeing giant killer whales from captivity. No, not protesting in advance the 2016 Sochi Winter Olympics. No, not recreating Jersey Shore episodes shot by shot with Playmobil figures. No, not... **TIME PASSES** No, not poaching rare California Condor eggs. No, not participating in college health department cold studies. No, not picking up Kanye West's dry cleaning. No, not the swimming hole, LOOK, WE ALREADY TOLD YOU THEY WEREN'T AT THE SWIMMING HOLE! THEY CUT THE DAMN TIRE SWING DOWN AFTER TOMMY BROKE HIS LEG. THEY ARE AT THE LIBRARY, OK? THE DAMN LIBRARY!!!! Yes, the library, or liberry, if you're an idiot, is the hot spot in town for fancy book learnin' (replacing Luigi's PizzaMat, which held the title from 2004-2009). Library World tells the story of two children who are on the verge of making this discovery: A little boy who's skeptical of how much fun you can have at the library and his friend, a more enthusiastic boy or girl who is well versed in the library-going experience. With the help of a hot rod stealing 70's tool, who breaks new ground in the field of "having nothing better to do", they'll learn that the library isn't just a place you can check out books from. It's also a place where homeless people can escape nasty weather because the librarians are too meek and defenseless to kindly ask them to leave because they're frightening other patrons. Mike, Kevin and Bill head on down to Library World, where they tried to find out where they keep the old stacks of National Geographics, but were too embarrassed to ask the librarian.
In preparation for working on Fad Diet Circus, we here at RiffTrax decided to try out a few of the more popular fad diets. We started with the “Macho Man Randy Savage Diet”, which allows only foods that you can “Snap into!” Then there was the “Soup-Made-From-the-Cheez-It-Crumbs-At-The-Bottom-Of-The-Box Diet” (use your own tears for broth). And of course the “Villain from the Muppet Movie Diet”, which consists entirely of Kermit the Frog’s legs (this one is known to true dietary insiders as the “Doc Hopper”). Finally we came to the “Penelope Cruz Diet”, permitting only food items you find while going through Penelope Cruz’s garbage. Thanks to this rigorous regimen, RiffTrax HQ has been temporarily relocated to the hospital, with one of us working remotely from prison (FORGIVE ME PENELOPE!!!!) You might expect a film called Fad Diet Circus to cover several different diets, or at least something, you know, “circus-y”. You silly fool! The filmmakers instead focus on the low-carb Atkins Diet. And by “focus on” we mean “aggressively attack”: one gets the feeling this hit piece was commissioned by Betty Crocker and the “time to make the donuts” guy. They even wrote an anti-Atkins torch song (really, we’re not kidding) and dressed the kindly old doctor up in a heinous plaid coat (there’s no way that coat was a voluntary choice) just to discredit him. Mike, Kevin, and Bill are willing to try any diet plan as long as the words “pork fat smoothie” are involved
When the 1920's ended, America was left with a shortage of crazy fads. Goldfish went un-swallowed. Flagpoles went un-sat upon. Charleston's went un-charlestoned. Dozens of dead bodies were pried out of a single phone booth. By and large people stopped messing around and got back to work. It was horrible. But amidst the ceasing of Roaring, one major trend still managed to sweep the nation: washing your clothes with gasoline! Every housewife on Main St. could be found hitting up the local filling station, returning home with a reeking, volatile jug of gasoline, and submerging her delicates in it to get out those pesky grass stains. Haven't heard of this trend? That's because it never actually existed. But that didn't stop...
In honor of Alone at Home, we did a little research on a similarly-titled film only to discover that Macaulay Culkin recently turned 30. That’s right, the kid from Home Alone is 30 years old. How ‘bout that for a dose of reality? A reminder of time’s cruel, relentless march? Did you just clear your throat, or was that an early taste of your own death rattle Can you really know? This cheerful reminder of mortality brought to you by RiffTrax.com! While Mr. Culkin’s defining film (pipe down, Pagemaster fanfic authors) and Alone at Home share the same basic theme, there are key differences. Little Kevin McAllister is left unsupervised accidentally. The parents in Alone at Home, however, make the same choice quite intentionally. Where have they gone? No answer is given. Why have they gone? A few minutes with the awkward, goony children they’ve left behind is all the explanation you’ll need. Seriously, there’s a kid so odd and skinny you’ll be up at night wondering where his bones and organs fit, yielding nightmares you won’t soon escape. If Home Alone’s notorious Wet Bandits had shown up at his house, they would have turned away in sadness, and perhaps launched a food drive. Mike, Kevin, and Bill have not been Alone at Home for years, because their wives know they’d just eat sticks of butter and wind up sticking their fingers in the electrical outlets again.
What would you do if you visited an elderly aunt only to find her injured on the floor? Would you regret that you had not been there when she fell from the stepladder, because if you had you could have captured the hilarious moment on video? Uploaded the video to YouTube, to see it become an instant sensation? Then awaited the inevitable dance remix, complete with her auto-tuned screams? And then finally felt a sense of culminated pride when a friend sent you a link to that same remix being played at someone’s wedding? Which you sneakily watched on your Smartphone while visiting your injured aunt in the hospital? Well, naturally, all of that would be the correct answer in today’s world. But Telephone For Help comes from a simpler time, a time when phones were shackled to walls via so-called “wires” and could only be used for boring, mundane things like calling for help (or as a platform for the work of important artists like The Jerky Boys). Thrill at the injuries! Shudder in suspense as the dim-witted children decide whether or not to use the phone! Sweat your face off as you watch an emergency response team so slow they surely inspired the Public Enemy classic “9-1-1 Is A Joke”! Mike, Kevin, and Bill were gonna Telephone For Help but they accidentally spent three hours looking for the highest-quality “Bed Intruder remix” ringtone instead.
Some questions are as old as time. “Why are we here?” “Can love really last?” “Who let the dogs out?” “Is corn grass?” But there’s one ancient question that’s sure to chill you to the bone, when asked creepily by your five-year-old after a long pregnant pause: What If We Had A Fire? It’s a simple query that can draw a lot of attention: just ask a certain Floridian minister who was recently in the news. But while the question of “who didn’t start the fire?” was well and thoroughly answered by the esteemed Mr. Joel, this matter has gone woefully unaddressed. No longer! The young star of our film goes after the issue head-on, inspired by the scorched home of one of his classmates. Undistracted by the question of “Should We Try To Help The Recently Displaced Family of My Classmate?” our boy says, hey, what about ME? His parents promptly send him off to seek answers at the fire station, so they can work on the new insurance scam their son’s question has inspired. “Honey, what if we had a fire? Maybe then I could get that Camaro I’ve always wanted!” Pretty much every party Mike, Kevin and Bill have ever attended has ended with the question What If We Had A Fire?
When police inspector Launchpad McQuack receives a phone call that Huey, Dewey and Louie have gone missing, his initial inclination was to suspect the Beagle Boys - a suspicion that his neighbor Donald Duck was only too happy to go along with. But Donald seemed a little too concerned about keeping Launchpad away from his newly planted garden bed, instead plying the straight-laced cop with a dish he called "Diablo Pato." And that's when the first severed head turned up in a box on Launchpad's doorstep, pulling him down into a twisted web of intrigue, with the case growing more depraved and fiendish with each passing hour. Sorry about that, that would be the plot of Se7en Little Ducks. Seven Little Ducks on the other hand is a good-natured short about a brace of ducks. You might assume that there would be seven ducks, but you would be a moron for expecting the good people at Coronet Films to do something as logical as naming their educational short in accordance with how many ducks are actually in said short. The ducks are owned by Carol, who is played by a Gamorrean Guard. Carol has mastered basic duck-care skills such as feeding them gravel and strangling them. The ducks detest their cruel owner, and led by the hideous Father Duck, whose skin condition makes Two Face look like a Noxzema model, plan a coup. I'm sorry, I'm also being informed that that should be "Coop", and is not a bloody takeover, but rather the enclosure within which the ducks reside. Obviously we can't get our details right about the content of the short, so just tune in to Seven Little Ducks along with Mike, Kevin and Bill and see for yourself. Quack.
When we're deciding what shorts to screen here at RiffTrax, there's a 27 step, bullet-pointed criteria we use. Then we just pick the ones with the funniest title. More often than not, this leads to disappointment. It turns out that Why Do We Still Have Mountains* was far duller than its title would indicate and Could a Goldfish Become Mayor of Tallahassee is in fact a short that we just made up. One short that fortunately bucked the trend is the hilariously titled Cops: Who Needs Them? It tells the story of a nihilistic band of youths, who despite their apparent middle class upbringing and lack of any real responsibility or hardship in their lives, have developed a healthy distrust of cops. The characters, whose viewpoint about cops is evidently modeled entirely around the West Side Story number "Officer Krupke", also happen to be just about the ugliest bunch of kids you've ever seen. Seriously, we think that Moosebaby makes a cameo appearance as Frank. The very cops whose need is questioned in the title are none too pleased about the sassmouth the teens are giving them and decide to take their leader along with them on a ridealong, mortally endangering his life and no doubt violating dozens of laws and protocols. Don't worry though, someone who may or may not be his dad and who also may or may not be furious at his son for having his car stolen gave them some sort of vague, verbal confirmation over the phone that it was OK. I don't think it qualifies as a spoiler to inform you that on the ridealong, somebody does in fact get shot.** Experience Cops: Who Needs Them? yourself along with Mike, Kevin and Bill who all think they smell bacon. Yep, definitely bacon. (It has nothing to do with the short about cops, someone just happens to be making bacon. As usual.) *Not a joke, this was a real short we screened **Also not a joke, someone really gets shot
Listen up, pizza-faced creeps! Until now, you’ve suffered shameful, wretched existences. Cowering in dark cellars. Adopting beekeeping as a hobby, just for the veil. Wearing a drug store Ninja Turtle Halloween mask all year long, playing it off as an ironic affectation. Even converting to new religions that require face coverings when in public. But no longer! The title of our new short makes a clear and simple promise: You Can Do Something About Acne! And, since this is a RiffTrax short, you can rest assured that promise will go completely unfulfilled! Yes, get used to your zits and the politely repulsed reactions of the opposite sex, because this film has no real advice for you. Maybe eat less junk food, maybe don’t, it’s hard to say. Maybe stop smearing your face with a stick of butter every morning, maybe smear more butter, there’s no good way to know. One thing’s for sure, though, your face is full of horrible stuff you didn’t know about, including a sticky substance named “sebum”. That’s right, sebum. You’re oozing with sebum. Deal with that. Excess pus and permanent scarring are NOT* symptoms of joining Mike, Kevin, and Bill for You Can Do Something About Acne! *Probably. Really, we can’t be sure.
Safe Living at School pulls no punches with its straightforward title: This is a short which attempts to tell you how to make it through the school day unscathed. Your elementary school is a virtual house of horrors, where an act as innocuous as opening a locker can result in a vicious badger mauling! A playful swing on the monkey bars can be interrupted by an atom bomb explosion! Eating the cafeteria pizza can slightly burn the roof of your mouth, not enough to cause you to stop eating it but enough to make you take a slightly longer pause in between your first and second bites! But the short, and dare we say humanity, fails to address the one safety issue that haunted us throughout our primary school years: Mrs. Pinkett, the bus driver who would sit on children when they misbehaved. Why this was tolerated by the school board, we have no idea, but it definitely happened, because an older kid who rode her bus one year totally knew a guy who saw her do it once. You'd sit facing straight ahead, not misbehaving except for the 98% of time you were on the bus that the wheels were moving, terrified that the slightest infraction, such as dropping a watermelon out the back window into the path of an ambulance, might trigger the wrath of Mrs. Pinkett, and then: SQUASH!!! Perhaps you find this example unrelatable. Trust me, if you were there, you would never forget it. Regardless, if it were covered in Safe Living at School, the short would not doubt put forth that it could be handled in one way: by freeze-framing the action and playing a hilarious timpani drum sound every time an accident occurred. This takes place approximately 730 times during this brief short. The timpani drum is to this short what jokes about how white people dance are to an 80s Def Comedy Jam standup routine: consisting of the majority of the act and each one more hilarious than the last. Mike, Kevin and Bill have safely lived at a school for over two years now, living in the janitor'
You can't underestimate the importance of a good title. What would "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" be if it were called "Some Stuff That Good People Do Good"? Or if "Who Moved my Cheese" had been called "How is this bottle of EZ Cheez empty already? I just bought it yesterday!" Or if "Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould" had been called "G. Gould: Sexecutioner"? Actually, we probably would have gone to see that last one...Anyways, the point is, titling your work of art is in itself an important art form. Or, shall we say, it was, because with our latest RiffTrax short, the perfect title has been achieved. We present to you: Behavior of Domestic-Pigs in a semi-natural Pig-Park. It has everything: unnecessary capitalization! Unnecessary hyphenation!...um...pigs! Yes, pigs, everyone's favorite raw material for bacon, finally are the subject of their own short. But these are not the lovable pigs you're used to. These are rough and tumble semi-natural pigs that make Hogzilla look like Babe, and make Babe look like some sort of high voiced, sheep-befriending wuss! You'll never look at your breakfast ham steak the same way again after you watch two boars butt heads in a vicious dispute over some semi-natural turf. And you'll abandon your ham steak altogether as you excuse yourself to go vomit in the bathroom once you witness the horrors of a pig process known as Parturition. Fortunately, a bewildering Scottish narrator is on hand to confuse the issue even further. Mike, Kevin and Bill riff this one from the confines of their own semi-natural Pig-Park, which they have entitle Xanapig.
In working on Monkey See, Monkey Do: Verbs, we came across a rare find: a behind-the-scenes audio recording from the making of the film! Before submitting the material to a museum, where it belongs, we’ve transcribed the conversation: Producer Norman Bean and Director of Photography, Carl, working at the height of their craft. Enjoy! Norman Bean: Carl, I’d like to talk to you about the footage you shot for our new educational short on verbs. I asked you to film, let’s see...a playground, a beach, a softball game, and the Fourth of July parade. Carl: Ah, yep. I didn’t do any of that. Norman Bean: I see that, Carl. It seems you just went to the zoo and filmed some monkeys. Carl: Yep, sure did. They got some pretty good monkeys, down there at the zoo. Norman Bean: In fact you only filmed them for about three minutes, and then looped that footage three times. Carl: Did I? Heh, heh. Well, I was pretty stoned. Norman Bean: This doesn’t teach anything. In fact it might make children dumber. Carl: Norm, I got an 8-year old. He spent an hour yesterday playing with some tin foil he found in the bottom of his backpack. Kids are morons. They’ll watch anything. Let’s slap a crappy song on it and head to the strip club. “Strip” - now there’s a verb! Norman Bean: Good Lord, I...okay. Okay, fine. This is not our proudest day. Carl: Look at them monkeys scratch! After serious consideration of the material, Mike, Kevin, and Bill implore you to - HOLY COW TAKE A LOOK AT THESE MONKEYS! THEY ARE FREAKING HILARIOUS
Life in Australia can be extremely hazardous. There's Tasmanian devil attacks, lethal doses of vegemite and large, bearded, drunken men. And that's just in the Parliament building!* Once you head out into the bush - just allow that to sink in for a second - the dangers of a vest wearing man disparaging the size of your knife become that much more pronounced. Thus, if you plan on camping in Australia, Don't Be A Bloody Idiot: watch Don't Be A Bloody Idiot. Mike, Kevin and Bill, (all of them Stickybeaks), pool their last Brass Razoo, try not to act like a bunch of Ockers and google "Australian slang" to find out what the hell we're talking about as they riff one of the finest 1970s Australian camping safety films they've ever seen: Don't Be A Bloody Idiot. *We know they have a parliament because the Australian guy Bart prank calls goes to his local member of parliament to try to sort out the issue before turning to the prime minister.
When we first received Magical Disappearing Money we assumed it was an M.C. Hammer biopic. Fortunately, it turned out to be something even more pathetic and strange! It’s the tale of a supermarket haunted by a witch, but not your standard-issue Hollywood witch. She’s more the “found her clothes in an oil puddle behind the Fashion Bug” kind of witch. The kind of witch who shows up at KFC five minutes before close, looking for free stale biscuits. You can bet she didn’t attend Hogwarts, but maybe its discount online equivalent, Pigzits. Join the Grocery Witch as she takes Mike, Kevin, and Bill on a spooky* journey into the dark realm of insignificant savings! After Magical Disappearing Money, you’ll never waste money on extravagances like “fancy seasoned rice” again!** *creepy **you absolutely will, and are right to do so
Values: Understanding Ourselves is the tale of three small boys who find a rusty hubcap in an abandoned lot and take turns rubbing it and wishing for it to turn them into a fellow classmate. "Stop right there", you are no doubt saying. "If Hollywood decides to revisit that played out, 'three boys find a hubcap and rub it' plot one more time, I will just freak out man!!!" Yes, by now it's a bit of a cliche. But we think you will find that this particular "Three boys and a hubcap" story brings something new to the table: complete and utter incoherence. The message, is ostensibly, "values". And it's quite likely that back in the fifties, the term "values" had an entirely different meaning, as did "gay" or "internet".* But we've been unable to discern that meaning. Our best guess so far is that it meant "nougat". Join Mike, Kevin and Bill in the abandoned lot of your imagination, for Nougat: Understanding Ourselves. *It meant "gay", oddly enough.
The Calendar. Whether you choose a Far Side page-a-day, an Anne Geddes year-of-horror or Twelve Months of Lifeguards that May Be Used as Flotation Devices, one thing is certain: none of us know how to use the damn things. Fortunately, five minutes before recording The Calendar: How to Use It, the producers told a PA to pick up a guitar that he didn't know how to play and write some songs explaining the intricacies of the calendar. The result is quite possibly the most tuneless piece of garbage since The Beatles "Wild Honey Pie", except instead of the charming introductory act of "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da", The Calendar: How to Use It has two spandex clad adults who intrude in a young girl's bedroom in a fashion that Antoine Dodson would disapprove of. Suffice to say, you will be far more confused about the calendar by the time the thing is done. Mike, Kevin and Bill team up not only to riff this short, but also to open an eBay store selling vintage 1994 calendars, which are due to fully mature in value in 2017.
Our latest short takes its name from a famous quote from The Gospel of Matthew. Or maybe it was from the episode of Eek The Cat, "Eek vs the Flying Saucers." What's important is that even though our newest short derives its title from one of these two important works, its subject matter, the Attwater's Prairie Chicken, does not appear in either work (we're certain about the Eek the Cat episode, less up to speed on our book of Matthew.) Yes, at the time the short was made, the Attwater's Prairie Chicken appeared to be Booming it's way towards extinction. The chickens' famed Booming grounds, where they once Boomed by the hundreds of thousands, had been paved over for a Showbiz Pizza, leaving them Boom-less. (After repeated viewings of the short, we think Booming refers to some sort of dice game.) The short details the efforts of a few concerned citizens, with nothing, literally nothing better to do than to save some chickens who it appears were public enemy one of Natural Selection. Hastily taped cardboard boxes, helicopters mounted with huge Wile E. Coyote inspired nets and, yes, Booming, all figure prominently. Mike, Kevin and Bill take a break from Booming to riff Unto the Least of These.
When you ponder ideal Christmas entertainment for children, do you think of a centuries-old tradition of violent puppetry, complete with domestic abuse and offensive minstrel-themed puppets thrashing each other? Well, you’d better--what’s that? That IS what you think of? Exactly that? Yes, well I realize I asked, but it was intended as a rhetorical question, really a set-up for a joke--what’s that? Oh, well I suppose that is a rather hackneyed structure for making a point, but...you know what, why don’t you just get the hell out of here! For EVERYONE ELSE, Santa Claus’ Punch and Judy will serve as a disturbing, yet delightful, foray into puppet-based hate comedy that predates Jeff Dunham by hundreds of years! It’s a special treat, as avid Punch and Judy enthusiasts, known as “Punch men” (these people actually exist) have named this particular performance “the best to have come from the States” (this is an actual quote). Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for Santa Claus’ Punch and Judy: hilarious puppet mayhem that will have the kids laughing, and then sobbing in confusion, for years to come!
Do you like Courtesy? How about Egg Puns? After a few drinks, have you been known to expound at length about how Sheldon, the egg with legs, was truly the unsung hero of the US Acres segments of the late 80's animated show "Garfield and Friends"? Yes? You have? Then kindly stay away from us, as that is just a comedically specific quirk that we made up thinking that nobody could ever really have and it is really creepy that you actually do that. Instead of drinking and lecturing us, why not tune into the latest RiffTrax short, Courtesy: A Good Eggsample. Forgoing human actors, as Tommy Wiseau did in "The Room", and instead replacing them with eggs, Courtesy: A Good Eggsample breaks bold new ground in the field of courtesy education. Mainly it does this through a relentless combination of groaning egg puns and horrible synth music, stopping briefly at the end to inform us that we've learned an important lesson about courtesy. The stop-motion animation nature of the film leads us to believe that substantially more time was invested in this short than many of the ones we've done before, which makes it even more impressive that it fails to deliver a moral with even a shred of coherence. On the other hand, they resisted the urge to name the lead characters something as obvious as "Eggbert" and "Benedict." This just in, I'm being informed that, no, they in fact did not resist that urge. Mike, Kevin and Bill team up for eggseptional riffing on Courtesy: A Good Eggsample
Alfred Higgins Productions famously struck gold with their "demand for obedience masked as fun" short The Following Instructions Game. Flush with confidence and literally tens of dollars in money, the AHP crew tried to replicate their success with a pair of new "game" shorts: The Doing Your Own Laundry Game, followed by The Turning All the Matchsticks in the Box So They Face the Same Direction Game. They even took a shot at board games with Chutes & Don’t Ask Daddy So Many Damned Questions When He's Watching the Aerobics Channel. These projects were met with utter indifference from the public, and the company would have gone under if not for bankrolling from Alfred Higgins' infamous "pygmy milk bootlegging" fortune. But the light of success finally shone again with the release of The Being On Time Game! Fans were enraptured by the brilliant casting of a child who stunned with her Eleanor Roosevelt good looks. Even Mr. Mac was sprung from prison and convinced to resume his "creepy rhyming workshop freak" role. The critics raved, calling it "Definitely something that was filmed!" Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for an unforgettable round of The Being On Time Game! Don't be late or you'll lose bonus points and harvest eleven counter-demerit units (it's a very complicated game).
If you have Daily Problems at your work, the humanitarians at Coronet Films are here to help you Handle them. And assuming that most of your problems center around how ugly your 1970s co-workers are, this is just the film for you! We'll meet a nurse living out a real life Grey's Anatomy, with the part of McDreamy being played by "Dan"*, someone who cannot have ever been taken seriously by anybody. Then step into the shoes of a successful restaurant manager, who packs in the customers every night of the week despite sounding like a creepier version of serial killer Jame Gumb. Finally, we'll Shake Hands with Cattiness at a construction site where terrible facial hair threatens to undermine all we hold dear as a nation of free people. Basic Job Skills - Handling Daily Problems won't teach you anything new about how to act at work, but it may make the woman in the cubicle next to yours who hums the theme song to "Denver The Last Dinosaur" and calls her cats on the phone three times a day seem a bit less irritating in comparison. *We're pretty sure Dan is Reggie from Beginning Responsibility: Taking Care of Your Own Things all grown up.
Some people would say that good old-fashioned common courtesy is dead in modern times. And we here at RiffTrax think those ugly jerks should keep their crusty mouths closed if they know what’s good for ‘em! Oh, we’re kidding of course, but if you think we’d hold the elevator for you as you approached rather than hurriedly push the “Close Door” button while avoiding eye contact, you’ve got another thing coming. So maybe we’ve got some learning to do when it comes to courtesy (shocking, after the powerful breakfast-based examples of recent short Courtesy: A Good Eggsample) -- good thing we’ve got Courtesy Counts A Lot to set us straight! And what could be more instructive than animated vignettes about a young nerd getting his hot air balloon in a palm tree, only to be assaulted by a giraffe...or a ghostly clown crossing paths with an angry armadillo...Hm. Well, at least there’s a hideous 2-line song playing under the entire film, sung by a chorus of children who sound so nervous you have to wonder if they’ve recently spent time on a beach with Santa Claus and a certain dessert-based Bunny. Yes, Courtesy Counts A Lot -- and apparently causes schizophrenia! After learning the lessons of Courtesy Counts A Lot, Mike, Kevin, and Bill were trapped in the room for 3 hours attempting to let each other be the first out the door. The final result: bloodshed.
Meet The Customer, three time finalist for the title of Most Disrespected Man in America. No matter where he goes: the bank, the supermarket, even his job, somebody is waiting to ignore him, inconvenience him, or throw confetti in his face while laughing uproariously.* How does The Customer respond to this disrespect? By showing the merest hint of backbone and asserting himself ever so slightly? Or by absorbing life’s blows with dead eyes and muttering to himself that one day, he’ll show them... He’ll show them all!!! (He honestly does B. Seriously, it’s pretty creepy.) Mike, Kevin and Bill team up to riff the consumer education short, Remember Me, which is approximately 60,000,000% less tasteless than the Robert Pattinson movie, Remember Me. *Usually this only happens when he goes to Rip Taylor’s house
Imagine you are a 1950s elementary school student, and you have just walked to school. Sure, you didn’t really want to go, but now you’re there and ready to learn. Maybe enjoy a vintage Cold War-era nuclear bomb drill, a great opportunity to crawl under your desk. As you settle in, resting your legs which you have just used to walk to school, the teacher puts an educational film into the projector. The subject...Walking to School?!?! What!? But, but, that’s what you just did! It’s the one thing you DEFINITELY don’t need to learn! Just by virtue of BEING at school, it should be clear that...no, no, you calm yourself. Teacher knows what she’s doing, quell your rage, this film must have value. WRONG AGAIN! As the minutes of your life tick by, you see the film is nothing but an excruciating real-time enactment of two kids walking to school! And these particular kids happen to live absurdly far from their school, traversing overpasses, underground tunnels, and even unexplored regions of the Yukon in their voyage. And, wait, they’re brother and sister, why won’t they stop holding hands?! You hold your tongue and prepare to take out your stifled aggression on anyone who looks at you funny at recess later in the day, because it’s the 1950s and that’s just what you do. Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill as they hurl stale Twinkies at passing kids who are Walking to School. And once they’re done with that part of their everyday morning routine, they will watch the short Walking to School!
Oscar-nominated film The King’s Speech focuses on a world leader who struggles under the burden of a devastating speech impediment (or so we’ve been told, we were gonna see it but accidentally watched Birdemic 35 more times instead). If Improve Your Pronunciation had been around to help that troubled monarch, The King’s Speech would never have been made, providing an open slot in the Best Picture nominees list for another amazing film that has not received the award recognition it so richly deserves (....no, we’re not talking about Birdemic...okay, yes we are). Improve Your Pronunciation imagines speech instruction, not as a private lesson with a certified professional, but as a garish game show hosted by the one and only Ned Blandford! Yes, that’s actually his name, why would you ask? No, I don’t think you should look into his criminal record. Seriously, it won’t be good. Just watch as Ned takes the shame of these poor speakers, ”grunters”, and “smudgers”, and airs it out for the world to see! After learning the lessons of Improve Your Pronunciation, Mike, Kevin and Bill would like to say “Thbpppbt snorfk inamota Ryan Phillippe!”
Your Basic Job Skills, or more accurately, your lack thereof, are why you are no longer employed at Long John Silver's. Yes, we know you've been telling people it's because your manager, Navid, was a jerk. But really, how was he supposed to react when he caught you and Darrell in the walk-in trying to see how many hush puppies you could fit up your nose?* In Basic Job Skills: Dealing with Customers, you'll learn how to handle the biggest thorn in any menial employee's side: the customer. Whining, complaining, yelling, bleeding all over the floor because the Cabbage Patch Doll you sold them came alive in the middle of the night and tried to eat their hair, customers are the worst. Unfortunately, a fact of business in the modern era is that you need customers to survive (although that Pole Dancing Fitness Class / Do It Yourself Dog Wash place by us has stayed open for like three years and we've never seen a single person in there.) In this short, you'll examine three different jobs, and how they deal with customers. Mostly it's by passing the buck and acting like they are too busy to help out with an assigned task. If you're reading this at work, you are likely already familiar with these tactics. But it also touches on advanced methods, such as the dog trainer who didn't think she dealt with customers, until she realized that she does.** Mike, Kevin and Bill pry the hush puppies out of their noses and team up to riff Basic Job Skills: Dealing With Customers. *Five. You surprised even yourself that fateful day. **Yep.
Jaywalking! It's convenient, exciting, good for a laugh or two. But is it wise? To find out, let's watch The ABC of Walking Wisely, which weighs in on J-walking as well as the rest of the walking alphabet. Oh, you weren't aware there was an entire walking alphabet? You're not familiar with common phrases like O-walking and K-walking? Are you curious how to avoid these deadly pitfalls? Intrigued by the subtle differences between the A-Walker and the Y-Walker? Then this is the short for you! Pop in The ABC of Walking Wisely and watch a delightful collection of dumb kids play in traffic. If you notice a reduced desire to be a Q-Walker afterwards, you can thank us then. Mike, Kevin and Bill team up to riff The ABC of Walking Wisely, and more importantly, to walk around like the kid who thinks he's Sir Kay.
Few would argue that Visions in the Forest rarely end well, especially if they’re brought on by the special chocolates the hippie left at your campsite before he scurried off, muttering about spruce bark beetles. But there’s one thing we all can agree on: few Visions in the Forest are more terrifying than the sight of Vaughn Monroe’s family. Yes, Vaughn Monroe, best known for singing “Riders in the Sky” in the short Vision in the Forest, loves the great outdoors, and so does his family, despite the fact that two of them appear to be the living dead. His youngest daughter, who has yet to adopt the ghastly pallor so fancied by her mother and sister, encounters Smokey the Bear in the forest and learns an important lesson: stay the hell away from grown men who dress as Smokey the Bear and lurk around the forest. Mike, Kevin and Bill each experienced “Visions in the Forest”* during the riffing of this short.
A Badger’s Bad Day is the harrowing tale of a Badger who works as a middle manager at a cell phone case manufacturing plant. He returns home after a particularly exhausting shift to discover a window broken on his house, and the front door ajar. His family is gone, but there are signs of a struggle. A bloody knife is discovered in the bathroom sink, and a severed toe is prominently placed on the kitchen table, on top of a taunting ransom note. Badger, filled with rage, must hunt down his family’s abductors on a journey that will uncork the decades of repressed rage he had worked so hard...so hard to keep down...Sure, Badger’s having a Bad Day...But for the kidnappers, it’s about to get even worse... What’s that? Not even remotely resembling the plot of this short? In reality, Badger just gets sprayed by a skunk and then encounters other woodland creatures who seem more indifferent than hostile to him? Well I guess that wouldn’t really equal a “Good Day.” Though does that by definition make it a “Bad Day”? Some might say...dear god! Is that a toe on my kitchen table!?! Oh wait, no, it’s a Cheeto. Mmm, delicious... Mike, Kevin and Bill consider any day involving badgers to be a Good Day.
Anybody who strapped in for the thrill ride that was Families: Food and Eating probably assumes they got the whole story. Three families from three different countries prepared food, and they ate it. Knuckle-whitening stuff, no doubt, but could there possibly be more? Hold on to your culturally-appropriate hat, because THERE SURE IS!! That food didn’t just come from nowhere, sonny, and Families: Earning and Spending is here to fill you in! All the stereotypical families are back. The smug, stoned San Franciscans, the efficient, unsmiling Japanese, and the hard-working, thank-God-they-can’t-see-the-spoiled-San-Francisco-family Mexicans! It’s a full-on prequel...or is it a series reboot? Hm. Well, the characters are the same, so, leaning prequel...but there’s definitely some retcon happening, though, so probably reboot? Eh, who knows. We’ll just have to let the rabid, Hitler-invoking commenters over at the “Families Shorts Series Wiki” fight it out! Join Mike, Kevin and Bill and spend a little well-earned time with Families: Earning and Spending!
Kangaroos - considered by many to be one of the top five marsupials in the world for drunken Irishmen to box, these creatures remain elusive and mysterious to most of us. (Exception: local kangaroo hoarder Crazy Dennis.) The creatively titled short film Kangaroos should put an end to all your questions, especially if your question is “Are there no kangaroos in America because many years ago they were all eaten by Wild Lions” which the short would have you believe is answered "Yes." Another question that will be answered affirmatively by this short? "Are kangaroos horrible, terrifying creatures that we would all be better off without?" Mike, Kevin and Bill, despite their best preparations, still had the validity of their knives questioned during the recording of this short.
The story begins with The Red Hen’s brother and their parents being slaughtered by the evil Queen Gedren’s army because The Red Hen rejected the Queen’s sexual advances. The Red Hen survives violent assault by Gedren’s troops, and even gives Gedren a kind of souvenir: a brutal scar on her face. Later that night, The Red Hen is visited by a spirit who grants her the strength to seek her revenge. In her quest, The Red Hen accepts the company of the mighty Lord Kalidor, but also gives him a warning: she will never lie with any man unless he can defeat her in a swordfight. Kalidor challenges her and they spar, but neither of them is able to defeat the other. They call it a draw. Kalidor at least wins her heart. Description of our new short The Red Hen or slightly-altered synopsis of 1985 Brigitte Nielsen & Arnold Schwarzenegger flick Red Sonja? Impossible to say. But, either way, there will be plenty of hijinks involving duck urine (that part is true) when you join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for the tale of bloody revenge/docile farm life that is The Red Hen!
What do ice-skating reindeer, pipe-smoking santas and a parade of aquatic champions have in common? You’ll see them all in the RiffTrax Live: Christmas Shorts-Stravaganza! The stars of Mystery Science Theater 3000® have a sackfull of delightful and demented shorts to riff live onstage. Some of the forgotten gems of Christmases past prove to be the perfect targets for the rapid-fire riffs of Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett. And if that wasn’t enough, they’re even joined by comedy legend “Weird Al" Yankovic for a musical short about the wonders of pork! It’s funnier than Ernest Saves Christmas and far less creepy than The Polar Express! Join Mike, Kevin, Bill and Al for a festive night of hilarious holiday comedy that is destined to become traditional Christmas viewing.
Most of us know the basics of dental hygiene. Brush after after every nine breaths, floss with a business card on public transportation, and gargle with Mountain Dew. So to be honest, it’s fairly insulting that the producers of Tooth Truth with Harv and Marv thought we needed an entire instructional video. And while it may be insulting that they thought this, the reality of their unspeakable creation verges much more towards horrifying. Harv and Marv are twisted little hobo/imp/hobbits, with laughs that rival the Ice Cream Bunny’s in terms of future scream-yourself-awake nightmares. And see that creature in the Tooth Truth poster? Looks like someone who should be playing Poison covers at a country fair right? Well, that’s the Tooth Fairy in this sick universe! That’s right, she sneaks into your children’s bedrooms after they are asleep and pays them for pieces of their mouth! Mike, Kevin and BIll team up to riff Tooth Truth with Harv and Marv, the pinnacle of the mismatched buddy tooth instructional video genre.
Before going any further, we should stop to let you know that our new short County Fair was produced by ACI, the same acid-fueled company that brought us the notorious Grasses short. We’ll pause now while those of you who have seen Grasses stop reading this immediately to purchase County Fair. Ah, the rural county fair -- the kind of place that everyone takes their children, then immediately remembers that county fairs are no place for children, or decent folk of any age. Carnies, deep-fried treats that make the KFC Double Down seem like a heart-healthy option, and rides that are either 100% rust or coated in the blood of previous riders, there’s no end to the number of ways a county fair wants to kill you. County Fair takes this bacteria farm of an environment and adds new levels of terror, with songs straight out of a bottomless David Lynch fever dream. Dip your funnel cake in liquid mescaline and join Mike, Kevin, and Bill on the ferris wheel to eternity with County Fair!
Quick! Say the first word that comes to mind when I mention porcupines. Ok... Sure, why not...That one’s not really what we're looking for, but keep 'em coming...Ok, that's a little weird that you thought of that...Oh god! How would that even work!?!? You know what, let's stop that exercise. NOT the results we were expecting. How would you even get the banana out of the rubber chicken once you were hooked on to the trapeze? You know what, it's not important. The word we were looking for was "salt". That's right, porcupines like the star of our latest short, Prickly, love salt and will stop at nothing to get one sweet, sweet lick of the decidedly non-sweet substance. Dont believe us? Possibly because you've never heard this so-called "fact" before and it sounds like it needs to be accompanied by a big fat, 72 point Wikipedia-style "citation needed" label? We agree that it does. So here's our citation: Prickly the Porcupine, a great new short in which one brave porcupine goes off in search of all the salt his heart desires. Of course, we just did a short that claimed there were no kangaroos in America because Wild Lions ate them all. So you probably should take anything you learn in them with a grain of...Dammit! Prickly ate the end of the sentence!
The internet era is filled with mysterious, indecipherable messages. The comment “firsties” on an article - what could it possibly mean, and what purpose could it serve? An all-caps email forwarded by your grandmother warning of the potential dangers of the ethanol gasoline conspiracy...but only after scrolling past thousands of strange, hieroglyphic “>” symbols. Or a text message like “lolwut gmafb rusrsly X-D”, which, according to the work of our finest crypto-linguists, translates roughly to “Pass the frog-banana, Harold.” But our new short The Mysterious Message shows that failures in communication happened even back in the ancient period known as Pre-Geocitian! In those days, something called “handwriting” was the culprit. Now used primarily for that one actual check you still have to begrudgingly write each month (ugh, rent) handwriting was once so common that a faux-scary short film with a faux-good Vincent Price impersonating narrator had to be made! From an easily-baffled mailman to a lovelorn secret admirer to a rollerskating waitress, you’ll shudder at the totally avoidable terror! Since riffing The Mysterious Message, Mike, Kevin, and Bill have taken to writing all tweets and texts in pen. So far they have destroyed 14 cell phone screens and a stranger’s laptop.
Sometimes it’s really hard to be a good sport. Like when your fifth grade basketball team gets embarrassed 41-17 on the court, so you convince all the boys on your team to hock a loogie into their palms before shaking hands with the winning team. Then the goody-two-shoes on your team, James, rats you out to coach and you get in big trouble. So, as kids do, you dedicate your life to developing an elaborate revenge plan against James, culminating in cut brake lines and you doing 10 years hard time for no good reason. Hey, we’ve all been there, am I right? Kids will be kids! Our new short, Being a Good Sport, tries to help you avoid such scenarios, but mainly just proves that snotty kids who don’t play well with others should be shunned for the safety of everyone involved. Embracing these adorable little psychopaths will earn you nothing but a knife in the back! Consider yourself warned! On their way to riffing Being a Good Sport, Mike, Kevin and Bill played a friendly game of rock paper scissors to decide who got shotgun. The fistfight that ensued lasted until sundown and destroyed 3 residential blocks.
Animals make their homes in lots of fun, interesting places! Some burrow into tree bark, while others burrow into the dense, matted armpit hair of a bench-napping Nick Nolte! Some gather twigs and leaves to construct nests, while others nest in the exhaust pipe of the inoperative Dodge Pacer in which Nick Nolte resides! Some dig elaborate underground tunnel systems, while others dig tunnels in the massive stack of restraining orders, ignored subpoenas, and unpaid adult pay-per-view bills that Nick Nolte keeps around so that he has something to wipe up his sick! Mike, Kevin, and Bill invite you to join them for Animal Homes, which provides a window into the everyday lives of gophers, opossums, and other hideous rodent beasts that you usually only get to see on the side of the freeway, being very, very still!
Sure, great, here we go..."beginning" responsibility, and "getting" ready for school. Hey kids, how about for once you just GET responsible and BE ready for school? We’re tired of coddling you! Oh, you can’t eat your breakfast, because we put the plate up on top of the fridge and you can’t reach it because you’re only five years old? Yeah well everyone’s got some kind of sob story, just figure it out buddy! Oh, sure, cry, guess you don’t need any help learning how to “begin” doing THAT. Inexplicable rage aside, Beginning Responsibility: Getting Ready for School centers on two wholesome 1950s lads, Pete and Ricky, and their morning routines. One boy’s home runs as smoothly as a Swiss watch, while the other is as disorganized and maddeningly chaotic as one of those Canadian watches you never hear about (and now you know why).
Who among us doesn’t love a good adventure? A chance to escape our routines and stimulate our minds and reinvigorate our sense of fun. Yes, there’s nothing like the thrill you get from emerging from your burrow, nervously looking around, and perhaps grabbing a nut before darting back underground to huddle amongst your brothers. What’s that? Not exactly how you define adventure? Something more along the lines of travelling, camping, whitewater rafting? Well, I apologize. I didn’t clarify that I was using the definition of adventure as found in the latest RiffTrax short Adventures of a Chipmunk Family. It’s packed to the brim with adventures, if you consider expanding the series of underground tunnels that the chipmunks live in in preparation for winter to be an adventure. Also, a weasel shows up. You know what, we probably should have mentioned that first...Forget everything you just read and remember this: weasel. Mike, Kevin and Bill tried to weasel out of riffing this short until they realized there was a weasel in it. Just wanted to emphasize that, yes, there is a weasel in this short. Weasel.
GET TO DA CHOPPA!!! Many of us have heard these iconic instructions hundreds of times. They’ve been shouted at us during important life events: graduations, weddings, or most likely, watching Predator hungover at two in the afternoon at Dan’s. Few of us ever take the shouter up on the Choppa-getting-to however. Except Billy! Billy is a boy who acts where the rest of us cower in fear, or perhaps ask Dan to pass us the gatorade. Make no bones about it, in Billy’s Helicopter Ride, Billy gets to da Choppa. The fact that Da Choppa is driven by Uncle Joe, who looks like he was rejected from the Grapes of Wrath cast on the grounds of being “too drifter-like”, does not deter Billy’s father from letting Billy take an unaccompanied tour of their town in the helicopter. While touring their town they see many exciting things such as: their town from a slightly elevated position than normal. Will Billy seize the controls in a manic episode and plunge the helicopter downward, spiralling towards their doom? Yes he will!* So buy it and witness every thrilling second of Billy’s Helicopter Ride! *An utter lie.
Yes, the short that brought the house down at RiffTrax Live, answering questions about paper that nobody was asking, is now available in a brand-new studio version! By now the sick, sad tale of young Willie and his demented belief in a talking paper bag, whom he names Mr. Paperbag (proving that “crazy” and “creative” don’t always go hand in hand) is the stuff of legend. Their nightly adventures to the forests of the American South will remind you of Bonnie & Clyde, if you don’t know anything about Bonnie & Clyde and assume that they mostly talked about paper. Willie learns a lot from his creepy little friend, primarily about the meaning of loss as Mr. Paperbag crumples and dies before his very eyes! (no, seriously, that happens!) Mike, Kevin and Bill have never had a conversation with a paper bag, unless you count the ones containing giant bottles of MD 20/20.
Aesop’s Fables. These stories, with their universal morals, have inspired us all. Tales such as “The Fox and the Grapes”, “The Lion and the Mouse” and “The Two Cat/Bear things that go to the North Pole and one dies but comes back to life and they see a polar bear.” Not familiar with the last one you say? Perhaps you remember it by its more common name Frozen Frolics. No? We’re pretty sure it’s one of Aesop’s Fables, it says so right on the title screen... Anyhow, Frozen Frolics answers that eternal question, “What was it like when people took acid before color had been invented?” The answer? Lots of black and white cartoon animals that sort of bob up and down repeatedly while a crazed mixture of consequence free violence happens all around them. Many credit it as the inspiration for The Jerry Springer Show. Mike, Kevin and Bill learned a very important moral during their riffing of Frozen Frolics: cured meats are delicious.
Ever since this short debuted at RiffTrax Live, we’ve heard one question more than any other: “Why are you standing so close to me?” But a VERY CLOSE second to that is, “When are you guys gonna release that insane Grasses short??” Friends, you need ask no longer! Unless you were one of the people asking the first question, in which case the answer is “It’s a free country, I’ll stand where I want. Hey, you gonna finish that Hostess fruit pie?” Here, in a new studio version, is At Your Fingertips: Grasses. It’s got everything! Arts & crafts so awful they would even disappoint Depression-era children, fancy headdresses galore, and child worship of a terrifying clay-faced god! Not to mention a certain inquiry about corn that ranks up there with “Who is Keyser Soze?” as one of cinema’s great questions. While recording At Your Fingertips: Grasses, Mike, Kevin, and Bill kept something else at their fingertips: lots and lots of bourbon.
Let’s just be upfront: this is a sequel to the infamous Grasses short and you should buy it right away. Yes, the mad geniuses at ACI films have recruited a new group of children to glance nervously at the authority figures standing off-camera as they’re forced to make crafts out of common household garbage. This time, the waste product of choice is cardboard boxes. Yes, before Calvin and Hobbes turned a cardboard box into a transmogrifier, the children in this short were showing similar sparks of imagination by pretending to assemble crafts that were clearly made by adults when the camera wasn’t rolling. There are no fancy headresses in this short, but you will witness an entire city made of blocks, complete with corpses floating in a motel pool. Also, two youngsters live out every child’s fantasy and use boxes to set up their own furniture moving business. And it wouldn’t be an At Your Fingertips short without twisted creatures brought into existence through the power of rubber cement and undiagnosed psychosis. At Your Fingertips: Boxes continues the proud tradition of its predecessor. Mike, Kevin and Bill can only look forward to At Your Fingertips: Pizza Savers.
A cutting, thoughtful, and sober analysis of the coming world energy crisis, Borrowed Power affirms -- WAIT WAIT DON’T GO just kidding!! It’s really about an extaordinarily ugly teenager killing someone with his car! Or did he? That question is the raw mystery of this driving scare film, which brings to life the character of young, reckless, hideous Jerry, and his equally unpleasant friends. In his hurry to get to a sock hop, or a malt shop, or some other dull and awful thing old-timey teenagers did to pass the time until video games and psychedelic drugs became available, Jerry drives his giant car like a gosh-darned fool. After his (potentially) lethal ride, he’s scolded by a vaguely governmental official who calls in Jerry’s parents, who somehow take the ugly levels EVEN HIGHER! You won’t believe your eyes! Mike, Kevin, and Bill have taken the key lesson of Borrowed Power to heart, namely, whatever you do, try not to be outrageously ugly while doing it.
There are lots of places you could take eggs. You could take eggs to a party! You could take eggs to the museum! You could take eggs to prom! You could take eggs to the workplace of your romantic rival, lock his office door from the inside and then plug in a hot plate, put a skillet onto that hot plate and slowly, one-by-one, crack the eggs on the edge of the skillet, letting them sizzle as you maintain steady eye contact with this man, your nemesis, as his terror grows exponentially in the face of your unflinching refusal to answer his questions about why you’re there and what you’re going to do to him. Or you could take Eggs to Market! From filthy chicken cages to depressed factory workers to big goopy buckets of yolk matter, Eggs to Market is full of delightful behind-the-scenes egg-packaging fun! Mike, Kevin, and Bill enjoyed Eggs to Market, but it did nothing to change their view that eggs should primarily be used as bacon grease delivery systems.
Juan and His Donkey! Rockin’ your commute on KBLZ 105.3! Stay tuned because we’ve got our producer Timmy The Gimp in nothing but a kilt out in front of a funeral home, and a guy in a turkey costume is gonna blast him with paint balls! It’s gonna be off the- Wait, what? Juan and His Donkey is not a wacky morning show DJ Team? It’s an educational short from Coronet, part of the popular “A Boy Of ____” series? Are you sure? I mean, that sounds feasible, but what is it meant to teach exactly? Hm...Cultural differences...I dunno. Seems like it’s just going to prove dated and offensive...You’re sure we can’t just run with the Morning Zoo thing? Well fine. A Boy of Mexico: Juan and His Donkey is NOT wacky, and there are no interns harassing old ladies. The donkey isn’t even painted like a zebra. But this tale of a poor Mexican boy who chops firewood for a living and longs for nothing more than to buy his donkey Pepito a new serape is quite dated and proves quite ripe for riffing. Especially when a rich city slicker runs out of gas and Juan and Pepito stumble across him and ROCK HIS COMMUTE on KBLZ 105- OW! Don’t hit, we’ll stop! Mike, Kevin and Bill are not rockin’ your commute with traffic on the nines. Leave them alone on the nines.
When you ask a company like ACI, makers of the now-infamous “Grasses” and “Boxes” shorts, to create a film teaching kids to count to ten, there are three things of which you can be certain. One, you can count on the fact that if you’re talking to someone at ACI, they are attempting to speak to you on a telephone made out of old, damp egg cartons. Two, you know the end product they give you will not teach children how to count, but WILL teach them how to succumb to the chaos of life and turn their backs on reason with whimsy and a shaky, nervous smile. Three, well, we’d list a third thing here, but we learned to count from ACI and frankly, after two we always get confused and take a nap under the kitchen sink. One Turkey, Two Turkey plunges the viewer gobble-deep into the hideous, squawking world of a commercial turkey farm. Juxtaposing images of these terrified birds awaiting execution with a cheerful, legitimately catchy song about counting is just the sort of special touch that only ACI could give. (note: other “special touches” given by ACI have resulted in criminal charges) Mike, Bill, & Kevin were so disoriented after riffing One Turkey, Two Turkey that they picked up forks and knives and chased each other in a … Read more » circle for a full 3 hours before someone had the sense to fry up some bacon and snap them out of it.
It’s summer vacation! School’s out and you have all the time in the world to hang with your best bud and...ponder the meaning of nothingness? In What is Nothing? we join two youngsters who, as all rascals do, sit around and contemplate the void. Whether they’re journeying to the library to look up “Nothing” in the dictionary, or coming up with profound truths such as “caterpillars matter to caterpillars”, one thing is certainly true: we want some of whatever these kids are on. What is Nothing? will have you longing for the bygone days of your youth, when entire days could be spent eating cookies, riding bikes, silently screaming about your own insignificance and watching Gilligan’s Island reruns. Mike, Kevin and Bill yell riffs into the abyss on What is Nothing? Oh wait, that’s not an abyss...That is a microwave oven somebody left on the side of the road.
We Discover the Dictionary weaves the enchanting tale of three grade school children who discover the dictionary for the first time. And that’s all well and good: they use it to write a thank you note to a police officer who must have lost a bet or something, because he had to come talk to their class about bike safety. But if we may nitpick for just a second... As far as discoveries go, “Discovering the Dictionary” probably ranks down there with Columbus “discovering” America in terms of least impressive feats. First of all, the dictionary, much like America, was already there the whole time. It was just sitting on teacher’s desk, gathering dust. Second, much like America, people were already using the dictionary before these three idiots found it. In fact, it’s hard to argue that anybody could “discover” the dictionary when it’s in fact a book created by other people. Thirdly, these children immediately begin to abuse the dictionary, looking up words like “poop” and “weiner.” Sure, this isn’t quite offering smallpox blankets to women and children, but monsters come in all shapes and sizes!!! Sorry...Sorry...we just found out we don’t get Columbus Day off from work and are kind of bitter. Don’t get us started on the Pinta either… Join Mike, Kevin and Bill as they discover the dictionary, ignore the thesaurus and drop Bartlett’s Book of Quotations on a reallly gross beetle.
When you see the title of our new short, Feelings: I’m Feeling Alone, you might think to yourself “Alone? That’s gotta be the saddest thing you could put after the words ‘I’m Feeling’ in an educational short meant for small children.” Not so! Consider these other titles in the series. “Feelings: I’m Feeling My Ex-Girlfriend’s Wet Doormat When She’s Not Home.” Or “Feelings: I’m Feeling Like the Last Bit of Hamster Food in the Bowl that Even my Disgusting Hamser Won’t Eat.” Then there’s “Feelings: I’m Feeling the Grooves in Mickey Rourke’s face,” and, last but not least, “Feelings: I’m Feeling Like Seeing Transformers 3 with my Wife on our Anniversary.” A whimsical, musical foray into the infinite sadness of childhood, Feelings: I’m Feeling Alone went the extra mile to bum out schoolkids, who were already pretty bummed out because they were watching awful educational shorts in school. And if you think the short builds to a resolution or offers kids any kind of hope for the future, you clearly haven’t watched enough of our shorts! Grab that blanky you’ve had since you were four and join Mike, Bill, and Kevin for Feelings: I’m Feeling Alone. What’s that? You lost that blanky? A college ex shredded it out of spite? Wow. That’s...that’s pretty sad. *siiiigh*
Setting Up a Room is about two women setting up a kindergarten classroom. It lasts for 27 minutes. To attempt to explain anything more about it would be an act of futility. It is one of the most baffling pieces we’ve ever encountered here at RiffTrax. It may not be for everyone. Like one of those Magic Eye images, you may have to stare at it for a little while before its brilliance snaps into place. Fortunately, you will have plenty of time to do this, because as we mentioned earlier, it is 27 minutes long. No detail of the room-setting-up is unaddressed. Blocks are put away one by one. Cubby doors are tested to make sure they can fully be opened. Pegboard placement is hotly debated. And all the while a simmering resentment bubbles beneath the surface between the two leads. Probably because they were forced to appear in a 27 minute short instructing other adults how to set up a room. We’ve already said to much. Please join Mike, Kevin and Bill for one of the greatest things you will ever witness.
Many of the educational shorts we riff seem to have been designed not to teach children, but instead to confuse them into a state of dizzy, nauseous acceptance. Most try to hide this deception with an authoritative narrator, some pretense of structure, or official-sounding “key terms.” Our new offering, Join Hands, Let Go! makes no such attempt, and in fact is so bold as to put contradictory instructions right in the title! Do we join hands, or do we let go? Who are the children in this film? Where are they going, and why? Is the mustachioed man with the wacky outfits connected in any way? Is he a good man or a bad man? He seems like a bad man. Will I ever go to college, or even learn basic math, if we keep watching films like this in school? The answer Join Hands, Let Go! provides to all these questions is a firm, definitive, “whatever.” Too odd to describe, too useless to be believed, you must join Mike, Kevin, and Bill as they succumb to the brightly-colored nonsense brainfart that is Join Hands, Let Go!
Do you ever get scared? Do you ever get the creeps? More importantly, are both of these questions wildly inappropriate for an educational short to pose to a bunch of nine year olds? Of course they are, yet The Creeps Machine soldiers on with whatever its mission might be. In theory, it’s supposed to reassure kids that they can conquer their fears. It does this by springing a hideous clown named Old Bobo upon them, thereby guaranteeing that they never sleep for the rest of their childhood, which fortunately will end much sooner once they’ve witnessed The Creeps Machine. The Creeps Machine features lurking old men, Rube Goldberg devices, a menacing gorilla’s hand, zero coherence and of course, Old Bobo. In other words, perfect educational fodder for Mike, Kevin and Bill to riff.
A discussion of great, important series would be incomplete without mention of Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, Twin Peaks, and, of course, the “Boy of” shorts. We’ve previously presented A Boy of Mexico: Juan and His Donkey, and our new installment doesn’t disappoint in fulfilling the naming scheme of “Boy of [country]: [name of boy from that country] and His [stereotypical animal from that country].” Told through the eyes of a narrator who insists on inserting himself into the story of Rama’s family life even though he never appears on screen, and there’s no reason to think the people in the short know he exists, it is a sweet tale of physical labor, visibly moist living conditions, and heaps and heaps of elephant feces. Despite this, the film contains less excrement than NBC’s “Outsourced”, which was 100% excrement. Grab whatever animal best represents your background (for most of us, a stuffed Ewok doll) and join Mike, Kevin and Bill for Boy of India: Rama and His Elephant!
It's true that the educational shorts we dig up have been described as “less educational than an episode of The Jersey Shore” in a review from Bizarrely Contrived Comparison magazine. Shown in classrooms, they formed young minds, in the sense that stomping a jar of wet clay flat is still a way of “forming” it. But our new short What Are Letters For? takes the miseducation of America’s youth to a bold new level, by teaching the alphabet yet LEAVING OUT certain letters. Which letters? That arrogant but rare Z, or perhaps the co-dependent Q that refuses to work without its U? No, they’ve instead plucked out all the vowels, those pesky soft letters that you almost never see in any words ever. Teamed up with random animals and objects, this short is easily your best bet for helping kids unlearn what scraps of language they might have learned! They’ll be committed to an illiterate future with no job prospects beyond fry cook, or popular tween vampire novelist. Having happily adopted the short’s distate for vowels, Mk, Kvn, nd Bll sk y t jn thm fr Wht r Lttrs Fr?
Meet The Wordsmith! Some say this wacky old gent has a way with words! Good thing, since he lives on the Island of Grammaria, where he runs a workshop teaching all the little boys and girls the rules of...Say, is that a monkey over there in the corner of the workshop? It is! Boy, this is going to be one heck of a short! What’s that you say, Wordsmith? Ignore the monkey, and focus on basic sentence construction? OK, OK...So, the predicate is always followed by the - I’m sorry, it’s just kind of hard with the monkey right there. It’s just that it’s bound to do something hilarious any minute and - Right, grammar. Focus on grammar. You were saying how a sentence is like a treasure map because it doesn’t make any sense if you don’t follow it in the proper LOOK, WHY WOULD YOU HAVE A MONKEY IN THIS SHORT IF YOU’RE NOT GOING TO EVEN ACKNOWLEDGE THE MONKEY!? WHY TEASE US THAT WAY?! WHY!!! WHY!!! WH-!!! We here at RiffTrax would like to apologize for the previous copy, which was written by an intern driven mad by the inexplicable fact that this lengthy short refuses to acknowledge the presence of a background monkey throughout its duration. Well, he was either driven mad by that or by The Sentencesmith’s hideous nightcrawler-like lips. The point is, he’s dead now. Mike, Kevin and Bill will never refuse to acknowledge the monkey.
For decades, the phrase “I’m looking for a job in cosmetology” has been a great, positive way to let your girlfriend know it’s probably in her best interests to seek a more compatible mate. Cosmetology is a profession traditionally filled with glamour, cutting-edge chic, and hip, attractive stylists--and our new short Jobs in Cosmetology manages to include none of those things! Even better, it presents a 1960s paradise of dead-eyed matrons squirting what appear to be bottles of diner BBQ sauce onto enormous beehive haircuts. It’s garish, hideous, and baffling--in short, the kind of thing we here at RiffTrax live for. Grab a magazine and plop down in a salon chair next to Mike, Bill, and Kevin for Jobs in Cosmetology! (And please, help us convince Kevin the full-body perm is a bad idea...)
“What Makes Things Float?” It’s no longer just something for your stoned roommate to mumble before he spreads Nutella on a Chipwich. It’s also an educational short which features two boys who just want to get some damn fishing done but are instead incessantly lectured by an off-camera stranger. Floating, as it turns out, is pretty complicated to figure out. After breaking new ground in determining that fishing sinkers do not float (this required a 3.2 million dollar grant), we’re taken to a science lab, that clearly did not receive any of this grant money. Here, a motley collection of misfit equipment that looks like its sole purpose is to inflict injury upon young scientist’s eye region, is used to determine “What Makes Things Float?” How exactly is this determined? Sand. Lots of sand. If you’re a petulant Jedi, you may want to stay clear of this lab. Instead, stay in your fishing boat with Mike, Kevin and Bill. They’ll only end up drinking all your beer and daring each other to eat your bait.
There’s no two ways about it, Let’s Pretend: Magic Sneakers is a gleeful, brightly-colored, downright whimsical piece of insane evil. A young boy, grime-encrusted as a train hobo, has seemingly been left to fend for himself in a glum warehouse district. He plays with the garbage he can find, all the while smiling and laughing, probably because his brain is collapsing into a vegetative state from going days without food. Among the filth, he discovers the Magic Sneakers, which can dance and move all on their own! Overjoyed at finding intact footwear, the boy follows the sneakers on what’s sure to be an uplifting adventure (or at least, a trip to a place where he can get some soup)...but no, the sneakers cruelly lead him through a drainage ditch to the kind of remote wilderness location where people tend to “disappear.” Things get even more sinister when a cloaked figure (who looks more like a violent meth addict from Breaking Bad than a playful spirit) appears, his sneaker trap successful! Is there hope for the boy? Have we maybe imposed a little more darkness on this story than is necessarily there? Join Mike, Kevin and Bill in the twisted world of Let’s Pretend: Magic Sneakers to find out!
Every community needs a Broken Bookshop. You’ll find it in town square, over by the Moth-Ridden Mattress Hut, just around the corner from Shaky Sam’s Shattered Stemware Emporium. Because it’s not enough to buy a used book, what you really want is a book that’s been abused, stained, made damp, shredded, and then painstakingly reconstructed into something you would still rather not touch, let alone buy. That’s the sound business model featured in our new short, Beginning Responsibility: Broken Bookshop. It focuses on the sweet old man who owns the shop and happens to secretly BELIEVE THAT BOOKS TALK TO HIM. His delusional senility may seem folksy and charming, until he brings an innocent boy into his world of pointless book repair. When he aggressively insists to young Andy “My books talk to me, and maybe they’ll talk to you too!” you know that this shop deals not only in broken books, but also broken hopes and dreams for the future. At first glance we thought this short was a documentary on Borders, then we realized the title says “Broken,” not “Broke.” Join Mike, Kevin and Bill as they take a brief rest from their busy book-destroying schedule to riff Beginning Responsibility: Broken Bookshop!
What child wouldn’t want a wild crow as a pet?...is a question you might sincerely ask if you had never encountered children or crows before. Crows, the repulsive, squawking harpies of the suburban skyline! Crows, the chosen pet of that drunken buffoon Uncle Billy in It’s A Wonderful Life!! Crows: where do they go at night? Nobody knows, and that’s the most terrifying thing of all!!! But when one family’s attempts at warding off the sinister black hearted beasts fails (because their scarecrow is less intimidating a Cabbage Patch Doll*), they decide to do the only logical thing and flee the harbingers of doom. No, of course they don’t; they devise a crude trap to capture it. It works almost instantly, presumably because this is exactly what the crows want to happen. After a couple weeks of feeding the crow beans** in its cage, they name it Corky and it becomes a lovable member of the family. But then...! Everything turns out alright actually... Except for a teacher that on a scale of “ladylike” to “very mannish” ranks as a “deluxe Eleanor Roosevelt”, who swoops in after it wraps up to harangue the elementary school children that watched this short about what they learned about crows. Mike, Kevin and Bill learned that they should stop every short before the haranguing begins. *So, still quite terrifying **Yep
Oh, you like reading, do you? You like reading just the way it is now, you say? Well tough, because here’s how reading is gonna be FROM NOW ON. From now on, reading will only be done upside-down, see? And someone’s gonna drip flat Pepsi into your nose while you read, you get me? And we better not catch you reading outside of a derelict tire factory, because derelict tire factories are officially the ONLY places that reading will be tolerated from now on, okay, wise guy? And no more books, from now on you’re only gonna read the labels on your grandpa’s medicine, and if you complain, you’ll lose privileges to read anything except the letter “Q”, capische? Those rules have nothing to do with our new short, but we do believe in them and will enforce them aggressively. Reading From Now On is the tale of a young, comically illiterate boy who lives in the shadow of an older brother who arrogantly shoves his book-learnin’ in everyone’s face. Will our hero crumble under the sibling pressure, learn to read, or fake learning to read by memorizing the names of a few pictures and shouting them on demand? Who knows, but it’s probably the last one! Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for the classic revenge story, Reading From Now On!
The 1970s were an exciting era in the world of educational shorts. The films shifted focus from “attempting to teach kids something practical” to “reminding them that life is a yawning, silent void with no purpose or warmth.” Yes, Friends puts the FUN back in ennui! It’s full of those treasured childhood memories we all share. Like when a girl finds a gigantic, broken TV antenna in a trashcan, and drags it behind her for the rest of the day. Or when an even weirder girl offers her money in exchange for friendship, which leads to crying, and eventually to that most iconic of games - the plum fight! Chucking ripe fruit at each other in an abandoned brick ruin, these girls learn the true meaning of friendship: no one is really on your side, and no one understands. Time for recess, kids! Grab a juicebox (grape ‘n dust flavor) and join Mike, Kevin, and Bill in the chummy abyss of companionship called Friends!
Running a Lemonade Stand is a childhood rite of passage, much like going off the high dive or finding a bloated corpse floating in the swimming pool right after you went off the high dive. Whipping up a bunch of artificially lemon flavored substance and selling it to neighborhood adults who would have preferred a beer was, for many of us, our first step towards becoming the financially responsible adults we are today, adults who would really prefer it if you waited until the end of the week to cash that check we just wrote you. The short The Lemonade Stand ponders the eternal question of What’s Fair? When one partner blows off selling lemonade to toss around the old horsehide, the other wonders who the hell still uses the expression “toss around the old horsehide.” When their lemonade sales skyrocket during the partner’s absence, he’s left with a tough decision: whether or not to screw over the Winklevoss twins and abscond with all the profits. The Lemonade Stand: What’s Fair? is an intriguing corporate thriller, that also features a little boy who performs an entire scene with a lemonade cup in his mouth. Mike, Kevin and Bill would have preferred a beer.
The Clean Club was created to teach kids about basic hygiene and washing habits, and it’s our dear hope that it will find new life as an instructional film shown at Comic-Con registration. It’s a horrific tale of children who have reached such hobo-in-a-ditch levels of filth they become delusional, and start to believe that ordinary bathroom objects are talking to them, sometimes in disturbingly seductive voices. And if you’re not gonna listen to sexy dental floss, who are you gonna listen to? The short also introduces us to some nauseating claymation germs who would make the Garbage Pail Kids shiver, locked in fierce combat in a battle against soap for their own survival. The important lesson: every time you wash behind your ears, you are inflicting gruesome death upon the goofy anthropomorphic germs who live there happily. Kill, kids! Kill for your own survival! It’s your only hope! Mike, Kevin and Bill have been denied membership to The Clean Club ever since the launch of their failed business venture, Foxy Septic Tank Wrestling. (It looked good on paper!!!)
Sometimes, we find something special. Something so strange, so distinct, and so wonderfully sad that by the time it ends we’re curled on the floor, guts cramped from laughing, clutching clumps of our own freshly-pulled hair as the keepers come to usher us back into our comfortable pens. David and Hazel: A Story in Communication is just such a thing. What the now-classic Setting Up A Room did for, well, setting up a room, David and Hazel does for the gradual, quiet collapse of a 1960s American marriage. That may not sound particularly hilarious to you, in fact quite frankly it probably shouldn’t, but trust us, it’s a journey you’ll be glad you took. Nearly 30 minutes long, packed with tension and vintage office scenes - if the popular AMC show were called Sad Men instead, this would be that show. Instead of Don Draper we have David: not quite as sexy, perhaps, but just as distant and seemingly confused by the presence of a wife and children in his home. When there’s trouble at work and his devoted, quivering Hazel decides to ask about it, the action* really heats up (*infinite icy silence). All that, plus a freakish son who’s at least 75% alien and a roast beef dinner scene that stands as a master class in Dysfunctional Family Planning. Let Mike, Kevin and Bill bring David and Hazel into your home, but don’t you dare ask how or why it was made because that’s simply not your concern, dear.
Why would you want to go outside and sail a toy boat when you could sit in a classroom and watch a film about other kids sailing a toy boat? The existence of Sailing a Toy Boat asserts that you wouldn’t, of course, you dolt. This short must have inspired lots of discussion questions from the students who watched it, such as “are we going to sail toy boats now?” and “where are the toy boats?” followed by some statements, like “the film didn’t even tell us how to MAKE toy boats” and “I honestly would rather have learned some math because now I’m just sad I don’t have a toy boat” and finally, “let’s push teacher in the lake and see if she floats!” Look, it was just a more violent time, okay? Complete with a male dog named Penny and a father who ignores his children while narrating the film with his mind (no, really) be sure to join Mike, Bill and Kevin for Sailing a Toy Boat, the full-throttle prequel to Battleship!
Drinking problems! In real life? Devastating addictions that can ruin careers and tear marriages apart. Clumsily depicted onscreen in 70s educational shorts? Hilarious! Chuck is the oily star of Alcohol. Like Don Draper, he just needs a shot or two to take the edge off and close the deal. Unlike Don Draper, he then fails to close the deal, instead drinks more, and vomits onto his stapler. When Chuck’s wife finally pushes him too far by insisting that he remain mostly sober for a few hours and accompany her to dinner with his own parents, he takes off with the office lowlife on a bender you would never be able to forget, were it actually shown in the film. Instead, you’re treated to the hungover aftermath, as Chuck wonders how he let a tiger into his apartment, met Mike Tyson, and made a crappy cash-in sequel. Mike, Kevin and Bill team up to riff one of their top three intoxicating liquid substances, Alcohol!
We know what you’re probably thinking. “Cooks AND chefs in a single film?? Sure, you might be able to pull it off if we were talking one or the other. Just cooks, or just chefs. And that’s still a big ‘might.’ But to bring both together in one short? WHEN DID THE WORLD GO SO MAD?!?” Well, despite what your surprisingly aggressive hypothetical probable thoughts would have you believe, Cooks and Chefs is here to prove you wrong. It’s a timeless training film for anyone aspiring to work in a restaurant, and more specifically one particular hotel’s restaurant where they only serve food so rubbery and fake-looking it’s indistinguishable from the centerpieces. So if that’s the job you’re looking for, your ship has just come in! Cooks and Chefs is full of helpful tips for the up-and-coming culinary professional. For example, did you know that it’s completely normal and expected for line cooks to be skilled ice sculptors? Well it is, so make sure and spend years training under a master before you even bother turning in that McDonald’s application, bucko. Ever since seeing the atrocities committed against food in Cooks and Chefs, Mike, Kevin and Bill have been fasting* in protest. *Drinking beer until not awake anymore, waking, repeating.
Danger Keep Out! is not just the sign any Taco Bell that carries the new taco whose shell is made of a giant Dorito is legally required to display. It’s also the name of one of the finest Canadian safety epics ever produced. One day, Christine decides to explore the construction site next to her house with her friend Mario, mostly as an excuse to escape her brother Ricky, whose default setting is “high-pitched whine” (a bold vocal technique later made popular by Bon Iver.) Christine and Mario have fun climbing on equipment, scaling ladders and leaping into piles of granular substances which likely rendered both of them sterile. Of course, all this fun comes to a horrific end when Christine sets a trap for Mario and he has a terrible accident (that’s actually what happens.) It’s then up to Ricky to save the day, which he does by lying to his parents faces and teaming up with a kid who looks like a less suave Steve Urkel. Like Shake Hands With Danger but instead of a folksy narrator, you have one that is sometimes made of clay, Danger Keep Out! is one warning sign not worth heeding! Previous quote designed to pander for prominent placement on the box cover of Danger Keep Out! VHS edition.
The Fish That Nearly Drowned is about a fish who [SPOILER ALERT] nearly drowns. Whoops, guess that spoiler alert should have come a bit earlier. Forget you saw it! The titular fish in question might actually drown! Because that is something that a fish can evidently do! But even though the question of whether or not the fish might drown, (he doesn’t [SPOILER ALERT] Dammit! Late again, spoiler alerts!) the true star of The Fish That Nearly Drowned is the narrator. Eschewing conventional educational short techniques, mainly because then it gets to use the word “eschew”, the short opts not to have a nebbishy man or lecturing woman narrate. Instead it has a fish do it. A fish named Silverus. A fish named Silverus whom the short informs us can communicate with the boy who maintains the aquarium while he plays ice hockey on a nearby pond. Yeah, we thought that would get your attention. Balancing ridiculously named Narrator-fishes with a glimpse into the aquatic world that is, (we can’t believe we’re typing this), actually sort of interesting, you won’t want to miss The Fish That Nearly Drowned.* *[SPOILER ALERT]** **Come on, now you’re doing it on purpose!!
Nutrition: The All-American Meal exists primarily as a guide to the wide and varied world of 70s hideousness. Throughout, a seemingly endless parade of unfortunate choices marches in front of the camera to lecture us about the “All-American Meal” of a hamburger, fries and a soda. Turns out that this traditional on-the-go feast is not actually that good for us. Ah, how little these poor Carter-voting rubes knew. You will probably watch Nutrition while consuming the Pizza Hut Ten Dollar Meal box (contents: bread & cheese), or perhaps the monstrosity known as the Baconator. If you are lucky enough you may even scarf down a taco with a shell made out of a giant dorito, washed down by a varietal of Mountain Dew whose color did not exist in the 1970s. You will see these be-muttonchopped, floral print wearing ninnies lecture about the negative health properties of a burger that shockingly contained no onion rings or pulled pork. And you will laugh. Then you will choke on a curly fry dipped in that new variety of ranch that is thicker because it’s specifically designed for dipping. So maybe hold off on those until after the short is done.
Not to be confused with the equally-pathetic Superman villain Toyman, The Toymaker is a strange Scandinavian man who makes toys for all the children in his village. Well, presumably. He doesn’t actually make any toys in this short, and there’s no village, but he DOES pit two of his own puppet creations against each other in a race war of his own making. Then he sort of heavily insists that they respect and bow to him as their Creator, makes them afraid about their place in the universe, and raises the other big philosophical questions kids have always associated with...toys. The answers to these questions may not be clear, but one thing is - The Toymaker is definitely taking huge swigs of blackberry brandy every time he ducks under his table. Join Mike, Kevin and Bill in the sinister clutches of our fickle puppet god, The Toymaker!
Dinosaurs! They were fearsome! They were hulking! They were evidently quite poorly drawn! Yes, dinosaurs once ruled the earth, and if you need any information about them, you are welcome to consult the hundreds, if not tens of thousands of movies, tv shows and books on the subject. Should any of those fail you, any given seven year old boy can likely deliver a PhD level dissertation on the subject, though they may get distracted during the part about the Pteranodons if there are Oreos nearby. So, it’s safe to say, that there was no reason for the brief, hideously animated short Dinosaurs: The Age of the Terrible Lizard to exist. This did not stop two men, whom the short would have you believe are actually named Witold Giersz and Ryszard Slapczynski from writing and directing it. The narration has all the trademark Slapczynski touches, while the directorial flourishes are classic Giersz. Join Mike, Kevin and Bill as they travel back in time to the age of the terrible lizard and try not to affect the future in terrible unforeseen ways, such as all taking the last name “Slapczynski”.
When you look back at your formative education years, there are a few flashbulb memories when even as a young child, you realized that the educational system was truly doing its job. The first time you could recite your multiplication tables. The day you learned how to spell Mississippi. And of course, the day the teacher showed Farm Babies and their Mothers and you just sort of stared at footage of pigs sitting in the mud for a while. Yes, one day in the sixties, another crate of stock footage of animals arrived on the doorsteps of an “educational” film maker, and though their employees pleaded with them tearfully that it would not teach the children anything and instead might very well make them dumber, the cruel CEO demanded it be formed into something resembling a film that could be shown in schools. “I dunno, show the adult animals, then tell them what the baby animal is called,” they’d say. “Who cares, Coronet is gonna bury us all anyways!” Farm Babies and their Mothers has a bunch of footage of cute baby animals running around. It has no educational content whatsoever. We think you’ll agree that this is a perfectly acceptable trade off.
Like Tarzan of the Jungle and Nanook of the North before him, Jimmy of the Safety Patrol heroically swings from vines of proper bus etiquette and drives a sled of huskies that look both ways at pedestrian crosswalks (we’re not exactly sure what Nanook of the North did, we’ve just heard of him in passing, probably from a weird uncle we’ve met like three times in our lives or perhaps a Far Side cartoon.) Not everyone respects the noble safety patrol though, probably because disrespecting them is the logical and many would even say right thing to do. If our childhood were rap albums, Safety Patrols were the skits: annoying, omnipresent and difficult to program your Discman so that it would skip over them. So it’s safe to say that your sympathies will probably lie with the kids who run around and play ball in the street, rather than the pre-pubescent NARC (Jimmy) that tries to keep them from getting run over, (Patrols with more than three fatalities on their watch don’t get to make the class trip to Washington DC). Join Mike, Kevin and Bill as repressed memories of their own tyrannical safety patrols come back to haunt them and they instinctively cower in fear of Jimmy of the Safety Patrol!
Our new short Joy Ride feels like beloved movie Dazed and Confused, but shortened dramatically, focusing on the minor characters, with less emphasis on keg parties up at the Moontower and more on the tragic consequences of reckless behavior. In short, it’s the perfect film! When two young boys steal a teenager’s car and pick up a couple of girls for a high-speed drive up a mountain, what could go wrong? Well, yes, that. Exactly what you’re thinking. But not before they have the time of their lives! For example, they park the fast car so they can...sit in an abandoned, not-working car, in a grassy field, and pretend to drive THAT car instead. Yep, totally worth it. Get “duded up” for some “hotshots” (actual slang used multiple times in this short) then join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for a seatbelt-free, Kool-Aid soaked Joy Ride!
Love That Car! is a short about automobile safety narrated in the style of the “nnnnnYEEES?” clerk guy you’ll recognize from the Flintstones and the Simpsons. That sentence should really be all the convincing anyone needs to check this out immediately. Young women, Boy Scouts, the elderly, none are safe from the sadistic glee of his twisted voiceover. They will suffer, and he will delight, and the world will go just a little bit mad! Join us for Love That Car!, a swingin’ trip back to the ‘60s: a time so free that everybody was gettin’ some, even cars.
You are of course familiar with the story of The Hare & The Tortoise. It is part of the grand tradition of children’s fables such as The Grapes & The Fox, The Cash & The Tango, and The Being Written Backwards and The Why Are These Things. While fables such as these seem perfectly reasonable when you read them, their inherent madness truly becomes evident when filmmakers try to recreate them with real life animals. Racing tortoises is not a natural behavior of rabbits, and the unfortunate star appears to simply be attempting to flee the cheaply constructed set. In addition to the two titular animals, the short also features a goose, an owl, a fox and a raccoon, all of whom appeared terrified to be in close proximity to each other. You’ll learn important lessons as you watch a narrator impose sentient thought on a bunch of drugged-up animals, but the true lesson of The Hare & The Tortoise is that you should study hard in school so you don’t end up being the guy who has to clean up after the animals on the set of The Hare & The Tortoise.
Get That Job is an instructional film that teaches adults all the secret tips for landing a high paying job. First and foremost, if a potential employer asks if you actually needed to watch a film called Get That Job in order to learn how to get a job, strongly deny having ever even heard of Get That Job. Our main protagonist is a Ginger Walrus. After receiving his GED from Night School (Motto: Show Your Probation Card for half off science classes), he wants a job. The problem is, where to start? So he goes to a library to look for books about resumes, which is really what you should be doing instead of watching a worthless short film like Get That Job. Eventually, he lands the big interview with a boss who is in no way overcompensating for his baldness by growing a ridiculous beard. Will our hero smooth talk his way into a dream job? Or will he mistakenly inform the delusional man interviewing him that he looks like the worst Wooly Willy variation imaginable in a suit. Join Mike, Kevin and Bill to find out!
Despite the title, our new short is NOT about popping Percocets, though there’s a good chance the people who filmed it were doing just that. Perc! Pop! Sprinkle! Such a mysterious title. What does it mean? Does it mean anything? It probably doesn’t mean anything, right? Who made these freaking shorts in the first place, and why? Who am I speaking to? How long will this rhetorical question routine continue? Which was your favorite Godfather movie? The answers to all these questions, and more, are definitely not to be found in Perc! Pop! Sprinkle! This one takes the standard educational short goal, “waste the kids’ time while teacher sips from a flask,” to a whole new level, by actually showing OTHER kids having THEIR time wasted. A group of children, possibly detainees in a secret government prison, are put through a series of “exercises” meant to replicate the motions of common devices familiar to kids...like, y’know, an antique coffee grinder. But at least the motions...are also confusing and really dumb. Maybe the short’s real goal was to make kids shut up and appreciate ordinary jumping jacks and push-ups? Enough questions, just join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for the hallucinatory gym class fever of Perc! Pop! Sprinkle!
Choking: To Save a Life is merely one chapter in the wildly popular Choking series. It came hot on the heels of the legendary Choking: To Get Out of A ‘Couples’ Baby Shower and the controversial Choking: Your Tax Guy To Get Him To Approve Your Super Bowl Tickets As A Write Off. We’ve all been there: enjoying a nice TV dinner of Swanson’s “Slightly Bigger Than Bite Size” salisbury steak (seems irresponsible on their part frankly), when all of a sudden BOOM! The person across from the table starts choking. “This could never happen to me” you say. Oh really? “Yes really,” you say. “Obviously if I am eating a Swanson TV dinner, I am doing so alone, possibly having not even bothered to do the crucial ‘stir’ maneuver halfway through the suggested microwaving time.” Damn, she’s right! (“Obviously I am also a man” you say.) Well, the point is, someone you know is probably going to choke at some point in time, and you should know what to do in order to save their life. So watch this short, then do the exact opposite, and you should be fine. This applies to all haircuts, fashion and home decor seen in this short as well. .
Another vintage 70s short in the “stuff your parents should really have already taught you at home” series (see The Calendar: How to Use It for further knowledge), Tic Toc Time Clock makes learning about time fun! Well, not so much “fun” as garish, frantic, and creepy. And not so much “learning” as “confusing, overly complex, and pretty much the opposite of learning.” Also their budget apparently didn’t cover K’s for the ends of the words “Tic” and “Toc.” But all that aside, we think you’ll agree that this film was a great use of school budgets, and if it meant Grade F meat for the cafeteria, well, that’s good enough for our kids. Tic Toc Time Clock tells the tale of a gym coach gone rogue. Instead of rope-climbing or push ups, he makes his students arrange themselves in clock formations on the ground, presumably as part of some ancient ritual meant to make people finally like gym coaches. He fails. As will any kids who learned to tell time from Tic Toc Time Clock!
Only available on the Christmas with RiffTrax: Santa’s Village of Madness DVD.
A short in the classic 1950s tradition of “let’s talk about a thing that’s terrible without REALLY talking about a thing that’s terrible,” Say No To Strangers presents a world that’s mostly sunshine, friendly policemen, and hopscotch...but also the occasional driver who pulls over to offer a some-strings-attached lollipop while patting the empty passenger seat. We learned something new about the 50s from Say No To Strangers - apparently it was a time when puppies were being handed out willy-nilly by strangers, MOST OF WHOM were totally benevolent. You’d be walking down the street, thinking about Howdy Doody or The Bomb, when out of the blue a kindly old man on a bench would insist on giving you a puppy. Again, most of the time, these puppy offerers were acquiring puppies, one by one, and handing them out purely from the goodness of their heart. It really was a better, simpler time, and this rampant puppy availability makes you wonder why Cruella de Vil had to be such a jerk about getting hers. Mike, Bill, and Kevin encourage you to Say No To Strangers, and also to Evites, friends holding petitions, and pretty much anybody you’ve ever known, met, or loved. Just stay home by yourself.
Live and Learn has an important safety message for kids, namely “Hey kids, here’s a bunch of ideas for cool stuff that would be super fun to do! Now don’t do any of the stuff, and how dare you even think about it, and certainly don’t consider litigation against the film that gave you those ideas!” It’s the 1950s educational film equivalent of Keith Richards talking about his crazy fun life doing drugs, partying, and getting rich, then telling you to Just Say No. Push your friend out of a boat! Start a fire in the yard with gasoline! Check out what’s happening at the bottom of a neat ravine! The only consequence is repeated trips to the hospital where you’ll get wrapped in bandages like a scary mummy by a friendly nurse, so you simply cannot lose!* Live and Learn! Or don’t and die, either way it makes for a very funny short. *Certainly don’t consider litigation against the ironic comedy website that gave you those ideas. Also we cannot guarantee your particular nurse will be friendly. -picture was already there
Our short Safety With Animals features more hilarious child endangerment than the inevitable FOX series Celebrity Child Boxing! The short teaches kids important skills, like, which wild snakes you should pick up - they claim the answer isn’t “none of them.” In order to protect the lives of the many, the filmmakers risked the lives of the few, specifically one sweet, confused little boy. Watch, as he: Tries to saddle an angry pony! Stands terrified and alone while horses circle him! And attempts to befriend a stray dog, which is apparently something children should be encouraged to do! Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill as they try to pet a mangy dumpster dog while picking up venomous snakes, then call Child Protective Services on Safety With Animals!
Ten Long Minutes is the harrowing tale of one young man’s attempt to download a grainy .jpg of Alyssa Milano via CompuServe in 1996 before his parents -- wait, sorry, wrong story... just forget you ever read that. Ten Long Minutes starts off like a classic grisly safety short. An unreasonably happy man goes to work in a factory, which experienced safety short viewers will know is a sure sign that brutal disfigurement and Play-Doh level gore effects are just around the corner. But then, a phone call, and a twist! This time the worker’s carelessness has put not himself, but his family in danger! Leaving him, and his sweaty “Wilford Brimley crossed with the Jump to Conclusions mat guy from Office Space” coworker to sit and imagine what went wrong for Ten Long (and, trust us, hilarious) Minutes!
Kevin is the new kid in class, and he’s got typical teenage problems. His mom obsessively hoards coffee pots and his dad has an insane inability to live without garlic salt. Oh, and he’s haunted by the ghost of a fellow student who died horribly in a bus accident last year. Rather than do the obvious thing and blackmail this ghost into destroying his enemies, Kevin takes the opportunity to learn all about bus safety. The first thing he learns? Always buckle your seatbel-... What’s that? School buses never have those? Really? Kind of seems ridiculously negligent, doesn’t it? Has anyone ever figured out why that is the case? Fortunately for Kevin, there’s a terrible bus accident and the driver is likely killed. He’s thus able to demonstrate all the lessons he learned, which include pointing in a general direction for people to exit the bus, and instructing kids to bend their knees when they hit the ground (as opposed to locking their knees and shattering their fibulas, as kids instinctively tend to do.) Will Kevin be rightfully mocked and pantsed for his devotion to bus safety? Is emphasizing their own likely death the best way to teach children proper bus exiting techniques? Will Nic Cage urinate a stream of fire? Tune in to Ghost Rider and find out!
Jack is a youngster who has trouble respecting The Other Fellow’s Feelings. One day, the other fellow brings in a new bottle of perfume to show off to the ladies, and Jack bumps into the other fellow, knocking the perfume to the ground and breaking the bottle. After that, Jack follows the other fellow around saying “Stinky! Stinky!” Eventually the other fellow can’t take it anymore and she breaks down sobbing wondering why on earth in a short titled The Other Fellow’s Feelings they made The Other Fellow a young girl named Judy. It checks all the bases for a classic 50s short: seven-year-olds who dress like fifty-year-old accountants, disembodied floating heads taunting helpless victims, and teachers who think the kindest solution is to demand answers from sobbing girls in front of the whole class. Plus, more taunts of “Stinky” than when Jabba The Hutt’s son was kidnapped. Buy the other fellow in your life a suitable gift depending on whether that fellow is a man, woman or wolf otherkin, then sit back on the couch and enjoy The Other Fellow’s Feelings.
The Day I Died is a fun, groovy, totally 70s take on the tragic consequences of teenage drunk driving. Plus there’s a great Sixth Sense-type twist at the end where you find out that the young narrator was actually dead THE WHOLE TIM--what’s that you say? Narrator tells us he’s dead from the beginning, then narrates his last day in creepy slow motion? The fact that he’s dead is even part of the title? Pretty hard to miss? I should really pay more attention? Fine, arguing person, you win. (Twist ending: there wasn’t actually an arguing person THE WHOLE TIME! It was just a lazy rhetorical device! Gotcha!!!) Come for the beach drinking, stay for the narrator yelling at relatives and friends as they walk by his casket! Like one of these email forwards from your Grandma (complete with 36 point bright-red font and a million little arrows to scroll past) come to life, The Day I Died will scold its way into your heart!
Those sick freaks at Coronet have done it again. Clowns. Just when you thought they’d run out of ways to spread a one minute lesson out over the course of ten minutes, they brought in clowns. Actually, and quite thankfully, there is only one clown. But his presence is a strong one. Cackling like he’s constantly having his butt pinched or possibly suffering a series of brain hemorrhages, he tells us a story about a young boy in search of a rubber band. Presumably the clown is observing the boy from the sewer. At one point in time he brandishes scissors. What is the short actually about, other than clowns? It was something about showing you the pieces of a story and then seeing if you can put them in order. Just as a test, let’s see how your skills are before you watch the short. The pieces are: 1) Utter abject terror, gnashing of teeth and wailing at the horror. 2) The clown appears. Pretty tough, huh? You better watch the short.
We can all agree that Classroom Discipline is great. But what good is it if you can’t maintain it? Fortunately we have this short, which comes with the delightful realization that “Wow, they actually expected adult professionals to watch this.” The film stars Mr. Grimes, (or “Grimey” as he liked to be called), in a classic “Goofus and Gallant” scenario. Which role would you emulate? The hostile, shrieking Mr. Grimes who hands out detentions as if they were pennies wrapped in tinfoil on Halloween? Or the cool, mellow Mr. Grimes who one day lets it slip that he still lives with his mother. Of course you’d pick the first one. Whether he’s an effective educator is beside the point, because clearly the second one’s admission has lost him the respect of at least the next ten years of students who parade through his classroom. Find an eraser to hurl and synchronize your watches so you’ll know when to drop your textbooks. It’s time for Maintaining Classroom Discipline!
Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s...a kid wearing underoos who’s way too old to be wearing underoos! This short tells us the story of Scotty, who is obsessed with a superhero named Rescueman. Rescueman’s specialty is rescuing people, believe it or not. We assumed that that was sort of par for the course for every superhero. Most of them have something else going on, but not Rescueman! Scotty goes on a field trip to the airport and despite looking like he’s about to enter middle school, spends the entire time mentally composing Rescueman/Safety Woman slashfic and thinking about his new Rescueman underoos. Does the short end with Scotty fantasizing about rescuing his classmates from a horrific bus crash while wearing said humiliating underoos? Do you even have to ask at this point? Rescueman teaches kids about bus safety the only way that the state of Pennsylvania knew how: incompetently with an absurd emphasis on bending your knees when you jump out of the bus. Join us, true believers!
Our new short Goodbye, Weeds is a product of a different time, a time when a commercial for weed killer wasn’t just something you waited impatiently to click “Skip” on so you could get to a YouTube video of a puggle farting in its sleep. Far more than that, Goodbye, Weeds is a 17 minute film, complete with animated segments, actual Hollywood actors doing their best imitation of the Thin Man movies, gigantic plantation-style homes and a lush golf course. You can almost feel the hand of Don Draper behind it all (warning: do not actually feel the hand of Don Draper, there’s no way to know where it’s been). But there’s still one thing plaguing the perfect life of this obviously wealthy “middle-class everyman” - that most treacherous of beasts, the common yard dandelion. But not for long, because the greenskeeper at our man’s country club has some advice - grab a big metal cannister and drench every inch of your property in Weed-No-More! It’s safe for dogs, kids, heck you can stir it into your Yoo-Hoo if you want! So dig in to a lawn care commercial with a bigger budget than the last three Air Bud movies and join Mike, Bill, and Kevin in saying Goodbye, Weeds!
This short may just save you a lot of trouble! No longer will you have to be forcibly removed from the Expecting Parents Class at the local hospital for shouting “When should grown-ups stop fights?” at the top of your lungs during the segment on diaper changing. Frankly, it was unacceptable that the so-called “class” did not touch on this issue. “Time is of the essence!” we told them. “One of them has the other one pinned down with a crowbar across the throat!” we told them. “Wait, is that a taser?” we asked them. Yes, this short would have saved us a lot of trouble. In the 21st century, the answer to the question When Should Grown-Ups Stop Fights? sadly seems cut and dry. Grown-ups should stop fights before they start, or at the very least, when the child you wagered on is clearly going to lose. But in the 1930s, 40s, or possibly 1820s when this short was produced, the answer was a much more ambiguous: Wait, stop fights? Where’s the fun in that? Presented in this short are four separate fights that occur on a pre-school playground that also seems to double as a Russian work camp/garbage heap. This precocious little tykes hurl sand, steal from each other, and gang up on scapegoats with no intervention from their teachers whatsoever. Presumably the adults are all inside watching a terrible short instructing them how to stop fights. Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill as they work off their gambling debts (Still can’t believe that first grader tapped out to the four year old!) as they team up to riff When Should Grown-Ups Stop Fights?
We’re excited to present Batman Takes Over, the first installment in one of the earliest screen depictions of Batman ever made, the 1949 serial Batman and Robin! This is where we’d joke that we finally found a version of Batman and Robin worse than the Joel Schumacher Batman & Robin, but that is physically impossible according to Newton’s Law of Schumacherian Bat-Nipplage. In this thrilling opening episode, Batman Takes Over...an hour to arrive at the crime scene, because he drives an ordinary car instead of a Batmobile. And, standing in for stately Wayne Manor, a slightly-less-stately suburban home. Batman and thirty-something boy wonder Robin are hot on the trail of The Wizard, so named for his lack of magic powers or costume resembling a wizard’s in any way. Speaking of costumes, Batman & Robin store theirs in a drawer in a FILING CABINET. And, and, and...well there’s too much great Bat-wrongness to tell here, you really just need to see this. So squeeze into an ill-fitting costume, buckle your utility belt (ordinary belt), and join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for Batman Takes Over!
You’re The Judge tells the story of two high school girls who want to get the attention of two boys who would rather be bowling. In a world where Snapchat and sexting do not exist, they’re forced to do this the old fashioned way: by goading the boys into entering an elaborate three course cooking contest and rigging the result. Are you sitting down? Got a firm grip on the sides of your desk? OK good. Because You’re The Judge is going to take you on a mind-bending trip, man. It puts forth the idea that, get this: men are not very comfortable in the kitchen! We’ll give you a moment to pick your jaw up off the table. These guys cut corners, goof around, and certainly don’t follow the recipes. It’s a bold reversal of virtually every stereotype that’s ever been portrayed in movies or on TV. The ladies, on the other hand, do everything by the book, including loading up the biscuits, apple pie, and fried chicken with plenty of Crisco brand vegetable shortening. This is because the book they are using is The Crisco Cookbook, and it calls for Crisco in everything, including brownies, Cobb salad, and iced tea. It’s a good thing that they’re using this particular cookbook because this short just so happens to be sponsored by Crisco! Imagine how awkward it would have been if their cookbook had called for natural, non-repulsive ingredients! It’s a cook-off that makes the Iron Chef look like a line cook at Golden Corral, and the best part is, You’re the Judge! (You are not actually the judge. There is a judge in the short. It’s one of the girl’s dads. We don’t know why they called it that.)
They’re back! With Batman Takes Over, the first installment of this vintage serial, we introduced you to obscure superhero characters “The Batman” and “Robin.” Not much is known about them, as they failed to achieve any kind of cultural impact, but luckily this film series -- as far as we know, the only screen representation of Batman & Robin ever made -- survived, so modern audiences can finally learn about these long-forgotten costumed crimefighters! In Batman: Tunnel of Terror, the second episode, our heroes continue their quest for the elusive Wizard in a frightening new setting. A terrifying tunnel of some kind, you ask? No, why on Earth would you think that? What are you even talking about? Forget tunnels, but the world’s greatest detectives DO manage to get themselves lost on some ordinary park trails, the kind retired grandparents walk for leisure, if the mall is closed. The action in this episode spans planes, trains, and automobiles (regular automobiles, the kind Batman drives in this series, definitely NOT Batmobiles) as the dynamic duo hunt for answers. But one question remains...WHERE IS GABE??? Join Mike, Bill, and Kevin in a swan-shaped boat for a romantic ride through Batman: Tunnel of Terror!
Hey kids! What’s the best way for a middle schooler to impress chicks, make friends, and just dominate the social scene in general? OK, I’m hearing ‘Be really funny,’ not the answer I was looking for. ‘Kick butt at sports,’ not that either. I’ll give you a hint: “Ban…?”. No, it’s not ‘Banter in the halls wittily!’ It’s band! Marching band! Join the marching band to win the acceptance of your peers who are also wallowing away in the grim social purgatory of marching band! Anyways, this is the plan that our hero Buzz comes up with. To his credit, he mainly came up with it after “Mr.” B Natural appeared in his bedroom and started jumping around on the bed and mimicking playing various instruments. Buzz did the right thing: just do what the crazy lady MAN! What the crazy MAN says in that situation and try to phone the authorities when she HE! When HE stops for gas on the inevitable cross country killing spree he’s trying to rope you into. This classic music educational film, first seen on MST3K and riffed in its entirety for the first time ever as part of our Kickstarter rewards, is a chance to see an all new take on the beloved Mr. B!
At last, the ORIGINAL faked moon landing is available as a RiffTrax! A Trip to the Moon is the most famous film by French cinema pioneer Georges Méliès (aka, the dude from Hugo) but somehow he forgot to include any dialogue or audio! Silly guy! Luckily for him, we’re here to provide some, over a century later. Yes, it was made in 1902, making it the oldest thing we’ve ever riffed (with the possible exception of Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny, which scholars believe was left on Earth millennia ago by sweaty, horrible, ancient aliens). For those who haven’t seen the film, or Smashing Pumpkins’ Tonight, Tonight video, it’s about a bunch of wizards, or maybe scientivsts, who fly a rocket into the moon’s eyeball, where they’re greeted by a bunch of freaky little monkey demon guys. In other words, the science is just as accurate as anything you’d see in a modern blockbuster. So grab a pointy hat, strap protective goggles on any lunar bodies you know, and join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for A Trip to the Moon!
Folks, there is no dancing around this issue: the plot of the first ever Norman short is that Norman uses a public restroom. Is this a pleasant experience for Norman? How dare you ask that question. This is Norman we are talking about. Having bad experiences with toilets is the closest thing he has to a personality. Fortunately, the director made the choice to film the entire short in stark black and white, to really amp up the despair factor, and also the sense that this might have all been found footage from a restroom surveillance camera. This lends the short a noir-ish, Bergman-esque touch to scenes such as Norman begging for change in a public restroom, and Norman overflowing the toilet. Fans of Norman should grunt, groan, and probably steer clear of the can for at least half an hour after Norman’s been in there in what is truly one of the top three shorts where Norman roots around in a toilet. See where it all began in: Norman Krasner.
The adventure continues! In this third installment of the vintage serial, Batman: Robin’s Wild Ride, we find our heroes at Disneyland. After an ill-advised turkey leg and funnel cake combo, Robin upchucks on the Tea Cups, forcing Batman to go find a towel and apologize to several families. On his way back with the towel, Batman spots the sign for Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride and gets a sudden idea for a title… Fine, you’re right, that’s not really the wild ride, and Disneyland hadn’t even been built when this short was made. The ACTUAL wild ride is...completely absent. Seriously, if you can find anything that would count as Robin’s Wild Ride in this thing you must be be under the influence of the villainous Wizard, or perhaps his rarely seen but much beloved henchman, Gabe. But never fear, this episode is packed with all the shlubby costumes, sleepy superheroes, ordinary vehicles, and stumble-drunk fight choreography you’ve come to expect!
Time to grab a stack of floppy disks, or maybe 2 of those shiny “CD-ROMs” we’ve been hearing about, and boot up our very first RiffTrax Special! The topic? 90s Cyber Thrillers. What’s a RiffTrax Special, you may ask? That is a totally fair (and totally 90s!) question. For these Specials, we’ll select a theme and a few movies we’ve never riffed, cherry pick our favorite scenes and riff ‘em up, hot and fresh. And it’s all introduced and hosted by Mike, Kevin, and Bill, right there on your futuristic video screens! Just how the 90s would have wanted it. Cyber thrillers, and in fact the very word “cyber”, ruled the 90s. And, since it was new to most people, ridiculous depictions of the internet ruled 90s movies. In this special, we take some of the biggest offenders to task. First up, Hackers, which unforgivably tried really hard to make the word “crispy,” and also Matthew Lillard, happen. Then we have The Lawnmower Man, which predicted that the future would mostly be about polygonal virtual reality sex between giant dragonflies. Spot on! And finally there’s The Net, in which Sandra Bullock uses chat rooms (whoa!), orders pizza from a site called “pizza.net” (who hasn’t?) and faces off against her cyber-tormentors on the floor of a computer trade show (nothing says “action” like paunchy men in Dockers!) Get your sister to stop using the landline so you can dial up and join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for 90s Cyber Thrillers! And if you’ve got an idea for a theme we could use in a future Special, let us know!
Over the years here at RiffTrax we’ve had the pleasure of riffing some of cinema’s finest villains: Darth Vader. Saruman. The cubbies from Setting Up A Room. But for our first ever Best of RiffTrax, we wanted to focus on some of the more overlooked villains in our catalogue. Though they may not be as iconic as some of the bigger name villains, these nefarious scoundrels’ deeds are no less evil, their laughter is no less insane, and their ponytails are no less greasy. First up is Terry Silver, billionaire toxic waste dumper and local karate champ humiliator from The Karate Kid Part III. After that, there can be only one...second villain in our villain special, and it is the delightful The Kurgan from Highlander. And to close things out, the biggest, baddest, most non-specific villain of them all: the trees/the wind/plants from The Happening! For Best of RiffTrax: Villains, we've pulled some of our favorite moments from riffs of the past, along with host segments by Mike, Kevin, and Bill. If you like what you see and have a suggestion for a future theme, be sure to let us know! **Note: riffed content is the same as the MP3s**
Yes, it’s back to the famous gentle rolling hills and remote forest cabins of Gotham City for another installment of this classic superhero serial! Picking up immediately after Robin’s Wild Ride (there was no wild ride) we’re thrown right back into the action when Batman gets trapped in Batman Trapped! Okay he doesn’t really get trapped, per se, but we do get to see the Caped Crusader climb a gentle incline with great difficulty! And it takes a while! He seems pretty tired! The mysterious Wizard and his squad of gangsters (except for Gabe, who spends this episode offscreen picking up Gatorades for the gangsters’ weekly pickup basketball game, he’s such a thoughtful guy) are still at it, kidnapping various scientist types and stealing various science-type things. What’s their endgame? Nobody’s quite sure, including the World’s Greatest Detective and the people who wrote this serial! Get Trapped with Mike, Kevin, and Bill!
A new short featuring the hapless NORMAN, as seen in our MANOS and BIRDEMIC live shows
As if to prove that Dunston wasn’t the only unpleasant, pest-ridden ape who knew how to Check In, here comes our old pal Norman! You’ll be pleased to know that Norman has finally cleaned up his act and gotten his life together: staying at a five star resort where everyone calls him sir, commanding respect with ease, women wanting him, men wanting to BE him...ahhh, we’re kidding of course. This installment finds Norman losing battles to a taxidermy convention, the magic fingers on a pre Civil War mattress, a television, and even exposing himself to a helpless maid. To reiterate: this short finds Norman in the bathroom once again, except this time, he is NUDE. So kick off your shoes, put your feet up on a motel comforter that’s never been washed, and check in with America’s least favorite guy, Norman!
Hey, did you hear the news? Norman’s coming back! Yeah, I know! Good ol’ Norman. He’s been away for - gosh, how long now? You’re not sure either? Well, we’ve sure missed him around here. The Norm-dawg, heh heh, yep, just, always, y’know...Normin’ things up, the way he does... (Psst, who the hell is Norman? You don’t know either?? Does anyone? Well what do we...shh shh cool it, here he comes, here he comes, don’t make this awkward.) NORMAN OLD PAL, how ya been?? (Okay let’s just change the locks, then get out of here and never come back.) Welcome Back, Norman welcomes back Norman, a business traveler you might regret welcoming into anything once you witness how merely exiting an airport rental car lot is, for him, an insurmountable task. If this short ever had a mission statement, which it most assuredly did not, it would have boiled down to “teach people that annoying imbeciles have a hard time doing things.” Mike, Kevin and Bill served with Kotter, they knew Kotter, Kotter was a friend of theirs. Norman, you are no Kotter. Don’t miss Welcome Back, Norman, because when Norman suffers, the world gains!
This is an alternate version of our short What's Happening? (our original release version is only available on our latest DVD, Santa's Village of Madness!) wherein Bill finally gets it all out of his system. RIFFTRAX LIVE GOODIE EXCLUSIVE!
If you’ve been following the Batman serial saga (in the same sense that your great aunt’s recent boil lancing was a ‘saga’), you certainly know what to expect by now: The event in the title, Robin Rescues Batman does not occur in the episode. Robin slurs his lines like your great aunt after she proved difficult during the boil lancing and had to be sedated. No actual plot developments of consequence occur. Oh really? Oh really smart guy? Are you so sure about that last one? Though there may not be an actual rescue of Batman by Robin, this episode does contain something which has been board certified as an actual plot development, possibly even an honest to god twist! Also, rumor has it that a certain henchman, heretofore only implied by our wishful riffers, may make an appearance. Join Mike, Kevin, Bill, Ives, and The Wizard’s mantrap installer for Robin Rescues Batman.
Hey kids! What’s the best way for a middle schooler to impress chicks, make friends, and just dominate the social scene in general? OK, I’m hearing ‘Be really funny,’ not the answer I was looking for. ‘Kick butt at sports,’ not that either. I’ll give you a hint: “Ban…?”. No, it’s not ‘Banter in the halls wittily!’ It’s band! Marching band! Join the marching band to win the acceptance of your peers who are also wallowing away in the grim social purgatory of marching band! Anyways, this is the plan that our hero Buzz comes up with. To his credit, he mainly came up with it after “Mr.” B Natural appeared in his bedroom and started jumping around on the bed and mimicking playing various instruments. Buzz did the right thing: just do what the crazy lady MAN! What the crazy MAN says in that situation and try to phone the authorities when she HE! When HE stops for gas on the inevitable cross country killing spree he’s trying to rope you into. This classic music educational film, first seen on MST3K and riffed in its entirety for the first time ever as part of our Kickstarter rewards, is a chance to see an all new take on the beloved Mr. B!
The oldest movie ever riffed! RiffTrax takes on the 1902 classic, Georges Méliès' A TRIP TO THE MOON.
This sixth installment in the thrilling serial takes an unexpected turn when the Wizard and his gang, who previously had been targeting Batman and Robin, begin to Target Robin! Oh, and also still Batman. The bad guys are still targeting both of them, as they have from the beginning. These titles are meaningless. But the action continues! Just as our heroes continue to keep their costumes in a file cabinet in Bruce Wayne’s unfinished basement! And the World’s Greatest Detective continues to fall for traps set by a blundering crew of mobsters, who are really doing a great job keeping it together in the absence of their good friend Gabe, by the way. Will Batman and his middle-aged charge escape a chamber filling with deadly CO2 gas, which despite what you may have heard in science class is apparently completely visible? Tune in with Mike, Kevin, and Bill!
In The Fatal Blast Batman’s world is nearly upended when ace reporter Vicki Vale finally begins to suspect his secret identity. “Are you Bruce Wayne?” she asks him. A hero of lesser resolve would have cracked, but Batman has decades of training that has hardened his constitution, honed his skills, and increased the limits of his willpower beyond that of typical human comprehension. “No,” he replies to Vicki. Having masterfully deflected that interrogation, Batman and Robin are free to pursue their archfiend The Wizard or perhaps determine where he keeps his secret magnetism machine. Technically, these goals are one and the same, as The Wizard never actually leaves the room with his secret machine in it, preferring instead to send his henchmen Earl, Neil, Gabe, Milo, Otis, and Slippy The Toad to do his dirty work for him. It’s something about capturing a train, or calling into Barry Brown’s radio show to win free tickets to Guy Lombardo, we think they may get around to addressing his actual goal in Episode 12. Batman and Robin audibly groan and pull several muscles as they inch ever closer to discovering The Wizard’s secret identity and perhaps getting themselves an actual closet to store their costumes as opposed to shoving them into a file cabinet in Episode 7 of the serial: The Deadly Blast!
Safety Woman’s back, and she’s more out of doors than ever! Yes, everyone’s favorite crossing guard turned cosmic superhero Guardiana, seen first in the beloved RiffTrax short Safety: Harm Hides at Home, is taking it outside, Dalton from Road House style. But don’t worry, she hasn’t changed a bit. Still freelance architecting, still keeping kids safe with the pie plate and baton some aliens gave her, and still visiting her “favorite Aunt Margaret” -- deal with it, lesser Aunts! Whether in boats, driveways, or crosswalks, dumb kids everywhere are getting themselves into trouble and needing saving, Guardiana style. She always shows up in the nick of time, er, well, after the nick of time, when the accident has already happened, then rewinds time and takes care of business. Teaching kids an important lesson: it doesn’t really matter what you do, a foxy lady in a shiny suit will show up and fix it! So go nuts! Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill as they don their official Guardiana headbands and sunglasses for Safety Woman: In Danger Out of Doors!
In this installment of the vintage serial, Robin finally meets the Wizard! Yes, the boy wonder teams up with Fred Savage, strapping on Power Gloves to win the tournament and the hearts of gamers everywhere. No, sorry, wrong Wizard! Correction: Robin runs into Radagast the Brown, who confuses him with an ACTUAL robin and asks him to defecate in his hair like the rest of the birds do. No, no, no, also wrong, our notes are all mixed up here. Robin joins the Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly Lion on a trip to the Emerald City, where the Great and Powerful Oz gives him what he really needs -- a job cleaning up after the horse of a different color. Oops, nope, nope, deepest apologies, turns out the Wizard that Robin meets is actually the knob-turning bad guy who’s been plaguing the dynamic duo since episode one! Also, he doesn’t even really meet him. Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill as they also don’t meet the Wizard in Batman: Robin Meets the Wizard!
This Is Hormel is a short in the grand tradition of David and Hazel and Setting Up A Room, where you look at the time remaining on your media player and think “Clearly that has to be a mistake.” But no! It’s a half hour long Hormel infomercial masquerading as an educational short that must be seen to be believed! In theory, this short is about Brad and Greg, two boys who while apparently attempting to set a world record for boredom on summer vacation, write a letter to the Hormel factory asking if they can take a tour. To their surprise, they do not receive a letter back asking “What the hell is wrong with you, go play outside!” but instead an invitation to serve as a thinly veiled framing device for a solid half hour of meat footage. And oh, the meat footage...You’ll witness the creation of a mysterious substance known as “ingredient meat.” You’ll visit the hide cellar, a place that makes Gary, Indiana look like Disneyland combined with the beaches of Maui. And you’ll witness the creation of Spam, a substance that evidently is at times purchased unironically. It’s a meatfest of the highest order, and we feel like even Upton Sinclair himself would begrudgingly approve. Just don’t touch any machines operated by guys with less than four fingers. Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for This Is Hormel!
Fresh off of not actually meeting Robin in the previous installment, Robin Meets the Wizard, it’s only natural that the Wizard would be ready to not strike back in this episode, Batman: The Wizard Strikes Back! The series is really coming into focus now. After slicing open the Penguin with his trusty lightsaber, Batman stuffs his faithful companion Robin into the villain’s guts and prays the other rebels back at Echo Base will see his bat-signal before the dynamic duo freeze to death on the ice planet’s unforgiving surface. From there, Robin undertakes a solo mission to the Dagobah system to seek wisdom from the ancient swamp-dwelling mentor, Gabe. Will he get what he’s after before George Lucas decides to go back and gunk up the whole thing with a bunch of digital effects nobody asked for? Did we mix up our VHS tapes again? Tune in to find out! Yes, the madness is really starting to set in and the lines of reality are becoming hopelessly blurred in Batman: The Wizard Strikes Back!
Think back on the all-time great great speeches humans have given. Martin Luther King on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Honest Abe’s Gettysburg address. Marc Antony at Caesar's funeral. Bill Pullman in Independence Day. But before delivering any of these masterful works of rhetoric, did any of the speech givers fish their notes out of a toilet and dry them off with a hair dryer? We think not! Advantage: Norman. Yes, Norman, the sack of failure in a bad suit last seen soliciting strangers for money in a public restroom, now has to give the big speech to a crowd of investors. Why? We don’t know. Perhaps a stupid dog that won’t stop licking its crotch was unavailable. Will Norman triumph over the odds and wow the executives with a masterful speech? Or will he just Norman the entire operation down his leg? Last seen during our RiffTrax Live: Night Of The Living Dead show, Norman Gives a Speech is here in all of its lumpy, mumbly, studio glory!
Nobody’s more qualified to tell people How to Keep a Job than Coronet Films, the company that managed to sleepwalk its way through making 99% of all educational shorts ever produced. How to EXCEL at a job? Not their thing. How to IMPROVE at your job? No dice. But How to Keep a Job through the kind of consistent mediocrity that doesn’t get noticed as either good or bad? Now you’re talkin’ Coronet’s language! Ignoring the timeless job-keeping strategies of blackmail and extortion, this film uses a Goofus and Gallant setup (classic Coronet originality!) to show that the best approach is to just work slightly harder than the laziest person in the office. Our hero learns that by following this simple advice, he too can someday aspire to a job in middle management, hiring people like himself for jobs they barely care enough to do. The system works! No job? No credit? No problem! You can still join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for the long term career stability of How to Keep a Job!
Health: Your Posture tells the tale of Adrilene, a young girl with a serious problem: her parents named her Adrilene. Tragically, her nightmare doesn’t end there, she also has to deal with a condescending educational short telling her she doesn’t stand right. Then, even her reflection in the mirror turns on her, scolding and nagging poor Adrilene into submission. Basically, her life is like being permanently stuck in a room with the “how can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat” guy from Pink Floyd’s The Wall. Granted, her name is Adrilene, so maybe she deserves it. Join Mike, Kevin, Bill, and your pals at the Centron Film Corporation in letting Adrilene know everything that’s wrong with her in Health: Your Posture!
Writing Better Social Letters! The much lighter follow-up to Coronet’s disastrous Writing Better SOCIALIST Letters, which led to half the company being blacklisted and drummed out of the film business in the 1950s. It’s about a young man with a real passion for politeness and social decorum - y’know, classic middle school boy stuff - teaching his younger sister how to write a nice thank you note. How did people convey subtle social cues and pleasantries in an age without emojis or Facebook “likes”? When the mere act of preparing, composing, and mailing a thank you letter took more time than the actual event the letter was thanking someone for? These kids will show you how. Soon you’ll be the thanky-est person on your block, and everyone who gets your letters will say “wow, SOMEONE’S got a lot of time on their hands.” So save the date, RSVP, and just generally waste as much paper and postage as possible with Mike, Bill, and Kevin for Writing Better Social Letters!
The cavalcade of madness that is the At Your Fingertips series marches on. In this installment: Cylinders! Turns out the tubes on the inside of paper towels and TP that you throw into the garbage without a second thought can be used to make art! Well, not so much art as stuff. OK, it’s crap. But boy is it crazy crap! You’ll learn how to make the world’s worst planetarium. Yes, even worse than that one where the laser show is set to Dogs Barking Jingle Bells instead of Pink Floyd. Also: cardboard tube zebras! Because who hasn’t looked around their home and thought “It doesn’t look like a lunatic decorated. I should change that.” And last but certainly not least, a robot kite that violates all three of Asimov’s laws, plus several more you didn’t even know existed! Originally debuted live at our "Manos" The Hands of Fate show, this studio recording of Cylinders is the perfect piece to complement the boxes and grasses in your life. Get yours today!
Fashion Horizons! No, it’s not a plus-size clothing store at the mall. It’s a little slice of history, a travelogue from back when commercial airliners were new and shiny and filled with traveling model/actresses, apparently. The short is also historic because it features all sorts of exciting fabrics that were new then, but absolute mainstays of every woman’s wardrobe today. Fabrics like “matte-latex”! Ah, what little girl hasn’t dreamed of growing up someday to be married in a matte-latex gown, sweating as if wrapped in car seat vinyl, eventually passing out from the heat and cooked-in stench. Fashion! From Phoenix to Panama, there’s no blisteringly hot locale these ladies won’t be forced to suffer in their shiny plastic clothing. And might the narrator focus a little too much on the “Latin flavor” of Esther Fernandez, credited in the opening as “Paramount’s Mexican Discovery”? The answer is yes, yes, the narrator definitely focuses on that too much. Don’t hesitate, join Mike, Kevin, and Bill on this journey through the world of probably toxic glamour, Fashion Horizons!
Complete these lyrics: Na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na… Batman? No, we’re sorry, those were the “na na na nas” from “Here Comes The Hotstepper” by Ini Kamoze.* Even though you failed the quiz, we’re still going to let you watch the tenth entry in the Batman serial, Batman’s Last Chance. In this episode, the Joker escapes from Arkham! Well, that’s not one hundred percent true. There is no Joker. But Arkham finally makes an appearance! Well, kind of. There’s a building called Markham. It’s not an asylum. It’s just a building. But for this series, we will classify that as a high point. And while this episode is lacking in iconic Gotham landmarks, it does have both Horse Art AND a Dog Statue, which you have to admit, are way cooler than Kite Man. Guys in hats run in hallways! The Wizard fiddles with knobs! The narrator finds hilarious ways to pronounce the word ruse! All this and more in the thrilling tenth installment Batman’s Last Chance! *Bear with us, we’ve written ten of these. By number 13 these descriptions are just going to be ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKE GABE A DULL BOY.
Sure, short films about janitors and toilets are great. Everyone agrees on that. Literally everyone. But if there’s one thing most of these films lack, it’s a meditative, philosophical approach to the subject matter. “Tell me something I DON’T know,” you’re probably saying to yourself, and that’s fair. But we have good news, friends, we’ve found a janitorial short that has all that, and then some: Color it Clean! Existential questions and urinal scrubbing, together at last! Fans of RiffTrax favorite Setting Up a Room will feel right at home here, as the filmmakers take the same Zen-like, obsessive level of attention that film paid to a school classroom and apply it instead to school bathrooms. And it’s all narrated by real live janitors, providing a glimpse inside the minds of the sponge-wielding warriors who fight the good fight against scum, grime, and the derision of entitled students every day. If you ever looked at your school custodian and thought “I hope I don’t wind up with that job, seems depressing,” this short will...well, this short won’t really change your mind about that. But it will make you think, laugh, and maybe, just maybe, inspire you to get up and clean the toilet, yeah even that area back behind it that’s hard to reach so we all kind of try to pretend it isn’t there, yeah, you know what we’re talking about. So grab a mop and a copy of Jean-Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness and join Mike, Bill, and Kevin for a journey into the porcelain and tile oblivion of Color it Clean!
If you’ve been watching the Batman serials up to this point, you know to expect disappointment with regard to the actions described in the title actually appearing in the serial. For example, Robin's Wild Ride did not contain a Robin partaking in a wild ride. Robin did not meet The Wizard in Robin Meets The Wizard; he was instead knocked unconscious from behind by The Wizard. One can only imagine that an episode called Robin Takes Oxygen Into His Lungs Then Expels it as Carbon Dioxide would involve the boy wonder standing around, cheeks bulging as he steadfastly refuses to draw a breath, only to eventually buckle onto the ground unconscious, hopefully dead. Which is why it comes as such a shock that Episode 11, Robin’s Ruse (rhymes with ‘goose’, of course) does in fact contain an honest-to-God ruse! Pulled off by Robin! And the ruse is this: Robin sort of crouches slightly outside a window and shines a flashlight into a room where The Wizard’s henchmen are gathered. Pretty clever ruse, huh? Look, we’ll take what we can get at this point. Also, Vicki Vale’s brother Jimmy plummets out of a skyscraper window and lands on the pavement and dies. Gabe and Neil serve as pallbearers. Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for the ultimate ruse: Robin’s Ruse!
The "educational films" made by the lunatics at ACI Films have covered some dubious subjects: County fairs. "Doing words." And of course, making terrible crafts out of garbage. But still, we held out the faintest hope that when they tackled a legitimate subject like ‘reading’, they might reign in their insane tendencies and NOPE! That sure as hell did not happen! Read On From Left To Right doubles down on the madness by throwing puppets into the mix. Just let that sink in for a second: an ACI short with puppets. Their names are Lem and Mel, and they make reading fun! And if you believe that, ACI has a fancy headdress to sell you. The lesson of the short is basically, don’t try to read things backwards. Most teachers simply find it easiest just to tell their students that, without subjecting them to the mind-warping powers of ACI. But if you do choose to watch it, you’ll be treated to the trademark ACI cutaways, disembodied limbs, confused children, and puppets who loathe each other. Don’t say we didn’t warn you!
On a “People We’d Prefer To Only Encounter Once In Our Lifetime”, most of us would rank the guy who twirls the sign advertising Little Caesar’s $5 Hot ‘n Readys, Hitler (after travelling through time to shoot him), and Hootie And The Blowfish drummer Jim Sonefeld* right up there with Harv and Marv. Well, they’re back for a second time. Deal with it. Yes, Harv and Marv, the barefoot, lumpy duo who apparently loathe each other are back once again to observe young children in the bathroom. It’s all quite horrible enough without the stunning revelation this episode provides: that despite their bipedal appearance, wearing of clothes, and utilization of technology such as glasses, Harv and Marv are not human. The short doesn’t explain what they actually are, be it humanoid aliens, or shapeshifting pile of goo, or possibly Yankee fans. We’re also not sure if it makes them watching kids shower while asking “What’s he doing now?” more or less creepy. Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for the latest installment with their favorite pair of inhuman, time-travelling hobbit-hobos, Clean and Neat with Harv and Marv! *Nothing against him, it just seems like once would probably be enough.
Willy Whistle! Yes, he looks like the Bill from that School House Rock cartoon’s less successful brother, but he’s so much more than that. He’s an anthropomorphic flying whistle who lives in a cop’s whiskers, and pops out to tell kids what to do, overcoming the challenges presented by his pronounced lisp! It’s no wonder Willy Whistle fever seized the nation after this film’s release. Everywhere you looked there were kids with Willy Whistle backpacks, lunchboxes, adults getting into heated arguments on Willy Whistle fan forums about what Willy’s rank in the police force would be, and whether his occasionally-disappearing eyebrows are “canon.” But forget all the merchandise, the fame, the women, the power; at his core, Willy is about crossing the street. Specifically, teaching kids how to cross the street safely and not just stand there screaming in terror at the floating sentient whistle who has just appeared to order them around. Look both ways then join Mike, Kevin, and Bill, for Willy Whistle! WILLY COMMANDS IT!
After the shocking, pulse-pounding ending of Episode 11: Robin’s Ruse (rhymes with caboose), many Batman fans were left wondering how will they top that?! Will there be an episode where Batman debates between a name brand and store brand pancake mix? Will Gabe be forced to wait in line at the DMV for an additional two minutes when he forgets to take a number upon initially entering the DMV? Will Vicki Vale become briefly concerned when the check engine light in her car momentarily flickers? Sadly, none of these exciting options happens. We do however, inch ever so much closer to the finale of this series, Episode 15: Batman Disappoints Some Kids. We’ll also get to see some stuff that has never been seen before in this serial such as some thugs in a submarine—Wait, no… The Wizard fiddling with some knobs—hang on… A plane dropping bombs! That hasn’t happened before! Maybe it won’t be completely, totally, abjectly the lamest thing anyone has ever seen!* Mike, Kevin, and Bill strap on their Rocketeer-style jetpacks and prepare to Ride The Wind along with Robin, but he of course was never intending to ride the wind in the first place, but they still had a good time without him. *Untrue
When you want facts, there’s only one form of entertainment that you can turn to: the documentary. Known for their unbiased viewpoints, documentaries like Fahrenheit 9/11, 2016: Obama’s America, and Loose Change give you the unvarnished truth, regardless of how much money their creators stand to rake in by sensationalizing viewpoints that confirm what people already want to hear. We’re proud to say we’ve discovered another documentary, Flying Saucer Mystery, that gives viewers the truth, the whole truth, and several ugly 1950s guys. Presenting hard, incontrovertible facts such as “I can’t be sure, but it looked like a flying saucer,” and “I didn’t get a good look at it but it was probably 50 feet in radius, or was that diameter, I can never keep those two straight,” this documentary proves once and for all that idiots will say anything to get on TV. Featuring video footage that makes the saucers in Plan 9 From Outer Space look like the aliens in Independence Day, Flying Saucer Mystery probes deep (ha!) into the mystery of our neighbors in the sky. Get it now before the government can [REDACTED]
As the latest episode of the Batman serial begins, Robin is speeding along in an...armored car? Hm, that actually sounds kind of cool… And it contains a remote control device called The Neutralizer? Intriguing, what’s it do? Disables The Wizard’s invisibility device!? Wow!! And in order to stop him, The Wizard’s henchmen start dropping bombs out of a custom built plane!?! Holy cow! This must be the most exciting episoHAHAHAHAHAHAH you poor, deluded fool! Clearly, there’s no budget here to give that action sequence the treatment it deserves. There are however, scenes of octogenarian policemen, Barry Brown broadcasting, and three, count them, three scenes of the old rich cranky guy berating his butler. The titular superhero shows up too, we think, when he’s able to free his costume from the mess of old receipts and warranties that he also keeps in the file cabinet. The Wizard’s Challenge: can you watch this entire episode without hurling something at your TV every time Robin tries to enunciate? Mike, Kevin, and Bill try and fail in our latest serial RiffTrax!
In episode 182* of the Batman serial, The World’s Greatest Detective, star of Detective Comics, is forced to do some actual Detective Work! The Wizard has been shot in the hand and in a twist that would make the writers of even the worst Scooby-Doo episodes, the ones with Scooby-Dum, shake their heads in disgust, every other suspect in Gotham has also suffered a mysterious hand wound! Oh, they all have their excuses: “I caught it on barbed wire.” “I snagged it on one of my mantraps.” “Gabe challenged me to Mumbly Peg.” “I hit the ‘stop’ button on my remote so emphatically during Episode 13 that it exploded, causing the injury.” So it’s up to Batman to do the trademark detective work that only he is capable of, namely, attempting to tell the difference between a barbed wire wound and a bullet hole. Will Batman be able to make this distinction? We have our doubts. We’re frankly not sure he’s been able to see a damn thing out of that mask throughout the entire serial. Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for the penultimate entry in the Batman serial saga: Batman Vs. The Wizard! *I’m sorry, we’re being told this is actually just episode 14. We apologize for the entirely reasonable mistake.
Here it is, at last, the FINAL EPISODE chronicling Batman’s struggle against the Wizard! The suspense is thick, and everyone’s wondering: who will prevail and be victorious? Will it be the nefarious Wizard or -- wait, oh come on, it’s right there in the stupid title! That’d be like titling the Seinfeld finale “They wind up in jail” or the Lost finale “Don’t bother watching.” One thing the title doesn’t give away is the identity of the Wizard, most likely because the writers of the serial didn’t get around to deciding who that would be until they started shooting the final scenes of this episode. Is it the old occasionally-in-a-wheelchair guy? Or occasionally-in-a-wheelchair guy’s butler? Convenient-provider-of-exposition radio guy? Vicki Vale’s dead brother, who everybody seems to have completely forgotten about, including her? I think we all know the real answer: Gabe. Gabe, you beautiful mastermind, you’ve been pulling the strings all along! Bless you, sweet prince. No matter how it turns out, one thing’s for certain: after the Wizard, Batman never faced another enemy again and Gotham City lived in peace and prosperity forever. Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for the victory-filled conclusion, Batman Victorious!
Crap! You’ve got some lying around the house, don’t you? Sure you do! Look under your bed or in the trash can. See! A whole bunch of crap in there. Now stick some of that crap to other crap. Maybe toss in some junk if you stumble across any. Draw a face on some crud and then fasten it to the crap-junk. There! You’ve got yourself a puppet! This is the guiding ethos of ACI Films, makers of the famed At Your Fingertips series. This short is an At Your Fingertips in every aspect but name. A mysterious offscreen voice instructs terrified children how to construct terrifying crafts out of scrap materials while a druggy soundtrack plays. This time we’re making puppets, which are terrifying even when not constructed by the lunatics at ACI, so you know you’re in for something special. We’re not sure when we discovered puppets for the first time in order to make a rediscovery necessary, but Rediscovery: Puppets asserts that this has definitely happened. We find it best not to question the people who put the ACI in MANIAC.
What would it be like if all the springs suddenly disappeared from the face of the earth? One might think that the only change might be the relief of children who no longer had to pretend to enjoy a Slinky for the approximately 3.8 seconds it takes for one to become tangled garbage. But no! The world would become a spring-less hellscape, where planes plummet from the sky, car brakes fail, and middle aged schlubs find ways to enbaggify their hideous wardrobes even more! One of these baggy clothes wearing schlubs is at the center of our tale. In a lapse of judgment, he wishes to never see another spring again, which a spring sprite named Coily is happy to instantly oblige. Coily evidently didn’t have much else going on. Schlub-o (our hero’s legal full name) then takes a harrowing, George Bailey-esque journey into an alternate reality, only instead of “Making Violent Love” to Donna Reed, he can’t get his glove compartment to stay closed. Needless to say, he cracks under the madness of this terrifying new world almost immediately and spends the rest of the short evangelizing springs, for fear that Coily will punch him in the face like Mr. Welch did to George after he told off his wife. Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill in wondering why there are no Google image search results for “Coily tattoo” riffing A Case of Spring Fever! No springs!
Not just a cruel nickname for the kid in the elementary school cafeteria with an unfortunate skin condition anymore, it’s Warty the Toad! Quite possibly our wartiest short yet, and the first to feature real live pond critters voiced by a real live pond person* (*pond person status of narrator assumed but unverified). Warty is vain because he’s covered in so many warts, which definitely makes sense. The wiser pond critters try to show him the error of the ways, and the hognose snake tries to eat him, probably because he’s bitter that warts are considered flattering while his hognose is worthy of scorn in this confusing, upside-down pond mythos. Reached for comment, Kermit the Frog has denied all knowledge of Warty the Toad and categorically denies he is the father. There’s a little to learn and a lot to smell at this pond, join Mike, Kevin and Bill for Warty the Toad!
Mike, Kevin, and Bill comment on yet another ACI Films educational short. This 1970 film showed how to combine flour, salt and water to make dough which can be used like modelling clay. What more could we want? More exciting action packed crafting based on household items from the folks who brought us the rest of the At Your Fingertips series: Boxes, Cylinders, and the greatest short of all Grasses!
Frustrating Fours and Fascinating Fives! No, it’s not an epic film about Mark Wahlberg’s decades-long struggle to count all the way to ten. Instead it’s about dealing with the pesky child who has rudely decided to grow up in your house. It’s the 1950s, so you can mostly just ignore him, but sometimes he’ll frustrate and/or fascinate you into action. But that’s not all: unlike most child development films this one carries a hint of DANGER! A father nearly backs over his own “frustrating” son in the driveway - an innocent accident or a subconscious desire made real? You make the call! Plus, a kid shoves another kid to the floor in a sudden twist that would have Mean Gene himself saying “Oh my!” Carrying on the proud tradition of Onerous Ones, Tautological Twos, and Thrifty Threes, join the guys for Frustrating Fours and Fascinating Fives!
No one at RiffTrax will ever forget the moment we discovered Zlateh the Goat. A long day of screening dusty 16mm film reels was approaching its end. We cued up one more. Our hopes were not high. Oh, it got off to a good start when a young boy was forced to drag the family goat off to sell at the market. Despair, bleakness, the tears of children - you know, everything you look for in a holiday special. But then he kept dragging it. And dragging it. Just how far away is this market anyway? We almost gave up hope. And then Zlateh showed us that miracles do happen – and that we had a new RiffTrax Holiday Classic on our hands.
This beloved and baffling gem from our Santa Claus Conquers the Martians live show is now available as a studio short! When thinking of classic Christmas specials, it’s not long before Snoopy comes to mind… dog? What dog? We’re talking about the much more better known Snoopy the Brownie, of course, who works for Santa and helps keep his menagerie of terrifying living toys in line while he naps off his most recent egg nog bender. Really, we’ve seen our share of drunk Santas over the years, and this one’s as red-nosed and bleary as they come. But Snoopy and Santa are far from the most iconic characters featured here. We’re talking, naturally, about the Candy Lion! Yes, the Candy Lion, the lion who can eat candy. Oh the concept still isn’t clear enough yet? Well fortunately his catchphrase, which he loves to blurt out at random times, will clear that right up. We won’t spoil the surprise, but-- “I CAN EAT CANDY!” --oh come on Candy Lion, who let you in here?? Join Mike, Kevin and Bill for a heaping helping of holiday cheer wi-- “I CAN EAT CANDY”-- Santa and the Fairy Snow Queen!
At last, the classic nuclear safety short that put the “fun” in “fundamentally unhelpful advice in the case of a nuclear attack” is available as a riff! Nothing says “atomic death is nigh” like a cartoon turtle named Bert singing a playful song. Did the fallout transform a human man into a musical reptile? If that’s how it works, that’s not so bad, maybe we should embrace the bomb and enjoy our new lives as carefree animated turtles? Alas, these questions go unanswered as the film moves on to focus on real human children and real human adults in real human situations. There’s nothing funny about protecting yourself from a city-incinerating blast with… a folded newspaper on your head. Yeah. That’s pretty much it. That’s the best they could come up with. Good luck, kids! It’s time to crawl under your desk with Mike, Kevin, and Bill, then stick your head between your legs and kiss your Duck and Cover goodbye!
If only Bernie Madoff had seen this film, things might’ve been different. Oh he still would’ve committed massive acts of investment fraud, Behave, Bernard! doesn’t address that topic at all, but he could’ve at least learned not to tear up newspapers in the neighbor’s yard or steal fast food hamburgers. Yes, the Bernard in question here is a pooch, a canine, and he’s hell on four legs, baby. He’s reckless and wild. And his young owner Glenn, being named Glenn, is no match for the situation. But that’s not even the worst of it… ...Oh you want to know the worst of it? Hm yeah guess that ominous ellipsis did sort of indicate that was coming, reasonable assumption. Okay, well the worst of it is...Bernard SINGS. And despite what you might expect from a clumsy troublemaking dog named Bernard, the singing is NOT VERY GOOD. He sings and stumbles his way through life, leaving a wake of bloodshed and tears behind him, and he feels no remorse! Bernard is unstoppable! Behave, Bernard!? Ha! You might as well ask a sandstorm to behave! Welcome to the century of Bernard, he’s running the show now!
Like it or not, every one of us gets angry. Maybe someone cuts you off in traffic, and you make an obscene gesture. Maybe someone doesn't clean up after their dog and you get a little steamed. Maybe the guy who calls in to the sports talk radio show right before has the nerve, the utter nerve to suggest that Tim Raines does not belong in the baseball hall of fame and you’re forced to spew bile-filled invective about him and maybe suggest that he in fact should be legally prohibited from reproducing and you find yourself driving over to his house clutching a lit molotov cocktail because Tim Raines’ lifetime on base stats are pretty much identical to Tony Gwynn’s except for oh, the nearly five hundred more stolen bases and three world series rings so I’ll see you in hell Joe from Queens A-HAHAHAHAH— Sorry, got a little carried away there. The point is, we all get angry. The kid in this short certainly does, and with just cause! You see, he brought a toy space capsule to school for show and tell, and some other careless kids knocked it over. What transpires would make Kurosawa proud as the retelling of events includes multiple viewpoints, with unreliable narrators, conflicting accounts, and a break for snack time.
Whether you’re delivering a speech to the UN general council or giving a toast at your cousin’s wedding, there’s one thing for certain: you’re probably boring the hell out of everyone. Also, you’re using verbal communication. In fact, verbal communication has made the AARP’s “Top Ten preferred methods of communication” list for nearly twenty years running. Last year it beat out grunting, crotch grabbing, going “EEEEEEEEEE” in a really high pitched tone, tilting your head back and to one side to indicate to the person sitting across the table from you to check out the person behind you, and semaphore. But do any of us really know how to communicate verbally? Wait, we do? All of us? One of the first social skills we learn, usually by the age of 18 months? Well then why did Alfred Higgins make this short? Your guess is as good as ours! It’s a crazy, mixed-up educational gumbo that includes ten year old Siskel & Ebert impersonators, rip offs of those silhouettes from The Electric Company, and children who have been given access to a functioning television production studio for some reason. Wait, maybe that last one does actually explain it...
Fall is here and it’s time to start school! And what’s the most important part of school? Math? Reading? Arts and crafts? WRONG! It’s sitting quietly and watching educational shorts about other kids doing all of those things! Kids like Mark, who wants to be a (verbatim quote) “telephone person” when he grows up. Or Michael, who informs teacher that the sound of a beating heart sounds like (yet again another direct quote) “boxing gloves.” Or Damon, who… Oh boy, let’s just say that Damon is going to have some issues once the other kids start learning what “beating up the biggest dork in school” is. Joining these little tykes are teacher’s casual sexism, impressions of Indians that are still stuck in the 1870s (or 2015 NFL teams), and a completely needless frame story, and you’ve got our latest baffling “educational” short: Starting School!
The title of our new short, With An All-Star Cast, could describe all kinds of movies. Ocean’s Eleven, Love Actually, Cannonball Run, and however many of those Expendables things they’re gonna throw at us. But there are stars bigger than any of the meatheads, smooth talkers, and leading ladies you’ll find in those films, stars who shine so bright all the world can see them, smell them, even taste them. The name of these true stars? MEAT. Yes that’s right, meats, in all their vaguely pink 1950s splendor, come to life on the silver screen! It’s an amazing film-within-a-film that puts Sunset Blvd to shame (only because Sunset Blvd was sorely lacking in five-pound pork chops). A male actor fails to cook properly on the set of a cooking short, so naturally the filmmakers trick a woman into doing his job for him! Yeah, like we said, it’s the 50s. Strap on your bib, crack the seal on a new bottle of barbecue sauce, and get ready to roast and broil the greatest stars of all: With An All-Star Cast!
Shoplifting! Before they invented bittorrent, the five fingered discount was all the rage with the teens (second only to the storied AARP discount.) But there were lots of “myths” about shoplifting. That it was a “victimless crime.” That you “won’t go to jail.” That if you “shoplift a Gorgon’s head, Pegasus will leap out of it.” The Myths of Shoplifting is here to clear up all of these misconceptions. It does this using the controversial “all dork cast” method that was so popular in the seventies. Watch as they attempt to steal makeup, records, and a pocket calculator! Even more impressive is that they are attempting all of these thefts in a Sunglass Hut, which to the best of our knowledge does not sell any of those things. We believe it sells sunglasses. Of course, this short was not very effective, since all the cool kids were already cutting class to shoplift stuff. Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for The Myths of Shoplifting!
Riffing together again for the first installment in their new series: Bridget Nelson & Mary Jo Pehl! LIFE IN THE SUBURBS According to research, everyday more and more Americans are leaving our big cities and moving to the suburbs. Entire apartment buildings empty overnight! Schools close from lack of students! Everyone wants a lawn and they want it now! You, like many people, may have questions about this phenomenon. Who exactly are these people? Are they people with particular interests and particular goals? And most importantly do they know HOW to live in the suburbs? Well, these are the people Redbook magazine calls YOUNG ADULTS. And these Young Adults are going to learn from Redbook magazine how to correctly live in the “AGE OF THE PUSH BUTTON!” With Redbook as your guide, learn the importance of, malls, cars, malls, appliances, malls, easy living and malls. Join MST3K favorites Mary Jo and Bridget as they Riff you through a “Happy-Go-Spending-Whirl” of 1957 consumerism, lust and greed. BUY IT BUY IT BUY IT (<-- subliminal)
Riffing together again for the first second time in world history! Bridget Nelson and Mary Jo Pehl bring you... A WORD TO THE WIVES Bridget and Mary Jo get a few pointers in this “how to” film from the 50s about getting a new kitchen. Jane and her new dark-haired schemer neighbor without a name come up with a plan to trick Jane’s husband into a brand-new kitchen, complete with new appliances so they can have more time to go shopping. In their panting greed for a new refrigerator that makes ice circles (we don’t know what those are either) and with poor hapless Jane as a pawn in her neighbor’s sinister plan, poor Husband George never knew what hit him. In a bloody, horrifying twist of events they get their new kitchen - and a little more than they bargained for. Tune in and see the new kitchen for yourself - if you dare!
Oh, animals. Whether it’s a kitten and a piglet becoming friends, a cute hamster stuffing Cheez-Its into his cheeks, or legions of plague rats devastating the population of medieval Europe, those wacky critters are always up to somethin’!
Bridget and Mary Jo do their very best to go limp all over by flip flopping their hands and drinking coffee. Sit back and relax as they Riff this important message from the fine folks at Pfizer’s.
Today’s Woman. She buys stuff. She buys stuff in a groovy way. If more merchants knew this simple fact then they would understand that they should sell things to woman. This short film teaches them that YES, women are in fact consumers and can, by law, be sold things they want to buy.
The sole plot keyword on IMDb about Naturally A Girl is “menstruation.” But Bridget and Mary Jo have plenty to add to this short health education film that tastefully and progressively explains the beauty of being a woman -- even boys are interviewed for their take on the matter. Hey, no matter who you are or how you identify, you’ll get lots of tips for having your period or someone else’s period!
"One is apt to think of Etiquette as being of importance to none but brides or diplomats or persons lately elected to political office. As a matter of fact there is not a single thing we do or say, or choose, or use, or even think, that does not follow (or break) one of the exactions of taste, or tact or ethics, or good manners, or etiquette." -Emily Post Never were these important words taken more seriously than on the birthday party circuit of 1950’s Cedar Rapids Iowa. And NO ONE understood the life giving freedom of these words more than Cindy’s fairy Godmother/ sprite/ demon. Follow Cindy as she faces the humiliation of not being invited to the party with steely resolve. Rejoice with her as she discovers “There had been some mix up” and she really was invited! But most of all Please call for help! Because Cindy’s Godmother/ sprite/demon has an etiquette vendetta against her that only right behavior and total cultural submission can vanquish. Bridget and Mary Jo are your Riffers for Cindy Goes To A Party. A must see for those thinking birthday parties are supposed to be fun.
The Prom: It’s a Pleasure is a Jam Handy production whose very title is lies, all lies! Complete with emotional baggage for Bridget and Mary Jo, this short features the real live actual 1961 America’s Junior Miss and future Newhart star, Mary Frann. Why, did you know prom is the most important social function? And viewers, play along at home, won't you? See if you can spot the product placement!
Oh, Boy! Babies! brings you face to face with feathered hair, over tweezed eyebrows and corduroy blazers as it seeks to answer the question: Are boys capable of babysitting? Weep with Bridget and Mary Jo as this simple question divides families, ruins friendships and ultimately cracks the very foundation of a prestigious east coast prep school. Rejoice with them as they celebrate the courageous teachers who dared to make a difference by implementing an afterschool program. Laugh with them as babies pee on people. Oh, Boy! Babies! will shatter all your sexist ideas about babysitting!
The Snob is a horror/science fiction film about an alien amoeba that emerges from a meteorite which has crashed from outer space in the small town of Downington, Pennsylvania. The amorphous globule consumes the locals, growing ever larger. Nope, hang on, I'm thinking of the The Blob. In The Snob, Sarah is a high school student who wreaks horror and despair in her small town by studying too much. She is regarded as high-falutin' and snooty because she reads. Worry not - all Sarah needs to reign in the depravity is friends!
Ain’t no party like a Halloween Party, because Halloween Party is a LIVE short, performed and recorded on stage at the Belcourt Theatre in Nashville! Now it’s ready to watch, whether you missed that show or want to relive the magic in the comfort of your home, where you host your own Halloween parties. And if your Halloween parties are anything like the one in Halloween Party, for some reason there’s a boy in a “lady scarecrow” costume. What’s a “lady scarecrow” costume, you ask? it looks just like a regular scarecrow costume, but you know it’s really a “lady scarecrow” costume because everyone goes out of their way to call it that. And, naturally, you make your son wear it to school. Also, there’s a very angry dog who seems better suited for protecting rusted-out fridges in a junkyard than, y’know, being allowed anywhere near children. All this plus pumpkins, “Indian corn,” and all the other 1960s Halloween staples that make your 1960s Halloween party the Halloween-iest ever! Don’t miss this LIVE recording of Mike, Kevin, and Bill’s Halloween Party!
By day, he’s a mild-mannered milkman with thick-rimmed glasses. But, when duty calls, he becomes something even less thrilling - Measuring Man! Does he remove the thick-rimmed glasses when he becomes Measuring Man? No he does not! Apparently when your only powers involve measurement education, you don’t have to worry about super-villains figuring out your alter ego. Besides, look at him, he definitely needs those glasses. In this measuring adventure, our hero teaches young Tommy the basics of, well, measuring. Tommy has somehow survived to the age of nine without learning concepts like “bigger” or “smaller.” Fortunately, Measuring Man is here to help. He uses his terrifying cosmic powers to whisk Tommy from the safety of his kitchen off to Measuring Land, a place beyond all imagination, assuming your imagination operates at the level of a hastily-planned middle school play. But that’s not all Measuring Man has! He also sports a belt full of measuring objects that are, well… suggestively shaped? Suffice to say, if you want to take the measure of a man, Measuring Man is your man. First performed live to immeasurable laughter at our Miami Connection live show, now available as a studio riff, join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for Measuring Man!
It’s being called “Literally the most anticipated sequel that is coming out in the last two months of 2015.” Fans have bought their tickets months in advance, recreated the trailers in Lego, and scanned the original material for clues about what the plot to this one might contain. We of course refer to Dining Together, sequel to the somewhat obscure 2009 RiffTrax short Playing Together. What did you think we were talking about? All your favorite characters are back: Duncan, Stickman*, and soul-crushing 50s greyness and blandness. It’s Thanksgiving day, and guests that make Peppermint Patty look generous and gracious are starting to arrive. Fortunately, there’s still time for the kids to learn valuable lessons about politeness such as “Keep the profanity to a minimum when Tony Romo ruins your three team tease in the first game of the day” and “Don’t comment that it looks like a badger could carve the turkey better than father.”
(1951) When an Hour of Thanksgiving is not enough, but a Week of Thanksgiving is simply too much, may we suggest A Day of Thanksgiving? Gather ‘round the Thanksgiving table for a 1950s feast from Young America Films. Fans of Young America Films know that, despite being heavily anti-Commie, they somehow feel like the grayest, bleakest Soviet shorts ever made. So, perfect for the holidays! Wash down that weird cranberry salad nobody actually likes with a tall glass of fear, shame, and forced conformity! The short focuses on a family that, despite living in a large, well-furnished house, cannot afford a turkey for Thanksgiving. Did turkeys cost more than houses in the 50s? The only reasonable conclusion is: yes. The family patriarch makes everyone list all the things they’re thankful for, to take their minds off his failure as a provider. And it’s a sweet list: family, shelter, security… and freedom from shadowy “political gangsters dragging people off to jail.” That’s right, political gangsters. Man, if I had a dime for every Thanksgiving that got ruined by some of those political gangsters showing up and making a muck of things. They don’t even bring wine!
It’s very special RiffTrax special, featuring yourses trulies (Mary Jo and Bridget), and some very special guest stars! So gather ‘round your technology device, pour yourself a hot toddy, gather the kiddos and granddad and Nana too, and make this special a special part of your happy holidays.
(1951) Bridget and Mary Jo learn a thing or two about marriage in this short’s frank depiction of bridge games and frosting cakes.
Spheres, cylinders, pyramids, the whole shape-y gang is here, reunited at last. Ready for their close-ups, repeated close-ups, over and over, so many close-ups of shapes you’ll be begging the narrator for something, ANYTHING that isn’t a shape as you descend fully into conical madness.
William: From Georgia to Harlem. At last, the prequel to RiffTrax classic Guy From Harlem the world’s been screaming for! Sure, we all knew he was from Harlem, but where was he from before THAT? Answers at last! Country boy and overalls-with-no-shirt-underneath enthusiast William finds his world turned upside-down when his family picks up and moves from drab rural poverty in Georgia to bleak urban poverty in Harlem. Ohhhh, so THAT’S where they got the title from! Because, you see, William moves from Georgia to Harlem. I get it now. It’s a very subtle title. Harlem is a strange new world for William, as he struggles to get along with Calvin, a kid with an inexplicable and extreme hatred of tractors. When a terrifying hardcore gang (aka, a few kids who smoke cigarettes) attacks William and Calvin in the park, his small town values are put to the test. Will he survive? Will he remain “from Georgia”, and if not at what point does he technically become “from Harlem”? Will Calvin ever get over his weird tractor thing? Find out with Mike, Kevin and Bill as they take a trip with William From Georgia to Harlem!
One of the best things about litter used to be its versatility. You could just throw it anywhere! Plus, it encouraged improvisation: If you put your mind to it, anything could be litter! Food scraps, old batteries, syringes, grandpa. Just toss it at the feet of an emotional roadside Indian and be on your way! But then the hippies had to come along, and everyone got all “groovy” this and “let’s not let the rest of the country end up like New Jersey” that. They started by indoctrinating our children with shorts like The Litter Monster, and the next thing we know our children are spouting propaganda like “Let’s paint garbage cans and put them in the park!” and “Dad, can you help us remove the rusty car parts someone dumped on the baseball diamond?” and “What happened to all those rusty car parts you had in the garage that mom’s been hassling you about getting rid of?” The short culminates with the construction of the titular Litter Monster, a hulking abomination that begs passersby to shove their litter into its gaping mouth. It’s like a robotic homeless Cookie Monster with severely lowered dietary standards, and to be honest, we really wish there was one on every street corner in our home town. Join Mike, Kevin, Bill, and thousands of pounds of delicious litter for The Litter Monster!
Sex! intrigue! Canada! Hungarian political refugees living in Canada directing films about young Canadian woman who find themselves pregnant in the summer of 1964! This must-see short has it all! Directed by George Kaczender (a Hungarian political refugee living in Canada) Phoebe is the story of Phoebe, a beautiful young Canadian woman who finds herself pregnant in the summer of 1964. Filmed in glorious black and white against a backdrop of exotic greater Toronto beaches and traffic-free roadways, Kaczender (a Hungarian political refugee living in Canada) takes us inside the mind of Phoebe as she comes to grips with the reality of her situation. This is the strangest, wackiest, coolest, sweetest, What the heck is going on-iest After School Special you have ever seen! Let the capable riffing of Bridget and Mary Jo lovingly guide you through all 28 minutes of this teen pregnancy hormone fueled event. They will help you figure out where exactly in relation to the beach is the abandoned house? How do Phoebe's while slacks stay so clean? Who are the strange top hatted dancers on the beach? And what’s the deal with Paul? * Extra credit essay question: Discuss the cultural impact Hungarian Political refugee filmmakers living in Canada have had on feminism in the Northwest Territories.
Imagine a tiny astronaut. No, tinier. Tinier still. TINIER. Are you thinking of a little white rodent yet? Good, then you’re ready to see his life put in grave danger in The Tiny Astronaut! The Tiny Astronaut is a short from the golden age of space travel, back when it was mostly about putting confused animals in giant explosive rockets and seeing what happened. But the twist this time is that the endangered mouse (not to be confused with Danger Mouse) is a young boy’s beloved pet. Aw, aeronautics can be so bittersweet. And actually, in this case, just straight-up cruel, as some mean older boys who are also somehow major science nerds take the lad’s mouse in their endless quest for knowledge and/or seeing stuff blow up real good. Will the boy save his mouse? Will the rocket launch go off as planned? Will Neil deGrasse Tyson butt in to point out scientific inaccuracies in the film? It’s time to head to the launchpad and find out, join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for The Tiny Astronaut!
What’s your Social Acceptability Type? Take the quiz! Circle the letter that best describes you. A. Happy following your own pursuits? B. Lower class, but good with people? C. Popular but lack a sense of security? D. Seem to ”fit in” but somehow don’t? E. Unusually popular, intelligent, a three letter athlete, come from a family with good income and high social prestige? Look below to find out your Social Acceptability. A. Voluntary Isolate (you’ve got this!) B. Climber (way to go!) C. Middle Case (uh oh!) D. Fringe (you’ll show them!) E. Handsome Leader!! (awesome!) Now watch the short film and match your type with the correlating character! Jot down helpful tips and get ready for fun and loads of encouragement!
The Value of Teamwork! No, it’s not the fourth Powerpoint slide in a seminar your HR manager required you to attend after your meltdown in the conference room last week, it’s our latest short! And it’s a sweet classic tale, all about a boy and his dog. Except the boy is an irritable loner who doesn’t play well with others, and the dog talks to him and tells him what to do. Nothing ominous or terrifying about that, right? Fortunately this particular dog is less into commanding murders and more into team-building exercises, being a nice kid, that kind of stuff. A weirdly sullen boy and his cute and powerful dog, teaming up team-style! Join the team-iest team of all, Mike, Bill, and Kevin for the The Value of Teamwork! Teams!!!
On Guard - Bunco! provides a hard-hitting and, if you take good notes, potentially lucrative look into the world of con-men! Scams covered include “The Encyclopedia Flim Flamica“ “The Widow’s Bankroll Do-see-do” and the always crowd-pleasing “Paint a Guy’s Roof then Threaten to Beat Him Up.” For good measure there’s a grand finale involving needless racism! If you’re anything like us, you’ll find it impossible to watch the whole thing and not go out and pull a few buncos of your own! In fact, here, have Kevin’s bank account number just to get you started!
What are the three words most guaranteed to be followed by something that will make you angry? That’s right, Don’t Get Angry! As in, “don’t get angry, but I tried to clean some bricks in your washing machine,” or “don’t get angry, but I’m punching you in the ribs right now as hard as I can.” On top of all that, Don’t Get Angry happens to be the title of our newest short. But please, don’t get angry. Who’s not getting angry in this short? No one. Which is to say, everyone is getting angry. And who’s everyone? Kids. Adorable 1950s kids with names like Priscilla and Carol, and oceans of rage right under the surface. From jump rope gone wrong to a flaky friend canceling plans, virtually anything can set these kids off into a punch-throwing, spittle-flecked tantrum. Given all that, how does Don’t Get Angry teach children not to get angry? Don’t get angry, but it doesn’t teach them anything at all. Don’t get angry, get Don’t Get Angry! With Mike, Kevin, and Bill. Who are, of course, kind of angry.
Were it not for the heroic labors of Dr. John T. Dorrance, the world might never have known this short film extolling the various applications of soup. Dorrance, a chemist with the Campbell Soup Company, (anybody else think it’s weird that a soup company had a chemist? No? Just me? Okay) invented condensed soup in 1897 and the broth world has never been the same. So pull up a bowl of soup, settle in, and prepare to be surprised, delighted, and - spoiler alert - shocked. (“Magic” loosely interpreted by filmmakers.)
Welcome to a black and white nightmare of typing, filing, dictation, and interpersonal skills. This short film graphically depicts the harrowing journey of Miss Hayes, fresh out of secretarial school and in her first job working for a real estate broker. Miss Hayes thought she was prepared… then the unimaginable happens. (Bring a barf bag.)
We here at The American Dairy Association have teamed up with the President's Council On Physical Fitness AND The Lifetime Sports Foundation to form a girl empowerment complex that will change the world! Collectively we wholeheartedly agree that Girls Are Better Than Ever! But we do have a few recommendations: Some girls need to eat more cheese and play tennis, others should eat less of everything and ride a bike. Some girls would do best to not exist at all or at the very least go bowling. Across the board they all need to stop sitting on the sidelines and try their very hardest to be a pleasure to look at. Other than that Girls Are Better Than Ever!
Keeping our children safe should be one of society’s top priorities. And who better to trust with such an important task than the lunatics who taught us the term “Fancy Headdress”, ACI Films? Yes, the garbage-fusing enthusiasts at ACI somehow didn’t waste all the grant money they were allotted one fiscal year, and Safety As We Play is the unfortunate result. Now kids can learn how to cross the street from the same people who used monkeys to teach us “doing words.” Featuring a song that we believe may be the most nutless piece of arrhythmic garbage since The Calendar and How to Use It, Safety As We Play is another hallowed entry in ACI’s Pantheon of Crap. Pop a lude, throw out your rhyming dictionary, and join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for the film that put the A-C-I in ‘Educational’!
The American Dental Association advises all Americans to Flash That Smile. They are confident that by doing so you will reach your goals, touch the sky and be a star! Be advised that it is VERY helpful to be a super foxy blonde with a rockin bod. If that is not available try at the very least to be a fly B-Boy with fresh moves. Floss your way to fun as Bridget and Mary Jo pull on their neon spandex and take you on a 15 minute oral hygiene adventure. Go ahead, Flash That Smile! Show the world world that despite constant nagging from your mother you never once wore your retainer.
Nobody Tells Me What To Do! is a film about peer pressure felt and applied, surrendered to, and defeated. A tale of triumph not to be missed. The story focuses on Zach, a quitter who quits everything but whose charm and charisma holds sway over an entire sophomore class and Gary, the hard working everyman who wears his baseball uniform to school. Set on a typical 1980’s day at a typical 1980’s mall, Zach and his gang apply peer pressure to Gary to enlist him in an evening of larceny. Meanwhile, his beautiful girlfriend Carrie bullies the popular girls (and Donna) into shoplifting at Cleo’s boutique. Sounds like a typical morality film you watch when there's a substitute teacher, right? Exactly!
Christmas ornaments are not a hard thing to come by. You can get a box of perfectly good ones for like three dollars at CVS. Or if you’re really hard up, most people won’t notice if they’re missing a few after you leave their holiday party. Or you could do as this short suggests and spend hours making terrible ones out of sugar for some reason. The choice is yours! Probably the sweetest installment in the beloved garbage crafting series from ACI Films, At Your Fingertips: Sugar and Spice is like the dreams you have after you eat a bunch of expired marshmallow Peeps and browse a bootleg Ukrainian version of Pinterest right before bed. Originally broadcast as part of RiffTrax Live: Santa Claus, it has all the classic At Your Fingertips thrills, but with the added bonus of not having to sit through more Songs of the World.
Bridget and Mary Jo are cooking up a holiday viewing feast and they’ve set a place for you. The main course is an expertly prepared short called Carving Magic, a mid-century tutorial on meat carving starring Harvey Korman. Side dishes include commercials, Kevin Murphy, and a special guest appearance by MST3K’s prop diva Beez McKeever! Leave room for dessert!
Katy is the story of a young girl whose brother goes to camp leaving the responsibilities of his paper delivery route to her. It takes her a really long time to get dressed for her first day but eventually she gets to the paper boy shack to pick up the papers she is supposed to deliver. Upon arrival the manager of the paper boys says “Hey! Where’s your brother?” To which Katy responds: “He’s at camp, I’m taking over while he’s gone.” At first the guy says NO! Girls can’t deliver papers. But then, he says YES! It just wouldn't be fair to give away any more of the crackling dialogue or outrageous situations Katy finds herself in. You’ve got to buy it to believe it!
See how many things the 1967 short film “The Home of The Future: Year 1999 A.D.” gets right. (Formerly available as Kickstarter)
This short is currently only available as Kickstarter. The metric system. You got an angry feeling in your stomach just thinking about it, didn’t you? The world has been trying to shove this probably-better-but-who-cares system down our stubborn American throats for DECADES, but we won’t have even a centimeter of it. That’s why Measure Metric is so perfect -- an old-timey tonic salesman and his grandson roll into an Old West town and try to convince the locals it’ll cure what ails ‘em. Did the people who made this short realize that framing the metric system as a big con, sold to unsuspecting rubes, might hurt their message? They most certainly did not. And if you’ve never been convinced to try the metric system before, don’t worry, this short won’t change your mind. The phrase “cubic decimeter” comes up a lot. Yeah, “cubic decimeter.” Imagine a world where you were constantly saying things like “cubic decimeter.” It sounds like a bad, bad world, so join Mike, Kevin and Bill in running these Measure Metric hucksters out of our decent old-fashioned measurin’ town!
Are you mature? Identify as mature? Mature-friendly? Then this is just the short film for you! The Maturing Woman, circa 1977, appears to be a PhD project by a couple of Women’s Studies majors. No matter: it’s a useful primer for managing the aging women in your life. Enjoy it with Maturing Woman Bridget and Blossom of Youth Mary Jo!
What do children exercising and animals lounging at the zoo have in common? They’re both extremely inexpensive to film. And the people who made Busy Bodies seized on that big time! Stitching together footage of kids and animals doing vaguely similar actions, the short is truly a masterclass in how to get paid to make something that kind of feels like something, but actually isn’t anything. Just ask the “lazy lion” who’s one of the main busy bodies in Busy Bodies. How can a lion be both lazy AND busy, you ask? Watch the film! You won’t get an answer, but it’s still worth watching.
Who is Allen? Allen Is My Brother. What is Allen Is My Brother? It’s a cry for help in the form of a short film, coming from an innocent young girl plagued by the cruel and endless tortures of her monstrous little brother, Allen. This is her story. He’ll hose down the clothes you hung up to dry without blinking an eye. He’ll toss a block at the cat just because he thinks you might give him the wrong dipping sauce for his chicken nuggets at dinner tonight. He’ll draw another mustache on your favorite doll even though it stopped giving him a thrill years ago, now it’s just something to do. He’s Allen, and he’s your brother. Increase your chances of surviving any Allen-being-your-brother that might occur: join Mike, Kevin, and Bill and learn from Allen Is My Brother!
In appreciation of the stylists of America, Bridget and Mary Jo along with Chevrolet* present American Look. A tribute to men and women who design. You’ll see lamps, chairs, counter tops, tea pots, door knobs, bottles and tons of other regular stuff you have in your very own house. A narrator will say a lot about how Americans like the “look” of things, but you'll never quite understand what he’s getting at, and there are no Chevrolets featured which will confuse you a bit. On the bright side, this short is beautifully photographed in Superscope 200!
When you think of truckers you think of a lot of things: CB Radios, speed, pee bottles, ridiculous arm wrestling training contraptions. Rarely would “The Uplifting Power of Song” be high on your list. Truck Song aims to change that! It of course fails miserably. Trucking is no better subject for a musical than say, one of our slightly more obscure founding fathers, one who never got to be president but still somehow made it onto our currency. It doesn’t help that the titular song sounds like someone asked the janitor at ACI to write you an “ACI style song” and then recorded what happened when he was drooling on a synthesizer in confusion. Based on a book (Finnegans Wake, we think), Truck Song is quite possibly the only short in our catalog that you can get to honk if you do that pulling down arm motion out your window. Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for the short that puts the F-U-N in “Ten Four, good buddy!” (Provided you rearrange the letters and add in a bunch of other letters.) (Formerly exclusive to Kickstarter Backers)
Live show riff available for the first time! We riffed this sparkling sudsy gem of a short LIVE in Nashville before our Mothra show in 2016, and now you can soap it up at home! Uh, sorry, that sounded kinda weird. But then, so is Soapy the Germ Fighter. Over the years we’ve faced down a host of shorts featuring anthropomorphic objects coming alive to haunt children in their rooms, from Coily to Mr. Paperbag to A Talking Car to Norman (okay, Norman never actually did that, but you know he WOULD if he could). Somehow, Soapy the Germ Fighter manages to be the least inspired AND oddest monster of the bunch. Least inspired because he’s just a giant bar of soap named Soapy. Oddest because he has arms and legs and dresses in Renaissance garb for no apparent reason. You’ll find him in the tub, waiting, watching, judging, and tuning his lute. Uh, again, sorry, that sounded kinda weird. But then... well, you know. You’re not clean, and Soapy knows it. Soapy knows everything. Get yourself sorted out and scrub the fear away with Soapy the Germ Fighter, riffed live by Mike, Kevin and Bill!
Everybody in the station wagon, we’re headed to rural Wisconsin to learn about life on a farm! Ever considered the goings-on of a Farm Family? Well now consider FURTHER the same family in the summer! Sure, it's less about everyday farming activities and more about scoring some funnel cakes, but it's really the journey — not the destination (especially if the destination involves funnel cakes). Join Bridget and Mary Jo as they hang out with a Farm Family in Summer - doing everything from milking cows to wearing colorful shirts at the county fair!
Before this groundbreaking film, boredom at work was known as the silent killer. This black and white short from 1961 was part of a series of films produced by the Mental Hygiene Division of the Oklahoma State Department of Health. Watch it with Bridget and Mary Jo and learn how to recognize the warning signs. You - yes, YOU - may be at risk! (For best results, watch while at work.)
Mike said it was "Too close to home," but Bridget and Mary Jo LOVE home, so here we are! Escape to Wisconsin! It’s beautiful this time of year with its colorful leaves and brisk fall air. And be sure to swing by the Markham place for pie and lukewarm coffee! Mary Jo and Bridget are visiting and as soon as all the chores are done, they’ll show you what life is like for a farm family in autumn.
She comes at night. She watches television. She gives your child watered-down tomato soup. She puts your child to bed two hours earlier than needed. She talks on the phone. She plays record albums too loud. She is... THE BABYSITTER! She won’t be stopped. She can’t be stopped. But Bridget and Mary Jo will try to route the evil unleashed by THE BABYSITTER!
There are those classic arguments every kid had growing up. Superman or Batman? Twizzlers or Red Vines? And of course, the biggest fight of all, “who’s your favorite industrial accident victim type, The Hothead or The Forgetter?” Well you can set all those years of fighting aside because now The Hothead & The Forgetter are together as one! If there’s one thing we’ve learned from years of riffing industrial safety shorts, it’s that a job in any kind of factory is basically a death sentence. There are so many exciting ways to get hurt! For example, you might be a Hothead, or you might be more of a Forgetter. One of them loses his temper too easily, while the other can’t remember stuff. Which one’s which? Hmm, I can’t seem to remember, and that’s MAKING ME EXTREMELY ANGRY! They’re two injury-filled tastes that taste even better together, so yell at the safety goggles you forgot to put on and join Mike, Kevin, and BIll for The Hothead & The Forgetter!
It’s Thanksgiving! Be sure to give your turkey a hearty thanks before cooking. It makes them ever so glad to be the meal. If you’ve never cooked a turkey or if you just want to hear A LOT of information about them then join Bridget and Mary Jo as they learn such terms as white meat, dark meat, giblets and viscera! Discover with them the many uses for America's number one flightless bird! C’mon, Let's Talk Turkey! You know you want to.
Studio version of Bridget and Mary Jo's 'The Griper', first riffed during RiffTrax Live: SUMMER SHORTS BEACH PARTY.
It’s the holidays, and you know what that means - time for weird old cartoons! And Gifts from the Air checks all the standard “weird old holiday cartoon” boxes: It’s got a poor orphan boy staring at toys in a window. It’s got those toys coming to life in terrifying bounce-up-and-down fashion. It’s got a cat being turned into an electric power source to run a bubble tree. It’s got Santa coming into a house through a radio to dump a bunch of toys in a stove. Okay, those last two might not be standard, in this or any universe. But that’s the magic of Gifts from the Air, it reminds you of Christmas without bearing any actual resemblance to any Christmas anyone has ever experienced. Riffs from the air on Gifts from the Air, with Mike, Kevin, and Bill!
Peppy, Zippo, and Click. They may sound like rejected Pep Boys, but they’re really Santa’s elves. Didn’t know the elves had names? Well then you probably didn’t know that elves look like winos who got their noses stuck in a pencil sharpener right before getting hit with a supervillain's shrinking ray! Yes, poor Peppy, Zippo, and Click, who look like an Anne Geddes calendar that got Dorian Grayed, are here to help Santa deliver toys all around the world in one night. Perhaps they should have hired a logistics planner as well, because this short strongly implies that Santa returns to the North Pole to restock his sled with presents after every single house. Maybe he just wanted another look at Zippo, who is clearly a 1930s boxing palooka wearing an elf hat. oin Mike, Kevin, and Bill for an enlightening holiday look inside Santa Claus’ Workshop!
Hey kids*! Ever wonder what the Whizzo the clown of snowmen would look like? “No?” “Of course not?” “How did you get in here?” Wrong answers kids! The correct answer is Spunky the Snowman! He’s like Frosty’s dirtbag second cousin, the kind of snowman who’s had a tooth knocked out of his mouth at more than one wedding. Spunky’s like Frosty without the charm or the clean arrest record. Put it this way, when you hear him going “thumpity thump thump”, he’s not romping over the fields of snow, if you know what we mean. Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for Spunky the Snowman. Now you’ve got something else to worry about.
Christmas! Whether you celebrate it with a traditional nativity scene, an ugly sweater party, or the increasingly popular “Chanukah” variant, one thing is certain: everyone celebrates it. And not just near! But far too! Christmas Customs Near and Far takes a very sixties look at these ‘far’ places, using the always culturally sensitive device of “forcing some confused kids into ridiculous costumes and pointing a camera at them.” Several of these children have lit candles strapped to their heads. At one point they construct something called a Mitten Tree that even the deranged bastards at ACI Films would have taken a look at and gone “That’s a little too stupid even for us.” Whether you’re near, far, or some horrible quantum flux state of both this Christmas, Mike, Kevin, and Bill’s riff of Christmas Customs Near and Far will hopefully fill your home with warmth, laughter, and whatever the hell a Mitten Tree is.
You know ’em, you love ’em - and so do Bridget and Mary Jo! Our favorite agrarians from summer and autumn are back once again to tackle the icy chills of winter. It’s Farm Family in Winter!
Every kid dreams of growing up to be a firefighter! Every kid, that is, except the kids who were forced to watch A Day with Fireman Bill, which makes the profession look about as exciting as working the loading dock at a frozen broccoli warehouse. There are no fires in this short! And if there were, Fireman Bill would not be allowed near them, as he is technically only a trainee fireman. Instead, we get to see him eat meals in the firehouse kitchen, stand by as other firemen out an imaginary fire, and clean several hundred feet of dirty hose. We don’t want to promise too much excitement, but there may just be a completely separate segment devoted to drying the now clean hose! Join Fireman Bill to see if he can one day achieve his dream of being promoted to Fire Marshall, and severely injure himself for our amusement on In Living Color.
Sometimes the title of a RiffTrax short is confusing, misleading, falsely exciting to oversell the dull subject matter at hand. But not this one. With Drawing for Beginners: The Square, you get exactly what’s advertised - real-time, excruciating instructions on how to draw a square. With a pen. On paper. So BUCKLE UP, BEGINNERS! It would be easy to confuse this short with another release of ours, Drawing for Beginners: The Rectangle. Because, and only truly advanced high-level mathematics scholars know this, squares are rectangles. And yet, somehow, each film is mesmerizing in its own special “close-up of a hand drawing on paper” way. And the 3-D models of the “finished” drawings are unbelievably goofy, like a trash-craft project from an At Your Fingertips short but with an even weaker grip on reality. Yes, it’s a film where someone tells you how to draw four straight lines of equal length, but it’s still more interesting than any unboxing video on YouTube. Join total beginners Mike, Kevin, and Bill. and get your online art degree with Drawing for Beginners: The Square!
Bridget and Mary Jo have stumbled across the rare hygiene film aimed at canines! Harry The Dirty Dog is the saga of a beautiful but conflicted border collie who runs away from the only life he’s ever known when it’s bathtime. He finds his way back home filthier than ever. But don’t waste your tears - Harry is a survivor!
People Soup is the first short we’ve done that has been nominated for an Oscar. (Yes, Henry Slinkman’s moving performance in Buying Food was rudely snubbed.) Evidently, when Alan Arkin points the camera at his kids while they waste a bunch of food, it’s "art", but when one of us does it it’s "the last time you ever babysit." Seemingly shot without a script or purpose, People Soup gives hope to the maker of every pointless educational short that your efforts will one day be rewarded with critical acclaim. Best Cinematography for What is Nothing? Best Special Effects for Drawing for Beginners: The Rectangle? Best Supporting Actor for Norman Spear Jr. in Parade of Aquatic Champions? OK, maybe not every pointless short… Join Mike, Kevin, Bill, and the Arkin boys, Matthew and Adam, for People Soup!
Be warned: if you haven’t watched this serious and important 1950s safety short yet, YOU MAY ALREADY BE DEAD! ...So, please take a second to check. No? Still alive? Good! But if you want to stay that way, you’d better take a close look at your life and make sure you don’t hold any of the SIX MURDEROUS BELIEFS! These beliefs are bad, and not just “the Tim Burton Planet of the Apes is the best version” bad. They’re seriously bad. Like one of the beliefs is “Safety is for Sissies” and then there’s a cartoon of the Grim Reaper sitting on a football player. See? You get it now??? This is serious, hardcore stuff, and you need to stop messing around or the dang Grim Reaper will SIT ON YOU. But football isn’t the only thing that can murder you. You know what else can get you all Grim Reapered? Basic carpentry! Doing science! Going outside! You’re doomed!!! There’s only one hope: learn to avoid the Six Murderous Beliefs with your Three Un-murderous Buds, Mike, Kevin, and Bill!
The Water We Drink is The Short We Riff, full of The Jokes We Tell to inspire The Laughs You’ll Laugh! This is one of those vintage educational shorts that breaks down the complex details of something most people never encounter in their lives: water. What is it? Where does it come from? What can you do with it? Is the puddle under the horse water? No, no it isn’t, and you shouldn’t drink it. And there’s a lot more to learn about water, but fear not, this Coronet short is ready to bring all that moist knowledge right to our dried-up dusty brains! Not to be confused with The Shape of Water We Drink, that’s a much naughtier film. Get thirsty for The Water We Drink with Mike, Bill, and Kevin!
Farm Family in Spring: Your number one resource for farm information in the tri-county area! There's cows, corn, trips to town, 4-H clubs, a birthday party and most importantly incriminating evidence about Grandpa! Grandma.. never.. knew.
The Spring Collection offers you three stylish shorts at one sensible price! Our offering includes Fashion for Go Getters featuring hunky Dartmouth jocks critiquing the latest trends. It’s the guy’s turn next with Accent on Spring. A kooky gal takes a psychological look at mens sportswear. And closing the show is a far out trip from Westinghouse about coordinating your clothing to your refrigerator called Match Your Mood! Be a well-dressed riftwatcher with The Spring Collection!
Susan needs glasses. We don’t mean like, “Oh, it’s hard for her to read a small font in a dark room.” No, Susan appears to be legally blind. Somehow she has made it to eight years old without wandering in front of a cement truck or mistaking a wolverine for her teddy bear. There’s a decent chance Susan is actually a large naked mole rat. But fortunately she realizes she needs glasses, not when a concerned adult intervenes, but when she reads (somehow) a children’s book about magical glasses. Thrill as Susan tries to mend all the social bridges she burned by finding a pair of glasses that don’t make her look like naked mole rat Elton John.
This DIY video shows you how to build your very own friendship, step-by-step! Start with traits like courtesy, kindness, and honesty, then add buddies Bridget and Mary Jo to laugh along with! Brought to you by Alfred Higgins, the brilliant filmmaker who also brought you VD: Prevent It, this short film explores the qualities that help you forge rewarding relationships with people you otherwise wouldn’t want anything to do with!
The “Beginning Responsibility” series from Coronet Films has already given us legendary characters like Mr. Bungle and Reggie the Dork’s Big-Lipped Talking Pillow. This next installment ups the ante by featuring a teacher who we’re pretty sure is 90% mummy. Based on the way these Coronet shorts usually work, we believe she was supposed to be only thirty-two years old. David has trouble following instructions. Namely, the instruction “For the love of god, do not appear in a Coronet educational short.” Fortunately, some animated creatures are here to help him learn, not only to follow instructions, but also how to push the definition of the term “animated” right up to its legal limit. There’s a friendly owl, three depressed elephants, and a turtle. There’s always a turtle. Please join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for what we believe is the 3,204th Coronet short they’ve riffed, Beginning Responsibility: Learning to Follow Instructions!
Mary Jo wants a puppy. Mary Jo gets a puppy. Mary Jo's family can’t sleep because the puppy is confined to the kitchen and cries all night. Everyone is pretty fed up with Mary Jo and her puppy until... Mary Jo comes up with a plan so “Out There” that it just might work!
You probably think you know how to outline a high school essay. You’d probably even be arrogant enough to say that, once or twice in your life, you’ve “built” an outline. Well, Coronet Films is here to let you know you’re wrong, dead wrong, you deranged fool. Outlining an essay is the hardest, most complex, and most IMPORTANT work you will ever do in your life. But Coronet will do its best to teach you how, with Building An Outline… that is, if you’ve got the guts. Jim and Bill are two of the classic “middle-aged teenagers” type we’re used to in Coronet shorts. They agree on most things: they wear the same white button-down shirt, sport the same haircut, rock the same sweater vest. One has brown hair and one is blonde, yes, but they’ve managed to be friends in spite of that. However they do disagree on something, something so big it could tear their whole world apart: THE IMPORTANCE OF OUTLINING AN ESSAY. Reckless Bill thinks you can just march into an essay on a topic like “Benjamin Franklin” without planning a meticulous outline. Cautious, wise Jim, on the other hand, knows that you must not only plan out your outline, you must first build an outline for an essay on the subject of how important it is to build outlines (he actually does this). Who will be proven right, in the end? Will their friendship survive the outline battle? Will either of their essays get deeper than “Ben Franklin flew a kite in a storm”? You’ll have to join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for Building An Outline to find out! No outlining required!
All good things must come to an end, and the At Your Fingertips series is no exception. We’ve covered grasses, cylinders, boxes… Um… Those little plastic discs that keep the top of the pizza box from touching the cheese, probably? The point is, if it is identifiable by 99% of the population as “garbage”, the folks at ACI Films tried to get kids to make revolting crafts out of it. This final installment is an outlier in that it instructs how to build a general TYPE of garbage-craft, rather than focusing on utilizing a specific type of garbage to build a craft. Something this radical needed a bigger stage, and so we’re proud to present this live version of At Your Fingertips: Floats performed at our legendary RiffTrax Live: The Room show!
The bug who happens to be a lady crawls around asking everyone she sees why it is so cold. She is told repeatedly it's because WINTER IS COMING and yet she persists in her willful ignorance. I'm giving away all the best plot points but I hope you will enjoy it anyway!
“Drawing for Beginners” may be the stupidest series of shorts we’ve riffed here at RiffTrax. The fact that we have riffed an entire series where kids make crap out of garbage should really drive home how insane these shorts are. Having already riffed rectangles and squares, it’s time to complete the trilogy in appropriate fashion with triangles. You see, because triangles have THREE sides…? Trust us, it will make sense after you watch the short. Pull up an oddly motionless, disembodied hand and lower your expectations and intelligence level, because it’s time to draw some damn triangles baby!!!
Originally released as part of the Cyber Monday 2018 Cyber Pack.
Because apparently “Jingle Bells, Batman Smells” wasn’t enough for him, here’s A Song For Santa! It’s a classic Christmas situation ripped right out of your childhood! A small Texan boy, who’s exploring Germany alone for unexplained reasons, wanders into an old Bavarian church and admires the traditional music and architecture. Y’know, just like all small boys love to do! The boy proceeds to fall asleep, probably exhausted from his hours of walking around Europe without supervision. Once he’s asleep things get EXTREMELY WEIRD, as he ascends to some kind of heaven, where angelic children live under the rule of some kind of dictator Santa. Maybe it’s a dream? Maybe it’s… a tragedy? No matter what, it’s perfect for a RiffTrax Christmas short, so get out your sheet music and sing A Song For Santa with Mike, Kevin, and Bill!
The Shoemaker and the Elves, a cute little fairy tale about the rewards of doing a good deed, delighted small children for generations - then Coronet got their hands on it. Now, see it as it’s meant to be seen, in full demented puppet form! The elderly shoemaker and his wife are puppets in a little puppet village, where everything looks like it was made of damp papier-mâché that was already used for something else. They’re barely scraping by, and can’t keep up with their business, because honestly they’re pretty lazy. Fortunately, some sort of fairy king senses their plight and dispatches some little weirdos to break into their hovel and pitch in. Because that’s how morality works, kids! No further questions! Leave out some leather strips and tools and maybe Mike, Kevin and Bill will riff The Shoemaker and the Elves for you overnight. But they probably won’t, so you should get it right here!
Since every entertainment franchise that has ever existed has put out their own version of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, it’s only fitting that the maniacs at Coronet Films decided to make their own. Apparently filmed during the Rutherford B. Hayes administration, Coronet opted not to use their stable of regulars in favor of a bunch of guys who probably were born before man had mastered flight. Which is a real shame: Mr. Bungle would have made a great Scrooge, that big-lipped pillow that harrasses Reggie could have been Marley, and Skipper the Racist Dog could have been Tiny Tim. Ah well, just be thankful that the folks at ACI never made one!
What is fifth-grader Charlie hiding from his family, his classmates, the customers on his newspaper route? What is it that keeps Charlie one step ahead of the law and living in constant fear, never using his own name and unable to set down roots no matter where he goes? Find out in Bridget and Mary Jo’s holiday special, Charlie’s Christmas Secret!
You think Jay Gatsby knew how to throw a party? Bridget and Mary Jo are just getting home from last night's celebration of plastic storage containers!
Coronet’s series of Beginning Responsibility shorts must be the largest franchise in film history. It might even be infinite. Every time we watch one short another blips into existence, yet somehow the new one was still made 5 to 7 decades ago. They are a treasure, a gift that keeps on giving, but honestly, shouldn’t Responsibility have stopped Beginning and finally Begun by now? Beginning Responsibility: Doing Things For Ourselves In School follows Steve, a classic crew-cutted Coronet protagonist finding his place in the world. Steve tries to follow the core principles of the Beginning Responsibility universe: 1) Don’t be such a pest, and 2) Stop whining about it! Steve has a friend named Ken who is slightly more boneheaded than him, as mandated by Coronet law. Together, Steve and Ken struggle to put their boots away, wear ugly painter smocks, and generally avoid the wrath of the scolding passive-aggressive narrator who lords over us all in Beginning Responsibility: Doing Things For Ourselves In School!
Featuring the finest “newborn baby calf stumbling around” scene this side of City Slickers, it’s Farm Animals! It’s a vintage short from a time when films were needed to show people things that they were never likely to see in real life. Exotic amazing things, like, uh, a horse! Some chickens, perhaps! Have you ever THRILLED at the sight of sheep? A nurse will be on duty in the theater to attend to those who faint! Buckle up (your suspenders), get a hose (for the amniotic fluid all over the barn floor) and wake up at 5am with Mike, Kevin, and Bill for Farm Animals!
That is how you might start copy for a version of Jack and the Beanstalk that wasn’t a stark, joyless nightmare. This one, on the other hand, is like a Dorthea Lange photo that decided it wanted to become a fairy tale. We all know the story: family is starving, boy takes beloved cow to be slaughtered, mysterious man offers him magic beans instead, Billy Peltzer releases the electric gremlin and all the gremlins get electrocuted except the sexy lady gremlin, Jack steals the golden goose, etc. But, (and we believe this technically qualifies as a selling point) you’ve never seen it told with such careworn actors before! Pop a few magic beans of your own and join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for Jack and the Beanstalk!
The most popular film genre in the 70s was clearly Robert De Niro’s Pre-Dirty Grandpa Phase, but a close second was Dumb Kids Hurting Themselves. Emergencies - What Would You Do? is a standout, taking the critically lauded step of leaving the viewer uncertain if the endangered children were willing actors or not. Whether it’s drowning, eating bleach, or somehow not understanding how basic playground equipment like the swings work, you’ll witness future Darwin Award winners in action, all under the guise of teaching kids the valuable lesson that in case of emergency, you should immediately find someone smarter and stronger than you to help. Mike, Kevin, and Bill opted to remain humble freelance architects rather than transform into Safety Woman and help these kids, and frankly we don’t blame them.
ommy’s Day! Another fine short from the fine folks at the very fine Young America Films. If you’re not familiar, Young America Films are like Coronet Films, just a little more judgmental. But if you’re looking to learn how to be a small child in the 1950s, they’re the best game in town! Tommy’s Day begins with a big moment - young Tommy discovers his first loose tooth! So, naturally, this short will be all about that, right? Why we lose our baby teeth, how the new ones grow in, maybe a poorly-animated tooth fairy to bring the lesson home? Nope! The loose tooth gets dropped like a season 2 storyline from Lost. Instead we see Tommy’s morning routine, and then we leave Tommy altogether for a while to get much more of his sister’s routine. And then, it’s off to school! Will we get back to the subject of Tommy’s loose tooth there? Not really! But there is a pet bunny to meet, so it all works out. Experience the shame and hygiene confusion of the 1950s without living through them, join Mike, Bill and Kevin for Tommy’s Day!
This combo of two shorts about feet, produced by the Encyclopedia Britannica, will have you saying “I wish the Internet had killed encyclopedias sooner!” It’s psychedelic, it’s aimless, and it’s all about FEET, FEET, FEET! Just kidding, that’s not all it’s about, there are also some shoes. Does it teach valuable health lessons about caring for your feet? No, it doesn’t even try! Does it teach about the various types of footwear used in different careers? No, keep dreaming! Feet at the park, feet in the dirt, combat boots stomping across the playground, they’re all part of the dark carnival that is Toes Tell / Whose Shoes?. This duo of shorts is honestly one of the weirdest, most inexplicable relics we’ve stumbled across (with our feet), and it’s the perfect blank canvas for Mike, Kevin and Bill to walk all over (with their feet!).
Jimmy is a plucky ten-year-old who just can’t seem to follow directions, causing no end of disaster in his personal life. He has a dream in which he is accosted by a morally superior robber who teaches him a very important life lesson.
During a subway-induced coma, teenager Victoria flashes back to her mother’s childhood and realizes, despite all their arguments, her mother had actually been a kid once herself. One with questionable judgment but nonetheless -- drop your backpack by the door, get some Fruit Wrinkles and Capri-Sun, and join Bridget and Mary Jo for this very special After School Special.
It’s the 80s and loads of British kids are dying in substations! We’re not sure why they’re going into substations. Maybe to find out what the hell substations are? This is clearly one of those sensitive issues that has to be handled with the utmost care. So someone poorly animated some cartoon birds and got them to lecture kids about the dangers of electricity. It’s a very powerful, sobering experience. In fact, during the moving scene where a kid’s pants literally catch on fire, our chortling was noticeably subdued. This is the version of Play Safe that debuted at RiffTrax Live: The Five Doctors; it has not been seen again since!
The teacher is really putting the squeeze on the kindergartners to bring something to show and tell, and the pressure is getting to one little girl. Out of nowhere, plucky Mary Jo kills it with a show and tell that forever changes the lives of her fellow first graders.
Student Mel just loves to stir the pot at his high school, casting aspersions on one classmate’s virtue, and the football ability of others. He even goes so far to rat out the quarterback for being out past curfew! At the dance following a game the team loses, Mel’s classmates have had it up to here and confront him. He is told in no uncertain terms to beat it! Fortunately, the narrator steps in before things get really ugly and asks the typical "Discussion Problems in Group Living" questions. So there actually will be a test!
James is on his way to school when he gets a small cut on his finger. And if you don’t for one second believe that that thin, thin gruel got turned into a seventies educational short, then what the hell have you been watching us riff for the past thirteen years?? Bleeding makes James feel Just Awful, which frankly, is good news. If it had been the opposite, say, if James felt increasingly stronger and confident as he watched his lifeblood seep out of his fingertip, the lawsuits would probably still be working their way through the court system. Instead, James gets to pay a visit to the school nurse, who is just relieved to for once have a student who is not going to barf up his Snack Pack on her. Slice off the top of a non-essential digit, preferably your own, and join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for Just Awful!
Some questions have plagued humanity for countless generations. What is the meaning of life? Can love last forever? What happens when we die? Is corn grass? Well forget all of those, because our new short tackles the biggest question of all: What is a Map? What is a Map is a production of Young America Films, so you know the answers will be stern, severe, and delivered with the clinical precision of a crew cut. The explanation of what in the actual heck a map is starts small, with the layout of a girl’s bedroom. Lamps, chairs, that sort of thing. But after that, the scope of the short gets much, MUCH bigger - well, okay, only a tiny big bigger. We get a map of her house and the surrounding neighborhood. Okay, not even the entire neighborhood, it’s more like four buildings. But hey, that’s what a map is, right? RIGHT?? Oh no, we still don’t really know what a map is! Existential angst aside, What is a Map is a whole mess of non-informative fun. Get your compass and chart a course for cartographical adventure with Mike, Kevin and Bill!
It’s the 70s! The pants are flared, the disco is thumping, and the educational shorts are meandering and pointless! In Someday we meet four children who discuss their plans for the future. We are not talking “Someday I want to be a doctor!” type plans. Lower your expectations to more of a “Someday I want to watch daddy pump gas” level. So please enjoy this short featuring small children shopping for vegetables, carrying a wild chimp, and sailing a boat alone on San Francisco bay. Post-viewing discussion questions may include: * Where were the adults? * Did they reall sneak a camera into a professional baseball game? * Huh? Think of a much better plan for what you want to do Someday and join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for a short so aimless you’ll be stunned it wasn’t made by ACI!
Just in time for trick or treating, it’s Bridget and Mary Jo’s Halloween Special! Your favorite riffing twosome is back with four seasonally appropriate shorts ripe for riffing. We'll tackle the issue of Halloween safety, whether a man can also be a wolf, how to sort out marriage to a monster, and so much more! Have a graveyard smash in Bridget and Mary Jo's Halloween Safety and Monster Mash-Up!
Bernard is struggling in math class mostly because his teacher will not stop calling on him. After multiple failed attempts of trying nothing, Bernard turns to his friend David to teach him basic math. Wouldn't you know it - his grade goes up! The victory is short-lived, however, when his math teacher demands no outside assistance for the next assignment. Bernard comes to a moral crossroads in trying to improve his grade. What Will Bernard Do? Well, we won't actually find out 'till the next installment - but watch the epic classroom journey with Bridget and Mary Jo!
Fun Days! All things considered, one of the better types of days. Beats the hell out of “crappy days” or “everyone you love contracts cholera days." One town loved Fun Days so much they had an entire Festival of Fun Days! As you would expect this involves tiny creatures terrorizing a small animated boy. Bunnies, a witch, and Father Time burst out of a calendar and wreak havoc, 1930s style. This mostly involves peeling eggs and singing while a kangaroo gets hammered. At one point in time there is a conveyor belt of babies. The festival’s permit was rightfully denied the next year.
Deck the halls with boughs of Bridget and Mary Jo in their latest RiffTrax Holiday Special! With fresh riffs for the 90s - the 1890s, that is. Featuring a Grandpa, a Virginia, a sing-along, and a Doug Llewellyn, this very special special will warm hearts yonder and nigh at this special time of year!
We know that, for all his other faults, Scrooge was good with money. What this short presupposes is: maybe he wasn’t? In Banks: The Money Movers, Scrooge, the ruthless financier, is not exploiting tax loopholes and favorable loan rates. No, he’s stuffing cash into a mattress. Sure, he’s missing out on valuable interest but on the other hand: Money Bed! The Spirit of Banking shows up to show Scrooge (his first name is Arthur in this one, we forgot to mention that because, well, it’s very stupid) the error of his ways. By the end of the night, Scrooge may not be a better person, but he may be marginally wealthier. And that’s really what Christmas is all about.
Squirrels. You see them all the time, and always the same question runs through your head: "Could one of these things pull a peanut out of a plastic tube with a string?" This short not only answers that question, but puts forth the notion that squirrels are actually super-brilliant geniuses, using the titular Squeak as an example. When he's not being forced to perform bizarre tasks for a mysterious team of squirrel scientists, Squeak spends his time eating, binge-eating, smashing his head against solid objects, and eating. You may not think of these as impressive feats now, but by the end you will come to truly believe in the astonishing brilliance of Squeak the Squirrel. For all this and more, join Bridget and Mary Jo on their nuttiest short yet!
Remember what life was like before we all had the Internet implanted directly in our corneas? Families talked during dinner, strangers said hello to you on the street, nobody got doxxed or swatted. It was a living hell! The Kids Guide to the Internet is an amazing snapshot of Online in the mid-90s, back when the Internet was something you still had to convince your parents to “get.” It covers all three things you could do in cyberspace at that point: sports scores, stocks, and away messages comprised of angsty KoRn lyrics. It was a simpler time, when every webring was Under Construction and your mom always seemed to pick up the phone and knock you offline just as the a/s/l check in the Red Dragon Inn was getting particularly steamy. Please join the extremely fake family The Jamisons, who invite their extremely fake neighbors into their extremely fake living room to get extremely online (at 14.4 bauds!) with RiffTrax Senior Writers Conor Lastowka and Sean Thomason.
Every kid hates it when their parents ruin fun by telling them to wear a bike helmet and follow the rules. It’s been a problem throughout history. But then along came the 90s, with a great 90s solution: have a lame gym coach rap the rules at them instead! The coach assembles a Burger King Kids Club-style rogues' gallery of bike riders and forces them to attend some kind of outdoor detention. There’s Rebop the bad kid and Arthur the bookworm, but the real stars of the show are the competing bike helmet safety regulation commissions, ANSI and Snell. Talk about fun!!! This day-glo rapping nightmare burned into Conor’s memory in childhood when a friend showed him the VHS, now join him and Sean as they exorcise bike demons in Bicycle Safety Camp! Stay tuned to the end for a corporate sponsor you definitely won’t see coming. Written by Conor Lastowka and Sean Thomason
A Green Thumb for Macaulay - the star of Home Alone finds himself forever changed after he tries to hitchhike in a field of gamma rays... THUMB SMASH!!! Okay, it’s really a short about a family planning their garden, but still… THUMB SMASH!!! It’s a classic 60s informational short about improving your home, which means it’s really a secret commercial for something. In this case? A line of gardening tools! An exceptionally vintage American family, complete with an odd kid and a dachshund, sets out to landscape their massive average-family yard (again, it was the 60s, average people had massive yards back then). They travel to the gardening store, which fortunately for the wife has a section of “Lighter Tools for Women” (no, really, it’s in the short!). The married couple have a strangely deep bond with the guy who works there, considering they are new to gardening. What’s really going on between these people and Arthur, the friendly gardening store guy? It’s all in the subtext, and that’s what we’re here for! Rake, hoe, dig, but most importantly, buy buy buy, it’s fun to be a consumer who consumes! No gardening tools required to join Mike, Kevin and Bill for A Green Thumb for Macaulay!
There are a few certainties in life: death, taxes, and that we will never stop finding shorts from the multi-decade Beginning Responsibility series made by Coronet. A Lunchroom Goes Bananas is from their 70s era, which usually means lots of confused kids with shaggy haircuts and some kind of disturbing puppetry. And this one doesn’t disappoint! It’s got claymation food that goes on strike, student investigative reporters, and a boy with an unexplained rat on his shoulder. What it doesn’t have is a clear point or reason for existing, another classic hallmark of any good Beginning Responsibility short. Learn some lessons from a talking eggplant, get yourself a steaming bowl of banana soup, and join Mike, Kevin and Bill in the cafeteria for Beginning Responsibility: A Lunchroom Goes Bananas! Written by: Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett, Conor Lastowka, and Sean Thomason
Little Red Riding Hood is one of our most beloved fairy tales, and for good reason! It’s got a little bit of everything: child abduction, elder abuse, and muffins. So it was just a matter of time before some enterprising filmmakers took a look at this charming story and thought “What if we made it super creepy?” This short, presumably filmed mere minutes after the motion picture was invented, features a wolf costume that was definitely once used in some sort of ritual. All the human actors seem deeply suspicious of the cameraman, possibly because they were worried his camera was capturing their soul. All in all, it’s the sort of delightful tale that you could easily imagine Santa telling a bunch of disinterested children on the beach right before the Ice Cream Bunny shows up.
Are you considering having an informal gathering where people serve themselves the food you’ve prepared? NOT SO FAST. First, you’ll need to complete this course, Arranging The Buffet Supper. Together with Bridget and Mary Jo, you’ll learn how to put food and forks on a table, and other hard stuff! (This counts toward Continuing Education credits.)
Whether riding a bike, shooting some hoops, or just attempting to use paper, kids can find all kinds of neat ways to injure themselves. And the world is full of dirt and grime that’s desperate to get rubbed into those wounds. Especially when this short was made, the 1970s, the grimiest decade in modern history. First Aid for Children will show you how to take care of those cuts, or get help from a kindly stranger (just temporarily ignore all the other shorts telling you not to talk to strangers). Horror buffs will be pleased to know the short doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to gore, there’s a papercut that looks like a real ER situation. Join Mike, Kevin and Bill for another fun entry in the “kids getting hurt” genre, it’s First Aid for Children!
Spoiler alert: Appreciating Our Parents does not turn out to be a cookbook like in that classic Twilight Zone episode To Serve Man. That being said, it’s still a pretty wild ride - a wild ride on the road to respecting authority, that is! As you might guess, Appreciating Our Parents has a pretty heavy pro-parent bias. It focuses on Tommy, a little boy who apparently thinks his room just gets magically cleaned while he’s away at school, and his meals delivered by angels, and his cowboy shirts mended by helpful gnomes. Oh yeah, the cowboy shirts - this kid Tommy goes through cowboy shirts like nobody’s business. Westernwear stores struggle to keep up with his insane demand for cowboy shirts. And his poor sweet mother? Spends her days hunched over a sewing machine, forever mending the cowboy shirts he keeps finding new ways to destroy. Appreciate your parents and cool it with the cowboy shirts, Tommy!
Sure, we’ve all taken Airplane Trips… Airplane Trips By Car, Airplane Trips By Foot, Airplane Trips By Your Nephew’s Razor Scooter That You Borrowed And Accidentally Broke. Now, brace yourself for the newest kind of Airplane Trip of all, An Airplane Trip By Jet! The story follows Sue and Bob, two kids dropped off at the airport by their grandparents to fly on this insane new technology all by themselves! Except they won’t be alone, they’re bringing their extremely nervous dog. But it’s the past, so the dog doesn’t ride in the cabin with them, she gets shoved into a metal cage for a safe and comfortable ride in the belly of the plane. Seeya on the other side, pooch! Maybe! It’s a fascinating glimpse into a time when air travel featured comfortable waiting rooms, friendly staff, and seats so big you could actually sit in them. Imagine! All these wonders and more await you in the friendly skies. Join Mike, Kevin and Bridget for An Airplane Trip By Jet! Written by: Mike Nelson, Conor Lastowka, and Sean Thomason
It’s Parents’ Night at Andrew’s school, and nerves are on edge. Andrew is a fifth-grader who has alienated everyone around him with his vague instructions and confusing driving directions. Will his presentation on how to communicate clearly heal the wounds of his classmates? Written by: Bridget Nelson and Mary Jo Pehl Contributing writer: August F. Nelson
For some people keeping neat and clean is just a far-flung dream. But it doesn’t have to be! This short follows middle-schoolers Don and Mildred through their daily personal grooming routines (SFW) and their quest to not be smelly losers. Written by: Bridget Nelson, Mary Jo Pehl, and Matthew J Elliott Something you should know: Content Warning: Gross close-ups of toenail clipping
The story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears has been retold countless times. But it took those mad bastards at Coronet to decide to inject some life into the tired fairy tale. How did they do this? REAL BEARS! Yes, one day some parents dropped off their adorable four year old at Coronet Studios. As we all know, this was a huge mistake. But instead of being traumatized by a sentient pillow or Mr. Bungle, this kid shared a stage with REAL BEARS. Were they trained bears? WHAT THE HELL DOES IT MATTER, THEY WERE THREE REAL BEARS. Also, no, they were not trained, they were led around by extremely flimsy looking leashes. Clearly, dozens of laws were violated during this short, and possibly even the Geneva Convention. In other words, it’s a must-watch RiffTrax!
Timmy had Lassie. Calvin had Hobbes. Jackie, the little boy in this short, has… an actual school bus. That’s right, The Big Yellow Fellow is all about the love between a boy and his bus. And you thought YOUR childhood was lonely! The bus, which is a sentient being that can smile but cannot speak, creepily follows Jackie home from school. But instead of offering him candy to go for a ride like in so many other educational shorts of the past, the bus just wants to be his friend. This is disturbing to Jackie’s parents, who inexplicably act like characters in a failed 60s sitcom. Then they get inside the bus to teach Jackie about bus safety. They also drive the bus, which had previously driven itself, opening deep philosophical questions about whether the bus has free will. It’s plenty weird, but none of that will prepare you for the third act twist. We’ll just tease it with this phrase “Professor Popper’s Pedigreed Pekingese Puppies.” To find out more, join Mike, Kevin and Bill for a ride on The Big Yellow Fellow!
His brother Martin tries to help, but he gets more and more frustrated with his lily-livered little brother. The worm turns when Timmy discovers the one thing he’s not afraid of! Tune in with Bridget and Mary Jo, and stick around for the special surprise twist ending to this short film!
Am I Trustworthy? It’s a question that can only be answered by the person asking it... but only if they’re trustworthy, which is the question being asked. Confused yet? We’re knee-deep in a logic puzzle, and a new Coronet short! The questioner in question is young Eddie. Eddie is upset because he lost the election for Treasurer of his “hobby club.” Yes, Eddie’s goals are quite low, but he can’t seem to attain them because the kids at school don’t trust him (also, his haircut is pretty bad). Fortunately, Eddie has a Classic 1950s Coronet Dad to help him out. Dad explains the importance of being trustworthy, not only for winning minor school elections but also for running a cash register, fixing a lamp, and other household chores that Dad wedges into the category of “trustworthiness.” Everything’s about trustworthiness, if you force it! We’re still not sure about Eddie, but you can trust Mike, Kevin and Bill for plenty of laughs in Am I Trustworthy?
Ah, elections. Seems like we Americans just can’t get enough of ‘em! Everybody loves elections, and they never cause any controversy or stress at all. But how do they work? It’s becoming quite clear that nobody really knows, but fortunately our new short U.S. Elections: How We Vote is here to clear everything up! Though here, How We Vote is really more how we voted back in 1970, shortly after the voting age was lowered to 18. The explanation of the process here is remarkably thorough - ready to see an Address-O-Graph in action, everyone? And if you’re worried about voting security nowadays, wait until you get a load of this short. Some voting centers were just set up in peoples' homes! You’d walk into a stranger’s house, fill out a ballot in pencil, hand it to them, and leave! As long as they had an American flag out front, you assumed everything was fine! None of this is an exaggeration! Let your voting anxieties be soothed by the terrifyingly casual elections of the past. Join Mike, Kevin and Bill for U.S. Elections: How We Vote!
What young citizen doesn’t look forward to the freedoms that come with turning 18? Lottery tickets, cigarettes, being able to click “yes I’m 18” on websites with slightly less shame. Oh, and also voting. Voting is pretty cool too, even if you can’t buy it at a convenience store. And if there’s anyone who understands “cool” it’s Coronet Films.Voting at 18 is especially cool, bordering on groovy, because it’s a rare Coronet Film from the 70s! Dig the haircuts, the clothes, the random shots of drug use and international strife meant to indicate “these difficult times.” Yeah, times were difficult back then too, who knew? Coronet did, that’s who! No matter your age, you’re legally allowed and encouraged to enjoy Voting at 18 with Mike, Kevin, and Bill. Strap on a big hairdo and some sideburns and head on down to the Place of Registration, baby!
Have you ever wanted to see how the Republican Party ran a local get-out-the-vote operation in the late 60s? You have?! Well then you’re almost certainly already familiar with Victory Squad, which is no doubt the defining classic of a genre that thankfully includes no other shorts that we know about. It’s hosted by Gipper and The Duke. No, not the Gipper and The Duke who have the third highest rated morning zoo show in the Quad Cities. The OGs: John Wayne (real name: Marion Morrison) and Ronald Reagan (real name: he forgot it.) Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for a hard hitting look at democracy in action. Because while the antics of those Gipper and The Duke DJs may be “too hot for the FM dial”, there’s nothing zany about Victory Squad. Seriously, it’s a bunch of 60s Republicans wearing suits while they sip non-alcoholic punch inside a converted Woolworth’s store front. It’s the least zany thing that has ever existed. Go vote, dammit!
It’s the first Tuesday in November, and it’s time to do your civic duty. It may not be fun, but it’s your responsibility. We’ve been doing it so long that sometimes we forget why, but it’s more important now than ever. Yes, it’s time to bitch endlessly about Daylight Saving Time. It’s also time to Vote, and there’s no better way to get someone to do that than showing them a film where ancient people explain our three branches of government until they run shrieking out of the classroom and directly into a polling place. This film is so old, we only had 48 states when it was made. Now it’s rumored that we have substantially more than that! There’s no way to know for sure since Coronet stopped making shorts 40 years ago.
Munchers! It isn’t a new budget horror franchise from the makers of Feeders, but it’s almost as disturbing in its own way. The Munchers is a claymation romp about your teeth, which apparently have faces and mouths containing little teeth of their own. Teeth within teeth, how deep does this thing go? The teeth also hop out of their gums to run around, square dance, and flee from their very own supervillain, Mean Jack Sweet. Mean Jack Sweet tempts young teeth with candy, then rips them apart with his giant metal torture device. You have to imagine the kids who saw this short never wanted to look inside their mouths again, knowing the hellish demonic realm within. Brace yourself (no pun intended) for a terrifying musical journey into the universe of your own gums. Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for The Munchers!
Alias St. Nick is a vintage Christmas cartoon. It’s from the golden age of animation, when all toys were required to come alive and just kind of bounce up and down, and all character voices sounded like a helium balloon that’s very sick. This one belongs to the “Happy Harmonies” series, the forgotten loser in the war with Merry Melodies and Silly Symphonies. Alias St. Nick is basically Itchy and Scratchy meets Home Alone. A hungry cat finds a tree full of little mouse children and decides to eat them. So he stuffs a balloon down his pants and pretends he’s Santa to make his way inside for mousey murder. But the adorable mice see through his upsetting costume and put him through the ringer with a series of whimsical, deadly traps. It’s not the holidays without a little mouse and cat cartoon violence, throw on your creepiest Santa suit and join Mike, Kevin and Bill for Alias St. Nick!
Ah, the famous December Holidays. We wait for them every year. After the exciting fall festivities of Toyathon and Geicoween, we settle into the colder months with the warm glow of Happy Honda Days, and of course, the Lexus December to Remember. Unbelievably, none of these holidays are discussed in this short. Instead, December Holidays brings focus to Chanukah, the Mexican religious festival Las Posadas, and some other holiday that happens in December… can’t remember the name, there’s some kind of tree, and socks over a fireplace or something? Anyway, all the information you need is here, along with 80s families showing you how they celebrate in 80s holiday fashion. Cozy up with a mug of hot December chocolate and enjoy December Holidays with December Mike, December Bill, and December Kevin! Written by Mike Nelson, Conor Lastowka, and Sean Thomason
There’s nothing in the rulebook that says a snowman has to be friendly! While kindly old Frosty gets most of the attention, the Snowman canon is filled with monstrous examples. You’ve got RiffTrax’s own Jack Frost, Clayfighter’s Bad Mr. Frosty, the snowman the idiot couple in Winter Wonderland forced to pretend to be Parson Brown, and of course, Calvin’s Deranged Mutant Killer Monster Snow Goons. The Snowman in The Snowman joins their ranks, and may be the most terrifying of all! He exists to wreak havoc on a squad of Old Timey cartoon characters. The kind that are usually just whistling as they whitewash a fence or something. It was the thirties, people would happily watch that crap for ninety minutes in between World Wars. Anyway, they bring the snowman to life, it terrorizes them and they melt the entire arctic in order to defeat him. Does that have devastating repercussions for the rest of mankind? We’re not sure, they didn’t cover that in the ten minute cartoon!
Hooligan Teddy O’Hara shoplifts a cake from the local delicatessen to give to his beloved aunt for Christmas. Aiding and abetting him is classmate Billy, who knows of Teddy’s hard-knock life and pleads his pal’s case to Sister Mary Benedict and Monsignor Thatoneguy. From the DuPont Theater’s "Cavalcade of America" series from the 1950s, this short film doesn’t pull any punches exposing the dark side of bakery larceny. Come for the cake - but stay for Francis Bavier in a rare non-Mayberry appearance!
Here come's Santa's Spaceship! Because, apparently, a magic sleigh that can fly all over the planet in one night wasn’t enough for him. Honestly, it just seems a little greedy! Santa’s Spaceship starts with a marionette cowboy singing a western song to an ailing reindeer, and gets weirder from there. All the marionettes living at the North Pole are worried about making the Christmas deliveries because the reindeer are getting old and tired. Rather than, say, try to help the reindeer who have served faithfully for so long, marionette Santa and his marionette friends decide to trade ‘em in for a used rocketship. The used rocketship salesman makes it pretty clear he will turn the reindeer into hamburger, but Santa goes through with the deal anyway. And still, somehow, it again gets weirder from there! Grab a warm mug of rocket fuel and settle in with Mike, Kevin, and Bill for the marionette madness of Santa’s Spaceship! Written by Mike Nelson, Conor Lastowka, and Sean Thomason
All we know about this short is what it isn’t: it’s not Lauren Schwartzard’s New York Film Academy project. It’s not Kosovo director Samir Karahoda’s short about local architecture. And it’s not a short film by Canadian social media personality Inanna Sarkis. Don’t watch those. Watch this one. There are teens, bikes, pools and vague dilemmas. Join Bridget and Mary Jo and we’ll all try to figure it out together.
Don’t be fooled. “Beauty” is the red herring in this short about Racine, Wisconsin’s seamy underbelly. Yes, that Racine: S.C. Johnson Wax's headquarters and meddling mothers-in-law. WARNING: graphic depictions of insoluble non-glycerin substances. Don’t say Bridget and Mary Jo didn’t warn you.
Cats. They’re famous for many things: mouse hunting, napping in sunshine, serving attitude, and, of course, cleaning themselves. They spend roughly 80% of every day licking their own fur in this endless quest for hygiene. Does that matter to the two kids psychotically obsessed with giving kitty a bath in Let’s Give Kitty a Bath? As you may have guessed by now, it does not! It’s a live-action Looney Tune as this young boy and girl chase a cat around the house for bathing. It’s not even clear that the cat belongs to them, or that this is their house. There is a criminal air about these children, and the lengths to which they’ll go to bathe this undirty cat will astonish you. Let the ransacking commence. Order some cat-catching products from Acme and join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for Let’s Give Kitty a Bath!
If you can suspend disbelief enough to think that Phyllis Diller ever had a garage sale, then you’ll appreciate the practical tips and corny jokes in this how-to video from 1987. It also features Brandon Scott in his Golden Globe-nominated role of “The Nitpicker,'' which forever changed how hagglers were portrayed on screen. Eagle-eyed fans of second-hand merchandise instructional sales videos will also spot the incomparable work of Russ Vogel, best known for, according to the sole notation on his IMDB page, “his work on How to Have a Money-making Garage Sale.” Join Bridget and Mary Jo for this straight-to-video video - which you’ll probably be able to find at a garage sale near you!
There are two kinds of RiffTrax shorts. The first are the straightforward ones, the ones where they teach a grown man not to use poisonous snakes as suspenders or a sentient belt sander shows a girl the error of her ways. Then there’s the nutty ones. The ones where, say, a depressed kid drowns his teddy bear, a guy dropkicks a turtle, or parents sleep in separate beds because their kid is too big of a weiner. ALL of those things happen in Fears of Children! It tells the story of Paul, a boy whose general vibe is “shellshocked Urkel.” He’s terrified to do things most boys love, like “riding bikes”, “exploring caves” and “being in the same room as your father.” This of course produces some of the best Angry RiffTrax Parenting this side of David & Hazel. If you had a nickel for every laugh-out-loud moment in this short, you’d be able to afford all the roast beef you want. Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for Fears of Children.
Rain. Skin. Fabric. Peanut butter? Your guess is as good as ours! Bridget and Mary Jo try to figure it out together, and you’re invited!
When a family moves to greener pastures, it's up to one housemaid to bring the American dream to a screeching halt. Who is the mysterious Mrs. Swenson and why does she threaten to destroy a loving marriage and break up a happy family? All in the name of housework? There’s no way to prepare yourself for the shocking twist ending of this short. Join Bridget and Mary Jo as they Meet Mrs. Swenson!
Do you think it might be “groovy” or possibly even “outta sight” to try those funny cigarettes your friends have been smoking? Have you been tempted to “turn on” with the “real heads” down at the pipe shop? Well, you can get all the completely unbiased facts on that crazy herb from the 1970 Santa Monica Police Department in our new short, Keep Off The Grass! As Tom learns the pros and cons of getting high, the police keep showing up, and whaddaya know, they’re always level-headed, helpful and cool! Meanwhile the potheads are selfish greedy jerks out to ruin Tom’s life. Maybe the police were the real “hep cats” all along? Like we said, it’s completely unbiased!
She’s a lady. He’s a rocket. Can they make it work even though they’re different molecular compounds? A talent scout whose name we never get and his pal Flash are in search of the All American Sweetheart. Thus begins the feeble narrative of this short film showcasing the 1952 line of Oldsmobiles. Ya know, the kind of promotional film automakers made until they figured it was cheaper and easier to have bikini-clad women at car shows. Anyhoodle - and for all you This Island Earth fanatics: if you’ve been wondering whatever happened to Joe Wilson, have we got a surprise for you!
he first thing you might notice about The Talking Car is that the title lacks the “!?!” punctuation made standard by A Talking Cat!?!. It also doesn’t have voice work by Eric Roberts - unless he’s uncredited, you never know with that guy! The Talking Car is also slightly misnamed, because it features not one but SEVERAL talking cars. A little boy playing in the street is nearly hit by a car, and next thing you know another car sprouts some eyeballs and a mouth and starts talking to him. In fact, the boy finds himself in a cloudy nether world full of talking cars… so maybe that car really did hit him, after all? A dark potential interpretation the short leaves unexplored! Instead, the boy and his growly little dog get many lessons and scoldings from the talking cars up in the clouds, including a cranky old jalopy who must’ve had kids saying “Do I really want to drive? Or even be inside a car, ever again?”
Rhythmic Ball Skills is set in some kind of gym class purgatory nether realm. There, children are instructed by an offscreen presence to go through the motions of waving various balls around in what no reasonable person would call “exercise,” let alone “fun.” The short itself describes what the kids are doing as “activities for demonstration,” which is maybe the most Orwellian phrase you’ll find outside of 1984. When the ball skills are this rhythmic, you really don’t wanna miss out. Brace yourself for the demonstration of activities and join Mike, Kevin and Bill for Rhythmic Ball Skills!
An amalgam of film footage in search of a narrative, The Box is a short film featuring a box in its breakout role as a box. You may never look at a square or rectangular container made from corrugated raw paper with a flat base and sides the same way again.
Is corn masks? The freaks at ACI Films return yet again with a twisted spin-off of the classic At Your Fingertips short. The parents have signed the waivers and headed to a bar, leaving their unfortunate kids to assemble “masks” out of various types of refuse. They’re potentially problematic, and definitely swarming with pests. One thing is for certain: nobody learned a damn thing the day this was shown in class. But it may have inspired a cult or two! Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for Masks of Grass. Originally performed live at RiffTrax Live: Carnival of Souls, this is a studio recording.
His name is Manners in School, but you can call him Chalky. Chalky the chalk demon, that is, with a little stick figure body and a big round Charlie Brown head. Chalky is accidentally brought to life by Larry, a surly lad who has to stay after class and clean the chalkboards on account of his poor manners. From there it’s a battle of wills between Larry, a boy who talks like a 1930s gangster, and Chalky, an upsetting 2D lifeform who loves to shame children. Who will win? It’s impossible to say, but one thing’s for sure - Chalky and Coily the Spring Sprite come from the same dark hell-realm. Clap some erasers together and join Mike, Kevin and Bill for Manners in School!
Sentient burlap sacks are running wild in our city streets, terrifying children and threatening to contain our yard waste! They dance, they ride horses, they generally just writhe in an unpleasant fashion. Meanwhile, they are pursued by their cruel master, a guy who could frankly use a bit of bag coverage himself. It’s possibly the most pointless short we’ve ever done, unless the point was to make you wonder what was in the bag, a shark or something? Originally debuted at RiffTrax Live: Summer Shorts Beach Party, please join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for this studio version of The Baggs.
When You Grow Up is a deeply 70s look at what becoming an adult and having a job might look like for kids in the 70s, from the 70s. Did we mention the 70s? This short is about what happens when the kids from At Your Fingertips: Grasses have to put away childish things, take off their headdresses made of weeds, and face the harsh realities of joining the workforce. From factory work, to paperwork, to construction work, then back to factory work, the world is your oyster, kids! When You Grow Up might sound ominous and grim, but at least it isn’t If You Grow Up. Plan your future and what kind of sideburns you should grow with Mike, Kevin and Bill!
In a world increasingly devoid of inspiration, firefighters are true heroes. Selflessly entering burning buildings, putting themselves in harms way to the ravages of wildfire, getting the occasional cartoon cat out of a tree. They are such heroes they make Captain America look like a mere Hawkeye. So what this short puts forth is: A chimp can do their job. A chimp named Shorty. Just put him in a funny hat and let him rescue the old lady who’s screaming from a second floor window, the rest of us human firefighter have a poker game that needs our attention. Oh, and see if the chimp will pick up some Thai while he’s out! They say to never work with children or animals, but to always riff monkeys. So we did. Please join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for Chimp the Fireman.
It’s a rainy day, and the humanoid Frances and her pet bunny Hopper have nothing to do. After ruling out a cross-country bank-robbing spree, remodeling the kitchen, and space exploration, the two get their crayons and start drawing. Will what she ends up drawing blow your mind - or will it be approximately ten minutes of aimless doodling narrated by a disinterested man? Find out as you hop along onto the latest short from Bridget and Mary Jo!
A pleasant family camping trip goes horribly awry when Dad gets didactic about the virtues of science. In this 1950s nuclear family, teenager Jack wants to go to the moon some day; sister Betty wants to get married someday. Dad brings the hammer down with some tough talk about how much they’ll need science in their lives - and lots of it!
What could be better than a box full of kittens? Puppies. Anyway, we digress. There are so many kittens in It’s A Cat’s Life, it’s practically a Russian novel of feline-ity. From the fine folks at Frith, who brought you Mother Mack Trains Her Seven Puppies (which would have been much more fun) and/or The Littlest Puppy Grows Up (which would have been such a better choice for riffing), this short from the 1940s is not about puppies. Nevertheless, Bridget and Mary Jo manage to soldier through this primer on the small domesticated carnivore that has the temerity not to be a dog. Written by: Bridget Nelson and Mary Jo Pehl
Just when you thought it was safe to be safe again… Halloween is really about three things: candy, costumes, and complete paranoia. Halloween Safety 2 brings a strong focus to the latter. It’s a Coronet short from the 80s... yes, somehow Coronet was still making films in the 80s, we don’t understand it either. A poorly animated pumpkin lectures a bunch of kids with Halloween safety tips, like "Give all the unwrapped candy you get to your brother" and "Don't incant the name of a Great Old One backward lest your mortal mind be unable to comprehend the ghastly magnitude of the horrors you witness." Break all your candy bars in half to check for explosives, then join Mike, Kevin and Bill for Halloween Safety 2: Even Safer! Written by: Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett, Conor Lastowka, and Sean Thomason
The title of our new short Basketball Is Fun comes off a little desperate. Basketball Is Fun! Everyone should hang out with Basketball! Basketball’s mom thinks Basketball is really cool, no matter what the kids at school say! But the title makes sense as a sales pitch when you realize this film was made roughly 10 minutes after the invention of basketball. On an endless field of black & white asphalt, young boys with letters on their jerseys instead of numbers try to understand wild new concepts like “passing.” The concept of “actually making a shot” apparently hadn’t arrived yet, though. Basically, these kids suck at basketball. Before man could run, he had to learn how to dribble. Join Mike, Kevin and Bill for a sports film from the dawn of time, Basketball Is Fun! Written by Mike Nelson, Conor Lastowka, and Sean Thomason
The Magic Shop is almost definitely the only short we’ve ever riffed that was based on a story by H.G. Wells - though there are rumors his work was a major inspiration for Moose Baby. It’s a tale as old as time. A young boy pressures his dad to take him into a magic shop. The creepy magic shop owner pressures them to join him in the back room where the REAL magic happens... and for some reason they actually go. The dad is stressed out by how much everything costs, but you’ll be stressed out by the creepy gorilla-hippo hybrid creature that even Dr. Moreau found “a little upsetting.” And the “magic” only gets more unspeakable from there. Join Mike, Kevin and Bill for the stone cold literary classic that is H.G. Wells’ The Magic Shop! NOTE: This short first appeared LIVE in the Space Mutiny show. Written by: Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett, Conor Lastowka, and Sean Thomason
he Little King was a comic strip that started in the 1930s and ran for decades, following the misadventures of a silent and extremely round monarch who seems to wind up in his underpants. A lot. Long before Garfield gorged on lasagna, the Little King was feasting away and, presumably, hating Mondays. The Little King: Christmas Night is an animated short that allows the raw, unadulterated roundness of the king explode across the silver screen. He feels lonely at Christmas, so he picks up a couple of old-timey hobos and takes them back to his castle. There he feeds them (nice) and makes them take a bath with him (maybe not so nice?). What will happen to the Little King and the hobos when Santa arrives? A power struggle? Long underwear with butt-flaps? Unexpected tattoo reveals? One thing’s for sure: it’s never quite clear if the Little King is a child with a beard or just a deeply immature man. But he is fun in a weird, confusing kind of way. Join Mike, Kevin and Bill and help us try
Christmas Cracker may be the most pointless short we’ve ever done, and we’ve done a short about gluing pine cones to cardboard tubes. Made by the Film Board of Canada, possibly on a dare, it weaves together three unrelated “stories,” in the same way that unintelligible graffiti scrawled on a bathroom stall, possibly in feces, is a “story." There’s a Jingle Bells music video that would be unimpressive even if you learned an ape had animated it. Then some toys come to life and bump into each other. And just when you think you couldn’t possibly take anymore Christmas cheer, there’s a short where a poorly animated guy goes into poorly animated space to get a poorly animated star for his Christmas tree, which is shockingly a lush, detailed animation, worthy of a Flemish master. We're just kidding - it’s poorly animated as well.
Beginning Responsibility: Taking Care Of Things is NOT to be confused with our other short, Beginning Responsibility: Taking Care Of Your Own Things. That one was made in the 70s and was about a little boy named Reggie with an appalling talking pillow. This one was made in the 50s and is about a little boy named Andy with appalling dead tadpoles. Totally different! Andy is a kid with a lot of problems. He drops a pencil in his elementary school classroom, and then has to sharpen the pencil in front of the whole class. Sharpening a pencil, so embarrassing, can you even imagine the shame? His teacher scolds him for being a “baby” and he becomes even less popular than he already was. Trying to rehab his image, the friendless and broken-penciled boy convinces an older kid named Fred to come over and see his room. Fred takes off, and Andy’s mom teaches him how to be popular… by helping his sister reattach a doll’s head. Thanks mom, it’s starting to become clear why Andy is a loner.
One: a suburban 1950s family with two children eagerly awaiting the arrival of Santa Claus. The other: a demented black and white cartoon that feels like it came from some other terrifying dimension. For the first time ever, Toyland is both! We start with the classic nuclear family on Christmas, notable for their small dog who sits upright in a chair. Then dad pulls out a projector and screen and forces the family to watch another film, a cartoon of the ancient variety. Complete with creepy Santa, dogs fighting over bones, and anthropomorphized household objects bouncing up and down to music. There’s a parade of mediocre toys and some kids who look like Felix the Cat. Yes, Toyland has it all! Join the live-action kids watching the weird cartoon and wondering “Is this really all we get for Christmas? Does dad hate us?” He might, but Mike Kevin and Bill don’t. All aboard the poorly animated sleigh to Toyland!
“Silent night, holy night…” Yes, you’ve probably heard the famous carol dozens of times in your life. And every time, you surely thought to yourself “What is the story of this Christmas carol? I must know!” No? No, not even once? Even now, you find yourself nodding off at the idea of learning where this Christmas carol came from? Well snap out of it, because Coronet Films is here to give you the origin story you never asked for! Silent Night: The Story of the Christmas Carol opens on a family being bothered by carolers, ironically making the night less silent with their droning. From there a narrator whisks us off into history, specifically the tiny village of Oberndorf, Austria where the song was born. We don’t want to give away too many spoilers, but it involves a priest walking down a hill, a musician with the sideburns of a 60s country singer, and the true hero of the tale: a traveling organ-mender. Yes, somehow wandering remote European villages and asking if they had any organs
You’ll be laughing your warm wool socks off (or should we say, on) as we follow Bill, Nell, and Charlie through a film that only an Encyclopedia could produce. Sure, you thought sledding was fun, but did you know there was a proper form to it? Have you been building snowmen wrong all these years? Do you have what it takes to win in a high-stakes game of “Fox and Geese”? Maybe you better think about taking notes before the next time you... Play In The Snow!
There are times when you need to ask yourself: have you been realizing perfume’s full potential? Have you been living, breathing, eating, seeing, tasting fragrance in every way possible? By the end of this hearty bit of infotainment, you'll be applying perfume and cologne more aggressively than you had ever dreamed. Part travelogue, part educational, and a whole lot promotional, this short film from Avon won’t rest until perfume has altered your very DNA.
Michael Jordan is the greatest basketball player of all time. Proudly wearing the number 23, Jordan played 15 seasons in the NBA, winning six championships with the Chicago Bulls while galvanizing the league with his dazzling showmanship. Unfortunately, this short is about a school bus known as Ol’ #23. The “Ron Howardy” looking bus driver has a routine meeting with superintendent of schools and convinces her that students love “Ol’ #23” so much that they will give up a Saturday to paint and reupholster cushions. The project is a success until the baseball team threatens to ruin everything!
Coronet, who had previously enriched our lives with insights into how to drink water, and how to keep a job, now tackles the herculean task of general hygiene. Specifically, Good Grooming for Girls. That’s right ladies, this short is packed with the mind blowing beauty secrets you’ve been waiting for like: washing your clothes, washing yourself, washing your shoes… and SO MUCH MORE! According to this short, the best rule of grooming is “to do it, then forget it.” Well, don’t you forget to join Bridget and Mary Jo down at the salon with Good Grooming For Girls!
Holiday from Rules follows four children who exist in abstract space, an empty void, a community theater set without any actual setpieces. These cranky, whiny kids are mad that rules exist, and they make one of the classic RiffTrax short blunders: they wish to live in a world without rules. You fools! You should never make a wish like that! Did you learn nothing from the teachings of Coily?? As you might expect, the omnipotent narrator takes the kids up on their wish and transports them to an island where they can try to live rule-free. So basically it’s Lord of the Flies with a lower production budget and not quite as many homicides. It’s fun to think about a world without rules… just imagine, you could eat all the old ham you wanted without any fussy “expiration dates” holding you back. Join Mike, Kevin and Bill as they study the pros and cons of life in this new utopia, this Holiday from Rules! Written by Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett, Kevin Murphy, Bridget Nelson, Mary Jo Pehl, Col
Romeo and Juliet. Shoes and socks. Ren and Stimpy. Wine and cheese. Dolly and Porter. Just some of the great pairings through the ages. And don’t forget: chips and dip. Courtesy of the National Potato Institute, Chip and Dip are leprechauns whose “adventures” include a bizarre origin story, recipes, and a tour of a modern day manufacturing plant. Celebrating chips as a healthy - indeed, essential - source of salt and fat, it all culminates in a cooking contest celebrating the humble fried tuber. Chicken Spaghetti Loaf, anyone?
Think you’ve got the courage, discipline, brains, and physical acumen to be a woman in the armed services? Not if your hair and makeup aren’t perfect, soldier! This 1970 short is short on the specifics of actual military service and long on the particulars of proper hair styling, cosmetics, and wardrobe for lady soldiers.
According to this short, some people call the local grocery store a battleground - people who have never heard of, say, the Revolutionary War. However! There is “a daily battle is being waged in supermarkets all over this country - a battle for the customer’s dollar.” And clerks are “The Front Line” in this instructional video, complete with information on greeting customers, dispensing change, and looking up prices on canned goods. Warning: contains graphic images of cash registers and Campbell’s Soup.
Just in case the 1948 version didn’t drive home the point, here’s the second edition of Coronet Films’ Build Your Vocabulary! This time, Bill is an average joe who needs more words in his lexicon so he can buy paint and ask a girl for a date. This 1967 sequel is hip and happening, complete with improv, skirts above the ankle, and even ragtime music for today’s teens!
Driving safety films tend to carry the same basic message: DON’T DRIVE, DON’T YOU DARE DRIVE, WHY WOULD YOU EVER THINK OF DOING SOMETHING AS EVIL AND TERRIFYING AS DRIVING??? But few have the car stunt budget and darkness of Leadfoot! Meet Tom. You’ll know his name is Tom because he wears a t-shirt that says “Tom.” Tom is a blonde 1980s teen living in the 1980s world of 1980s Los Angeles. Tom recently got himself a car for $400, so you know it’s safe! Adults and a concerned policeman talk to Tom about driving safety, so naturally he heeds all their warnings and nothing bad or tragic happens at all… *SCREEEEEEEEEEEEECH SLAM BLOOD LIFELONG REGRETS* Yep, Tom’s a Leadfoot all right, and wait ‘til you see who pays the price for his mad desire to operate an automobile! To find out, just grab an open container and go joyriding with Mike, Kevin, Bill, and Leadfoot!
A babysitter with basic survival instincts doesn’t let the house burn down, and might just be the local paper’s “Hero Of The Week”, despite the misgivings of a hard-boiled investigative reporter for the Neighborhood News section.
Golly, Jill would forget her head if it weren’t attached! Thankfully Jack is on hand to protect her from everything - everything - in an average ordinary day. Brought to you by Pacific Bell, this short about workplace safety reminds us we must never let our guard down around marauding and predatory desks and shoes.
You know you’re in for an action-packed, can’t-catch-your-breath thrill ride with a movie from the McGraw Hill Company in cooperation with National Office Management Association based on materials furnished by the Education and Training Department of Aluminum Company of America and part of the series on the Office Supervisor’s Problems! Grab your popcorn and use the restroom, because you won’t want to miss a single moment of a boss being irritated with the secretarial pool!
It’s the prequel you didn’t know you needed! See, a couple years back we riffed An Airplane Trip By Jet. It was packed with great 1950s travel information, but some astute viewers couldn’t help feeling they’d been dropped into the middle of a larger story. Like reading Go Set A Watchman before To Kill A Mockingbird, or watching Retro Puppet Master before regular Puppet Master. But never fear, we found the original, the one that started it all, and life should make sense again thanks to An Airplane Trip! What’s the difference between An Airplane Trip and An Airplane Trip by Jet? Well, mostly the jet. Cheerful children are ditched at the airport by grandparents who are more than happy to see them go. Glamorous, friendly flight attendants and glamorous, friendly airline staffers help them through every step of their journey. The whole 1950s flying process is so pleasant that this feels more like science fiction than any science fiction films made in the 1950s. It’s fun to imagine a fil
In this short from Encyclopedia Britannica, young Mickey would rather watch television than be courteous to his mother’s guest. As if that weren’t bad enough, his mother brazenly flaunts an infinitive marker, asking, “Where have all your manners gone to?” This sets off Mickey’s fantasy of being President and declaring a no rules policy across the land. Written by Karyn Vanderkooy. Contributing writer Bridget Nelson
The title Magical Field Trip to the Denver Mint is a bit redundant, since obviously ANY field trip to the Denver Mint is going to be magical. What makes this particular journey to a penny factory so special? Well, naturally, it all starts with a vacuum cleaner! The vacuum cleaner in question is wielded by Rosie O’Flanagan, a whimsical supernatural being whose main power is… being extremely Irish. When three youngsters are bored in their school library, Rosie and her vacuum appear to whisk them away to, you guessed it, the Denver Mint! Does this make more sense when you watch the short? Not really! The kids get to explore the ugliest, dullest rooms at the industrial plant, all while Rosie does her magical thing of… well, being Irish. Rosie O’Flanagan should really team up with the Grocery Witch from Magical Disappearing Money and use their combined powers to bother people about small change. Join Mike, Kevin, Bill, Rosie O’Flanagan and a bucket of nickels for Magical Field Trip to t
Thirteen-year-old Danny Coleman, played by 13-year-old Ben Affleck, thinks his single mother needs to meet a Mr. Right. Using personal ads technology, he and his industrious best friend Melanie secretly put an ad in the local paper. The most important lesson from this 1986 Afterschool Special? The great Madeline Kahn can even garner an Emmy for an Afterschool Special!
Shoplifting: many of us already know that it’s a victimless crime, and a great way to get things you want but can’t afford. But did you know that it can also be quite fun? In this educational short, we’ll examine several common shoplifting mistakes, so that you can learn what not to do as you maximize your enjoyment while accruing free power tools and video games. What’s that? Ohhhhhhhh… We’ve just been informed that this short is actually about helping killjoy employees prevent shoplifting, by pointing out devious scams such as “putting the perfume in your purse” and “leaving a paper sack full of meat by the door.” The second one is really something people had to be told to look out for! Hell, it even involves an accomplice!
We’ve got a brand new riff of Last Clear Chance, a high watermark in the storied genre of “Driver’s Ed films intended to scare the crap out of you!” It was made in 1959, so the lessons are harsh and the haircuts are stern. In the heartland of America (read: some farm), young Alan is excited to receive his driver’s license. What joy, what fun! Not so fast, says Officer Hal Dixon, who crashes the family’s picnic lunch to shame Alan for past misdeeds in front of his parents and confused grandpa. Officer Hal goes on to let Alan know one of his teenage friends recently died in a tragic auto accident. Thanks for joining us, Hal, next time bring some potato salad we can cry into! Keen viewers will learn a thing or two about railroad crossings, and keener viewers might notice… the accident that killed Alan’s friend was really Officer Hal’s fault? Dig deep for the truth, and don’t miss your chance to join Mike, Kevin and Bill for Last Clear Chance! Written by Mike Nelson, Conor Lastowka, and
Shazam!! With one simple word and a puff of smoke, young Billy Batson transforms from an awkward dork with his pants up around his rib cage to a slightly older, doughier dork with his pants up around his rib cage. Yes folks, it’s another black and white superhero serial that appears to have been filmed during the Harding administration! An American archaeological expedition has traveled to the Far East in order to respectfully aid local scientists in preserving a sacred site. Just kidding! They’re going Tomb Robbin’! Unfortunately, they’re shocked when their efforts result in a terrible curse: their story will be told in glacially-paced, poorly-acted, low-budget serial episodes! Only Captain Marvel can rid the world of the Curse of the Scorpion. Unfortunately, he’s still figuring out this whole “superpower” thing, and you know what? A few innocent people are gonna die while he’s getting his sea legs. Fortunately, there’s a dozen of these things, so he’s got plenty of time to figure i
Bobbi is a middle-schooler who’s crazy about school buses. She plays with a toy bus; her t-shirt proudly proclaims “Bus Nut”; and there are six or seven actual buses in various states of disrepair in her family’s yard that she’s fixing up to resell. She cares just as passionately about vehicular safety. Just in time for back-to-school, this 1980 short covers correctly boarding a bus, the dangers of roughhousing in the seats, and how not to get hit by a car when you’re running late. Written by: Bridget Nelson and Mary Jo Pehl
It’s the late 70s and Seattle is overrun with dweebs. And as you’d expect when a crowd of more than five dweebs gets together, some juggling is going to break out. This particular Juggling Lesson is taught by an alpha dweeb, who looks like a less charming Ned Blandford joined a Christian Rock version of The Doobie Brothers. He shows up unannounced and uninvited at a Seattle farmer’s market and proceeds to berate a wide variety of people who look like they’ve at one time considered asking a bartender for a Yoo-hoo about their lack of juggling ability. There’s also a mime. Of course there’s a mime! Are you a scooper? Do you occasionally shovel? Do you not know a single juggling term and want to pursue a more dignified hobby, like rock licking or designing cute little hats for hedgehogs? Well too bad! The only way to end The Juggling Lesson is to pass the diabolical Juggler’s Test, so let RiffTrax Senior Writers Conor Lastowka and Sean Thomason be your guides!
For most of us, our knowledge of economics is limited to knowing that the guy who texts you “Is the non-working vacuum you listed on Facebook Marketplace still available?” will never respond once you reply “Yes.” But there’s some people out there who actually understand economics. They are nerds, but they are much, much richer than us, so we won’t insult them anymore, lest they pork belly the soy bean futures and quantitatively ease our Roth 401-Boglehead. Here, have a non-working vacuum as a peace offering! How did these people come to understand this complicated field? Some give credit to their “advanced degrees” and “years of study.” But we know the truth: they watched a 20-minute short taught by a six-foot chicken. Chickenomics combines scholarly topics such as “Consumer Sovereingty” with a mascot who once pulled Tommy Lasorda’s pants down. The Famous Chicken does not appear to have any formal economic training, so ask yourself, would you rather this short was hosted by Jim Cra
Are you a wholesome teenager, child, Yankees outfielder, U.S Naval Academy cadet, former ice skater, old time inventor, youth pastor, grandma, grandpa or nerd from rural Missouri who's looking for some wholesome fun? Then you should be roller skating right now! There is no other activity on the entire plant that can provide you with the USDA recommended dose of wholesome fun then the wholesome activity of roller skating! This Is Roller Skating is a short film that exists to tell the world that rollerskating is a wholesome sport that can and should be enjoyed by the young, the old, the tall, the short, presidents, farmers…oh just everyone! So get on four wheels and start living!
Patterns for Smartness is not a TED talk about increasing your brain's ability to process information in a systematic way as we were all led to believe. Instead, it’s about something much more sublime, interesting, and lmportant. It’s about what colors make you your most exciting and attractive self? It’s about experimenting with actual fabrics, cutting out patterns and most importantly, it’s about working really hard to make a bunch of clothes for a fashion show to make money for your boyfriend's basketball team!
A long long time ago before the invention of sweatpants by Thaddeus P.J. Comfy sparked a worldwide activewear revolution, the American woman was considered the best dressed and most dressed woman in the world. This was due to Yankee ingenuity, which produced a fashionable, well-made dress to sell for twenty dollars or less. This was considered a miracle and there is speculation that someone at the National Cotton Council Of America may soon be granted sainthood by Pope Benedict. Enjoy this short about the inner workings of dress manufacturing and don’t let the Devil tempt you with Prada!
Encyclopedia Britannica wants you to know: clowns get toothaches, too! Scared of the dentist? Well, a hideous CLOWN should take care of that! Turns out the "this" in "Now I've got this to worry about" was gingivitis. There are two redeeming things about this short: 1) Nobody carves their initials into a young boy's fingernail, and 2) The clown does appear to be in quite a bit of pain. Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill as they apply a soothing salve to a Toothache of the Clown!
This is the story of Skippy Gordon, who, in the fall 1953, did unknowingly fall prey to the influence of Miss Temple and her nefarious cooperation in a federally planned routine which would envelop him for one half of his waking hours, and which would continue for the next ten, fifteen, or twenty years of his life. Suffer with Skippy as he endures the joy-ending trauma of realizing that all his toys and nice mom are at home while he's stuck in a stinky room with twenty paste-eaters painting endless pictures of his house with thick, unruly paintbrushes. Feel, with him, the betrayal as his love and desire for a big-boy bike is twisted by the duplicitous Miss Temple into a sick plan to teach him to read, write, and do arithmetic. Finally, an exposé that has the courage to shine a light on first grade as it truly is.
Things got off to a Shazammy start with Chapter 1, the one where Captain Marvel uses his new superpowers to… shoot a bunch of guys in the back with a machine gun. Look, it was the '40s, they were still figuring out the whole superhero thing. Now, with Adventures of Captain Marvel: The Guillotine, the second installment of this classic serial, things really start heating up. One of the powerful lenses raided from an ancient tomb in Chapter 1 has been subsequently raided again by one of the guys who raided it. But which guy? He, the masked supervillain, naturally works with a bunch of old-timey gangsters to get the rest of the lenses. And for some reason, they’ve constructed an electric “guillotine” contraption so overly complicated even Rube Goldberg would blush. But the most shocking reveal of all? Squeaky-voiced Billy Batson has a radio show!
In this short film from the days of landlines, the great Jack Klugman does a lot of soul-searching about dialing long distance. A harbinger of the self-service evolution, AT&T blames YOU for not taking responsibility for your phone calls.
Since a hilarious tragedy struck years ago, Nicholas (which can be abbreviated to NICK, by the way) has lived the life of a SAINTly hermit, but he still has GIFTS that he could give to society if only he was able to one day BECOME SANTA CLAUS. Wait, that was too on the noise, strike that last one! It’s the most predictable film twist since it turned out Keyser Soze was dead the entire time, and observing the whole thing from afar is a deer that the narrator claims was present at the birth of Jesus. Debate over this dubious theological fact has caused countless schisms, crusades, and holy wars over the millennia. Merry Christmas!
One snowy Christmas Eve in a remote cabin in Ukraine, a family prepares for a big dinner of… well, mostly raisins? The boy’s only joy is looking forward to decorating the tree in the yard his father promised years ago would be theirs for Christmas. How sweet! Then, his father sells the tree to a rich man who passes by. How sad! Then, to make up for it, the father makes his son… carry the tree on a sled to the rich man’s house on a freezing winter night. How… cruel, and perhaps punishable if reported to the appropriate authorities? Wolves howl, and a mysterious stranger approaches. Will the boy survive? If he does, will he finally get his greatest wish of… looking at a tree and eating some raisins? There’s only one way to find out: brace yourself and join Mike, Kevin and Bill for the raw holiday joy of The Christmas Tree!
Who better to spread the word about the hip, happening, now-wow sport of snowmobiling than Emmy and Peabody award-winning journalist - and native Canadian - Peter Jennings? Discover why snowmobiling is more than just back-breaking, eardrum shattering, and numbingly cold recreation - it creates opportunities for nightclubbing!
The draconian fun policy at Western And Southern Life Insurance no doubt drove many employees to quit for sanity’s sake. Actual work barely rates a mention in this recruiting video aimed at high school girls from the early 1950s. Instead, there’s bowling, a free cafeteria, a library, basketball, wrist watches, music over the office sound system - why, you’re even allowed to dream of working your way up to becoming the boss’s secretary!
Nowadays, it’s very common to set up a Christmas Tree inside your home, but did you ever stop to wonder: who was the first person to do it and how drunk they were? Of course, nobody could possibly know the true origin of this tradition, so the folks at Coronet just made up some garbage about a medieval toymaker. We’re not talking cool toys with Blast Processing and Kung Fu Grips, we’re talking wooden crap with yarn made of goat fur nailed to it. Christmas Trees provide light, comfort, and joy, so of course their tale is full of bleakness, poverty, and the fear of being devoured by wolves. Look, at least it doesn’t have a talking pillow! Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for the tale of the guy who was decorating Christmas Trees before it was cool, The First Christmas Tree.
A Christmas Riddle: What has to do with the birth of Jesus, doesn't cost any money, is always welcome and makes folks so happy that they might even give it right back to you? Hmmm. You have until midnight December 24th to solve the riddle. But Bridget and Mary Jo just might be willing to help you out. Ring in the season with a delightful short from our friends at Family Films. Hint: All you need is _______
When we say that our new feature is a fantasy adventure tale full of strange creatures, with a small but brave hero who quests across dangerous terrain, including a volcano, all while showing off the grand landscapes of New Zealand, obviously there’s only one movie that comes to mind: The Monster’s Christmas! The hero in question is a little girl named “Girl.” Oh, those wacky New Zealanders and their zany names! On Christmas Eve, she falls asleep reading a children’s book called The Monster’s Christmas (not an actual book, we checked) and goes on to dream her way through an adventure that’s about 95% monster and maybe 5% Christmas.
Our story continues, which can mean only one thing: Captain Marvel somehow survived the electric guillotine in the previous chapter? But the ending led us to believe he’d perished! Surely the serial won’t pull anything like this on us again. To refresh you: it’s all about lenses. And gangsters. And a mysterious villain named The Scorpion who wears a hood and also stole… a scorpion. But like, a statue of a scorpion. Which is also where the lenses came from. Oh, and now and then some guy called Captain Marvel shows up.
It’s a big red flag for Nora when her boyfriend doesn’t order the Lobster Cantonese on their double-date with his brother and fiancée. The two of them didn’t even look at the menu together! Fortunately, a frank talk with her mother just days before prepared her for just this kind of calamity. Nora was able to take a step back and reevaluate that maybe they should just commit to occasional roller skating for the time being.
Not only did we discover a pristine film copy of this beloved RiffTrax short in an unmarked film canister we purchased from eBay, but thanks to our Kickstarter 2022 backers, we've riffed it - again!
Medieval peasants had it pretty good. Bold trends in seneschal headwear. Exciting new plagues. Early retirement (due to death, caused by aforementioned plagues.) Plus, you were never more likely to encounter magic beans or wee little imps who would grant you wishes! Of course, if you’re granted three wishes, you’ve got to use them carefully. Don’t be like the couple in The Three Wishes who eschew the traditional “lots of money” or “infinity wishes” wishes and instead opt for a series of wishes involving cased meat products. Honestly, it’s a better lesson than you learn from most Coronet shorts. Pile some green fabric on your head and join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for The Three Wishes.
June 10 1967 – President Lyndon Johnson signs Proclamation 3700, designating "the week beginning June 11, 1967, as 'National Succeed With Brunettes Week' and directing 'the appropriate Military officials to begin training Naval personnel in appropriate dating techniques including, but not limited, to: Walking on sidewalks, putting on coats, ordering food, and shaking hands.'" Okay, not really, but the U.S. Government did spend our tax dollars on a 16-minute movie explaining the do’s and don'ts of dating brown-haired women! "Success with brunettes and blondes or anybody is built upon respect. And being a gentleman is about commanding respect. How to succeed with brunettes? Be a gentleman!" Bridget and Mary Jo could not agree more! Join them as they forget the cares of the tumultuous 60’s and help you learn How To Succeed With Brunettes!
Gumby, everyone’s favorite malleable substance / god-king, is back in our first RiffTrax Gumby Double Feature. First, Gumby is lured into an oven by a sentient ball of dough. Looks like Gumby fans aren’t the only ones getting baked! But seriously, Pokey dies and Gumby learns a very valuable lesson about croissants or something. Next, Gumby joins the pantheon of great classical musicians, like John Williams and The Guy That Did The String Arrangements on Wu-Tang’s “Reunited”. A pair of musical notes teach him the many wonders of the symphony, which sadly, does not lead to Pokey dying again. Will you learn anything? No. Will you wonder what the clay Gumby is made of tastes like? Almost certainly. Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for another trip into the Gumbyverse!
We all know you can Shake Hands With Danger on a construction site. But did you know that bountiful opportunities to greet danger exist in the standard American office?* Deadly hazards lurk around every corner: cords to trip over, filing cabinets to get pinned under, and co-workers who insist on telling you about their fantasy football teams. And who better to teach us about these hazards than the U.S. Navy? It turns out that while the troops were off winning WW2, the Navy home office was full of people who needed helpful tips like “Actually, don’t slice your thumb off with the paper cutter!” Miss Dipple, Lockenbar, and Lumbering Louie are essentially the Jackass crew of the 1950s, injuring each other for our amusement. (Their antics came to an end after Lumbering Louie controversially stapled his sack to his thigh in front of the First Lady at the Eisenhower Inaugural Ball.) Uncle Sam wants you to lumber on down and join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for Safety in Offices!
In the fourth installment of The Adventures of Captain Marvel, we get plane crashes, kidnappings, and high speed chases. Remember, this is one guy’s quest to track down some lenses. Thankfully he’s not after something more interesting, like an atomic bomb or the Mona Lisa. Things could really get out of hand quickly! Billy Batson narrowly escapes a plane crash by remembering that he has insane super powers and doesn’t even need a plane to fly. This knowledge is somehow not enough to prevent him from getting tied up in the basement of a local antique shop soon thereafter. Evidently, The Scorpion didn’t have a lot of budget left for Plan B. Meanwhile, Betty is nearly taken out by a falling flower pot on her way to investigate an evil rental car agency. Just another day in the thrilling world of comic books! Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for Death Takes the Wheel!
This educational short elucidates the fun and responsibility of urban pets, be they dogs, cats, birds, or rhinos. How deeply will rhinos factor into this short? You'll have to watch to find out! Learn the joys of pets, fun, and responsibility with Bridget and Mary Jo! Written by: Bridget Nelson and Mary Jo Pehl
What is The Color of Health? Sort of yellowish, with lime green undertones and massive bright red bumps? Because if not, we'd better get to a doctor ASAP. The Color of Health is an educational short from the 60s, so you know right away it’ll be bright, colorful, stylish, and that you won’t learn anything true. Two children sit in an abstract shell of a house surrounded by mid-century modern details that would make HGTV swoon. They can’t stop talking about health and food groups - you know how kids are! And of course, the short reveals that the solution to all health problems is to eat more bread. White bread, cereal, more white bread: that’s the key to a healthy diet, kids! Might that have something to do with the fact this short was funded by the American Bakers Association? Nah, we’re probably just being cynical. Grab a big loaf of the good stuff and join Mike, Kevin and Bill for The Color of Health!
We’re living in the age of the Seneschal, baby! Seneschal T-shirts, Seneschal themed restaurants, and we recently learned that Seneschal was the number one baby name in 2022, regardless of gender. What is a Seneschal, and why is it so hard to spell? You can learn all about it with this newly recorded studio version of Life in a Medieval Town! But there’s more to the short than just the Seneschal - as if he wasn’t enough! The film gives us an exciting low-budget window into feudal society in Europe, and a real historical appreciation for how much life sucked back then. You want a new hat? Better bring your best cow to town! And don’t forget to pay the “bringing your cow into town” tax, or you’ll probably be executed. It was a simpler time, and a worse one. Unless you were the Seneschal, of course, then you were heaping green fabric on your head and living large!
The Scorpion’s goons have left Betty spiraling. Not spiraling in an emotional sense: literally spiraling down the parking ramp while passed out at the wheel. She’s unconscious, but still somehow guides the car to the bottom without crashing - a feat more impressive than anything Captain Marvel does. That being said, the marvelous Captain does eventually get around to showing up and helping out. Specifically, he helps out by casually murdering a guy who was no real threat, and just sort of annoyed him. Yes, they were still figuring out the whole “superhero” thing in those days, folks! Remember Chapter One, when the boy-turned-hero shot a bunch of guys in the back with a gatling gun? We sure do! Billy Batson becomes suspicious that the masked Scorpion might be one of the archaeologists he hangs out with – a reasonable suspicion, since they are the guiltiest-seeming group of men ever assembled.
We have to wonder how the filmmakers came up with the title for our new short, Let’s Be Good Citizens At Play. Mad Libs? Some primitive 1950s version of A.I.? Perhaps they threw darts at a board covered in wholesome, bland words? We may never know, but rest assured after you watch the short you’ll say “Oh, I guess the title tracks… sort of? Hmm.” The “citizens” in question? 50s kids in striped shirts, slicked-back hairstyles, and frilly little dresses made from tablecloths. The “play”? All kinds of good clean moral fun, from roller skating to ping pong to baseball in the style of The Sandlot. And the “good”? Well, we’re still trying to find that part. Things really come to a head when this little gang of background characters from a Peanuts cartoon put on a play to raise money for the baseball team. The play’s theme is cowboys and Indians, of course, because it’s the 50s and nothing says “good citizenship” like violent struggle between settlers and indigenous peoples!
Ever wanted to vandalize your school, but you weren't sure how? Hey, we’ve all been there! This helpful instructional short film will get you started with everything you need to know, from egg selection to crafting the perfect insulting nickname to Sharpie on the principal’s door – wait, what’s that? The film School Vandalism is actually against school vandalism? Well, that’s a little confusing! School Vandalism is from the 70s, when kids were wearing bell bottoms, feathering their hair, and just vandalizing the ever-loving heck out of their schools. The film follows four boys who decide to bust into school after hours on a whim. They don’t like the lunch lady, and that’s enough motivation for them! The vandalism they commit is… well, it’s pretty weak, really. They sort of mess up the cafeteria kitchen, and leave a stove on. But that’s enough to bring out the town’s entire police force and fire department to give these lads the public scolding of a lifetime!
RiffTrax shorts have covered a lot of rudimentary ground over the years such as how to bounce a ball and how to draw a square. But every time we think we’ve found the bottom of the barrel, it turns out there’s another layer of ooze down there as well as some dimwit nine-year-old who’s curious what the ooze tastes like. The dimwit in question here is Jack, and you’re gonna watch him count to ten. You’re gonna watch him count to ten a whole bunch. Probably more than ten times, but we can’t be sure: the numbers that come after ten must be covered in another short. Jack is counting his army men, and we’ll consider it a success that he never gets one lodged up his nose. Then he moves on to counting real army men, and honestly, if Colonel Jessep had ordered a Code Red here, Tom Cruise probably would’ve just been like “Yep, kid had it coming.” They really thought this was the best way to teach this, folks. Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for The Number System.
It’s all fun and games until your older brother almost gets killed ‘cause you started hanging around with stoners in short shorts. Where were you on November 12,1980? Were you highlighting shows that you wanted to watch in your TV Guide with a marker you took from your guidance counselor’s office? If so, this after-school special would have been of extra special interest, because it happens to star the very person whose photos covered your locker and Trapper Keeper. Wednesday, 4:30pm: “Jack Thinks Smoking Pot Is The Answer To All His Problems! Jack Melon is a good student, one of the best in class - but he's shy, has no friends, and can't talk to girls. Getting high makes Jack feel popular, but it also gets him into deep trouble. If you smoke pot, know somebody who does, or just want to understand what it's all about, don't miss this very important show. Stoned, Wednesday Afternoon at 4:30pm - starring Scott Baio of ‘Happy Days!’” Oh, and it won awards and stuff!
Not sure who made this short film claiming that lower order animals are actually useful to us humans, or why - but they are! Mostly in sandwiches! Little Jimmy is on a quest to discover how every animal on grandfather’s farm fits into their own little capitalist artifice. Eat your heart out, George Orwell! Cows are there to provide food. Chickens? Also food. Sheep? Clothing and food. Mink? Just clothing! Good for those lucky, lucky minks! Will more animals and their vocations be discussed at arduous length? You’ll have to tune in to find out. Join Bridget and Mary Jo as they look for a job down on the farm to learn How Animals Help Us!
According to a Newsweek story “The Creativity Crisis” (no longer linkable), preschool kids ask their parents an average of 100 questions a day. By middle school, they’ve basically stopped asking questions. Around this time, the article points out, student motivation and engagement plummets. In our opinion this is great news for adults who can finally get something done because they aren't being bothered all the time with questions that could be easily Googled. This cautionary short film dramatizes actual situations in which youngsters ask questions about cats, cops, plants and death. You can really mess up a kid if you answer incorrectly, so pay attention along with Bridget and Mary Jo as they Answer The Child's Why.
Words can be tricky. Do words ever fool you? Do they ever convince you to liquidate your savings into crypto and send it to a guy named "$enator Epicdoge" so he won’t release the webcam footage he claims he has of you? Do you have any idea how to get it back before our wife finds out? Yes, words can be tricky, as the young star of our new short learns. Jerry buys some binoculars out of the back of a comic book, somehow resisting the allure of X-Ray Specs and Sea Monkeys. This is a good thing—Jerry seems like the kind of kid who would have definitely drank the Sea Monkeys and possibly tried to eat the Specs. The binoculars are advertised as “powerful”, and Jerry, who thought he would be able to gaze at neighboring planets with them, is disappointed. Evidently the lesson is, “Yes, words can fool you, if you’re as big a dope as Jerry.” You’re not as big a dope as Jerry, are you? Wanna prove it? Well then check out Do Words Ever Fool You? today!
Like most educational shorts from the 50s, Don’t Be Afraid is about a boy named Billy with a mother who wears a nice dress with an apron over it at all hours of the day. Unlike most educational shorts from the 50s, Don’t Be Afraid centers on the terror of being alive. Buckle up for the existential dread of simply being Billy, kids! Billy’s afraid of everything, and his mom’s not afraid to shame him for it. Things in the closet, warm stoves, climbable gutters, friendly school janitors - they all chill young Billy to his core. Mom tries to help Billy by pointing out that other kids are afraid of things, too, like dogs and bringing home bad report cards to judgmental parents. But those kids are wrong to be afraid, Mom says. The world is full of scary things, Billy, and everyone is afraid, but you shouldn’t be, because being afraid is wrong. Get it, Billy? Do you feel better now, Billy??
This sixth installment of the classic serial centers on the very thing everyone wants from a superhero story: lenses! Specifically the Lens of Death, like when a soft contact rolls back behind your eye and you can’t get it and it’s driving you crazy and you just want to die. Or, perhaps more accurately, a lens-based scorpion contraption stolen from an ancient tomb way back in the first episode that can be used to melt mountains, trapping Captain Marvel in a gooey lava inferno. Both lenses are equally terrifying! But the real star of this episode isn’t the lens, or even Captain Marvel: it’s a butler. An anonymous, library defending butler who takes on all comers and kicks an extraordinary amount of gangster butt. We’re not kidding, the episode absolutely should’ve been called Butler of Death. Join Mike, Kevin, Bill, Captain Marvel, and the world’s most savage butler for Adventures of Captain Marvel Chapter 6: Lens of Death!
Little Joey is tired of not having any friends, so he uses the strict set of rules from this short (and helpful advice from his mom) to try and make some new ones. [Released early to 2023 Kickstarter backers]
From the mind of Educational Collaborator William E. Young, Ph.D., Director of Curriculum Development Center at The University of the State of New York, and in collaboration with Coronet Films, comes the eternal question: is it considerate to bore your classmates? Only Jeff, a green-sweater-wearing sixth-grader has the courage to seek the answer to this and other profundities, such as the proper way to invite new kids from New York to a birthday party (sorry, Peggy, this party is only for boys), and how not to mangle the cake.
It’s the late 70s and Ebenezer Scrooge is mired in a deep malaise. Not about Christmas: his coworkers are begging him to join their carpool. Usually Scrooge is an unsympathetic character, but him not wanting to jam into a van full of chattering accountants before he’s even had his first cup of coffee is one of the most relatable things in the RiffTrax library. Scrooge needs to be taught a lesson about conserving fuel, and it was either “be visited by three spirits” or “be forced to watch a beige educational film.” You know the drill: Marley’s chains, Fezziwig, “Boy, what day is it?", etc. But no other adaptation has been bold enough to show a televised Jimmy Carter smack dab in the middle of the story! Too bad, that really would have been a bold choice for The Muppet Christmas Carol…
The Christmas Spirit is set some time in The Past, an ambiguous era full of prairie dresses, wool caps, and men wearing wide ties too short to reach their belly buttons. The story centers on two young brothers obsessed with ponies - it’s boys who famously adore ponies, right? - and the gruff old man they rent the ponies from. Turns out the gruff old man is gruff because his son died. Bet you feel bad about judging him for his gruffness now, don’t you? Well you should! The great drama of the short is that the older boy may have to settle for a slightly inferior pony to the pony he really wants for Christmas. Can you imagine anything sadder?? Trust us, the gruff old man can. And so can his eyebrows. Join Mike, Kevin and Bill and spend a little time in the disturbing Norman Rockwell painting that is The Christmas Spirit!
“Santa” has hit a bit of a rough patch this year, and they should temper their gift expectations accordingly. Think “hotel soaps” and “a fistful of jelly packets from Hardee’s.” Does this have anything to do with the fact that Daddy’s been getting out of bed around 11AM these days, unshaven and mumbling about how he’s gonna “show them all” as soon as the dog track lifts his lifetime ban? Who’s to say!
Sean and Conor were kids in the 80s, a time when pop culture was still figuring out the whole “Super Mario” thing. Was he a plumber who climbed ladders to fight an ape? Was he pro wrestler Captain Lou Albano? Was he Bob Hoskins going up against a spiky-haired Dennis Hopper in an industrial dystopia? And again, the plumbing, how much was that a part of his deal? The animated Christmas adventure Koopa Klaus answers none of these questions, and raises several more. Koopa, who you may know better as Bowser, has a plan to freeze Santa’s workshop in the North Pole so he can’t deliver toys. Why would freezing the North Pole be a problem, when it’s pretty famously a cold place already? No clue. How long has Santa Claus existed in the Mushroom Kingdom, let alone the faith upon which Christmas is based? Hard to say. Does Mario use a plumber’s snake as a weapon at some point in the episode? Yes, yes he does.
In search of just the right Christmas tree to soothe their mother’s aching heart, three seemingly wholesome Canadian siblings go all “daring heist” and filch a fir tree from a crabby neighbor. Come Christmas Day, they set out to right the wrong, and give Old Man Neighbor Guy all the gifts they didn’t want.
From the makers of Santa and The Ice Cream Bunny comes Santa and the Three Bears. (Plus porpoises) When park ranger Uncle Hal (voiced by Hal Smith, Otis on Andy Griffith) tells bear cubs Chinook and Nikomy about Christmas they decide to skip hibernation and stay awake several months to meet Santa Claus. This makes Nana, their mother, (voiced by Jean Vander Pyl aka Wilma Flintstone) very annoyed and so she goes to yell at the ranger but ends up hatching a plan involving a fake Santa. A blizzard… oh wait, before the story even starts there's a live action part with Uncle Hal (not played by Hal Smith, Otis on Andy Griffith) who takes his nieces and nephews to a porpoise show at Ocean World, which is part of Pirates World in Florida. The nieces and nephews ask him to tell them a Christmas story which turns into the animated part and, um, oh just watch it so you can be as confused/enchanted as we are!
This is the tale of The Little Match Girl - Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Match Girl, that is, not to be confused with Bram Stoker’s The Little Match Girl or the Spike Lee Joint Match Girl 6. True to the original, The Little Match Girl is a heartwarming Christmas story of one child’s brutal struggle for survival against impossible odds. Ho ho ho! Enjoy a warm mug of cocoa while this penniless orphan dreams of an extravagant gift, like a crust of bread or a leather shoe to boil. But don’t worry, it all turns around when Santa appears to show the girl bizarre magical visions of dancing snowmen and toys and family members who are long gone and… oh no. Oh dear. This thing isn’t going in a Zindy the Swamp Boy direction, is it? Please open your heart and spare some pennies for The Little Match Girl, she ain’t doing so good!
Hansel and Gretel, the beloved fairy tale of neglect, torture, and murder, is finally a film the entire family can enjoy! Because everything with these old shorts has to be needlessly weird, Hansel and Gretel are played by two adults in their late twenties instead of grade school children. The effect is quite creepy, which is ends up feeling rather appropriate, given all the aforementioned neglect, torture, and murder! Shot on a set that looks like it was rejected from Pirates World for being “not nearly stained enough” and featuring a performance as the witch that almost certainly required the actor to enter the witness protection program, Hansel and Gretel still manages to teach us a valuable lesson: it’s OK to kill someone if they’re kind of weird and live alone.
With the landmark cartoon Steamboat Willie, Walt Disney showed his genius by setting up two core elements of the Mickey Mouse character that have lasted to this day: he’s always on a steamboat, and his name is Willie. Such vision! With its recent entry into the public domain, Steamboat Willie also enters the RiffTrax catalog, and, uh, our hearts? It was one of the first animated films with synchronized sound, so we’ve synchronized some of our own sounds to it. Thrill as Mickey bobs up and down! Gasp as his vaguely cat-like antagonist spits tobacco! Wonder “how much longer could they possibly play Turkey in the Straw?” as they continue to play Turkey in the Straw! It’s got Mickey, it’s got Minnie, it’s got a range of barnyard animals Mickey torments for his own perverse musical purposes. It’s the steamer that launched an empire, hop aboard with Mike, Kevin, and Bill for Steamboat Willie!
Are You Listening? From the educational minds of Educational Learning, Inc. Are You Seeing This? I Mean, Really, What Are We Even Looking At? should be the real title. Sometime during the 1970s, a lovely Texas school teacher decided to present her students with an object lesson that must be seen to be believed! No participants could be reached for comment.
First off, Gumby’s taken up sculpture. Already distressing, we know. But wait til you see what he’s making! It’s a horrific lump with razor sharp teeth, and much like Frankenstein, it immediately tries to destroy its creator. (Sadly, the name of the guy who created Frankenstein has been lost to history.) Will Gumby escape ? He better, because he’s got to endanger some animals in part two! You see, the lion at the Gumbasia zoo has died from an illness. Instead of spearheading a campaign to shut down this local misery factory, Gumby sets out to capture it not one, but three wild lions. When someone points out that these lions were not born in captivity, combined with the zoo’s already established 100% lion fatality rate, means almost certain death for them, Gumby traps a few more exotic animals as well. It’s all made possible by a friendly WC Fields lookalike. You know, for the kids!
Down to Earth maniac, Gary Slasher, and his delightfully dead wife, Erin, are set to tackle one of the most important horror movies ever -- 1980’s Friday the 13th. Sean Cunningham’s classic is dissected by the sharp tongues of this deadly duo whose bitterness over not having made it big in the horror industry has driven them mad. In order to avoid any potential accidental injury while viewing, please review the following: * No skinny dipping in lakes, fornicating in woods, or “getting busy” in general. * Please keep keen eyes on any children swimming whose safety you are in charge of. * Clothing is not legal tender in Monopoly. * Having alternate lighting is a bonus, however if none is available shouting “Hello” into the darkness almost guarantees your immanent death. * There’s always time to stop for a nice cup of Joe. * No doob, puff, crank, duff, spaz, or goof balls. Be among the first to experience the horror and hilarity of this premier track from Hor-RIFF-ic Productions, the bloodiest crew in the biz! Update: There are now tracks available for both the Theatrical version and the recently released Uncut version of the film.
The Slashers are back! Gary Slasher - the madman of movie riffs and his wife Erin Slasher - the corpse of commentary. Still bitter about not being accepted by the horror “in” crowd they have decided to take their revenge on Stephen King’s The Children of the Corn, Hor-RIFF-ic Productions’ 2nd victim. This film gets plowed, picked, shucked, cooked, eaten, and oddly enough, passed straight through their systems. Yep, this movie certainly doesn’t skimp on the fertilizer. Just a couple of things to consider when considering this one: * Never go to Nebraska. * Not buying this track is forbidden sayeth the Lord! * Seriously, never go to Nebraska. * Profaning and unbelieving, all the cool kids are doing it. * If you’re already in Nebraska....get out now! * You might start referring to perfect strangers as “OUTLANDER!” * Western Iowa, Northern Kansas, Northeast Colorado, just stay away from the whole Midwest in general just to be safe. BONUS: Special guest star -- Satan! Be sure to pick up this latest installment by the Hor-RIFF-ic duo that’s here to slay. We promise it’s going to be a bloody good time.
They are NOT happy campers! Gary and Erin Slasher (the rippers of riffing) are back again to slice up another helpless horror movie for their own sick amusement, and yours as well. This time it’s the 1983 cult horror favorite Sleepaway Camp and Hor-RIFF-ic Productions has some fun activities in store for campers: * Fun with swear words. * Gender confusion talent show. * The art of being mute. * Making out without doing anything. * Irresponsible boating. * How NOT to react to emergencies. * Archery, and many more! Pack your curling iron and your psychiatrist’s phone number -- it’s going to be a great summer! Hor-RIFF-ic Productions is proud to present their 3rd victim to the chopping block for all horror/comedy fans to devour.
Hor-RIFF-ic Productions has decided to spread the blood love, with their next sickeningly funny offering: My Bloody Valentine (1981). Gary (I-don’t-like-to-be-touched) Slasher and his always lovely corpse bride Erin are more than willing to dissect this Canadian horror classic. What do you need to make a horror movie in Canada? * Beer - a lot of it. * Miners - the less safety conscience the better. * “Eh?” - a lot of them. * Harmonicas - there can be only one! * Women with low standards. * And a dryer that can handle a severely unbalanced load. Presented in mind-blowing 2D!!! Hor-RIFF-ic Productions has gone the extra mile and is providing tracks to both the theatrical and uncut DVD versions of the original 1981 film. It must be loath love!
Here they go again! Hor-RIFF-ic Productions returns to the franchise that started it all: Friday the 13th Part 2. Gary and Erin Slasher continue the assault on this beloved horror series with their lackey Satan in tow. Will hard feelings over Jason’s success hold them back? Not these horrid hellcats of hilarity. Let’s just make sure we’ve got everything for the trip.... * Fire extinguishers? -Check. * Scantily clad teens? -Check. * Deranged Mama’s boy? -Check. * Dimwitted authority figures? -Check. * Potato-sack fashion statement? -Check. * Mandatory handi-capable survivor? -Umm... Pick up this track or you’re DOOMED! Join Hor-RIFF-ic Productions on their continued trek toward stardom, one victim at a time. Just be careful where you step, things might get messy.
Hor-RIFF-ic Productions is proud to present the 2nd half of Stephen King’s classic made-for-TV epic -- IT. Having been sufficiently tenderized by Cinester Theater in part one, Erin and Gary Slasher are set to devour IT’s remaining half. Mmmm....mediocre acting talent. What can be expected from this creepy crapfest? * Cross-dressing corpses * Adorable fortune cookies * Brown Thrushes (Noooo!) * Sizzling Ritter/Curry action * Team disembowelment tryouts * Balloons, Balloons, BALLOONS!!! IT’s long, IT’s disappointing, IT’s stupid, it’s IT! The Slashers are hell bent on taking their revenge on any horror film that dares exclude them, even if they are 3 hours long.
How can a movie with Dracula, Frankenstein, the Mummy, Wolfman, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon be bad? Exhibit A: The Monster Squad. Hor-RIFF-ic Productions riffers, Gary and Erin Slasher, are primed to rip this 80s childhood favorite limb from limb. Yes, even the little girl, that @#$%&! In case you're not familiar with this Goonies knock-off, here's what you're in for: * Science... I dig it man! * Armadillos... wait, what? * Nards... they're everywhere! * Fat Kid News... All fat kids, All the time. * The most inept monsters ever... Bogus! * Scary German Guy... is there another kind? Special Guest: Brad Dracula! So gather up the kiddies for some family un-friendly fun with your favorite killer comedians. Please be sure you bring at least one virgin! (Don't worry, that one time doesn't count.)
Did you feel that? The ground is moving, something's under there! Oh wait, somebody was just shaking with laughter after watching the newest Hor-RIFF-ic Productions victim: TREMORS! Gary and Erin Slasher, along with Satan and a gaggle of their freakiest friends, are ready to drag this cult classic down and kick sand in its face.
Again?!? Surely they didn't make another one. Ok, if you say so, but it does seem like overkill. Hor-RIFF-ic Productions is back for another installment of the famous horror franchise: Friday the 13th Part 3! Gary, Erin, and Satan return to Crystal Lake looking some merry mayhem. But with the same recycled deaths and lame attempts at 3D photography, this one is going to be painful! What's left to scrape from the bottom of this bloody barrel? * Phallic symbols! * Pregnancy...wait, what?! * Hay, straw, and...more hay! * Bowel movements...in 3-D!!! * Manners Enforcement Squad! * Harold - the worst man on Earth! Plus: Random Hockey Equipment! And guess what? You get an eyeball, and you get an eyeball, EVERYBODY GET'S AND EYEBALL!!! Well, what are you waiting for? Go buy it already!
Hungry? Your pals Gary and Erin at Hor-RIFF-ic Productions have cooked up a tasty treat for their 10th victim: THE STUFF! Never heard of this gaggingly bad MO-tion picture? Well tuck in! You don't know what you've been missing... * Spanking! * Abe Vigoda! * Communist plots! * Wild mayonnaise! * Folksy sayings at every turn! * Extremely effective advertising jingles! Warning: This film has not been approved by the FDA for consumption by the general public. So if you like your horror to be smooth, creamy, and delicious--this one's for you. Dig in! But be careful, because enough is never enough. Ok, technically it is but you get the point.
Hor-RIFF-ic Productions rises from the dead yet again. This time Gary and Erin have set their blood soaked sights on the spooky classic: Poltergeist! Sure, it's a critically acclaimed box office smash produced by Steven Spielberg, but you think that will stop the Slashers? They can k<censored by DreamWorks>s! What did we find when we cleaned out this movie's creepy closet? * Evil Clowns! * Steak Marathons! * Horrible Parenting! * Gravity Fluctuations! * Psychic Leprechauns! * Puff...Dope...Bud...Chronic! Plus: Enough Star Wars toys to choke a Wookie!
Hor-RIFF-ic Productions takes it's first stab at one of the original horror franchises. In doing so, Gary and Erin will attempt to survive one of the strangest sequels ever devised: Halloween III - Season of the Witch! Never heard of it? Assume you must have seen it at some point but just don't recall? Don't be so sure, once you've seen Halloween III, you never forget. Scared? Good, that's kind of our thing! What can you expect to find in your pillow case this Halloween? * Druids! * Irish Robots! * Catchy Jingles! * Alcoholic Doctors! * Unfortunate Nudity! * Defective Halloween Masks! Plus: The perfect amount of Michael Myers! So join us, if you've got the guts, and soon you'll be singing along: "We just saw Halloween III, Halloween III, Halloween III! We just saw Halloween III and laughed our ass off!"
'Tis the season for bloody slaughter! Well for Hor-RIFF-ic Productions it is anyway. Gary and Erin Slasher bring their merry mayhem to one of the most beloved X-mas horror movies: Gremlins! Will they be naughty or nice to this 80's classic? (Hint: they're never nice.) Chestnuts aren't the only thing that's going to be roasted this holiday season! So, what did jolly old Satan Santa Claus drop down your chimney with glee? * Pupa! * Y.M.C.A! * Foreigners! * Old Lady Catapults! * Depressing Anecdotes! * Disgustingly Cute Mammals! Bonus: The Slashers' Creepy Carols Track! So grab a flashlight, squirt gun, midnight snack and prepare for a heaping helping of Humbug! Dickens has nothing on Joe Dante.
Pack up the camper, Hor-RIFF-ic Productions is heading back to Crystal Lake! Gary and Erin Slasher take down the much loathed 4th film in the franchise: Friday the 13th - The Final Chapter! Four times the kills (that you've pretty much seen before), four times the action (hope you like windows breaking), and four times the suspense (will the opening montage ever end?)! What's in store for us in this ironically named installment? * Twins! * Plot Holes! * Dead F*cks! * Vintage Porn! * Canada and Love! * Cripsin Glover's Dancing 101! Plus: Corey Feldman's Hair Care Tips! So hurry and see the final chapter of the Friday the 13th series... you know, before things start to get silly.
Prepare to meet the harbingers of doom and evil beyond imagining. Gary and Erin Slasher from Hor-RIFF-ic Productions will now face their most terrifying foe to date: FROGS! Why are you laughing? You don't think frogs can be scary? Well just try sitting through this ecological cautionary tale all by yourselves and see if you're not screaming by the end. What's out there in the swamp, ready to hop out and kill you at any moment? * Poo Shots! * Pillow Fights! * Drunken Boating! * Toads! Wait, what?!? * Armed Octogenarians! * Excessive Amounts of Denim! Plus: The Horror that is Sam Elliot's Bald Upper Lip! So don't be green with envy, grab some hip waders and come along on this bayou beat down! No renegade amphibians will stand in the way of our good time, no matter how many bodies start to pile up.
Once in every generation comes that rare movie which forever more defines that group's childhood. For the Japanese it was Kimba the White Lion. Unfortunately, those of us in America were stuck with the Lion King. Join the future stars of Broadway's the Producers, the voice of Darth Vader and, of course, the 3rd villain in the Die Hard series for a musical romp* through the film that paved the way for High School Musical 2. The team from the ThatGuyWithTheGlasses.com mixes humorous nostalgia, irreverant observation, a touch of homage to classic MST3K and some down-right mean spirited jokes to take you through this little adventure that will have you wondering, just what the heck does "Hakuna Matata" really mean? * Word has reached us this isn't so much a romp as it is a musical death-march through Elton John & Tim Rice's nightmares.
Do you remember all the love and giddiness that broke out after Super Mario Bros. and Street Fighter came out? No, not the video games, the movies. Wait, I'm sorry I mentioned those. Stop crying, please, I didn't mean it. Anyway, as Mortal Kombat shows, no beloved video game property is safe from the reach of Hollywood. The spine-ripping, head-popping, ESRB-creating fighting game series comes to the movies with a PG-13 rating...not because they toned down the violence, but to spare young children from the ham thrown onscreen by a powder-wigged Christopher Lambert (who clearly was born to play a Chinese thunder god). The One Man Band once again rolls up his sleeves, throws a few well-timed kicks*, and sends this monster back to Outworld where it belongs. At the end, only one of these titans will be left standing. Place your bets now. *Yes, I am fully aware that I could have made so many Balls of Fury jokes. However, Christopher Walken has been seen in my neighborhood lately, and I'd prefer to avoid his wrath.** **If Christopher Walken is reading this, hello. I'm sure you're a very nice guy. Please don't kill me.
Stephen King is the Master of Horror. Of course, anyone who's read his books also knows that he's the Master of Writing Books That Are About 400 Pages Longer Than They Need To Be. And anyone who's seen one of the many movie adaptations of his books knows that he's also the Master Of Adapting Great Works Of Fiction Into Barely Watchable Crap. "Stephen King's IT" is the worst of the worst, a made-for-TV disaster starring Tim Curry, the kid from "The Neverending Story II", and just about every late 80's/early 90's sitcom star you can shake a stick at. And like the book, the movie-version is about twice as long as it really should have been. Shawn and Keith of "Cinester Theater" take on 50% of this horrifying tale of terrible terror. The children of Derry, Maine are being hunted by a malevolent shape-shifting demon named Pennywise The Dancing Clown, the least successful movie monster of all time. When the body-count reaches an unacceptable ONE, its up to the Little Rascals... uh, I mean, the Goonies.... uh, I mean, The Losers Club... to save the day! With friendship! And silver ear-rings! And we can't even begin to explain how awful this movie is!
"'A Thousand Narfs' is about a rare narf who comes once in a generation of a narfs—called a Madam Narf." Young-Soon sums the story up pretty nicely right there: This movie is about saying the word "narf" (yeah, that expletive Pinky used to use) at every possible opportunity. But wait! There's more! You'll also hear the word "scrunt," which, although it sounds like a small rodent with a gimp leg, is actually a wolf-like beast with grass all over it whose special power is that "it can lie...completely flat!" Stop laughing; this is serious. There's also a mud called "key" and three monkeys with one name and an abusive pool maintenance man and an evil nerd and one of the Fine Young Cannibals. M. Night Shyamalan also casts himself as a writer who's work will change the world and kills off a movie critic in effigy. That guy! What a clown. Features Tristan, Tracy and Kevin
How do you successfully make a movie with unlikeable characters, an outrageous plot, and shot after shot of people staring at screens and typing? The correct answer is, you don't, as Iain Softley's 1995 Hackers demonstrates. On the one hand, Hackers brought Angelina Jolie (granted, a very Vulcan-looking Jolie) to the limelight, but also graced us with Matthew Lillard, so it's a mixed bag all around. As far as plot, the creator of the Short Circuit robot has an evil scheme to steal a bunch of money with Tony Soprano's psychiatrist...until one of the Clockstoppers downloads the program that could blow the lid off the whole thing. Their plan to cover their tracks? Plant a virus to tip over some oil tankers (the FIENDS!) Enter former superhacker Sick Boy, who must team up with Shaggy, Lara Croft, and...let me check IMDB here...ah, Halpern White from "The Shield" to expose the deception before the virus gets pinned on them. And how will they clear their names? By constantly breaking hundreds of other laws, that's how! The One Man Band won't stand for this. Armed with a desktop, a few million lines of code (that's programs to you who are not l33t), and a bag full of tricks, it's time to crash this system once and for all. Hack the movie. HACK THE MOVIE!
The final key has been found to our own evolution. The one thing holding us back from taking the place of the gods themselves...adrenaline. Yes as it turns out, adrenaline makes you fly, run faster, jump cars without a ramp, and gives you perfect accuracy. Yes adrenaline can even make you...CURVE BULLETS!!! So why do people like this movie? I believe it was the use of the tried and true Cinderella plotline, the rags-to-riches story, going from nobody to somebody. This film truly captures the imagination of a child...because surely an adult mind could not conceive of this (Although I have been caught praying to a magical loom before). Get your silver slippers ready....if for no other reason then to have something handy to impale yourself with if you find you cannot handle this movie.
Cowabunga! Just when you thought everyone had forgotten, 1990 comes ninja-flipping back into your life with this timeless classic about martial arts, toxic waste, and hockey! "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" is the story of Carl, the worst ninja ever. Also, there's a subplot about a group of sewer-mutants who come to the surface under cover of darkness to beat up teenagers. Somewhere along the line, they run afoul of the Foot Clan and their leader, the unlikely-dressed Master Shredder. When their wise, old, and undoubtedly stinky master Splinter is rat-napped, the Ninja Turtles must draw on all their ninja training and quip their way to victory! Join Shawn and Keith of "Cinester Theater" as they do battle with stunt-men in turtle costumes, washed-up hockey players, and the pointiest villain in movie history in "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles"!
They don't make action movies like they used to. Inflated special-effects budgets have made it too easy, and now every action movie seems to be about pure spectacle. Wouldn't it be great to look back on the action movies of yesterday? Back when all you needed to keep an audience enthralled was an overly-muscled protagonist grunting unintelligibly into the camera against a backdrop of exploding mutants? Back when plots were so thin they gave your brain paper-cuts? Back in the days of the legend himself, Arnold Schwarzenegger? Douglas Quaid had it all: a beautiful wife, a wonderful job as the only believable guy at the construction site, and all the protein powder he could eat. But a fascination with the planet Mars soon leads him to Rekall, a vacation company that sells him an implanted memory of his perfect Mars getaway as an unstoppable secret-agent (because nobody's built for espionage like a 6'2 Austrain that can bench-press a motorcycle). But soon Quaid finds himself caught up in an interplanetary conspiracy to deprive ugly people of oxygen, and he'll have to punch, shoot, and grunt unintelligibly into the camera his way to the truth! Join Shawn and Keith as they once again dive into the fray, knives of comedy clenched firmly between their teeth! Joined by their hateful sync-goblin Syncy, Cinester Theater take the some of the worst that the 80's action genre has to throw at them. Will they falter in the face of extreme adversity? Or will they be left standing atop of pile of metaphorical bodies, covered in the metaphorical blood of their enemies, shirts ripped to expose their manly metaphorical chests, and scream defiantly into the sky as the camera fades slowly to black? Don't be the last one on your block to find out!
Have you ever looked over at your neighbors yard and found yourself thinking, "Gee, the grass really is greener over there"? Have you then wished that you could replace that new lawn with Jack-O-Lanterns and bat corpses? Then this is the movie for you! After celebrating another dreary Halloween, Jack Skellington discovers a gateway to the world of Christmas. Filled with the inexplicable joy and good cheer, he decides to share the wonder with the denizens of Halloweentown. But when their love of grisly murder threatens to ruin Christmas, Jack will have to sing and mince about on a toe-tappin' quest to rescue Santa Claus from the Boogieman!
Get Ready... to rush out of the Cineplex! Sure, 1993 was a more innocent time. The world wasn't burdened with the knowledge of horrible things like reality television, the Backstreet Boys, Enron loopholes, or Star Wars prequels. So it comes as no shock that such a naive world could be snookered into thinking that a bus could actually fly. Now, in a more cynical age, Chris, Todd, and Danuuc have stepped forward to point out the elephant in the room... which happens to actually be an exploding hunk of public transportation.
“Cindy Goes to a Party” was filmed in Lawrence, Kansas, and that is literally the most interesting thing about it. This gritty film tells the tale of Cindy, a little girl who wasn’t invited to a party. When an emotionally needy fairy appears and whisks her away to crash the party, we learn exactly why she wasn’t on the guest list in the first place. Fans of superimposed text and crappy dissolve effects will be in heaven.
An uncompromising look at the world of bland adolescent dating rituals. Woody wants to take Ann to the “Hi-Teen Carnival,” but may only do so under the strictest of conditions. Asking her to go with him, for example, is not permissible. Apparently it is an unforgivable offense to ask a girl a direct question. The date does take place, against all odds, and the teeners attend a rave more wild and debauched than anything the denizens of Zion could imagine.* Urban legend holds that this short was written by Ed Wood, though I’d say it’s far too well plotted. *Zion here refers to the lame fictional city of the Matrix Trilogy, not the Promised Land of God’s chosen people in the Old Testament. Consult a physician.
This daring film sparked a national dialog that led to the Truman Administration’s controversial “Thoughtfulness Index.” After a few cranky kids explain why they can’t be bothered with thoughtfulness, we spend way too much time with a disgustingly perfect family who are so darn thoughtful you’ll hurl. Their orgy of consideration and helpfulness escalates in bloody one-upmanship until each of them lies dead. Just foolin’. Nothing really happens.
Join Commander Rick Wolf, along with his robot pals Johnny Cylon and Topsy-Bot 5000 as they’re forced to sit through the trashy horror epic Lady Frankenstein. Italy’s take on the classic tale is the smuttiest one to date! After the Doc’s phallic-headed monster bear hugs him to death, his foxy daughter Tonya decides to use his lab as a boyfriend factory! It’s a steamy love story for the handicapped, as Tonya seduces not only her father’s crippled lab assistant, but their mentally challenged stableboy! Be among the first to see the second episode of the series being hailed as one of the least awful underground riffing shows around! Six fun live action skits included!
Roger Corman’s THE WASP WOMAN tells the oh-so-progressive story of Janice Starlin (Susan Cabot), a successful-but-aging cosmetics executive who is destroyed by her own obsession with youth and beauty (SPOILER, by the way). When a crazy, vaguely ethnic beekeeper (Michael Mark) offers to share his secret research on royal wasp jelly with her, Starlin embarks on a dark, twisted, and clumsily plotted journey into horror. Winner of the 1959 Academy Award for “Best Science Montage Featuring Footage Already Seen In The Movie,” WASP WOMAN will sting you with terror. Or not. The cast also features Paul Gordon, Lynn Cartwright, and Corman favorite Bruno VeSota (Big Dave from Giant Leeches!). Bzzzzz! Here’s the full, un-riffed movie on Archive.org
If South Park met MST3K, and was animated in the peculiar “Syncro-Vox” style of Clutch Cargo, you’d have… The Atomic Soda Pop Gang. Join Johnny, Jimmy, and Dub as they rip into the Cold War classic “Duck & Cover.” This is the film that taught school kids how to kneel in pencil shavings under their desk to protect themselves from a nuclear holocaust. Of course, a wooden desk is a cement bomb shelter compared to the piece of newspaper Dad holds over his head when the missiles strike. It’s atomic paranoia at its best. Bring on the Commies! The Atomic Soda Pop Gang is ready to rumble.
TRON. We can't really identify it as a movie. It's a shared experience of nostalgia. Everyone we talk to remembers loving it, but can't remember when they last saw it. And so we, in our continued efforts to improve our community, have taken it upon ourselves to educate the viewing public on just how bad this film really was. Oh sure -- there's glowing spandex, futuristic crotch rockets, intelligent Frisbees, David Warner - all things we'd love to have in our daily life - but underneath it all, there's a digital elephant in the room, begging you to realize that when a programmer is sucked into a virtual world in order to save humanity from a computer hellbent on domination, we should recognize it simply as The Matrix, and call it a day.
The universe is in danger, and He-Man is getting too old to do anything about it anymore. The universe needs a new guardian. Someone strong. Someone brave. Someone green and scaly. Unfortunately, riffer Insert Coin(s) to Continue is the best we could come up with. He'll be taking on one of the biggest threats to mankind: Kaiju revival films! Today, Coin(s) riffs everyone's favorite turtle movie! ... Well, that's not true ... Everyone's favorite turtle-fighting-evil movie ... rather ... Everyone's favorite Japanese turtle-fighting-evil movie ... made in 1995. MST3K favorite returns in Gamera: Guardian of the Universe and he loves children more than ever! More fun than you could crash a taxi through!
Rarely have the planets of Bad Acting, Bad Science, and Big Budget aligned so perfectly as in the 2003 blockbuster movie, "The Core". Contrary to what you are hoping, this "The Core" is not an inspirational video about your company's work ethic, nor a PBS special on apples; it's not even a new exercise regimen. No, this "The Core" spits on the work of H. G. Wells, replacing artistic genius with warmed-over technobablistic faux-facts*. When the Earth's core stops spinning, there's only one course of action: build an unfeasible ship, crewed by unlikely heroes, sent on a preposterous journey to overcome insurmountable obstacles, thus solving an irreparable problem. Oh, and did we mention "Bad Science"? Who could resist all this, an easily predicted character culling, and a two-hour-plus runtime? Certainly we could not, so we invite you to join us on this tour of the bowels of the Earth Sci-Fi movie silliness.
A folder of government documents is in danger! ... And that's about all I understood of the plot of independent director Jeff Prahl's first original feature film, The Lincoln Project. In retaliation for a horribly embarrassment involving a homecoming tux and a can of Red Bull, Jeff's close and personal "friend" Insert Coin(s) to Continue rains on his cinematic parade. Produced on a minimal budget and featuring a cast of Jeff's friends and classmates, the film is a battle between directorial genius and narm-laden cheese. Follow David Manson's and Nathan Burnett's chase around the world to exotic locations like London (shots of downtown Bellevue), LA (shots of Seattle), and Seattle (ironically, not using any footage of the very convenient Seattle). Grab on to your stupid hairstyles! It's like James Bond meets Mission: Impossible ... The High School Years. More fun than you can sneak out of an antiquities show in a champagne glass!
In their inaugural riff, Michael T. Bradley and Jason Freston take on the Voyage pilot. Like so much Trek, Voyager's high concept is brilliant, but its execution is, shall we say, somewhat flawed. Ostensibly about a solitary Federation ship in uncharted territory having to mix with a renegade Maquis crew, searching for a way home and having to adapt and take drastic measures along the way, the show quickly becomes a reset button-laden TOS wannabe. With the pilot, we get a blobby alien who brings ships into the Delta quadrant so it can pretend to be an old woman offering corn and/or an old grumpy man who plays the banjo. It also likes to become a flirtatious young woman. Less said about that, the better. The pilot also introduces us to a race of Thunderdome rejects who haven't figured out water but have spaceships. They like to talk about how useless other races are. We also meet the disturbingly nude Neelix. Janeway decides to strand them all 75 years from home with little to no thought and for vague, seemingly unnecessary reasons. It's a fun ride for all.
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan has it all: slam-bang space battle action; a clash of hero and villain both larger than life; resonant themes of revenge, age and renewal, friendship, and sacrifice. Lots of people say it's the best Trek movie ever made. Think it's too good to make fun of? Think again! C'mon, mind-control earslugs? The Duel of the Hams? The Shat That Roared? Oh, we're gonna have fun with this, boys and girls. William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, and Ricardo Montalban's chest* star in the movie that launched a thousand sequels (okay, eight or nine). Paul Golba and Shane Tourtellotte star in the riff that launched PS Productions.
Jon Voight is a deeply disturbed, homicidal maniac with an Ahab-type-Level 3 obsession. That's handy for the movie Anaconda where he plays a homicidal maniac snake poacher with an Ahab-type-Level 3 obsession with giant snakes. However, Mr. Voight is required to flex his acting muscles a bit for the rest of the character in order to create the insanely cartoonish expressions of Paul Sarone who employs a Wile E. Coyote style plot to, for some reason, trick a documentary film crew into coming along on his hunting trip. Oh, and there's also J Lo as the hot survivor girl, Ice Cube as the token black guy, and a handful of other dolts who might as well have "Snake Bait" tattooed on their foreheads. So sit back and enjoy as Logan Jones a.k.a. Riffer Zero tears into this wretched piece of cellulose for his inaugural Riff.
Upper middle-class kids in LA have a case of the crazy. They show up at a movie theater and trash the place. So what could possibly cause them do to that? Well drugs of course! Fortunately Frank and Friday are on the case! Marvel at intense dialogue! Vomit at the detectives lunch selection! Learn about many new and exciting products in the commercial breaks!
Josh Way riffs this 1965 Sci-Fi "classic," featuring badly dubbed Russian astronauts, a highly impractical robot named John, and just a hint of Basil Rathbone for seasoning. An excursion to the planet Venus reveals the startling truth - that even in space, boring things are lame. This iRiff comes with a Video On Demand movie with the riff audio mixed right in, as well as an mp3 of the isolated commentary. The original movie is available on archive.org: http://www.archive.org/details/VoyagetothePrehistoricPlanet
Why do humans in the future need cinnamon to have a good time? Will Thufer trim his eyebrows? Will Stilgar ever practice basic hygiene? There are very good answers to all of these questions. None of them are found in this movie, however. Join geek and useless knowledge addict Courtney Ferguson for a raucous ride through this dark, confusing science fiction classic. Wallow in disgust at the glorification of obesity! Marvel at the power of technologically enhanced sneezes! Weep in the presence of shocking earth tones!
Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's... Wait. It is a plane. But not just any plane! It's a HUGE military plane with tiny planes inside! How about that? Clark Kent and Lois Lane are out to cover the story on this massive machine, but this is during World War II, meaning that there's a bunch of evil Japanese spies running around. Join Max Fleischer's extremely well-animated Superman as he has to deal with both the great Japanese threat AND Lois' racism. This looks like a job for Hecklevision!
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to make a sucky superhero movie? I know, in this day and age, we can't possibly imagine them screwing up something as full of potential as the Incredible Hulk or Fantastic 4. But clearly that is exactly what Richard Lester was hoping to do when he came out with Superman III. Of course, then they felt they had to top themselves with Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, but you have to start out slowly when making utter tripe out of an iconic figure. Even Lex Luthor refused to be in this one, so they got the next best thing: Richard Prior. Yeah, we don't understand it either.
From the mind of Uwe Boll, certainly the Coleman Francis of our generation, comes a bold, striking new take on the age-old battle of Good Vs. Evil: what if it was depicted as a battle between light and darkness? This breathtaking new vision lays the groundwork for Alone in the Dark, one of the darkest, loneliest movies of 2005. Tara Reid, fresh off her highly publicized affair with the entire 2005 AFC Pro Bowl team, joins a mostly-not-drunk Christian Slater in a battle against some ambiguously evil guy with some sort of vague plan that involves dropping worms in people's mouths and cavorting with slimy dog-lizard creatures. And that was just how Dr. Boll described it at the pitch meeting. But the pain will abate as J.C. Walsh enhances the viewing experience with his own brand of snarky Jersey wisdom. Why, ninety minutes from now, you'll scarcely be able to tell which you hate more. But maybe, just maybe, you'll learn a little something about yourself.
Emergency! Red Alert! Patty please advise! Patty please respond! All Patty report to duty stations! Patty ASSEMBLE!!! A seemingly-dramatic recreation has broken out in the San Fernando Valley, threatening the lives and livelihoods of simple farm-folk. All this seen through the eyes...of our narrator. Not so much through young Patty Garmen as the title might suggest. Yes, contorted irks may occur to the confused stylings of announcer Don McNamara, who apparently read the 'gag' copy all through the recording session. Kids, though, will feel highly empowered towards the end of this short.This was the case for many atomic-era educationals. Why the child in you will feel the call to duty against the flaming red menace that endangers all.The slavic, borscht-eating inferno. The billows of vodka-swilling godlessness. Needing to be stamped out and doused upon by big, American hoses! But, then we'll all learn Patty's big lesson,..and fart at it.
Back in 1977, an unknown little indie picture named Star Wars was quietly released. It was a critical and box-office failure and has been criminally ignored ever since. Now it’s time to dust off this obscure gem and give it the attention it deserves. Blame Society Productions is Matt Sloan and Aaron Yonda -- creators of Chad Vader and a slew of other hilarious internet videos. Listen as Matt, Aaron and Chad Vader himself riff on everyone’s favorite sci-fi sacred cow and reveal some startling secrets about the characters: the sickness and depravity of R2-D2, C3P0 and his “special friend”, and Darth Vader’s bizarre Neil Young obsession. Chad Vader also waxes nostalgic about his relationship with his older brother Darth and tells a few stories from his own life. Oh, and there’s also a bunch of boring “good vs evil” and “hero’s journey” junk too. Enjoy!
What would happen if the Gamera franchise ran out of ideas and tried to pad out a new movie with random fight sequences from other Gamera movies? Destroy All Planets. Still, there is something to be said of the gore of giant monsters violently tearing into each other in a movie aimed at children and dressed as a family film. Offical Synopsis: A group of aliens from another planet head for Earth with the intentions of conquering it. Their first ship is destroyed in transit by the giant flying turtle Gamera. A second ship makes it to Earth and captures two Boy Scouts and holds them captive so that Gamera will not attack them. The aliens then implant a remote control device into the monster's neck and use the great turtle to attack Tokyo. The boys then come up with a plan to foul up the remote control device to the point where Gamera does the opposite of what he is ordered to. As a result Gamera destroys the aliens ship, but then has to contend with their giant squid like leader Viras.
What happens when airhead models and smarmy photographers break into a castle for some sort of photo shoot or something? Bloody Pit of Horror won't answer that question but it certainly tries, and Luke and Joe are here to help in this full-length VOD riff.
What’s really a wonder is how any audience could manage to sit through this painfully-long 2005 remake by Peter Jackson (Lord of the Rings) without the benefit of an iRiff commentary. If you thought the previous 1976 remake by Dino De Laurentiis was bad, you ain’t seen nothing yet! Jack Black and Naomi Watts co-star, along with Adrien Brody’s nose, and more CGI dinosaurs and bugs than you can shake a banana at, plus the King himself (and we don’t mean Elvis). Lawrence Woolsey presents this first installment of Fanboy Sci-Fi Theater, while Dan ANGELO and his robot pals—Tim Gizmo and Art T. Robot—provide the commentary, making this iRiff more fun than a barrel of (giant) monkeys!
Better living through chemistry 50's style as Rifftrax iRiffs presents "The Relaxed Wife"- a vintage short from Pfizer. Join riffer mister X (professional smart-ass) as he tackles all this bizarre little film tosses at him: -see an actor who's mugging makes Jim Carrey seem subtle -hear pathologically whimsical music that will test your sanity -endure a rhyming narrator who makes the poetry of Jewel sound like ee cummings Complete with disembodied arms coming out of desks, a man with a pressure cooker head and a product we never get to see, "The Relaxed Wife" is a trippy prescription drug short that makes you think the makers were on something a little stronger when they made it. Fortunately the snarky, silly and deceptively crass commentary by mister X is the cure for this one.
Buckle up and hang on tight- the discovery of a parallel universe launches you into the adventure of a... oh, who are we kidding? It's Super Mario Brothers, I can't write this with a straight face. Bursting onto the scene with witty repartee and mild inebriation the Emergency Riffcast System proudly presents their debut iRiff, Super Mario Brothers. Sean Kuczmarski, Mike Haka, and Jack Thorp bravely suit up and follow these plumbers into the soft, squishy underside of New York plumbing. We ask the hard questions: Why are they Mario Brothers if one of them is a Luigi? Is Bowser the missing link between Gamera and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? What did we just step in? The ERS (Emergency Riffcast System) consists of Sean Kuczmarski, Mike Haka, and Jack Thorp. A trio of Michigan engineers out to prove that everything is funny if you dismantle it far enough.
The Writer of RIDING WITH DEATH Directs his first and last Video Game Movie with STREET FIGHTER. Starring Jean Claude Van Damne as the guy from Universial Soldier and Raul Juila as the guy from Overdrawn at the Memory bank... with super powers! Also Starring a bunch of TV actors and Wal Mart Greeters cosplaying as their favorite Street Fighter 2 Characters!
What happens when Mister Willis, a poor sap with no neck, can't find the right words to say at a city council meeting? Sure, he becomes the laughing stock of the community, but there's more. As a nameless narrator lurks in the shadows, Willis' whisper thin son (who frighteningly looks like Jimmy Fallon) gives him tips on building his vocabulary. Famed voice actor Mel Blanc's spirit even drops by to take possession of Mister Willis. It's fun for the whole family if the paint has finished drying.
$0.75 Uploaded: Mar 04 12 Available formats: Alcohol Is Dynamite Add to Favorites This is an iRiff - created by RiffTrax fans! Click to see all fan iRiffs! Sure, I can say without rebuke, we've all experimented at a young age with the explosive effects of booze. Whether it be that swig of shine from Granny's still, or.. Actually, I can't think of a single real, live-action instance when a libation has ever been so incendiary. Where dark, gaseous matter is violently strewn from the ear cavities, suggesting that alcohol is more than a mere oral irritant and liquid depressant. Well, at least we have the notion of do-gooding, sports writer Tom Ullman. He claims that alcohol, in the hands of minors is a deadly combination. A stress-relieving 'POISON', if I may, that brings decadence to young minds and horribly taints the essence of good, clean American youth. And when this teen-borne alcohol abuse causes risk to health, livelyhood, property, and even life itself, Tom, for some reason, calls this poison 'DYNAMITE'! IT JUST WORKS, DAMMIT! For you (the viewer) we hope this educational ephermeral will be most informative in the ways of preventive measure. And may it not sway you from the fact that Mr Ullman is a stodgy, generalizing weinis trying to appeal to head-strong teens with certain buzz-words he read about once in 'Boy's Life'. And all our hopes that your own meaning of 'dynamite' serves you well.
... Be Careful, cause "Bruce" will either save your family or KILL YOU... depending on how you feel about invisible people. ... sounds like something that only the great CENTRON could come up with! Pretty people don't like things that are not them ... and they let YOU know...
Newlywed Margie wants desperately to please her husband Tim, so she learns about soft balls and sheet testing. These are just a few of the thousands of hot and sultry "Cooking Terms" that every new wife must learn (what did you think we were talking about?). Watch with the "Marital Riffs" couple as Margie races against time, stupidity, and the harsh reality that pizza delivery hasn't been invented yet to finish lunch before Tim comes home.
David Rice (Hayden Christensen) has discovered he can teleport anywhere and wouldn't you know it, people want to kill him! Folks just aren't as accepting of Jumpers as they used to be. Despite the advice of legal council, David continues forward in a plot full of more holes than a mini-golf course littered with swiss cheese. The "talented" and whiney Christensen brings a performance that will leave you saying, "Did he just fart or was it acting?" UPDATE (January 2009): No more YouTube sample. Sorry. The "man" said so. And by the man I mean FOX. And you know what they say about the "man"... Chico and the "Man." Here is an approximate transcript of what you missed: Movie says something. We say something clever. The Movie Says something else. We say something witty. The Movie says something related to a "Plot." There is a pause. Fart Joke! So, in short, I'd like to conclude by saying this iRiff is funny. But you don't have to take my word for it!*
Join Rocky Jones and his obnoxious sidekick, Winky, as they pursue Truck Harman, a traffiker of the "tarantula weed," who has, in fact, escaped into space. Can they catch up to Truck before he smokes all his "tarantula weed"? Will they be able to find a loophole in the law so that they can charge him for the crimes he already confessed to? And what of Truck Harman's smaller cousin, Go-cart Harman? All will be made clear (and made fun of) in QuipTracks: The Show!'s first victim—Escape Into Space!
Michael T. Bradley and Chris Alderman lampoon the second THRILLING episode of Voyager, B'elanna punches a guy and gets promoted! Also, effect precedes cause! So really B'elanna gets promoted and punches a guy? It's all very confusing, and you'd have to be Janeway to understand. Luckily, SHE IS IN THIS EPISODE! Featuring multiple Voyagers! This is one episode you'll certainly feel follows after the pilot!
Finally, a Christmas tale that doesn't get all bogged down with that whole "True Spirit of Christmas" mishmash. A bunch of physically-identical orphans wake up on Christmas morning, completely unconcerned with their lack of parents or even food. No, what does them in is finding out that their Christmas loot is subpar. Not to worry! Thanks to the lack of privacy laws in the 1930s, an eccentric old man discovers their plight and decides to get them some toys. The kids are left on their own to find food and adult supervision.
Simultaneously eyebrow raising and forehead slapping, this odd short from the 70's probes into how NFL football causes food processing managers to dunce around the plant, inadvertently tainting their product. At least until the great pendulum of nature swings into high gear and doles out heaping helpings of sweet retribution. Watch with "Just Andrew" as he orders up "food safety" with a touch of "Twilight Zone".
Everyone wants to know whether Kirk or Picard would win in a fight, even though Generations bungled our chance to find out. But if you ever wondered whether Kirk or Spock would win in a fight, here's your chance, with the Classic episode "Amok Time." And now, it's funny too! Spock finally hits puberty, and must return to Vulcan to mate -- or die! (Admit it, you would've loved having that excuse as a teenager.) But when his fiancee back home turns out to be the worst Bridezilla this side of the Crab Nebula, he's forced into ritual combat where he must kill his captain -- or die! Paul Golba and Shane Tourtellotte at P.S. Productions will keep you in stitches with this riff -- or die!
Thanksgiving - that national tradition of stuffing yourself so full of turkey and various other heart attack inducing foodstuffs to leave you comatose on the couch. But due to a shortage in turkeys thanks to someone in the 70's needing to toss them out of planes (don't ask me how the economy works) in the 1950's the government was afraid all of the schoolchildren would turn communist. So this short was born, a warning to everyone that if you are not grateful for your small miserable little American life then the government could just break down your door and take your small popcorn bowl away when you weren't looking. Perfect for anyone who's facing a huge family Thanksgiving dinner, a small intimate gathering, or planning on eating a Hungry Man in front of the TV this short will make you grateful that you're not stuck in their horrific little world being forced to recite at McCarthy gunpoint every democratic thing you're thankful for.
In this episode creepy Clint Howard AKA Balok!!! Rules his cubical ship with an iron fist and plays shenanigans with the Enterprise. Meanwhile, Kirk references board game strategies to take control of the situation and leaves one of his own crew members behind as a peace offering. Maybe Kirk should have considered Candy Land instead of Chess when he formulated his master plan. Confused? So is Kirk!
Michael T. Bradley and Kaisha Medford present the third riff by Ice on Mars. Picture a pitch room in Hollywood. Braga and the usual suspects litter the room. Someone brings up the idea of doing an episode of Voyager about a cut-off alternate future, where effect PRECEDES cause. Someone else says, 'Maybe we should check and make sure we haven't done that already?' And someone else—probably Braga?—says, 'No, we've only had two episodes, NO WAY have we done that already.' Then everybody laughs and PROBABLY there's cocaine involved? Maybe they torture a hobo to death? Whatever. This is the episode in which Kes's amazing psychic powers to—in the "real" space-time continuum—SENSE NOTHING first show up, and ... that's obviously an important continuity point. You like annoying elf children? Check! You like fashion mistakes that would make Lady Gaga blush? Check! You want craggy white guys arguing? BABY, VOYAGER WILL NOT LET YOU DOWN.
Rob "Vanilla Ice" Van Winkle terrorizes video screens with his obnoxious hair and bad rapping. He hangs out with the father from Alf, who coincidentally has a daughter named Kat who Ice seems to be "hungry" for. Is Ice an alien? Is Ice Alf in disguise? Why do fish get more screen time than the token black people? What happens to Willie now that Alf discovers him? AND WHY IN GOD'S NAME IS THERE A SCENE WHERE ICE SIMULATES HUMPING A DUDE ON STAGE???? Find out the answers to these questions and more in "Cool as Ice."
The 80s. An era of hair, an era of synth music, and an era of children's movies with puppety creatures. Obviously, combining all three would make for the most amazing cinematic experience imaginable. Right? Depends on your definition of amazing. Watch an underage (and overacting) Jennifer Connelly run around whining, David Bowie showing off amazing songs and even more amazing hair and codpieces, and creatures born under the unholy marriage of Jim Henson and George Lucas's creativity. All with the added bonus of John Fleury's first ever edition of Riff This!
Merry Christmas. Peace on Earth, good will toward men. Women, on the other hand, need to learn their place. In what may be the most sexist Christmas movie ever, Joe Santa Claus tells the story of a man who runs away from his wife. The woman did, after all, want to cook, clean, raise their child, and HAVE A JOB! Their family was torn asunder by Mrs. Joe Santa Claus' determination to keep them out of bankruptcy. Joe finally manages to find a way to keep his wife at home-- by becoming an illustrious retail associate and being fondled by the janitor. Will Joe ever come to terms with his wife's devotion? Will he ever go back to his family? Will dinner be ready when he gets there? Find out in this holiday special so classic, no one remembers it!
In 1984, assuming you were around back then, you probably saw two movies; Ghostbusters and Red Dawn. And in the long run, Ghostbusters became a classic while Red Dawn became a cult-classic. Which is to say one is awesome and the other... persists. The film, packed with the hottest young stars of the day, chewing the scenery like they were in a rush to start a cocaine habit, can only be described as jingoistic - and Reagan-tastic! Join us for a romp through alternate history that doesn't include Canada, allergies, acting, and military porn... it's Red Dawn! WOLVERINES!
James, Ben, and Casey are three video rental store employees who work at a store that wishes it had a fraction of the business that Blockbuster has. Brad Sherman, the owner of B.S. Video, has a questionable taste in the movies that he decides to play in the store. Instead of succumbing to boredom or doing something completely insane, like doing their jobs, the trio decides to pass the time by making fun of the horrid movies that their owner makes them endure. Titan AE is the story of Cale (Not Luke Skywalker) and his quest to free humanity from the evil Drej (Not the Empire). Along with Captain Korso (Not Han Solo), Akima (Not Princess Leia), and Gune (Not Yoda) they embark on a quest to find the Titan (Which looks nothing like the Death Star). Filled with characters and dialog that makes the Star Wars prequel trilogy look like Citizen Kane, this is one film that Joss Whedon surely wants to forget he ever wrote. Written and performed by James Rosenthal (James of LinHood), Ben Rosenthal (MechanicalTorgo), and Casey Tripp with additional writing by Mike Hirsch (dignan) of the Rifftrax forums.
A clarion call for negligent blame-seeking parents everywhere, "Mazes and Monsters" (1982) was Rona Jaffe's attempt to cash in on the sensationalism behind the James Dallas Egbert III case - you know, the one that Patricia Pulling made so famous as an "expert witness" to the demonic influence of Dungeons & Dragons? Out of the cast of nobodies that starred in this made-for-after-school-TV masterplop, one shining Bosom Buddy emerged relatively unscathed: Tom Freakin' Hanks. Though to this day he continues to conveniently omit this unsightly little springboard (check his Wikipedia entry - it's not there), the Head Games Podcast crew managed to dig it up out of the dollar store bargain bin and give it the sarcasmoblasting it so achingly deserves.
The original series of Star Trek was groundbreaking in so many ways. It took the genre of science fiction and elevated it from campy kiddy matinee fare up to a serious primetime drama intended for adults. It showcased some of the best writers in the industry, and went down in history as a show that promoted equal treatment of all people, both now and in the future. Then, with one episode, all of that was shot to hell. "Spock's Brain" was 50 minutes of hokey, sexist drivvel. Everyone even remotely connected with Trek would like to forget this episode exists... but it does exist, we have proof. And as your Riffer for this evening, I promise you that I will not let them live this down.
Aaron Bossig riffs this 1946 short Disney produced for Kotex.
Who is going to teach high school boys not to pick fights, scowl in the corner, or treat girls like pond scum? Well, you'd think it would be their parents, but apparently this herculean task is reserved for the good folks at Coronet Films. They'll introduce us to Bill, pug-fugly kid with personality issues that go far beyond your garden-variety emo. He thinks all the kids are stuck up, yet Bill can't figure out why no one is jumping at the chance to hang out with him. Given the help of his friend, the all-powerful narrator, Bill gets all the help he needs to go to the Hobo party. Will he succeed and win the heart of his fair Carol before the clock strikes midnight?
Godzilla was originally about a Japanese guy in a rubber monster suit wrecking cities and fighting big moths. *Record-Scratch* But it's the 90's! And the 90's require a dope new attitude, and This ain't your daddy's Godzilla, and Parents 'll never understand it, and We just do, and Special effects and rap covers of Led Zeppelin songs are fine, but what kids really want is a cohesive plot and likable characters...NOT! *High Five* Put on your clashing, unbuttoned (or incorrectly buttoned) over-shirt, swivel that cap around and pull a tuft of your greasy blond hair through the hole, strap on your RatchTech Shoes and get ready to raise the roof because this fly flick is totally money!
Mr. Universe of 1955, Mickey Hargitay (Lady Frankenstein) plays reclusive ex-actor Travis Anderson, who enjoys wearing effeminate bathrobes and brooding in his cozy castle. Along with his two live-in henchmen, he lives a life of complete and utter solitude! However, that all changes when a group of smarmy smut photographers and their fussy model girlfriends storm his lair, and it means one thing – wacky trouble! Watch Travis’ noble crusade against the sinful pornographers, aided by the lovable spirit of skin-tight leotard-wearing murderer, The Crimson Executioner! Your jock area will be positively aching with sympathy pains!
The year is allegedly 1888. The Vatican's army of Buddhists, Muslims, and toddling friars with hat hair work tirelessly to arm the great monster hunter Wolverine with the most ridiculous and inane weapons known to man, so that he might fail to hit large targets with the utmost speed and accuracy, picking up baronesses in tight corsets along the way. You'll gasp as Dracula chews more scenery than you could fit in Wyoming. You'll scream as the Frankenstein Monster relays life lessons about tolerance and acceptance. You'll yawn and scratch your unmentionables as Kate Beckinsale expands her acting repertoire to include vampire *hunters* (she wouldn't want to be pigeonholed). And you'll snack as the movie becomes tedious and you wander into the kitchen for a sandwich. Features the voices of: Tristan, Tracy and Kevin.
We're passing the savings along to you with this double shot of brand new shorts! "You and Your Work" is the inspiring tale of a shoe salesman who learns to suck it up and pretend to like his job. "Bus Nut" is the inspiring story of a little girl who really, really, really, REALLY likes her school bus. They're both yours for the ludicrously low price of 99 cents. Have we gone INSANE??
What "solitary" figure in American folk lore deserves to be taken down a peg or two less than the Lone Ranger? Well strap on your spurs because OneWallCinema is about to do just that. Firing silver bullets of wit and sarcasm, k1 and K2 take you on a 79 minute ride full of laughter and awkwardness as they tackle the beloved Lone Ranger and his cringe-worthy sidekick Tonto. Hi ho Rifftrax aweigh!*
"You take off now, girl, you got real problems!" David "I Just Want a Cheeseburger" Hasselhoff of T.V.'s Knight Rider and Baywatch fame plays White Bread, a bounty hunter trying desperately to save Linda Blair's nonexistent career. I...
Are you afraid to go to parties because you might slather ice cream all over your pheasant au jus and try to shove it in your earhole? Wouldn't it be great if your future self could come back and beat some sense into you? Now you can deal with such involuntary time travel with the aid of forks, spoons, plates, fingers, and other eating implements beyond your limited comprehension. Soon you'll be in demand as the most excitingly dull person on your block! Riffs provided by Dana Simpson of "Ozy and Millie," Thomas K. Dye of "Newshounds" and David Brodbeck.
Do you remember John Landis' classic take on the werewolf film, American Werewolf in London? The classic scene with the "American Balloon Thief?" The amazing transformation sequence that won a special Makeup Effects Oscar? This is not that film. Less of a sequel and more of a...well, completely unrelated film, "American Werewolf in Paris" proved that yes, a film was made 16 years after the other one. Starring Kirk Cameron-alike Tom Everett Scott (from others films in the late 1990s) and Julie Delpy (who shows there's more than one way to pronounce 'cellar'), the plot revolves around a group of extremely hairy monsters that stalk the streets of Paris hating Americans...and there's werewolves, too! But I kid...the real horror in this film revolves around CG embarassing even for 1997 and, of course, gratuitous use of Smash Mouth.
More than two decades ago, a group of men attempted to riff the 1968 movie, "The Green Slime". They failed... Okay, so they didn't know what riffing was yet, they hadn't perfected the craft, but soon would! Now, revisit the film used for the original, unbroadcast pilot of MST3K, given the full iRiff treatment. How could it maybe have sounded had they fully done a riff of the movie, with the full abilities of riffing afforded to them later on. Thus, it's KiTMAh Predicts! Thrill to vague attempts to not sound much different from how they sounded, without breaching copyright issues! No references past October 1988! A sleepy voiced guy and a Midwesterner! A third riffer oddly appearing after whenabouts a host segment would've gone, then disappearing after when the next one would've gone!... And YOU, are there!
The target of this iRiff is 1999's 'The Mummy': 739th in a long line of miserable remakes. This version of the movie far outstrips its predecessors on two counts: it contains more Brendan Fraser, and it contains more of that sugar-substitute for quality, CGI. If either of those two things seems promising to you, may we suggest that skipping this iRiff and viewing Journey to the Center of the Earth might be more to your liking. For those still with us, please enjoy this iRiff as we dig in to a nice, dare I say 'juicy'?, helping of well-meaning acting and energetic silliness. Adding that special blend of sarcasm and irony, with a dash of disbelief and a pinch of pain, Tom and Jon endeavour to make this movie palatable to the discerning Riff-lovers' taste.
The Old West! It was back when times were tough, the land was harsh, vigilantes were unforgiving and outlaws… were apparently pretty nice guys! Jesse James is the perfect gentleman, quick-witted and soft-spoken, who is wanted by the sheriff of every town in the West. It’s hard to figure out why—everybody seems to like him! Sure, the guy might have hit a stagecoach or two, but he’s just so darned charming! Those stagecoach drivers would probably have just handed over the money if Jesse had just asked. In keeping with its dedication to historical accuracy, Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter depicts one of the most legendary conflicts in American lore. The legendary gunfighter goes up against Maria Frankenstein, a power-hungry babe with a PhD in Undeadology. If Jesse doesn’t stop her, and put and end to her corpse-reviving, the West will be overrun by terrible monsters! Even worse, it’ll mean a sequel to this crappy movie!
Did you ever wonder why older people think kids will do anything they see on TV? It’s because apparently, in the 50s, parents and teachers believed kids couldn’t learn anything unless their lesson was the subject of a crappy educational film. A fine example of this is Care of the Skin, next in our series of useless educational shorts. Apparently, Encyclopedia Britannica films was under the impression that elementary schools were full of kids who couldn’t bathe properly. Such naiveness is characteristic of the 50s… today, we’re well aware that dirty, smelly people tend to migrate toward airplanes, where they inevitably sit next to you. In this film, we get a glimpse into the lives of three children—Virginia, Billy, and Fred—who live in a giant mansion, dress in silk pajamas, and sleep in gargantuan beds. These obviously wealthy seven-year-olds have no parents to speak of, but that doesn’t bother them too much. Somehow, they’ve managed to make a functioning household. Their only concern in life seems to be their evening wash-up time, which easily takes three or four hours for each kid. Care of the Skin documents every soaping and sudsing these already clean children put themselves through on a daily basis.
If you think back, I'm sure we all can remember a time that we were an innocent, naive 13-year-old girl who wanted nothing more than for the cute older boy in our class to look our way and realize how special we were beneath our clumsy exterior. For most of us, the story ended with us realizing that the older boy in our class was held back because he'd huffed so much paint he couldn't spell his name without entering a trance-like state, and us realizing we were young men from the Midwest randomly dreaming of older men in a society more stringent than that portrayed in Brokeback Mountain when it came to such things. For Stephenie Meyer, however, she takes this premise, makes the boy a sparkling vampire who doesn't kill humans, and Mary Sues herself right into the midst of things. Whether you love it or hate it, there's certainly no denying that Twilight exists. So whether you're a Twi-hater, the boyfriend, husband, father or some other relation to a Twi-lover and you're sick of it and just want something to deaden the vapid silences rampant in this film (you can throw it on an MP3 player & enjoy the film in your own special way!), OR you're a Twi-lover and want to use this as an excuse to show it to friends ('no, no, this makes fun of it!' but secretly you're hoping the magic will sweep them away despite all the silly voices...), this is the riff for you! Features Michael T. Bradley, Kaisha "Time & Again" Medford and Josh "Human Beasts" Robinson.
Kurt Russel has found himself in the midst of a Chinese buffet battle raging in the streets of little China. All he wants is his truck back... and maybe a crack at the crab legs. Meanwhile- John Carpenter himself is looking for the ultimate shemale to be his bride and the grandpa from 3 Ninjas is pissed. Will Wang get his "girlfriend" back? Will John Carpenter have to register as a sex offender? Does anybody else smell that? Just remember what old Jack Burton says at a time like this- "Yes sir, the check is in the mail." - Reminds me of a joke my uncle Roger once told me...
Step right up and buy some nuts, because you'll get a handfull in this adventurous and dare I say nuts, humerical Riff. You can soar through the planes of comedy and will NEVER stop laughing. Please rate it and dont bias the rating just because my description is amazing. How Do You Do is a rather stupid and anoying film and honestly I damnright love em this way. If you do too, break a leg and bust a nut and buy my film now. This film is 13 mins and 34 seconds so your heaving laughter will be eased.
Do you like meat? I bet you don’t have a CLUE where it comes from! See, meat actually comes from ANIMALS! And animals eat GRASS! And get this—those animals don’t just fall apart into sausage, hamburger, chops, and roasts—they need to be BUTCHERED! Or wait, maybe you did know that… you and every other person who’s even vaguely familiar with the concept of “meat”. However, somewhere out there in some remote corner of the planet is a poor sot who has no idea how cows turn into Big Macs, and that person is thanking their lucky stars that Encyclopedia Britannica Films is there to help. So don’t be making fun of them! Michael T Bradley (Ice on Mars writer and longtime vegetarian) joins Aaron Bossig (who likes a good steak) to deliver this farm-fresh iRiff. Meat: From Range to Market is suitable for carnivores and grass-eaters alike, and is offered as a full-video iRiff. Download and enjoy!
Emily K. lampoons this 1954 Encyclopedia Britannica short.
Jean's brother Steve is bringing his roommate home from college. They're having a party, and it just has to turn out right! This 1950 educational film warns us that our party will be a disaster without careful library research. This is Team Swizzlebeef's long-awaited debut. Please note: this is perhaps the only iRiff featuring bacon, furries, and a panda.
Bryan Sample riffs this 1953 classic story of attractive young women in black tights plotting to invade the Earth.
The "Dwayne Johnson" Rock stars as Sarge, the tough-as-nails Marine...um, sergeant, alongside Karl "Bones McCoy" Urban, as well as...um...yeah, about that. Anyway, the most British/New Zealand-sounding U.S. Marines ever are called in to find out what happened to a group of scientists that disappeared under mysterious circumstances (if you call recordings of people being eaten mysterious, but what do I know?). As trained professionals, they handle themselves with dignity and respect...until the monsters show up, at which point they start shooting at everything and everyone, yelling at each other, picking on the handicapped gentleman, and make sure corners are secure. And then there's Portman. Ohhhh, is there ever Portman. And don't forget the 1st-Person segment, so reminiscent of the video game that you'll shout, "I waited an hour and a half for THIS?!?" Join the One Man Band as he leads the team into the depths of the red planet, looking for survivors. Odds aren't looking good.
In a world filled with tea parties crazy enough to put out the mad hatter, Russian spies that rub elbows with Paris Hilton and Glenn Beck we look to a simpler time: a time when all we had to fear were the Russian commie rats trying to poison the water supply and no amount of turtles covering and or ducking could save us all from nuclear annihilation. Make Mine Freedom is all about a town filled with 3 foot tall cartoon stereotypes as they weigh the pros and cons of embracing the devil's new government and just when is America supposed to get it's shiny new straw hat? A special appearance by a Disney character gone mad with power.
With the Internets abuzz with J.J. Abrams' successful relaunching of the Star Trek franchise, we invite you to take a step back to yesteryear with us - a big, biomechanical step into Borg territory. Yes, it's Best of Both Worlds Part One, wherein Captain Picard is captured by the Borg, who are all very upset because they don't get to shave his head like all of their other captives. Performance and script by Matt Nelson; writing assistance by Kevin Rudolph. Part Two is riffed by Ice on Mars, which is available at: https://www.rifftrax.com/iriff/ice-on-mars-star-trek-the-next-generation-best-of-both-worlds-part-two
OH NOES! Jean-Luc Picard is a Borg! Whatever shall we do? Well, a few months later we're gonna start off the new season with some slam-bang action, THAT'S what we're gonna do! If we're the people making ST:TNG. But we're not. We're people viewing it 15 years later and mocking it, so WE are going to riff the hell out of it. Featuring Michael T Bradley and Jason "Caregiver" Freston. This is the followup to Dark Matter Production's riff of part one, available at: www.rifftrax.com/iriffs/dmp-best-both-worlds-part-one
How can you make better use of your leisure time? Damned if we know, but maybe you'll know after watching Team Swizzlebeef take on this 50's educational short! Thrill as Ken and his life partner, The Narrator... well... so far as we can tell, they don't actually do anything, but thrill anyway! Cringe away from lovingly filmed up-close junk shots, gawk at Ken's magic desk-mounted time portal, wonder why Ken's dad apparently married his grandmother, but most importantly, laugh your fool hinder off as Team Swizzlebeef excavate the funny from this otherwise baffling short.
Student Mel just loves to stir the pot at his high school, casting aspersions on one classmate’s virtue, and the football ability of others. He even goes so far to rat out the quarterback for being out past curfew! At the dance following a game the team loses, Mel’s classmates have had it up to here and confront him. He is told in no uncertain terms to beat it! Fortunately, the narrator steps in before things get really ugly and asks the typical "Discussion Problems in Group Living" questions. So there actually will be a test!
DANGER! DANGER! HORRIBLE MOVIE! When you think of "action star," who do you think of? Arnold Schwarzenegger? Sylvester Stallone? If you said "The guy who played Joey on 'Friends'," then this movie is for you (and get some help)! It's the nobody-asked-for reboot of the 1960's cult TV show, and it holds the distinct honor of knocking "Titanic" off the #1 spot on box office charts after a 15-week reign. So actually, a lot of good came out of this. Starring William Hurt, Heather Graham, a Jar Jar Binks-ian alien pet monkey (not to be confused with Matt LeBlanc) and a performance by Gary Oldman that Mike Nelson quipped "degraded mankind as a whole." Get lost with Josh and Jordan as they riff through this sci-fi misstep of a movie!
Bernard has a dilemma. What will he do?
Meet Neelix. He's the Jar Jar Binx of "Star Trek", and somebody stole his lungs. An intelligent group of protagonists might recognize a good thing when they see it, but this is Voyager, so that's right out the window. Based on some misplaced sense of responsibility (or some heavily skewed market research numbers concerning the popularity of the Neelix character) Janeway and her crew waste no time in looking this particular gift-horse in the mouth and set out on a desperate quest to get those lungs back. When the intrepid crew blunders into an asteroid that's actually a Fun House Hall-Of-Mirrors, they encounter a mysterious group of aliens that look like wads of ABC gum. Will they find Neelix's lungs in time? Will anyone care if they don't? And when do they add that hot Borg supermodel to the cast?
Much like "The Room," the titular "Butt" of this episode of ST:V never appears. Perhaps "my butt" is a state of mind? A mental fog that comes over one when watching such a droll, meandering piece of "art"? Philosophers will debate for centuries. Join Aaron Bossig & Michael T. Bradley as they take on one of the most pointless exercises in "trying to be like old-school Trek" ever, in which ... Neelix is the sane one (nothing means anything anymore?!?). Until the end. Then it's lunacy.
After Neelix, holo-lungs. a hall of mirrors, and space butts, Star Trek: Voyager finally decides to shape up and get serious when the crew discovers a wormhole that leads to the Alpha Quadrant—that's the good quadrant! Unable to fit through the wormhole, the crew instead tries to use it to send a message to a Romulan ship that, for some reason, is loitering around the other side. This is their chance to get messages to StarFleet and let everybody that they hope is worried about them know what's going on. BUT WAIT! Could they also beam to the other ship through the wormhole?! They've just GOTTA! Yes, after six long episodes, the Voyager crew is finally going to make it home! NO DOUBT ABOUT IT!
Imagine a world where, when murder happens, the decedent's memories are put into a USB stick & loaded into an artificial person, then testifies against the defendant. Pretty awesome, right? Well, all that happens BEFORE the opening credits here. Instead, we get some wannabe-noir starring Wang & Paris (they're cops!). Tuvok has to clean up the mess. THRILL! as an old guy whines about his uselessness as a husband. GASP! as Wang delivers exciting commentary like, "Then we went into the other room." SUSPEND! your disbelief as Paris gets lucky with a woman! REEL! in terror from the bottom-of-the-barrel makeup jobs (seriously, did they just tape on some shit they had lying around the wardrobe room five minutes before the cameras rolled?).
Released shortly before Dragonball Evolution, Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li was part one of an insidious, cross-studio plot to systematically destroy strategically chosen beloved franchises and, by extension, an entire subculture of nerds. Luckily, Roland Emmerick's Legend of Zelda movie was canned and the plan crumbled in it's final phase, leaving the evil masterminds responsibile to go into hiding, pouring all their remaining funds into the Cowboy Bebop live action movie with Keanu Reeves. The world was left with two shameful blights forever scarring its unalterable history. Most tried to ignore Dragonball and Chun Li or turned to powerful drugs for even the most fleeting feeling of blissful ignorance. We at QuipTracks, however, cannot turn a blind eye to such cinematic injustice. We have taken these horrific devices of torture and made them into something we can all feel good about. Like E. Honda with a turbo switch, "Street Fighter" slaps you with an unending barrage of inept directoral decisions and inconceivably insipid performances. Crime lord M. Bison, head of feared organization "Shadalao" (the director's inspired take on Shadaloo), threatens to clean up the slums of Bangkok and build nice homes there. He also loves his daughter and would like to see her again. But all her life, Chun Li blamed Bison for her gradual change from a little Chinese girl into a Canadian, and she's not about to just sit back while he buys a majority share of the slums.
Alan Brooks (Forrest Tucker of F-Troop infamy), apparently a professional smoker for the United Nations, can never seem to get a vacation in. When he drops by Switzerland's Trollenberg Institute for Contaminated Cheese Development to see his old equipment-abusing buddy Professor Crevette (and his lab assistants, all of whom are named Beaker [and his recalcitrant computer with its state-of-the-art Windows 58 OS]), he becomes swept up in a whirlwind of addled psychic doublemint twins, narcissistic brits, headless geologists, homicidal zombies, flatulent bartenders, dispeptic local politicians, saucy broads who dress like NFL referees and, thankfully, that sweet, sweet Swiss shizzle. Oh yeah... and an angry mob of decapitating, mind-controlling, opera-mauling TENTACLED CRAWLING FRIGGIN' EYEBALLS FROM ANOTHER GALAXY FER CRYIN' OUT LOUD! who go door-to door preaching the Good News. Poor Alan... All that and he nearly ends up joining the "Kilometer High Club" ...AGAINST HIS WILL!
Watch George Putnam explain how porn can corrupt on sight...while showing us an awful lot of it, erratically censored with bits of magenta tape.
In this, Ice on Mars' much anticipated second movie release Michael T. Bradley and Ari Dennis continue their trend of tackling tween tales of truly terrifying tackiness. This time, though they even went further down the age scale and went for the Hilary Duff vehicle THE LIZZIE McGUIRE MOVIE. Even if you have no children, were born before 1980 and never watch the Disney Channel (like me!) you've probably seen Lizzie memorabilia here and there and wondered, 'WTF? Is that Hannah Montana?' or something similar. Well, get ready to embark upon a magical roller coaster ride of wonder and whimsy! You might notice the EXPLICIT CONTENT notice. That's because this riff is, in fact, VERY dirty. Down and dirty like the dirty dozen, in fact. If this were to be rated on a dirty scale, we would probably clock in at at least a dirty gross. If foul language doesn't bother you and the riff appeals to you, then come along with Lizzie, Gordo, Kate and the voice of the wife on "Family Guy" for a fun-filled, action packed adventure to Rome!
A bully named 'Chick' uses threats and his thumb to create an army of undead young boys to do his bidding. "Oh my garsh!...They'll kill us!"
Boys from around the U.S. gather to compete for bread line fast passes and bootleg juice boxes.
Aliens are evil. Except ALF. And E.T. Vulcans are okay. Klingons came around, eventually. Wookies, of course, are awesome. On second thought, aliens are kind of a mixed bag. Perhaps there's a lesson here. A lesson of tolerance, a lesson of open-mindedness. Sure, some aliens try to conquer the planet, breed us as livestock, take away our television, probe us in our...wait a minute… OUR TELEVISION?!?!? Alright! That's it! Enough of this hippie Ziggy Stardust garbage! You took our TV! YOU'RE GOIN' DOWN!!! At least, that's what happens when a wayward extraterrestrial finds himself stranded on earth. Unbenownst to our spacewrecked visitor, his very prescence disrupts the sweet, sweet electromagnetism that makes the miracle of television a reality. The Federal Government, the Armed Forces, the LAPD and the mass media all join together to fight this menace, and against such an elite force, the alien... ...does pretty well actually. All things considered, without any weapons or anything, he holds his own just fine.
"The young princess seeks to return the golden city to her people and overturn the tyrant general." Amateur and failing sci fi writer, TourqeGlare, and his suspiciously similar English counterpart, Nate dissects the Return of the Kung Fu Dragon. The plot involves several different people; the movie isn’t sure who to follow, as they try and overthrow Fu Manchu and a cackling mustachioed Davros who had formally succeeded in overtaking a peaceful city for some reason. This delightful tale has tree stumps, parrots, Shampoo, the Kohaku River Spirit, and legions of men who practice kung fu in dresses.
A BUNCH OF VERY WHINY KIDS DREAM ABOUT A LAND WHERE LAWS DON'T APPLY TO THEM. KIND OF LIKE 'THE BEACH' WITHOUT LEO OR WEED "Hey, Stupid!"
Sequels, prequels, remakes, and re-imaginings...for years, it seemed Hollywood had run out of ideas. But then came the Underworld series, with the most original concept yet: Vampires and werewolves fighting each other! And it only took a solitary sequel before the makers realized, "Hey! Let's make movies that happened BEFORE the first one! It worked for Lucas, right?" Yes, for those who simply CAN'T WAIT for the new Twilight movies, this will wet your appetite for blandness and crappy vampire on werewolf action. And yes we do imply both meanings to that sentence...let's just say, you'll never look at cliffs the same way again. But hey, at least nobody sparkles. The One Man Band (no stranger to lame werewolf movies) and Moleman (no stranger to violent, cinematic overindulgence) unite to not only drive the final stake into the coffin of this blue-tinted snorefest, but to make sure the only "Rise" you'll get from this movie is a few chuckles. Well, and maybe bile...we're humorists, not miracle workers. Be prepared to witness this action pa--no, wait...this horror/thrill...no...this well-acted dram...uh...hmm...well uh, this...OK, we're not sure WHAT it is. But remember this: In the Underworld, there is no depth we can't sink to.
In 1984, Stewart Raffill wrote and directed "The Ice Pirates." He would later direct "Mac and Me" and "Mannequin 2: On the Move." If that doesn't clue you in, I don't know what will. The One Man Band, already in enough of a pickle having to watch the movie in the first place, is in double trouble when he wakes up to find the rocket containing the film he tried to stop has been drifting through space for 3 million years, and the only companion for light-years is the PPD-3200, a "terminally cheerful" computer program. With friends like these, who wouldn't prefer an hour and a half of pure torture? As for the movie itself, TV stars Robert Urich and Mary Crosby lead a (nearly) all-star cast, several of whom not only survived the film itself, but surprisingly had long careers afterwards...and if there's hope for Ron Perlman, there's hope for ALL of us! Princess Karina lost her Daddy years ago when he went searching for the 7th World (and when he'd rather be on another planet than with you, he might be telling you something), a planet rich with the scarce resource of water. Naturally, what better way to find him than to join up with a scruffy crew of pirates, led by the mostly incompetent Jason, all the while dodging the evil Space Templars bent on keeping anyone from finding the planet and screwing their monopoly on drinkable substances (apparently no one has heard of desalinization plants). On the way, they'll nearly lose their naughty bits, tempt frog alien-women, experience racial slurs, do the time warp (again), and, of course, fight Amazons riding unicorns. What, doesn't every space epic have unicorns?
What happens if instead of dinosaurs in "Jurassic Park", it's killer apes? You get "CONGO"! A fun movie with no chance of being good. "CONGO" has a cavalcade of B-movie actors including Bruce Campbell, Tim Curry, Joey Pants, Joe Don Baker and Ernie "The 4th Ghostbuster" Hudson as the coolest guy in the movie. Witness a talking monkey movie desperate to be taken seriously as Josh and Jordan tear through it with their hilarious commentary!
The titular, Ovaltine-shilling Captain Midnight (who seems to work entirely during broad daylight) is a man with a mission. A secret mission. A mission to fix a radio. A radio apparently vital to national security. A RADIO THAT IS NOT BROADCASTING OVALTINE COMMERCIALS 24/7! No, we don't get it either, especially since he chose Sid Melton as his sidekick. Join Team Swizzlebeef for a journey to a Mexico that never was with a superhero with no powers!
The first ever iRiff done entirely with musical parodies! This is not a love story. It is a story of necessity, frustration, and ultimately triumph. The kind of triumph that only comes from overcoming obstacles to complete the menial task that you're hard wired to do. This is an ode to the working class, the blue collar joes and jills out there, flying under the radar and living job to job. So let's raise our styrofoam coffee cups as we sing along to this groundbreaking effort, brought to you by OneWallCinema.
Josh Way riffs this, the epic space saga of our - of ALL - time. You like rockets? I thought so. We got rockets. We got ray guns. We got helmets that make you stupid. We got a GIRL who flies SPACE SHIPS. "Planet Outlaws" is unlike any other science fiction entertainment you've seen, assuming you haven't seen all that many science fiction entertainments. Join Lt. Buck Rogers - the unfrozen 20th century adventurer - and his ineffectual sidekick Buddy as they battle against the evil Killer Kane and his Outlaw Army for ultimate space supremacy in the 25th century. And who knows, we all might just learn a thing or two about the human condition along the way.* *Don't hold your breath.
The Tale of Despereaux (or "ToD", as it's known by its fan) is an award-winning* tale of a loveable** mouse on a quest to restore sunlight, rain, and soup to his troubled kingdom***. Also, it's stupid. Following are a list of awards which ToD should have won: Best Movie to Introduce the Concept of "Being Eaten by Rats" to Your Four Year Old Most Faithful Rendering of a Lousy Book or Book Series to a Lousier Movie Since Battlefield Earth Best Miscasting of High-Caliber Actors and Actresses Since Judi Dench Starred Opposite Vin Diesel Lamest Character Names _NOT_ in a George Lucas Movie Most Obvious Bid to get Children to Eat Soup! If you want to sit down and watch a painful movie, or if you just really hate your kids, pick up a copy of The Tale of Despereaux today! If you would then like to salvage your dignity, sanity, or family cohesion, listen to this iRiff while watching the movie!
Much like how in The Godfather the word "Mafia" is never actually spoken, in the Twilight saga's New Moon, neither the words "furry" nor "bestiality" are ever said by any character, BUT it is what the entire premise of the film is about. Admittedly, most of the world doesn't really "get" the appeal of being a furry, and Bella is no exception. Jake is a nice enough boy, but once he starts putting on his wolf suit, she accuses him of being "wrong" and quickly runs back to her abuser boyfriend, Edward, who jaunts off to Brazil, where adult prostitution is legal (though he claims this is not germane to his reasoning for leaving). Jake is determined not to be judged for one aspect of his personality, and stages a shirt strike along with his "pack" to ensure people understand the seriousness of their cause. Also, there's motorcycle riding. Back from the original Twilight riff we have Michael T "ubiquitous" Bradley and Kaisha "I hate you so much, Michael" Medford. Also, as "Ari Dennis," New Moon features the voice talents of Ari "wanna do it with a wolf?" Dennis and Christopher "I just got married!" Alderman.
It is the year 2018. The machines have taken over...despite the fact that they are about as easily tricked as Home Alone villains. All Americans have found themselves replaced by Australians and the English, who imitate their accents...blandly. And McG is allowed to direct another movie. It is a dark time for humanity. Enter the One Man Band, who, despite Rifftrax beating him to the punch*, has taken on this wonder of movie chicanery. Sam Worthington (playing American Sam Worthington) wakes up to find the world somehow exploded around him. He asks a robot with a machine gun what happened, which in turn leads him to meeting Ensign Chekhov (Anton Yelchin). Sadly, while no one says "Wictor Wictor," he IS informed that there is a resistance fighting against the trigger-happy machines, which would be good news if it wasn't run by the kid from Newsies (Christian Bale). From there, things get awkward, as Sam finds himself getting into fist fights with robots, skipping across ponds, and even getting blown up with landmines. Gee, you'd think there's almost something MYSTERIOUS about him!
This is the episode where both Janeway and Harry Wang almost get laid! Voyager is literally accosted by this dude from Suck-arris, where pleasure is the first order of business. Things start to get a bit squishy when this Suck-arrian babe wielding an impressive weather-predicting dildo takes Harry to a planet 40,000 light-years away for a bit of the old in-out. Harry blows that open-legged opportunity when he discovers where he is and returns to Suck-arris to cockblock, er, inform Janeway of his experience. Turns out the Suck-arrians are in possession of a space-folding technology that could send Voyager home and mercifully end the series after three-quarters of one season. But NOOOO! The Suck-arrians have their own version of the Prime Directive and refuse to share their space-folding-thingy. Besides, the Suck-arrian Magistrate is more determined to get him some Janeway-tang than Helen Keller was determined to read.
Isaac Asimov's classic Three Laws of Robotics: 1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow his sleek, affordable Audi(R) to come to harm. 2. A robot must obey orders given it by the FedEx corporation except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. 3. Drink More Ovaltine. Okay fine. So they took a few creative liberties. Such as demoting the main character of the book into the cute, quirky sidekick. And making up the hero and villain out of nowhere. And slapping the name of a hallmark of science fiction onto some script they had lying around. Oh, and of course adding so much shameless product shilling that the ticket ought to have been free. It's a movie, they're allowed! But at least you don't have to trudge through this dry story of one robot's journey to humanity alone. Barely 20 seconds will pass by without hearing a hilarious sarcastic comment to lighten the mood, by your friend Will Smith! Oh, and also Chris Hanel, Dave "Danuuc" Atwater, and Todd Gutknecht. So put on your Converse(R) All-Stars(R), cue up I, Robot and Riff Raff Theater's riff into your JVC(R) home entertainment system, and laugh 'til it hurts! (Because that's when your robot will stop you).
We of the Knights of Tuve Hall hold only one thing sacred about cult classic movies, absolutely nothing! Cult classic movies can roast in hell! HELL! The devil has many names, this time we’ll call him Dino De Laurentiis. And it turns out that Satan’s minions are a lot of big name actors like Chaim Topol, Timothy Dalton, Max von Sydow, Ornella Muti, & Brian Blessed. Flash Gordon was a movie that during the Christmas season attempted to follow the rave that was May’s release of The Empire Strikes Back, and miserably failed. Failed to the tune of a 7.8 million dollars net loss. As our fearless Sir Green says, it’s “a campy, poorly pasted, deep coma inspiring bad dream.” Speaking of roasting in hell, that’s what most of my childhood was like, because I loved this movie as a kid. Probaby one of the most notable things about the film is the soundtrack, all written and performed by a little band called Queen. So raise your lighters to an exclusive soundtrack that will haunt our nightmares.
So what if your entire society was structured upon the belief that naturally occurring spatial ruptures on your planet caused you to physically transfer from your present life and zip on up to the next "emanation," wherein you are physically reborn? That would certainly be an interesting concept to play around with, wouldn't it? Especially once they find out that it actually is just essentially a naturally occurring transporter that takes you to a barren, lifeless moon. Interacting with this society would definitely be intriguing, and tricky--walking the thin line between imparting what science tells you and what their faith allows. Oh, that would be a fine episode of a thinking man's television program, yes. Instead, we get a Keystone Kops-style bait-and-switch story with Wang, and the woman he's replaced by is quickly kacked in order to streamline the plot. Huzzah, Voyager!
Josh (left) and Jordan (the other left) take on the 11th installment of Ice On Mars' project for riffing Star Trek: Voyager, Season 1. What can be said about this episode? It's like all the others except with 13% more Chakotay (the Spock/Riker to Janeway's Kirk/Riker... but with more Native American tattoos).
Today's genre-hopping adventure takes us to 6th Century Denmark, where Beowulf (Ensign Harry Kim) has just arrived to slay the beast Grendel and save the kingdom. With jutting chest and piercing gaze, he heroically soils his pants and is immediately devoured. Take two. Today's genre-hopping adventure takes us to 6th Century Denmark, where Beowulf (Chief Medical Officer.exe) has just arrived to slay the beast Grendel and save the kingdom. Armed with magical hologram powers and more than half an IQ point, he has a bit more luck. Yes, it's Star Trek Voyager, Season 1, Episode 12: "Heroes and Demons!" Wow, we didn't lose you at "Voyager"? Well good, cause it's actually got a lot of plusses: the alien isn't a walking forehead prosthetic, the most competent actor of the bunch (Robert Picardo, followed closely by Kate Mulgrew's hair) gets the spotlight, and best of all, Neelix is COMPLETELY ABSENT. Then again, it IS basically Star Trek Voyager meets Dungeons and Dragons. So curl up with a flagon of mead and a leg of spit-roasted elk, and help us sacrifice another episode of Star Trek Voyager to the riffing gods!
Not since Andy Warhol's Sleep has the screen crackled with such a dynamic sleeping performance as Robert Beltran delivers in the ST:V episode "Cathexis." Your heart will pound as he sleeps while Torres puts rocks on him! Your spine will tingle as he sleeps while the Doctor looks at him! Your brain might literally explode as he sleeps while Neelix stands near him! Please do not view unless sitting on a tarp! All this hot sleeping action takes place before an equally thrilling backdrop: what begins as a standard Brannon Braga authored WTF-fest takes a shocking twist when it is revealed that an alien may be aboard Voyager! With this radically unusual turn of events, no one can be trusted, and Voyager's only hoping of restoring sanity (cough) is to place their faith in Chakotay's pseudo-spiritual talisman things because Native American!
Do you like vague, tension-free stories involving miners and oppressive gun-toting villains? Do you thrill at the thought of an away team wandering around uninterested while other members of the crew are held captive? Does this sound like a retread of "Time and Again" in a lot of ways? Well, it IS, except it's really more a retread of a classic TOS episode, and the return of the Phage bad guys from "Phage" with nothing new said about them. Join Kaisha Medford and Michael T Bradley as they tackle this unforgiving beast of an episode, in which actors wear prosthetics (no, really) and B'elanna's Klingon half is shown to be far more interesting than her human half.
This early effort from the Bonehead Radio team is comedy from the top of the mountain to the middle of the spider web! It's a tremendously funny rip on a movie that believes in taking the viewer everywhere, and showing them each and every step taken in the slowest possible manner. Glaven!
Jetrel! This is a completely original episode where an alien species has developed a nightmarish weapon that they use during war-time to completely vaporize anyone within a radius of many miles and make others who are outside the blast zone deathly ill. Can you believe some aliens?! "Ghost reportin'. Never know what hit 'em."
You WILL NOT BELIEVE the pulse-pounding, edge-of-your-seat excitement that is the end of season one of Star Trek: Voyager! Having amazingly made it home through strife and turmoil, the crew of the Voyager finds their home quadrant IN RUINS!!! The Federation in SHAMBLES!!! Desperately scrambling against an enemy who USES TIME ITSELF AS A WEAPON. The only area of the galaxy within which they could even HOPE to find some sort of saving mechanism? THE DELTA QUADRANT! So our intrepid crew is sent BACK, this time with specific orders to find technology to save their ENTIRE SPECIES-ES!!! The clock is ticking, and the stakes have just been raised A HUNDREDFOLD!!! Wouldn't that be awesome? OK, here's what really happens: Hey, kids, remember the Maquis? You--you don't? But it's only been ... uhh ... five episodes since they were last mentioned! Wait, what--seriously, FIVE episodes? My god, that's ridiculous! I mean, aren't they the dramatic thrust of the show? Aren't--sigh. Oh, forget it. Tuvok trains some cadets. "Hoosiers," it ain't. Together with intrepid co-riffer and co-writer J. Wilford Neville, Michael T Bradley sets out one last time to take on the crew of Voyager. We barely make it. CAN YOU?
When Reed and his pal, Victor, try to harness the energies of a vague cosmic force which is, for some reason, known as "Colossus;" an explosion rings out! and also some lightning! While the accident leaves Victor presumably dead, Reed continues on with his life until ten years later when the wonderful idea of harnessing the energy of Colossus dawns on him. This time though, instead of only one of his close friends, he decides to include three of his close friends -- and, wouldn't you know it? There's an explosion! The results of this accident seem to have given the titular Four their Fantasticness as oppossed to just killing them like Victor... However the adventure is just beginning, as our heroes may have made too many presumptions -- for a flamboyantly hand gesturing shadow from the past has now engulfed them in all of its darkness. A flamboyantly hand gesturing shadow by the name of..... Doom.
Not all Navy pilots are cool enough to hang out with Anthony Edwards and Meg Ryan. Some, like Dilbert, shouldn't even be allowed to socialize with Val Kilmer. Yes, even after the weight gain. Meet Dilbert: The Bottom Gun of our elite WWII fighter pilots.
Not everybody's cut out to be a salesman. Not everybody is driven by disembodied voices and visages in hot beverages. Fortunately for capitalism, such people do exist. Our protagonist is an insurance agent, worried that he will never find enough diner waitresses with unrequited ardor to meet his sales quota. Fortunately for Our Hero, he's surrounded by people looking for human contact in a cold, lonely world, and he'll be there to sell them stuff.
Not everybody's cut out to be a salesman. Not everybody is driven by disembodied voices and visages in hot beverages. Fortunately for capitalism, such people do exist. Our protagonist is an insurance agent, worried that he will never find enough diner waitresses with unrequited ardor to meet his sales quota. Fortunately for Our Hero, he's surrounded by people looking for human contact in a cold, lonely world, and he'll be there to sell them stuff.
Much like the existence of BigFoot, the location of the holy grail, and who thought peanuts submerged in Jell-O was a good idea the human conscious is constantly on the hunt to discover how to throw the perfect party. Let the Committee for the Perfect Party Planners from that legendary head of the Homemaking Education Department show us the way as Gene and her wild gang of 40 year old highschoolers plan a coming out party for Steve. You can barely contain your excitement as they tear through the mixer games and sing a rousing public domain song. Join us on our trip through a good Party.
For many people, Temple of Doom is easily the worst Indiana Jones movie… released before 2008. It inexplicably takes place in 1935, whereas Raiders of the Lost Ark takes place in 1936, technically making this a prequel. And as we all know, George Lucas minus time equals tragedy. Watch the tragedy unfold with me (Dru Brock) and my less enthusiastic wife (Mrs. Dru Brock) as our favorite non-practicing archeologist gets some stones. Joining him along the way are the annoying lady, the annoying Chinese kid, the skull-faced villain, the big bald Nazi from Raiders (who now has new facial hair, a turban and the most drastic tan this side of the Jersey Shore, despite working in a cave all day) and the host of Tales from the Crypt (spreading his acting wings in the role of the indecipherable village chief). It will be Drawback Productions' finest hour.
Come along as little Billy learns the horrors that await him every night as he flips on his radio and is whisked away to a world of cowboys, more cowboys, old people and the dead eyed zombies who provide the sound effects that rot little Billy's brain so. There will be action, danger, women driving cars, and a special guest appearance by Air Flap bladders.
It's the late 1940s, when America was overrun with argumentative dwarves, except that instead of having names like Oin and Gloin, they instead represented concepts such as Labor, Management, Southern-Fried Politics and Big-Chinned Farmers. These vermin were easy prey to gangly yellow-suited hucksters selling liquified political ideologies in convenient non-child-proof bottles. This unflinchingly rubbery documentary takes a look at how these little pests avoided being ruled by a pair of giant blue hands, just by reminding themselves of how awesome they are. Riffs provided by Dana Simpson of "Ozy and Millie," Thomas K. Dye of "Newshounds" and David Brodbeck.
As young women mature, they find themselves under pressure to conform to the expectations of their peers, establish an identity, get shot in the head by blank bullets, select a...wait, what now? Meet the Sisters. A secret society so secret that...well, it's not. Everyone seems to know about it, including the police, who have to clean up the mess when their initiation ceremony kills a pledge by accident. Or was it? It wasn't. No spoiler alert necessary; it's obvious from the get go. Fast forward seven years. Our Sorority of Stupid is enjoying all of the benefits that come from being a member of an elite alliance of the select few. Except for the fact that they're all pretty much losers. And, unfortunately, getting killed off one by one as the sins of the past come back to haunt them. They're also haunted by a boom mike. Seriously, it's everywhere.
It's 1950. WWII is over and America is entering into one of the most prosperous times in its history. Innovation and might decides who the world's superpowers will be and ahead of the pack is the good ol' U.S. of A. What is that propels us to the top of the food chain? What is that makes us so feared and revered? How is that we came to stand on the forefront of all human civilization? Atomic Power. As the rest of the world struggles to rebuild and obtain their own nuclear arsenal the United States has begun research into all new atomically powered devices, including the next generation of advanced super weapons.
Introverted Wife (Sabrina Zbasnik) and Introverter Guy riff this Chevrolet infomercial. In our modern go go world where danger lurks around every corner threatening to swallow us whole and spit us out in tiny human chunks comes a friendly little short from Chevrolet to try and convince a man who is lucky to have survived past age five that he is far safer in his car than while trying to perform simple mundane tasks that are certain to lead to a snapped neck like taking a bath or hanging a picture. The Safest Place on Earth is a simpler time when men were men and women were women and cars with windows were a novel idea. Join us on a trip to The Safest Place on Earth - not valid in Mississippi, New Jersey or Mordor.
Times are tough. Competition in the workforce is fierce. Mere adequate performance doesn't cut it anymore. If you can't find a way to make a difference for your employer, a metaphoric clone of you will step into one-half of a stationary camera shot and make you look bad. Grease up your hair, put on one of many sport coats from the wardrobe department that don't quite fit right, and listen to the story of Walter, ne'er do well of the company, who puts his own manicure schedule, crossword addiction, and general bad 'tude ahead of all else. You'll be glad you did. That way, when you find yourself face-to-face with your own doppelganger, you'll have a competitive edge when it comes time for year-end employee evaluations.
When asked what is your all time favorite food you'd be pretty hard pressed to find someone to shout out "SOYBEANS" before putting their underwear on their head and passing out literature on Elvis's new home on Pluto. Yet scientists, agronomists and hollywood were pushing soybeans down our throats in the '50's. Every beach movie heavily featured a scene of Frankie Avalo chowing down on a pile of tofu and soybean sprouts. Come along where it all started when scientists first brought Soybeans to the masses in Science and Agriculture (the soybean). They never got the title figured out.
Scix Maddix, Ari Dennis and J. Wilford Neville riff this tortured, twisted tale of forbidden love. Many a film has been crafted about this risque topic, but few truly capture that frustration we've all felt when we fall for someone we know the people around us won't accept as well as the '80s classic "The Karate Kid." Ralph Macchio portrays a conflicted young man whose emotions for Johnny keep boiling over, causing fights to break out over the smallest of things (like Elizabeth Shue), misdirected rage turning into flying fists and kicking feet. Soon, however, a cantankerous older man who knows too well the pang of regret that can grow into a shard buried deep in the heart when a love is denied, takes Ralph in and teaches him how to channel his frustration into something meaningful: karate.
A homemaker in the 1950s often found herself tortured by the pressures of the era. Would her children be seduced by the temptations of motorcycle gangs and that awful Rock 'n Roll music? Were there really communists deep under cover in the PTA? And worst of all...would a snarky voiceover steal an entire room of the house as an early infomercial for kitchen renovation? Our protagonist finds herself in this very situation: Her Kitchen abducted, held ransom until she can complete a remodeling visionquest, searching for the kitchen she has carried in her heart for her entire life. In the end, she realizes that she is powerless in the face of cabinet arrangement, and only the guiding force of corporate-sponsored consumerism propaganda can save her from an eternity of single-sinked oblivion.
Halloween is a time of mischief and fun when you cosplay as a Hammer Monster or the latest breakfast cereal mascot and gorge yourself on enough sugar to power a nuclear sub. Or at least it used to. This PSA was created in the late 70's in response to all the fears parents had that their children had the balancing abilities of Peter O'Toole at Oktoberfest and were collapsing all over the roads in the town of eternal darkness. And who can forget all those razor blades/syringes/hand grenades that were never actually hidden in Halloween candy. Well this short sure can't. Even dressing as a simple witch is banned by the Anti-Fun police and instead suggest you dress your child as something a bit less politically correct. Check out Halloween Safety and afterward strap on a gimp mask and run through your neighborhood down the middle of the road munching on raw apples laced with strychnine to celebrate the classic Halloween.
**Update** You can now view this entire riff and movie on YouTube for free. The sample player should play the entire movie, or you can get it direct from here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bfh4hmtyVvk No need to pay me or spend time syncing to VHS! Comment on YouTube if you enjoy the video! With the signature line “There can be only one,” the foreshadowing for what would become the second installment in the Highlander series could not have been more eloquent. Highlander 2: The Quickening is known as being so bad that the storyline of Highlander 3 ignores it entirely. “Pretend it never happened,” the producers seemed to say. Oh, but it did happen and it is a complete disaster. Since this is our first bad movie we’ve attempted to write a comic commentary for, we were determined to find one that did most of the work for us. Please note: This commentary is for Highlander 2: The Quickening. It will not sync with the later releases Renegade Version or the Special Edition. Highlander 2: The Quickening, which is the theatrical version was only released on VHS and, at the time of this posting, could be found on Amazon.com for $3 including shipping!
Take a beloved video game franchise and turn it into a live-action movie. This seemed like a great idea to movie producers in the 90's and led to several fantastic examples of how it just doesn't work. Super Mario Bros is one such example rife with bizarre choices; casting a British guy (Bob Hoskins) as Mario. Casting a Columbian-American (John Leguizamo) as Luigi. Make sure they spend the first hour of the movie out of their signature coveralls. Bowser's too hard to pull off, so just cast Dennis Hopper and call him "Koopa." Princess Peach needs saving in the video game, but in the movie it's all about Luigi and Daisy. Don't worry about Mario though, he's got a clone of Fran Drescher as a girlfriend. Step into the warp zone and visit the ultimate "minus world" of Super Mario Bros, the movie!
Poor Susan Jane Smith! Despite a name that's very similar to one of the most popular Doctor Who companions, she finds herself a social outcast. And since she goes to a school where everyone's a soc, and nobody's a greaser, that leaves her as the singular Outsider. No rumbles, no sunsets. There isn't even hair grease (andit's sorely missed). So our heroine has no choice but to find a way into the exclusive social circle that up until now has chosen not to bestow their attention upon her. While her attempts at spying around corners and conforming her after school snack counter orders prove fruitless, she soldiers on, with only the voice of a lone, passive-aggressive narrator to guide her.
Alien is a popular franchise. Predator is a popular franchise. What could go wrong by slapping them together? Here to answer that question is Riff Raff Theater, the masters of crowd-sourced movie riffing. Lance Henrikson plays definitely-human-this-time Charles Bishop Weyland, a billionaire roboticist who discovers a lost pyramid under Antarctica and develops a bad case of dollar-bill-signs-of-the-eyes. Also, emphysema. He sends in the best resources and experts money can buy, but fails in every conceiveable way. Sounds like a perfect stand-in for the studio suits. Soldiers? Mercenaries? No, our heroes are an arctic tour guide, a "pyramid expert," a constantly-coughing old guy, and some other forgettable fodder. Though for you romantic types there's the will-they-won't-they of the title characters, and one man's undying love of his Pepsi-Cola bottlecap. Find out along with riffers Chris Hanel, Dave "Danuuc" Atwater, and Todd Gutknecht that the whole is often less than the sum of its parts, in Alien versus Predator! Note: We are riffing the original THEATRICAL version, *NOT* The “Unrated Director’s Cut”. On a side note, This DVD was one of the first to abuse … Read more » the term “Unrated” with such shameless transparency as to make marketing people start to question whether they felt guilty for starting this trend. (This lasted for .52 seconds before they went back to serving as minions of Satan.)
One might ask, "Why? This was actually pretty good!" One might not remember the helicopter scenes. The endless, endless helicopter scenes. The One Man Band is forced into a conundrum by his commanding officer (newcomer Sarge Crumley): either leave the safety of his underground bunker, or review "The Thing." Guess what he picks. The Thing stars a pre-Sky High Kurt Russell, who plays a drunkard with a beard who hates doing things while pretending to occasionally be a helicopter pilot for an Antarctic research crew. Things (pun intended) go downhill from there when the two worst marksman in Norwegian history get themselves killed, leaving the American team at the mercy of an alien creature that likes to eat people and dress up as them (Nobody tell Leatherface). The crew, already on edge from Wilford Brimley hawking Quaker Oats and being bossed around by the Punky Brewster guy*, pull out the research station's obligatory flamethrower and start seeing how flammable they all are. In case you're wondering, it all ends in tears. Though chances are nobody misses Palmer.
When making a movie based on a videogame inspired by classic George Romero movies, apparently George Romero wasn't what they were looking for so they went with Paul W.S. Anderson. The result? Resident Evil (2002), the movie that combines all the most boring parts of the games involving wandering and not knowing what is going on with a tightly crafted fanfiction. And zombies...but that's really besides the point. After a deadly virus escapes the underground laboratory called "The Hive," Umbrella Incorporated sends in their own specialized military task force to investigate without any proper briefing whatsoever. When they arrive they find Alice (Milla Jovovich), suffering from plot convenient amnesia at the hands of the Hive's super-computer defenses, Matt (Eric Mabius) a cop that dropped by for tea, and Spence (James Purefoy) another guy suffering from fun memory loss. The three are dragged along the team's mission to find out why the supercomputer decided to go all homicidal and just what all those undead fellows are going on about. Combining the least amount of residence in comparison to evil you can possibly get!
The crew of the Nostromo wakes up to find that huge, creepy planet out the window isn't Earth. In fact, it's a more like the worst rest stop you've ever been in...cold, nothing works, and it's full of parasitic alien eggs. After one crew member finds out the hard way that sticking your face into unfamiliar eggs isn't the brightest thing to do, the rest find themselves stalked by a creature that can't help playing with its food before jamming its second head into their faces. And how do they respond? Well, Captain Dallas doesn't care, Security Chief Lambert cries for three hours straight, engineers Brett and Parker want to talk about the bonus situation, Ash the science officer suddenly starts acting really, really evil out of nowhere, and Ellen "I'm in the sequels" Ripley can't find anyone to listen to her. It's like "The Office," in space. And the future. And the new temp is trying to eat everybody.
Thanksgiving - that national tradition of stuffing yourself so full of turkey and various other heart attack inducing foodstuffs to leave you comatose on the couch. But due to a shortage in turkeys thanks to someone in the 70's needing to toss them out of planes (don't ask me how the economy works) in the 1950's the government was afraid all of the schoolchildren would turn communist. So this short was born, a warning to everyone that if you are not grateful for your small miserable little American life then the government could just break down your door and take your small popcorn bowl away when you weren't looking. Perfect for anyone who's facing a huge family Thanksgiving dinner, a small intimate gathering, or planning on eating a Hungry Man in front of the TV this short will make you grateful that you're not stuck in their horrific little world being forced to recite at McCarthy gunpoint every democratic thing you're thankful for.
With Sammy Petrillo and Dean..um..Duke Mitchell. Voted one of the worst movies ever made in the last presidental election. Voted our best episode ever by a focus group at our smokehouse.
"The eternal wonders of space and time. The faraway dreams and mysteries of other worlds..." It's a movie about women in tights. On the Moon. I really don't think there's anything else to say.
Boy, I bet you never thought Dickensian times could evolve into something even more bleak and destitute. Add one Seymour Hicks into the retelling of this most cherished morality tale, and you may never feel to ponder 'Oliver Twist' for the rest of your days. But I'm getting ahead of myself here. MERRY CHRISTMAS to you one and to you all ! You've foregone the option of 'Jingle All The Way', and decided to settle down instead with this bootleg quality, 'Christmas Carol' adaptation so oblique, so obtuse, you'll wonder how they ever found reason not to include the beloved Fezziwig into the overall story. Cuz they didn't. They don't. Sorry to break it to ya. Oh and no Scrooge's sister Fan either for some reason. Maybe all for the better. You decide. She dies anyways. All the more stranger is the fact the Mr. Hicks transfers his performance of Scrooge from stage to screen here, having played the role countless times before stepping in front of the camera. And yet, by comparison, I'd rather pit Whoopi Goldberg best to rival Alastair Sim as the greastest Ebeneezer Scrooge of all time. Think of the cognitive abilities of your 80 year old Grandpa with his head in a plastic bag while running the New York Marathon. That, in essence, is Seymour Hicks. May the tidings of gladness fill us all (or maybe just a nice endorhpin rush) to lighten the load, as we tuck into this; the 1935 production of 'Scrooge' . God Bless us all ..everyone. Please for the love of God! Make it go by fast! The Turkey Shoot with Scott Zee
Buxom Blondes battle Beastly Brunettes in steamy, tropical Elstree Studios, while an inscrutable White Rhinoceros looks on in papier-mâché stoicism. Join British hunter David Marchant (Michael Latimer) on an epic quest to discover the magical force that holds up cruel queen Kari's (Martine Beswicke) animal skin bikini. Thrill to the sounds of prehistoric tribes and their perfect English syntax! Wonder at the slave girls' seemingly endless supply of mascara and hairspray! Recall the sets and actors left over from One Million Years B.C.! Despair that the exception is Raquel Welch, who does not appear in this movie. Yes, travel back with us through the magical iPortal of Ralph and Rick... For Prehistoric Women (1967)! Featuring a special effects sequence so effective, you'll swear you can hear Carlo Rambaldi's facepalm.
High in the Himalayan Mountains of Tibet, legend tells of a mysterious and most horrific creature. To locals-he is Yeti. To the tourists-the Abominable Snowman..and sometimes the Yeti. To botanist Frank Parrish, he is not really any form of vegitation that he can categorize or squirt it's enzymes into a petri dish. But here, in one motion picture, the primal worlds of phytology and cryptozoology..COLLIDE! As Parrish treks the treacherous snowcapped Trans-Himalayan slopes in search of-..plants!(again..one must shrug) , fate deals him a most deadly encounter deep within the cavernous lair of the dreaded beast. Not at all resembling 7 foot specialty talent Lock Martin sewn into a suit of mange-infested daschhunds, the monster sets upon Parrish and his crew, only to be overpowered by it's own weakness of reckless stupity and total lack of logical discourse. Spiriting the creature back to the United states, Parrish sees an opportunity not only to take advantage of this incredible find, but to convince the world botanists often do kick some major-ass! Our Yeti friend, however, quickly realizes, even with it's own limited cognitive attributes, that a walk-in fridge can easily contain your average Swanson chicken pot-pie, but not so much an 800lb primate. Escaping via this knowledge, it descends on an unwitting urban setting, savagely stalking the seemingly good people of Los Angeles somewhere in California. Now Parrish, aided by the LAPD, must utilize his new-found, botanically enhanced hero-skills and save the remains of the day (the monster escapes sometime around 8pm) before gangly women and children fall prey to this most assuredly, abominable terror! Will Parrish succeed? Hey, if you're talkin' 'botany', it's only a matter of 'when'.
The suburbs: as American as shopping malls and booze. Mix yourself a Tom Collins, snuggle up with your credit card, and join Team Swizzlebeef on a merry romp through Redbook magazine's 20-minute consumerist wet dream about the endless cocktail party that is life... In the Suburbs.
Boy, aren't robots adorable? You know, when they're not trying to melt our faces off, use our bioelectricity to fuel their terrible war machines, or sending themselves back through time to murder our children? "Short Circuit" is here to prove that the answer is no. Even when they're cuddly and lovable, robots are annoying and should probably be destroyed. In this family-friendly version of "Frankenstein", Number 5 is a sophisticated war machine brought to life by a plot-convenient bolt of lightning. After escaping from his inventors, he terrorizes the surrounding Oregon countryside with horrible TV commercial impressions, zany mishaps, and one of the most awkwardly forced romance subplots in the history of cinema. Co-starring Steve Guttenberg, Ally Sheedy, and Fisher Stevens as a probable sex-predator, "Short Circuit" is a heartwarming tale that's surprisngly less family-friendly than you remember! Join Shawn and Keith as they turn this mockery of a film into a hilarious 90-minute thrillride of comedy!
Gary and Erin Slasher are asking themselves one question...do they feel lucky? Well? Turns out they're not because they have to watch a height challenged, rhyme addicted, gold obsessed killer. That's right! Hor-RIFF-ic Productions is taking on the Irish themed horror classic,Leprechaun! This one is sure to put you off your breakfast cereal. So what sort of pint-sized wicked whimsy can we expect from this mythical movie? Goooold! Tarantulas! Child Labor! Shoe Fetishists! Pogo Sticks of Death! Alcoholism!...ok that one was a given. Plus: Jennifer Aniston's nose! (Circa 1993)
Star Trek movies. The final frontier. These are the commentary tracks of the website Gymkommentary. Its continuing mission: to make fun of terrible films, to seek out new cinematic garbage and new celluloid travesties. To boldly mock where we're pretty sure at least a couple others have mocked before.
Cartoonist and writer Josh Way riffs this 1953 tale of Federal Communications Commission investigators going to the San Fernando Valley after what appears to be a UFO crash. During their investigation they receive witness reports of what appears to be a man dressed in a bizarre outfit…
Ralph and Rick are honored to bring you the first episode: CHAPTER ONE of the PHANTOM EMPIRE CROSSOVER PROJECT! Lost to the annals of history, a forgotten people bravely struggle for their very way of life in this stunning epic serial. This is the story of the Singing Cowboy, proud, majestic, harmonic... They can take his land, but they can never take his spirit. Without a flimsy radio contract. Oh, and there's some underground civilization not seen since the last ice age. With robots. ...And Gene Autry, one time owner of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim! Frankie Darro, before his breakthrough role as Delivery Boy on the Addams Family! Betsy King Ross, "Queen of Young Wild West Riders" at age 14! And of course Smiley Burnette, inventor of the emoticon. Over 20 Riffers take part in taking apart this 12-EPISODE adventure serial.
As every school child now knows after the last ice age the continent of Mu sank into the ocean erasing it and its people off the map. However some of Mu’s inhabitants continued on in caves accessed via the sea. Just below the Earth’s crust Mu’s advanced civilization, possessing superior technology to our own, developed isolated and independent of the surface dwelling populations. Nowadays it is difficult to imagine a time when we were not even aware of our brothers from down under (literally) but believe it or not their existence was a mystery to us but during the tumultuous times of the 1930s forces conspired to see these two people collide in a way that would shape the future of humanity forever. While not a documentary The Phantom Planet painstakingly recreates these days of discovery in a dramatic series of episodes. By episode two it is discovered by a Professor Beetson that large deposits of valuable materials, including radium, exist just below Gene Autry’s ‘The Singing Cowboy’s Radio Ranch.’ Unbeknownst to him, Autry, or indeed any surface dweller, that wealth of minerals belongs to the proud and powerful Murania Empire. Located 25,000ft below the Ranch Murania is home to towering skyscrapers, deadly energy weapons, advanced robots, and a tyrannical queen sworn to defend it all. Queen Tika is all too aware of the greed and barbarism of the surface dwellers and she will stop at nothing to keep her nation and her people safe from those who would simply take, and take, and take without regard to the future or to basic human decency. She knows that the easiest way to insure the safety of Murania is to keep its very existence a secret and therefore does what any rational person would do; send wave after wave of bedazzled horseman to assault a radio station. These “Thunder Riders” are the elite expeditionary forces of the Queen and serve as her right hand upon the surface world. Their existence is known only in rumor, their deeds
The Phantom Empire - Episode 4: "Phantom Broadcast" Maybe the writers were getting tired because we're only up to episode #4 and they're already using the word "Phantom" more times than Gene Autry can touch a kid in a way that might have flown back in 1935 but today would land him in the gray bar hotel with a roommate named "Bubba". In this episode, Gene and his pals, "The Junior Thunder Riders", must save the day by helping Gene get his radio broadcast on the air and escape before the bad guys can find him. Fortunately, his Radio Ranch barn has more levels than an M.C. Escher painting, so escaping isn't a problem. Oops - did we give away the ending?
In the land of the Rising Sun, where the blowfish are plentiful and the panties are available for purchase in street-corner vending machines, a young man named Light stumbles upon a miraculous object: a notebook belonging to a Death God named Ryuk. Light discovers that this notebook holds incredible secrets: the fantastic notes Ryuk took in his fourth-hour stats class, some wonderful poetry he penned about rainbows and sunsets and a series of engaging tic-tac-toe games he played with his lesser-demon classmates. There was also another minor secret: any human whose name is written in the notebook will die. But seriously, who would find that trait the least bit interesting compared to finding out which teachers Ryuk has crushes on? Hailed by some as one of the greatest marvels in all of Japanese manga (and by "marvels", we mean "sources of yaoi fanfiction"), join Marianne Miller, Lucas Schuneman and Martin "LittleKuriboh" Billany along with special guest riffer/writer Kyle Hebert as they put this movie into their mouths --- AND EAT IT! This iRiff is rated TV-14 for Mildly Offensive Language and Suggestive Situations. Special thanks to Andee Lewis (aka Soupykins) for our promotional poster and Rinbo for designing Flappy, our audio sync automaton!
Goku is a [wild jungle boy] teenager with [inhuman strength and an insatiable hunger] a grandpa. He lives [alone] in shame, fending for himself against [countless dinosaurs and other man-eating creatures] bullies. The [naïve, monkey-tailed] jacketed fighter’s life [changes] continues when he meets Bulma, a girl who is on a [quest] quick errand to collect seven “Dragon Balls,” one of which just happens to be Goku’s most [prized] round possession. With all seven Dragon Balls, Bulma hopes to [summon the powerful dragon Shen Long and have her one wish granted] be famous. But the precious orbs are scattered all over the [world] immediate area, and Bulma needs Goku’s help! With a [magic staff for a weapon] shirt and a [flying cloud for a ride] pair of pants, Goku sets out on the [adventure] sequence of events of [a lifetime] about an hour and twenty minutes… Original film made in 2009.
FilmRoasters take on this low budget 1984 story of computers vs. sorcery. The Movie is also known as Ragewar.
In the first years of the 21st century, solely in response to "I've Got a Feelin'" by the Black Eyed Peas, feelings of any kind were prohibited by law. Now the people of Libria have nothing to do besides concoct ridiculous new martial arts, the apex of these efforts being "Gunkata", which is exactly like gunfighting but while surrounded and standing completly still. It is with this infallible fighting style that Third Concillery Tetragrammaton Cleric John Preston (Batman) hopes to irradicate the rebelious parasites stirring up unwanted feelings in the Nethers of Libria. But he also came up with a cool new way to hold a sword so he uses that too sometimes. Everything changes for Preston when he misses his twice-daily dose of Prozium 2 (the sniffling, feeling, crying, laughing, fury, least angry you ever got at a dictator medicine). Free of the drugs suppressing his emotions, Preston discovers the simple joy of handrails, the prettiness of a rainbow, and the cuddly-wuddlyness of puppies. But he's still super bad ass.
Quick! Name a sci-fi movie from 1984 that features murderous robots. If you said The Terminator, you're right, and you get a cookie. If you said Runaway, you're also right, but...um...what the hell is wrong with you? Well, either way, everyone should enjoy this historically accurate tale about how in the near-future we all completely depend on robots to cook our meals, babysit our children, and murder our families. Gene Simmons plays the blandest villain ever captured on screen, while Tom Selleck is led around by his moustache as he repeatedly saves the day in every scene. It must be exhausting.
Long before M. Night Shyamalan's "The Happening," though ... slightly later than "Little Shop of Horrors," there were some really dull, shambling plants that attacked people in a little film called "The Day of the Triffids"! It's British, so you know there won't be much suspense. It's about killer plants, so you know there won't be much horror, but IT EXISTS, and J. Wilford Neville and Michael T. Bradley have decided to mock it at their own peril!
Award-winning comedian Noah Antwiler of The Spoony Experiment teams up with the Nostalgia Chick (also an award-winning filmmaker, Lindsay Ellis) to tackle David Lynch's sci-fi masterpiece Dune! It's a movie full of oily, ugly people in rubber costumes giving intense, whispered inner monologues. It's a movie without a recognizable narrative structure! Either you love this movie like Noah does, or you'll suffer through Lindsay's personal gom jabbar (whatever that is). It's one of the strangest sci-fi bombs out there. At least you can safely say there's nothing else quite like Dune...and there's a few good reasons for that.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. He also made aliens at this point but totally forgot to use them. But that's all about to change, because visionary blowhard M Night Shyamalan, in associaton with the LORD, has crafted a brilliant plan so convoluted and complicated that it's just GOTTA be profound. Graham Hess, an ex-priest, never forgave God for taking his wife from him. Having hung up his clerical collar for good, Graham, who is known to burn meat and is constantly suspicious of the possibly fictitious Wolfington Brothers, now lives with his son Morgan, a paranoid asthmatic; his daughter Bo, who leaves water glasses around the house half-full (or half-empty, if you're the pessimistic type); and his brother Merrill, who swings bats at stuff. These are the characteristics that M Night pulled out of his trait jar for this movie, and it's these characteristics that Graham and his family will need to clunkily utilize in order to survive Thursday's big alien invasion. And if THAT won't bring back Graham's faith, God's out of ideas.
The earth is doomed. Of course, this is hardly news. The signs are clear: War. Injustice. Pushing Daisies was cancelled while The Bachelorette mercilessly continues. Yes, we all live in constant awareness of the impending apocalypse, but no one takes any action to avert our terrible fate. That is, until a small, elite team of scientists pool their collective genius, and make the bold decision to....run. Run like all getout. Tails between their legs. Straight out of Dodge. Run like rabbits. They even bring rabbits, so they can see what they're running like. Join Doctor Morley, Doctor...the Foreign Guy, the, um, Angry Dude, the...er, Rich Dude He's Angry At, and the beautiful Doctor...Woman...Doctor, as they tunnel to the the depths of the planet, in search of safe haven from impending armageddon. Of course, "join them" means "observe them from the safety of your living room." You wouldn't want to go along. They try to find Shangri-La in the earth's mantle. Obviously, it turns into a giant cluster.
Aliens have decided to invade the planet and as usual a white male scientist is the first person they contact. The scientist, played by Hugh Marlowe pleads for the US government to contact the aliens but to no avail. So the brave scientist sets out on his own to contact the aliens - and promptly sets the Earth up for invasion. Nice going nerd. Meanwhile, science guy's new fiance complains that someone else can save the world from his planet-threatening mistake and future father-in-law becomes a walking slave to the aliens. That's gonna be a weird Thanksgiving.
Josh Way riffs this 1965 Sci-Fi "classic," featuring badly dubbed Russian astronauts, a highly impractical robot named John, and just a hint of Basil Rathbone for seasoning. An excursion to the planet Venus reveals the startling truth - that even in space, boring things are lame.
The Phantom Empire - Episode 5: "Beneath the Earth" Thrills! Spills! Lots of subterranean action! These are things you won't find in chapter 5 of "The Phantom Empire." Also, no phantoms and very few empires.
Chapter 6 of the Phantom Empire finds singing cowboy Gene Autry about to be executed for seeing the underground city of Murania. Luckily (or not) Gene is spared by an underground movement (Get it, underground? I think I'm funny) to overthrow Queen Tika. But Gene's rescue is not a benevolent act and he is soon on the run from a bunch of men in silly hats. Oh, and there's something about some disaster from the skies but that's not important.
Death be not proud. In fact, when you're a singing cowboy who perishes at the hands of mole people, death can be downright humiliating. It's bad enough to lose your life in a fight against mumu-clad subterranians and blocky robo-waddlers. Once you've perished, do you get to move on? To enjoy your eternal reward? Nope. Instead, your corpse gets schlepped around like a sack of turnips, and your corpse gets stuffed into a resurrection machine that would make cylons roll their eyes. Human-looking cylons, that is. The other kind of cylons...well, they're always rolling their eyes, sort of. Back on topic, our hero returns, none the worse for wear.
Ah, yes the JAWS OF JEOPARDY! It was around the time when the Jaws series of film had reached it's nadir with Bruce the Great White Shark appearing on game shows.... ... What? You say this is not part of the Jaws franchise? You mean this is another one of those crappy singing cowboy vs futuristic underground empire films? Oh OK. So, Gene Autry spends another 20 mins riding around and escaping from evil underground dwelling dudes, all with a song on his lips. Will he defeat The Phantom Empire and save radio ranch so we can all go home and watch the latest Charlie Sheen interview? Find out in this exciting chapter!
What's this? Gene Autry burning to death in a crash airplane? Scientists planning on destroying Radio Ranch for their own purposes? A totalitarian queen who imprisons children, who are later subjected to deadly radium beams? Why, it must be children's entertainment! The 'fun' continues in Chapter 9 as Gene Autry predictably escapes through miraculous means from certain doom from Chapter 8 (and Chapter 7, 6, 5...ah, heck, nobody EVER dies in these things), and Frankie & Betsy get kidnapped by the kingdom of Murania, who decide the best method of dealing with small children is to hand them over to guards stupider than they are.
And now to the next exciting episode in this incredible saga..! With Frankie and Betsy deep within Murania's underground complex, Gene Autry and Co. look to extrapulate their young friends before Imperial forces find them first. Meanwhile, Count Argo has gathered his army of rebels and dissidents, preparing to march forth to battle Queen Tika and her Empire... Now imagine that as a big, yellow-lettered crawl. ..Still no good? ..Meh!
"The Phantom Empire, Chapter 11: Queen in Chains" When the Kids agreed to help out with the riffing of the second-to-last chapter of a classic Gene Autry serial, they thought they knew what they were in for. Oh, sure, people tried to warn them. They tried to tell them that this was no ordinary singin'-cowboy western. But would the Kids listen? Nooo.... The potent combination of Gene Autry, giant robots, and a city beneath the surface of the Earth soon overtook the kids, and they found themselves gaping in awe at the majesty and grandeur of a cardboard vision of a world not their own. It wouldn't be long before they were all ready to declare Chapter 11 (a joke Charles made us promise not to use in this short). "Queen in Chains" presents explosions! Fisticuffs! And jaw-droppingly bad costuming choices galore! All lovingly hand-riffed by the Kids on the Streets' stalwart team of Glen, Charles, and Maria. If you find the story a little confusing, well no wonder! It's the penultimate chapter!
The exciting conclusion to the Phantom Empire saga blazes across the screen, and brief portions of it are actually intelligible. Join Gene Autry and his hick pals for one last adventure in the mysterious (and doomed) underground realm of Murania, where everyone dresses just as weird as all get out.
Pop quiz, hotshot. Pacemakers stop working. Birds crash into buildings. Lightning destroys Rome and microwaves toast San Francisco. What's the cause? Answer: the Earth's core has stopped spinning. Doesn't make sense? Well, maybe you need to start thinking less like a scientist and more like a "scientist". It's certainly going to be a bumpy ride, so strap yourselves into your ridiculous tunneling vehicle and get ready for the most fantastic abuse of science in the history of Hollywood!
It isn’t often that a motion picture holds a mirror up to its audience, forcing them to look at and ultimately into themselves and ask an uncompromising question. In the case of Die Hard 2, that question is, “Did I really need the Die Hard Box set when, really, I would’ve been fine with the first film alone?” Those unsatisfied with how hard they died the first time around will answer this question with a resounding “Yes”, as it is those folks who need, nay, DEMAND… to Die Harder. Moonlighting’s Bruce Willis battles terrorists at Christmas once again, all the while winking at the preposterousness of the very movie he’s in with lines like, “Here we go again”, “Story of my life,” and, “What am I, a terrorist magnet?” Continuing our series of films you probably already own, Drawback Productions is proud to admit that we like money, and we know you’re more likely to watch riffs for movies that are sitting on your DVD shelf. Join me, Dru Brock, and my wife, Megan*, as we undergo the world’s most transparent cash grab outside of any movie that starts with the credit “Hasbro Presents”.
The Cold War was a scary time. Locked in an atomic stalemate, the great powers of the world engaged in a precarious game of cat and mouse. The very survival of the human race was in jeopardy. In those times of desperation, the American People called out for a hero. They were given Arch Hall Jr. Yes, the kid from Eegah! No, this is not a fictional alternate history where the Soviet Union conquered the world. Watch as our champion of democracy faces off against offensive ethnic stereotypes, wise-cracking bunnies, and a femme fatale who uses Rohypnol as perfume. Against all odds, our hero saves the day, and rides off into the sunset with a fair maiden...who also uses Rohypnol as perfume.
"When there is crime in society, there is no justice." -Plato That's how I felt when I came upon the comic book movie, Judge Dredd. It's a crime that such a movie has no laugh track... and so... justice must be meted out. The solution? Rifftrax Recyled! Mike, Bill, and Kevin are unwittingly forced to watch the selfrighteousness of Judge Dredd (Stallone) as he attempts to communicate through various grunts and facial expressions. He may and try to convince us differently, but we already know that Stallone is... the LAWL!
You would think that a movie about sending nuclear bombs to the core of the earth in a giant cigar would be little more than two hours of people looking at readouts and calling out numbers. Well you're right, but facts have never held Hollywood back yet, and they didn't start with this turkey! Sure, there's enough calling out of numbers to put a lotto junky into a coma, but there are also dive-bombing pigeons and sentient lightning intent on detonating world icons! Plus, it turns out that the inside of the earth is not dark at all. It actually looks like bulimic angels binged all night on orange Crush, tinsel, and glow sticks then purged! In fact, it's surprising that more people are not blinded when they try to dig a hole. Throw in the illegitimate son of Lady Elaine Fairchilde as a computer hacker and what's not to love? That's right, everything. Never fear, even when Hollywood takes a bevy of great talent and literally throws them in a hole, we are there to turn it into a fun evening. So go ahead, pop in that copy of The Core that you accidentally bought thinking that it was The Score, start up this QuipTrack and laugh your way to the center of the earth and back.
M. Night Shyamalan drives the final nail in the coffin of his reputation for surprise endings by telling a tale with all the twists and turns of a pretzel... not the twisty kind, but the straight kind that doesn't have any twists. The trees and plants of the Northeast US, no doubt still angry over Al Gore's defeat in 2000, have begun intermittently emitting a gas that causes humans to want to kill themselves. (Hey, can you blame them? I mean, even humans have been known to do that from time to time, right?) Anyway, it's up to She (of She and Him) and Marky Mark (minus Hector the booty inspector) to protect a child-sized dress mannequin and get it to the place where the event is not happening. Can these two adults, who are not only in touch with their inner children but have them writing all their dialog, stay a step ahead of flatulent shrubbery and skydiving construction workers all the while pulling their relationship through the toughest crisis it has ever faced? Or, more importantly, can you make it through the movie without trying to drown yourself in your soda or gouge out your eyes with Twizzlers? Fear not. QuipTracks is here to help you through this difficult, uh, phenomenon? Occurrence? Seems like there is some other word I'm looking for here. Oh well.
After escaping a secret mountaintop Rogaine testing facility, Aang (some kid) encases himself in a large underwater ice sphere for one hundred years, successfully shutting up David Blaine once and for all. After being freed by Sokka (the guy that's Jasper in Twilight), a wannabe tiger seal poacher; and Katara (a fan of Jasper in Twilight), his narrator, Aang is discovered to be the missing Avatar, a person that is destined to be onscreen for most of the time. But the evil Prince Zuko has made it his goal to capture the Avatar, although it's not made clear why. After Zuko kidnaps Aang from the Water Nation elderly farm, Sokka and Katara discover that their destiny is to provide exposition to the audience through stilted conversations with various old people. Once reuinited with Aang, the three of them set out to learn and spread the spiritual ways of Shyamalanism, thus fixing the world. NOTE: The Last Airbender should not be confused with the animated series of the same name. Any similarities between the two are strictly coincidental.
Join Team Four Star's Lanipator, Kaiserneko and Takahata101 as they journey through the cinematic abomination that is the American live action adaptation of Dragonball.
Chinese action director John Woo (no doubt cheered on by his own last name) takes on the world of Mission: Impossible with all the great performances of Broken Arrow and all the plausibility of Face/Off (not to mention face removal and off-putting faces...but I digress). The Chimera virus is the most deadly and least contagious virus created by man and it must be stopped by the most acrobatic and least intelligent agent known to man: Ethan Hunt. To succeed he must overcome tedious symbolism, slow-motion photography, flocks of pigeons, and the constant failures and arbitrary limitations of his grudgingly-written-in team of IMF experts. There's also some crap about a smirking china doll and a fist fight at a motocross event. Good thing QuipTracks is here, or this one would sting like pulling a latex mask off your face in one fluid yank*. Bonus! Learn the secret of how to search for a hero. (Are you paying attention, Bonnie Tyler?) *Historical side note: Curiously, during the American Civil War a fluid Yank was a Confederate unit of measure reserved exclusively for measuring donkey urine. Let it never be said that QuipTracks is not educational.
A QuipTrack 65 million years in the making, or at least it seemed that way to us. It really only took us five. It's Jurassic Park: the Fifth Anniversary, Final, Ultimate, Third-Time's-the-Charm, Absolutely-the-Very-Last-One Edition! Don'cha just hate technology? When it's not burning your toast or pocket-dialing your ex, it's re-animating dinosaurs at the whims of an eccentric old entrepreneur. I can't wait for somebody to invent the time machine so I can go back and punch the inventor of technology in the gonads. Anyway, it's because of the afore-mentioned entrepreneur that noted bone-brusher-offer Allan Grant finds himself on Isla Nublar participating in a test run of Jurassic Park: a magical place filled with living breathing dinosaurs that children of all ages will never forget--even after years of therapy. Along for the trip is his acquaintance and girlfriend Ellie Sattler, who apparently never says no to a couple of bottles of wine; the startlingly bizarre Ian Malcolm, who wouldn't even take a lungful of oxygen without first checking with Mother Nature; a little boy who loathes Grant's book almost as much as everybody loathes him; a wannabe computer hacker; and a lawyer whose life is cut almost as short as his leg wear. Well, the most ridiculous and crappy plans of carnivores and men often go awry, and when somebody neglects to hold onto their butt, Grant and Co. are put in jeopardy, not only from gargantuan lizards but also from the movie's crew itself! Continuity and location shift relentlessly as our heroes struggle to survive from one inconsistent shot to the next! Will they foil Spielberg and survive to collect their paychecks? It doesn't really matter what happens because with our QuipTrack you'll be ROFLing through the whole movie like a parasalolophus!
When Rose DaSilva brings her creepy, sleepwalking daughter to the town of Silent Hill for no decent reason, she stumbles into a world of witch-burning, hole-discovering, wall-bleeding, cop-dodging, skin-ripping adventure! Meanwhile, Sean Bean desperately tries to sneak into the movie and be relevant. Join VoidBurger and Bob on this tour of the world's worst vacation destination: Silent Hill.
It's HORROR-ween with Hor-RIFF-ic Productions! Two whole shorts drenched with sarcasm more sticky than any caramel apple. The subject: Halloween Safety! What kind of beggar's night shenanigans are we in for? We're talking: Paranoia Deadly Robots Tainted Candy Racist Princesses Reflective Patches Anamorphic Jack-O-lanterns Track includes BOTH 1977 and 1985 Centron Safety Shorts! Don't be the only one without a razor filled candy bar this All Hallows Eve!
The Incredible Hulk is probably one of the most misunderstood super heroes. The main reason for this being that he rarely speaks in coherent sentences. "Hulk smash!" "Hulk hate puny Banner" and "Betty?" are about all he can manage to belch out most of the time. Personally, I suggest a speech therapist but the Hulk can be pretty stubborn about those things. The Incredible Hulk tries to do what Ang Lee's Hulk failed to do; be a good movie. It stars Edward Norton as Bruce Banner doing his best Keanu Reeves impression, and William Hurt as General Ross doing his best Dick Cheney impression. It also stars Tim Roth as Skeletor... er I mean Emil Blonsky. Along the way other Incredible Hulk comic book characters make subtle, and not so subtle*, appearances. The Incredible Hulk is FireRiffs first submission track, featuring jokes from several writers who submitted their scripts mixed in. It was a lot of fun getting other takes on this movie and I think you'll enjoy what they add to the riff. So sit back, enjoy the riff, and try to avoid any gamma irradiated blood you find lying around. *Dr. Samuel Sterns
Hulk angry. Hulk confused. Hulk want see movie of Hulk, but why so many small pictures? Pictures fly at Hulk like birds. Which one movie? Where is Hulk? Why we watch puny boring humans? What wrong with Jennifer Connely? She in coma? Hulk tired of rocks and moss. Why Ang Lee show Hulk dead wood? Hulk breath smell like dead wood and moss? Ang give Hulk hint? Where!? Is!? Hulk!? Movie say Hulk, Hulk not see Hulk! Oh, there Hulk. Why Hulk in dark? Only show Hulk in dark? Why dogs not red inside? Hulk like red filling, not green smoke! Good. Now Hulk in light. Hulk know now why Hulk in dark. Put dark back on Hulk. Hulk ears not that small. Hulk face not beady-eyed ferret. Hulk not rubber balloon! Hulk angry! Hulk smash! Why movie not smash? Movie not real? But pain real! Pain real! Quiptrack? Hulk play Quiptrak with movie and make movie better? Puny human right. Hulk laugh now. Hulk not smash. Features the voices of Tristan and Tracy.
Who knows what humor lurks in the bowels of the Shadow? OneWallCinema knows, and we've dug up some gold for your ear holes. Strap yourselves down for 100+ minutes of awkward advances, fake noses, uncontrollable laughter, the tiger from The Jungle Book (I think) and that burning question: Just how hairy is Jack Donaghy? Spoiler alert. Quite.
The setting is a bleak future-fifties where there is no robot Fonzie (or even a roomba Potsie) and dress codes require at least a three piece suit for all activites from mowing the lawn to space travel. In this frightening dystopia the one secret to success is in your jeans, er, that should be genes. I must have been thinking of Pornattaca. So any way, this one guy borrows a ladder and apparently forgets to return it, so he has to swim laps with his brother and work at Gattaca, the most prestigious pun-based space-travel organisation the retro-future has to offer, with Quinton McHale. On top of that Mr. Monk makes him wear erector sets on his legs until he can't pee on his own and he has to hire a guy to do it for him. It all leads to this exciting scene where...wait, Pornattaca again. Gattaca just leads up to more swimming. Except that the professional pee man, who's like a cross between Sky Captain and a bicycle, ends up on the wrong end of the George Foreman grill of the future--but that's not as exciting as it sounds. Ok, honestly, we can't really say this one is a turkey. But the pacing is slower than traffic in a Furr's cafeteria parking lot, so we decided to take a shot at it. There is no denying, at any rate, that it's a heck of a lot funnier with a QuipTrack. So download it now! Features Tristan, Tracy, and Cody
What do you remember from your worst birthday? Was it the year you got strep throat and couldn't eat the cake? Was it ruined by the Aunt that everybody hates but still just has to hug you? Did you black out and kill a bunch of people? Exorcise those mad memories with Ronin Fox and Vamperica as they tear open Happy Birthday to Me, the movie that finally answers the question of whether lizard tails can aid memory retrieval. Melissa Sue Anderson stars in this desperate attempt to distance herself from prairie life and make an impact in the world of twist-filled slasher films, with a twist they almost forgot to include until the last day of filming.
"In the violence of the night, where you hear the silent screams... He only knows where he is going to... Like a dream within a dream." In keeping with our Uncut Series tradition, we roasted Laser Mission one night not knowing what we were getting ourselves into. The commentary track is entirely improv and was recorded during our first viewing. Just a random selection from a collection of crap movies in our posession, only later did we find out that this one had already been tackled as an iRiff. In the meantime, as it turns out, the RiffTrax guys themselves have also taken it to task, which means that we've got some pretty healthy competition on this one. Under any other circumstances we might be afraid to release it, but dammit -- we're the FilmRoasters. So here it is. Any similarities between the riffs are either pure coincidence or the consequence of great minds thinking alike (or just making jokes about the painfully obvious). However, as a bonus for you, the viewer, we encountered a pretty severe glitch partway through the video that ultimately wound up lending itself to the funny. We like to think of this as the "Director's Cut Wormhole Edition." Nonetheless, you'll be getting a Laser Mission like you've never missioned a laser before. This VOD is of a higher quality file than what we've released in the past. In addition, we've included printable, hi-resolution DVD box and label artwork! As Satan would say, "Enjoy the film."
Cinester Theater is back again with a brand new member, ready to bring you a brand new iRiff full of brand new jokes about this not-quite-so brand new action comedy about everyone's favorite (really?) abominations of nature. After defeating The Shredder, the Ninja Turtles are living it up in their roommate April O'Neil's apartment, fighting crime and eating pizza while doing a terrible job of concealing the fact that four 200+ lb karate monsters are the building's newest tennants. While April O'Neil battles her HOA over violations of their very strict "no pets" policy, the Shedder climbs out of the garbage and is ready to take his revenge. But when a blast from the past hints at the turtles' secret origins (HINT: they were covered in toxic waste), the Shredder decides to grow some abominations of his own, and soon the fate of the city is at stake as our four brave heroes apply the silent art of ninjitsu as garishly loud as possible. Featuring Vanilla Ice, puppets, and some senseless flailing-around that technically qualifies as martial arts action, "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2" is 80 minutes of family-friendly "fun" that you'd need a ninja kick to the face to be able to enjoy. Fortunately, Shawn, Keith, and Brooks are here to turn the pain into pleasure with a nonstop barrage of jokes, jibes, and jests that will have you laughing harder than a turtle shell. So tighten your bandanas, strap on your sais, and get ready to laugh as Cinester Theater Presents Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2!
Film: Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999) Director: George Lucas Runtime: 500 million minutes (or 136 minutes; hard to say when you're watching it) Genre: Disgraceful Prequel Stars: Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman Rated: PG for Sci-Fi/Action Violence, Mild Gungan Profanity, and Crimes Against a Generation's Collective Childhood. IMDb, Wikipedia, Jake Lloyd: Ten Years After Phantom Menace A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away two men decided to embark upon a great quest: to do fan commentary tracks for all six episodes of Star Wars. We begin with The Phantom Menace, which just happens to be coming back to theaters on February 10, and in price-and-eye-gouging 3D. We here at Gymkommentary do not recommend you pay $18 to see Episode I, but if you have to, see it with us. We'll share your frustration through the interminable discussions of trade routes and taxation, and share your disgust at the slightest mention of Jar Jar Binks. May the Force be with you Gymkommentarians. You will need it.
Whenever a mad scientist creates an army of gigantic metal geese led by a woman in an absurd leather shower cap, the World of Tomorrow® can always count on Sky Captain to save the day...of TOMORROW~! Jude Law makes several of the dumbest faces ever and Gweneth Paltrow is at her smirkiest in this shamelessly asinine CGI-fest.
Admit it, when those first teasers came out we were excited to finally see our favorite cheesey monster done justice. By the nation that botched his name back in 1954... maybe we should have seen this coming. Anyway, we all thought "finally, a godzilla movie without goofy special effects, horrible dialogue, and contrived plot devices!" Weeeeeellllll, maybe the next one. Brought to us becasue no one asked for it by Masters of Disaster Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich, haters of famous American landmarks and apparently movie critics (see mayor of New York in the movie). And let's face it, who doesn't love a movie that makes the american military look worse than a bunch of Storm Troopers? Carrying with it the classic Godzilla film hamfisted environmental message, it also taught us that "size DOES matter" unless of course they're talking about the size of the monster which tends to change quite radically depending on where you're standing. A labor of love (and hate) over a year in the making, brand new riffers James, Jordan, and Josh bring you: A French Monster in New York! No? No one liked that title? Nuts...
Gary and Erin Slasher are back! And this time they are not messing around. It's time they took on one of the biggest movies in the business: Dracula! Can the Slashers make it to the bigtime and knock off one of the industries icons? If so they have many obstacles to face, such as: Non-action! British Emotion! Fang Banging Sycophants! Creepy German Scientists! Unstoppable Boredom and Ennui! Special Guest: BRAD DRACULA! Don't miss the trimphant return of Hor-RIFF-ic Productions as they bleed the bat shaped turkey dry! LOOK INTO MY EYES!!! YOU WILL BUY THE TRACK, SHARE THE WEBSITE, AND RATE IT ALL 5 STARS, BLAH!!!!! Visit the Slashers Evil Lair at www.Hor-RIFF-ic.com.
Star Trek Nemesis: The epic story of a madman with a doomsday device bent on destroying innocent lives, made as a reaction to the disappointment of Star Trek Insurrection (which told the story of a madman with a doomsday device bent on destroying innocent lives) and the last film in the Star Trek franchise before JJ Abrams gave us his incredibly original reboot (involving a madman with a doomsday device bent on destroying innocent lives). Staring Tom “Bane” Hardy, in a role that proves that no one cared who he was before he put on the mask. He plays Shinzon, the evil clone of Jean Luc Picard, who needs to kill Picard to survive, but lets him live every time he gets him alone, then loses interest in order to kill everyone on Earth in order to take revenge on the Federation for the fact that the Romulans exploited his vampire-looking friends the Remans who no one had heard of before this movie. (It's only a spoiler if it makes sense.) There's also another Data-like android, that is used for evil. You may think this is horribly unoriginal considering the numerous episodes of the TV series featuring Data's brother Lore, but you're wrong. This is a totally different thing, because this android is an idiot. See? Original! Join Ronin Fox and Vamperica as the Next Generation boldly goes to the point of no return, leaving Gene Roddenberry's legacy in the capable hands of Scott Bakula. What could possibly go wrong? Written and Performed by James and Erica Cruise. Additional writing by Shane Tourtellotte of P.S. Productions.
Once upon a time, a young Austrian man came to our shores, looking to become the most powerful man in the world. And one day, he realized that dream, starring in the worldwide phenomenon, Hercules Goes Bananas. But soon, his star fell, and he was forced to star in low-grade, low-budget films like Predator, Commando, and, of course, Conan the Barbarian. Conan tells the tale of what happened to a small boy whose village was destroyed when James Earl Jones stopped by (though when you are in charge of the Death Star, you tend to leave paths of destruction wherever you go). The young boy gets strapped to a wheel he is forced to push for many years, which gives you a body that months and months at L.A. Fitness seems incapable of delivering (never mind he never eats in all this time). After many years of pit fighting and tawdry love affairs, Conan stumbles across a snake-worshipping cult, only to find by pure coincidence that Jones, now called Thulsa Doom, is in charge of it. With his friend Subotai (not to be confused with Sukhothai, who make the world's greatest PP6 with Beef hands down) and 'girlfriend' Valeria, he plots his revenge on the maniacal wizard. But with a voice that smooth, can Doom ever be stopped? Though normally a loner, The One Man Band teams up somewhat reluctantly with k1 and k2 at OneWallCinema. But the reluctance isn't to last, as not only do the Conan impressions come out fast and furious, but all ends well with a rousing musical number. If you're not in tears by the end...well, then, you're just a jerk. Or have no tear ducts. In which case, we're sorry we thought you were a jerk.
If a princess were to visit the United States, one would expect her to be flanked by several armed gaurds sworn to defend her with their lives right? Well one would be wrong apparently. In chapter 1 of The Return of Chandu, the princess Nadji of Egypt has come for a visit to Bel Air, California with absolutely no protection whatsoever. Of course this makes her easy pickings for the evil Clan of Ubasti. They have decided to kidnap her and make her a human sacrifice to ressurect the queen of a long lost continent where black magic was born. So who will protect the princess from these evil men? Why a magician of course! What do you mean that sounds stupid? I'll have you know magicians make excellent body guards. Try to get past them and they'll swiftly best you by pulling a quarter from your ear! Yes the magician Chandu will come to her rescue from these evil people... somehow.
As Benjamin Franklin so eloquently observed, after three days, fish and houseguests begin to stink. Of course, when your houseguest is an expatriate Egyptian Princess, and her unconscious body is swapped with the mummified corpse you keep in the living room, she'll probably start to stink even earlier, and, quite frankly, you only have yourself to blame. Frank Chandler, AKA Chandu the Magician, AKA The American Born in China Who Talks Like Dracula for Some Reason, races against time to rescue the Princess Nadji from the kidnappers who would sacrifice her to an ancient deity. Will the Princess be found in time? Can Chandu save the day? Will the cult of Ubasti get their ceremonial robes from Etsy by the end of the week? Find out in Chapter 2 of the Return of Chandu!
Thrill, as Bela Lugosi (in a rare non-vampiric role (fine, there’s Der Fluch der Menschheit, but nobody’s counting that)) wears a jaunty sailor cap and... well.. mopes a bunch and befuddles some adorable kitten henchmen. Wonder along with Team Swizzlebeef how an American guy raised in China somehow has a slavic accent! Cringe in horror as Bela drives with his... we’ll just leave it at “drives”.
Journey with us once again to exotic and mysterious lands filled with warbly music and jumpy, monochromatic characters. Yes, it's the Return of Chandu with BELA LUGOSI! Thrill to the mystery and suspense: How many times in a single episode can Princess Nadji of Egypt be abducted and imperiled under the watchful eye of CHANDU, the Magician?! Will this be the episode to break all previous records? RALPH AND RICK bring you the nonoultimate* episode of this fabulous movie serial, currently being riffed episode-by-episode by an elite group of Rifftrax' best iRiffers! Of those who signed up.
You will be unable to see anything clearly. You will be unable to hear anything clearly. You will have no idea what is going on. This movie may be 80 years old, but it will leave YOU feeling 80 years old. This is the Return of Chandu! If you aren’t familiar with any of Chandu’s previous adventures, then congratulations on not having died of old age, which any fan of this crap has already done many years ago. Bela Lugosi supports his drug habit by playing Frank Chandler, AKA Chandu, who can do magic stuff that can all be easily achieved in camera. Chandu is dating an Egyptian princess who an evil cult wants to oh my God, I can’t even be bothered to finish typing this! Drawback Productions (Dru Brock and his more-than-patient wife, Megan) will be tackling the fifth chapter in this cinematic packing peanut that was meant only to take up space before the real movie started. If you haven’t seen chapters 1 through 4, then you’re in luck, because nothing of consequence happened. Nothing really happens in this one either, so your luck has run out. Sorry about the brevity of your lucky streak.
By now, audiences are thrilled and excited for the next installment of "The Return of Chandu!" And by "thrilled" we mean "driving to Target in the rain." And by "excited" we mean...well...."driving to Target in the rain." Here comes Chapter 6: Chandu's False Step! We'd like to argue that "Chandu's False Step" should actually have been Chapter 1 for starting this entire serial in the first place...but we digress... Chandu is trying to rescue Princess Naughty (again) and hilarity ensues! Yes. Join the gang from Rabbit Ears as we watch Bela Lugosi*, Peter Tork, Tom Wilson, Ralph Macchio and Lindsey Lohan in this classic masterpiece.** * - Actually appears in film. ** - Blatant lie.
Usually Johnny's ghost roomies won't let the poor guy have a good night's sleep. This week, though, he turns the tables, as he awakens the three phantom ladies for an emergency viewing (?) of a chapter of 1934's RETURN OF CHANDU, starring Bela Lugosi. Follow Lugosi's adventures as Chandu, a 1930's action hero only slightly more physically capable than Stephen Hawking, in his attempts to solve the mystery of the island of Lemuria. Watch Chandu's advanced investigative techniques, such as running away from temples, bumping his head, and falling through trap doors. Ask yourself why the producers didn't just hire Karloff.
As riffers(and riff watchers), we pride ourselves on our ability to watch and oftentimes enjoy hackneyed plots, bad dubbing, cheap special effects and rock-stupid dialogue. However, most of us have one weakness: padding. And if you thought the previous chapters of the Chandu saga had it, you ain't seen nothing yet. I actually did the math, and this chapter- without all the padding- would be roughly three minutes shorter. That's three minutes that could have been spent on character progression, a half-decent fight scene or even a schmaltzy speech by Lugosi that we would only halfway understand! When we iRiffers were picking out chapters for this project, I said I wanted this one because eight is my lucky number. Eight can, obviously, now go straight to hell. That said, hold onto your sanity and let's dive into The Return of Chandu, Chapter 8: At Least It's Not #&%@$ Quidditch!
If nothing else, this twelve-part turkey trot demonstrates why you should never leave your travel plans in the hands of a goulash-tongued magician who did his training in the Mystic Orient. In this ninth installment, the loopy intinerary of the Incomprehensible Chandu has left everyone stranded in the back lot of Lemuria. His tiresome family is being shuffled between a tribe of over-dubbed primitives and a cult of poofy-headed cat-fanciers. His lady love is still stuck in the Motel 6 of ancient temples. And Chandu is left to meander through caverns with Tyba, High Priest of the Great Unwashed. Let BEMaven, Learned Mage Of Rage, guide you through a labyrinth filled with sordid crimes against fantasy and fashion. And watch for a cameo appearance by the BeeGees' Barry Gibb as a turbaned guard.
Flashbacks and crushing stones. That's this exciting chapter in a nutshell. Spoilers! Half our latest installment takes place in the last serial to star Bela Lugosi involving Chandu. Only he wasnt Chandu in that one. More like a secondary villain.It will confuse you. As it did I. Fun huh? Then we're treated to Chandu's torture of the Crushing Stone! You won't know whether or not the stone is actually trying to crush Chandu, or is simply tilted menacingly, or is hovering manically, or is busted and needs new bearings. It's a time killer for sure. If you havent gotten the hint that this whole serial is pretty much following this one pattern, please take it now. But we're sure you have.
Just when you thought it was almost over--it isn't. Not by a long shot. In this latest installment of Joseph Conrad's pulitzer prize winning serial from the 1930's--The Return of Chandu--Bela Lugosi stars as Prospero-like magician with a problem in a version of The Tempest so sexy the Taliban had it Cali-banned even in the 90's. Bela--Chandu--has no magic powers to speak of or at least refuses to use them, even when in basic Houdini-like situations even David Blaine could get out of (of course we always hope he won't). The ol' mojo isn't working if you get my drift. He has to be saved by an incestuous kid, he walks away from a sexy DAMSEL IN DISTRESS (perhaps he'd rather be damselled and distressed?), enjoys a little Fifty Shades of Great, joins up with the Joad family (who apparently took a wrong turn on the way to L.A.--Okies!) for a little sushi, gets knocked around a bit, and decides to RUN AWAY! Just your average everyday depression era hero, ladies and gentleman. I hear, in fact, this was written by old Clifford Odets (Barton Finked!) in an effort to bring socialist and anti-colonist ideas to poor sobbing Our Gang types who flocked to these serials in the 30's while their parents were out havin' a night of honky tonk drinkin'. Imagine the ride home. Mom and Dad drunk swerving down an unpaved Nebraskan dust-bowled road, cursing that the days of easy divorce are still decades ahead, kids in the back trying to make sense of what they just saw--in Chandu of course. And then, while the kids are discussing the merits of a post-agrarian, multi-racial island with a wall high enough to keep the Republicans out (Odets, you're the man!) the car swerves into.....well, you get the picture. It's another nightmare Chandu episode complete with bone-crunching jump cuts, a dismal soundtrack (don't blame Sinsurround if you can't hear the actors whining), offensive stereotypes, a guest appearence by Miley Cyrus and Amanda Seyfried, and a number of dual nationals arguing their
It's here! All the questions will be answered! All the answers will be questioned! Will Chandu succeed in rescuing the princess before she is sacrificed to the Lemurian god Ubasti (who looks like Mrs. Thompson's 3rd grade class entry to the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade)? Will the evil headquarters explode for no apparent reason? Will Bela Lugosi realize this is his one shot at playing a good guy? Does anyone else agree the guy in the hat is way better at his job than everyone else who has shown up in this whole serial? The ending turned out to be far too much for one man to handle alone, and so the One Man Band and one of the guys from OneWallCinema teamed up to take one of the most silly and one note serials ever to grace the silver screen (Was that enough ones? Here's a few more...one one one one one). Watch along and learn: - The terrifying origins of "SLEEP!" - Things such as character location and geographical connectivity mean nothing where Chandu is concerned! - That we have no shame when it comes to shouting "BLUH!" - Why there are a lot of cat cults, but not many dog cults! Well, even if nobody actually learns anything, at least this thing is over. Now you can go back to watching real stuff on TV, like normal people. NOTE: Contains some mild language and rude humor, most of which is far less offensive than the portrayal of "savages" in this 1930s serial.
Since Arthur Conan Doyle, man has wondered about the existence of still-surviving dinosaurs. Especially man with little science education. Well, this story is about four such men and one such woman. Share in their incompetent story as they fight dinosaurs, giant sloths and their own ineptitude (and sobriety) to outwit their pea brained adversaries! A rare early color film! I'm joined on this riff by Mr B Natural. Make sure to check out his other iriffs including our joint iriffs!
Long, long ago in a far away land film producers were left with an unenviable task. The twin Gods of Supply and Demand had left them with 14 Italian Sword-and-Sandal movies that still had the potential for profit but did not warrant full theatrical releases in the New World, America. After consulting with the Oracle it was decided that television shall play the bard and deliver onto the people these tales of heroism. Trouble was no one in America knew who the hell Maciste was and it was Hercules they wanted to see. So it came to pass that the assortment of films featuring various heroes with no connection to each other were placed under the “Sons of Hercules” brand and released to American TV.
Get ready to move Ryan Reynolds to second place in your most hated superhero roles! Well, technically Superargo is not so much a superhero as he is a lousy costumed private detective. He sort of has superpowers - if poor handling of a sports car, shunting off work to his sidekick, and gazing longingly into the eyese of women (and men - seriously) are considered superpowers. Superargo's death count by the end of the film has to number into the double digits, and we're not talking about the bad guys. It says a lot about a police force too incompetent to handle an investigation that they have to bring in a lycra besuited professional wrestler-turned-mystic to track down the person behind a series of serious kidnappings. Superargo bumbles his way through a series of incredible coincidences to discover that they are being turned into "robots" with the goal of.. uh, well... I'm not sure. I've seen this movie at least five times and it's still not sure what the end game is here besides turning a bunch of athletic, energetic men into a bunch of lumpy, slow-moving robots to rob banks. This is, incidentally a sequel. The original movie apparently was such success that someone sat and argued that this was a sure-fire money maker based on the success of the first film. That's hard to believe.
Two scientists, two friends, two men decide the fate of the world in this classic Larry Buchanan Sci-Fi feature. The rogue Keith cursed to the fringes of science and academia, ignored and even laughed at by his peers, warns humanity of its hubris only to find his cautions fall upon deaf ears. The hero Kurt, pushing the frontiers of science and human understanding, leaps ever more boldly into unexplored realms. The rogue, desperate to save his race from a world gone mad, allies himself with a most unlikely celestial neighbor. Zontar, born of the fires and poisonous hellscape we call Venus, agrees to aid the rogue Keith in mending our world acknowledging that it was Keith alone who succeeded in contacting him from across the cold reaches of space. With a plan failing, a wife pleading for sanity, and a friend reaching out to him it is too late that the rogue realizes what he has brought to our world and it is up to our hero, Kurt, to lead a one-man resistance against an invading alien entity. Will redemption come? What of humanity's fate? Where the hell is Peter Graves? Watch and see!
In the New England region of England, a lovely student of history decides to spend her vacation investigating a little-known 2,500-square-foot town with a history of witchcraft and low-lying fog. Is there really a mysterious passageway under her hotel room, or was it filled in years ago with plot-filler? How did that hitchhiker vanish from her car, and why can’t she make that odor vanish the same way? Famously pilfered for heavy metal satanic fodder by Iron Maiden, King Diamond and… Rob Zombie(?) this film is one of the handsomest productions to hit the American public domain. Ralph and Rick are joined by riffing-virgin Roxie as they lovingly resent this incredible oddity, meeting the challenge with bad British accents equal to or surpassing the bad American accents found herein.
Goodbye to Garbage. A fairly ridiculous short about "garbage disposers," as my mother calls them. You'll never look at a garbage disposal the same way again. If, y'know, you ever look at one. Not sure why you would, but ... if you do .... anyway. The sample is the full version of this, though one line has been changed for the final release & some audio tweaked. (Runtime 5:55) Who Cares. This short might seem familiar. That's because it's been done before by both Film is Pwn & Movie Masochists. Whoops! Go buy theirs on iRiffs and enjoy them as well, but ESPECIALLY enjoy our take on it. A young unhappy boy is swayed to the dark side by atonal music. It is, like most shorts, just weird. (Runtime 11:01) 220 Blues. An odd little look at the issue of race. We are, of course, completely respectful of this controversial topic. (Runtime 16:37) The ABC of Sexual Education for Trainables. Oh, now, what the hell is this? Seriously, the '70s, what was WRONG with you? So let's explain. "Trainable" is a euphemism that went out of style (for obvious reasons) for mentally handicapped. Yes, that's right, this short is about teaching sex ed to people who make you uncomfortable on the subway. Again, we approach this short with only the most sincere and respectful of intentions. (Runtime 19:48)
Nathan (Taylor Lautner) has always felt like a freak. His neck, an exessive protrusion for a human's, has made him self-concious in his teen years. He's been told he's the Chosen Alpaca reborn, put on Earth to defeat the Invincible Yak upon its return from other-realmly banishment, but that kind of thing's not likely to impress his crush, Karen. She's got the kind of big, buxom eyebrows that Nathan can't resist, and he'd trade his legendary link to the spirit of the Great Alpaca to be able to say "hey" to a girl that wooly. Destiny cares not for Nathan's dreams of mediocrity, however, and he is shaken out of his denial by an undeniably cropped-weird photo of him that he finds in the family archives. A photo cropped that weird can only mean his parents are shams, and the daily smackdowns he gets from his "father" suddenly don't seem like fun bonding moments anymore. His "mother" is also about Nathan's age and pretty hot, and he'd like to expose them as imposters as soon as possible so he can start hitting that right away. But before he can hardly feel her up at all, both fake parents are murdered by the minions of one Nikola Kozslow (codename: The Invincible Yakov) and Nathan soon finds himself freakishly-long-neck-deep in a twisted conspiracy that could go ALL THE WAY TO A GUY! Thankfully, nobody's abducted, but it's still pretty intense. Features: Tristan, Tracy, and Matt
Cinester Theater invites you to join them on a heartwarming journey through American history: the trials, the tribulations, the seafood. Come and watch it all unfold through the eyes of a simple, goodhearted man and the near-endless stream of people who pathologically take advantage of him. Forrest Gump is a bit... different. Not the sharpest knife in the playroom (knives don't go in the playroom, Forrest, we've been through this), Forrest is born into a country in the middle of growing pains of its own. In the hustle and bustle of the great changes sweeping the world, Forrest is carried along on a series of increasingly grand adventures. From China to the White House, from shrimp boat captain to bumper sticker prodigy, Forrest Gump is always there to blink uncomprehendingly at the most pivotal of historic events. And with Shawn, Keith, and Brooks along for the ride, it's a side-splitting comedy saga that you won't ever forget. Grab some snacks, some friends, and a comfy cushion and settle in for this epic tale of love and ping pong as Cinester Theater Presents: Forrest Gump!
They say that we only use 20% of our brains. That being the case, butt-chinned Michael Jennings reasons, it should be fine to let an excitable leprechaun blast at least 80% of one's brain with lasers. And so this is how our hero makes his fortune. By reverse engineering pointless new technologies for rival companies and subsequently allowing Paul Giamatti (that weird guy that always manages to convince you that you don't hate his performance for some reason) to practice his Star Fox skillz on incriminating memory cells, Jennings essentially trades his memory of his dubious business practices for a... PAYCHECK! He's paid in the form of PAYCHECKS, you see. During an attempt to aquire such a check, Michael falls in love with Uma Thurman (reprising her role as run-down prostitute Fantine), who presumably also collects regular PAYCHECKS. Yes, Mike's got it all: a job working for billionaire Jimmy Rethrick, his old pal from Butt Chin U; a tepid relationship that he's guaranteed to forget forever; and of course the promise of that most desirable and titular of checks, the PAYCHECK. But Rethrick's been making a lot of transparently evil faces in scenes without our hero, and the FBI is on Michael's trail for whatever he's been working on. You see, FBI agents also receive PAYCHECKS, but they earn them by CATCHING MICHAEL JENNINGS AT ALL COSTS!!! Features Tristan and Tracy.
There are two kinds of people in the world: people who were shocked, betrayed, and angry about the Star Wars prequels, and people who've seen "Willow". Proving that maybe he's not the legendary story-teller he claims to be, George Lucas brings us the story of Willow, an... elf? A dwarf? Like, is he a magical creature? Or is he just short? Are there just regular short people in this world? Do the rest of the world make all the short people live in adorable little farms in the middle of the woods, or did they choose to live there? And is seriously nobody bothered by how many of these guys George Lucas seems to have on his speed dial? Anyway, to save his village from some vague, unspecified destruction, brave young Willow must go on a generic quest to return a Macguffin baby to a place. Stout of heart but small of step, Willow is joined by idiot swordsman Val Kilmer, as well as Kevin Pollack and some other dude doing a "Two Wild And Crazy Guys" sketch in front of a green-screen for most of the movie. Along the way, they... fight evil, I guess? And get captured a lot. And there's technically a dragon, I think. Cinester Theater invites you to join them for one of the most banal fantasy adventures in the history of film! So strap on your sword and find your magic ring (whoops, wrong franchise) and get ready for "Cinester Theater Presents: Willow"!
Oh the horror! Two straight-laced kids who look like they just stepped out of a 1950's Sears catalog, get just a little too close. And with a little help from cheap booze and their plaid-obsessed friends, they end up speaking the three little words that will spoil any date. No, it is not, "Sorry, I'm broke". But "I have VD". After ignoring problems "down there" or pretending that they do not exist, the narrator then forces them to check into their local neighborhood clinics. There, they are then subjected to humiliating lectures and scorn by not-yet-dead Nazi doctors, know-it-all Urgent Care physicians and in the end, are shamed far beyond anything Kim Kardashian could bear.
In "Health: Your Posture", we learn the story of young Adrelene (quite probably spelled wrong), who is haunted by her anthropomorphic mirror and the voice of a self-esteem-crushing narrator. If that doesn't give you the warm-fuzzies, we don't know what will! If you or a loved one suffer from posture problems, it's probably best you don't watch this short without our helpful commentary; we take no responsibility for the effects caused by viewing un-riffed material.
While most stories about living toys seem content to depict the heartbreaking reality of the gradual loss of childhood wonder while also weaving a touching tale of the of friendship in the face of adversity, one series has long dared to stand apart. Instead of filling us with a nostalgic sense of wistful sympathy, this series has scared us, thrilled us, made us roll our eyes, caused us to blame Jennifer Tilly for ruining all our nice things, been turned off before the 5th one is even halfway over, and then suddenly gotten back to scaring/thrilling us again. That series is, of course, Child's Play. Deranged serial killer Charles Lee Ray is having a bad day. First he's gunned down by police, then he's forced to voodoo-stash his soul in a nearby Good Guy doll, and then he's given to 6 year old Andy as a birthday gift. Rather than taking the obvious opportunity to reform his ways and lead his new best friend on a series of wacky adventures where they thwart bank robberies and get Andy's parents back together, Chucky instead focuses on murdering his way across Chicago in a desperate bid to undo the voodoo that he do, and he's more than happy to let Andy take the blame for it all. But the clock is ticking, and if Chucky doesn't find a way out of the doll, he'll become trapped in it forever. And since there's been like 6 of these movies now, I'm sure you're right on the edge of your seat to see how it all shakes out. Join Shawn, Keith, and Brooks as they take on one of the most iconic horror villains in movie history! With goofy looking animatronics, weird puppets, voodoo spells, and adorable child-sized murder weapons, "Cinester Theater Presents: Child's Play" is a fast-paced festival of freaky fun that you'll never forget! Download it now, before there's a recall on all copies due to the excessive amount of lead-based paint we used to make it.
Throughout the history of mankind, young men have heard the Call of the Sea, beckoning them to travel across the globe and find their fortune. And as long as there have been young men to hear the Call of the Sea, the echoed reply has been: "Are you kidding me?!? Live on some leaky old boat with a bunch of smelly dudes? For, like, practically no money? For months? With no women? Are you high?" And thus, as long as the Call of the Sea has been ignored by young lads who, seriously, could think of probably a thousand other things they'd rather do (because, c'mon, those guys bathe, what, maybe once a month?), ship captains have impressed men into service at sea against their will. Join one such voyage, a journey on a whiskey schooner from New York to the Italian coast, frought with danger and intrigue, murder and deceit, and Bela Lugosi dressed as a one-armed Buster Brown.
Dead people should not be walking around. Dead people should lie down. And stay lying down. Anything else is generally a bad situation. First, you have zombies. They eat people. Living people, who generally do just fine walking around, because they don't eat brains of other walking-around people. Then you have mummies. They're dead, and they walk around. It's also bad, because they kill people. They don't eat the people they kill, but they still kill 'em, and that's just wrong. Finally, you have vampires, who walk around and drink the blood out of living people, making them dead, or vampires, who then drink blood out of other people, making dead people or vampires, who then...well, you can see the downward spiral that's going on here. Vampires, therefore are the worst dead people walking around. If you doubt this, just watch Dead Men Walk. This movie proves that vampirism not only kills people, but is also is the leading cause of George Zucco proliferation. Multiple, yes multiple George Zuccos stalk the living, turning them into.... Well, actually, now that you mention it, they never get around to making more than one vampire. In fact, not much is gotten around to at all. Basically George just stands on opposite sides of a split screen effect and reads from cue cards.
Here's a film that makes Vincent Price's Last Man On Earth look like Citizen Kane.A tax cheating man,his self absorbed wife and his lazy lawyer find themselves to be the last three people on earth. Well actually the last people in Puerto Rico as they never really bother to establish the whole world is dead. Anyway they fight over the last woman while she enjoys the attention. Also in this package deal is Chapter Two of Flash Gordon:Space Soldiers Conquer The Universe. Ming pouts and feels sorry for himself while Flash and his gang go hiking in the mountains.
Megan and Dru riff this 1984 episode of the Michael Landon show about an Earth-bound angel helping people. This was a bonus track included with RiffTrax.s04e723 Drawback Productions - Girls Just Want to Have Fun
A riff on the Twilight Zone ripoff "One Step Beyond" for the episode titled "Epilogue". It's the whole episode, and not just the epilogue, so don't panic..This track was a bonus included with the purchase of Drawback Productions collection of Highway to Heaven riffs
In Episode 3, As Johnny settles into his new living arrangements with three lady ghosts, he receives a rude awakening that leads to the whole gang watching AIR COLLISION, The Asylum's 2012 foray into exciting, big-budget disaster film. Watch as an ultra-modern computer (looking like a Commodore 64) accidentally sets Air Force One on a doomsday course with an airliner filled with passengers, one or two of whom you actually might not want to die. Watch high-profile Hollywood cast, led by that one guy who used to act with Urkel on FAMILY MATTERS. You will scratch your head with confusion at the fact that every satellite in Earth orbit seems to be permanently parked above the city of Cleveland. And you will be on the edge of your seat in anticipation, wondering if you'll actually get to see the President of the United States slamming into something this time, or if it will just remain a rumor, as it mainly did during the Clinton administration.
Ice on Mars sends up this educational Encyclopedia Britannica short from 1956. This short was bundled with the Ice on Mars riff of The Karate Kid.
Every sports scandal brings with it a loss of innocence. From the Black Sox scandal of the 1919 World Series, to the performance enhancing drug controversies of the modern age, none matches the spectacle of the Great Fountain Pen Debacle of 1954. Relive this dark chapter in High School athletics, as we go behind the scenes, into the locker room, then to the coach's office, then back to the locker room, then to the soda shop, then back to the locker room...alright, they got their money's worth out of the locker room set, but the point is, a potential theft is witnessed. The young teammates resolve to spend countless hours getting to the bottom of the controversy. They could have figured it out in five minutes if they just asked a couple of simple questions, but they were that committed.
A Vintage Emergency School Bus Safety video from 1976 with Rob Reiner look alike.
Vicky has been pretending to have a boyfriend to compete with a girlfriend for sometime. Now, she is forced to choose one of the guys to pretend to be her boyfriend for a double date. However, when Wyatt innocently comes over to watch a Sherlock Holmes movie, he gets mistaken for the boyfriend and forces her hand. In addition to Riffing "Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon," the gang also take on the classic short "The Medical Aspects of Nuclear Radiation."
and to think I thought this riff was going to be about heave.... eden of the east is a weird mashup of conspiracy and anime that will leave you craving more but not without my Iriff. lets just put it this way. first episode. main character. naked. white house. gun and cell phone... if those words aren't enough to al least make you check out the anime.you must be deaed inside.
Well again I find myself dispatched from this life doing an I rif of yu yu hakusho and boy is this a trip down nastalga lane. yu yu hakkusho was one of the shows I watched on toonami durintg the ninties and all I know is. 1. it stared a dead man in the first episode. 2. this shoould of made me cry as a kid. besifes that this anime was one of the many that kept me formn doing my home work every afternoon and so holds a special place inmy slakler heart. pelease enjoy.
Fire Roasted Films make their movie roasting debut by slamming one of the all-time worst movies in cinematic history! This is a recording of the live show performed at the Screenland Armour in North Kansas City, MO on January 18th, 2013. This track is set to begin right at the beginning of the movie... there have been sync lines added throughout in case you lose your place. There was also a drinking game played with this that you can feel free to participate in: Every time there is a freeze or ice pun, drink your drink!
A few years after the movie, guest riffer Spongebob himself along with Patrick, Plankton and host Ti Rich comment and reminisce on the movie that broke new ground and pushed the boundaries in backside joke animation and in many opinions gutted the franchise of it's charm for years to come. Now it's Riffing but even better, featuring a small round guy, a pink chubbie dude and a squishy square man child.......OK, well then not so different . We welcome our guests courtesy of The Impersonator Ti Rich. Thanks, God bless and have fun. (No explicit jokes beyond the movies rating) ; )
Is it worth your life? Let's take a look at it shall we. First off how does one determine worth? You take it to the Pawn Stars of course. If you did they'd probably say they're not sure exactly how much your life is worth. However they do know a guy they can call who knows a lot about lives and can tell us a little more about yours. They call an expert from a life insurance company who values your life at $100,000. So Rick says, "How much will you take for it?" You say, "How about $95,000?" Rick says, "We are far apart I was thinking more like $55,000." You say, "can you give me $85,000?" Rick says, "You gotta remember lives aren't as valuable as they used to be. You also have to consider my cost to store and frame your life. Then I have to find the right buyer which may take years. I can't go any higher than $60,000." Right then you decide to just hold on to your life. So the answer is no it is not worth your life. That being said enjoy this short about late night robbery prevention and safety.
There are thousands of amazing, entertaining movies available that you could watch again and again. I highly recommend watching as many of those as you can get your soylent little hands on, 'cause Soylent Green isn't one of them. Based on an entire line of food that never made it to your local farmer's market (thankfully), and the place Green Day got it's name from (not really, but it sounded good), it's got all the action, suspense, romance, and character development of a whole-wheat cracker. It's a movie that teaches you about the importance of saving our planet; something you probably already learned from Al Gore. Less importantly, it's a movie that teaches you how to eat, and that's not even the worst part. The worst part is the 90+ minutes of your life you'll waste watching this film, when, chances are, you already know the outcome because some moron(s) spoiled it for you. You can't get that time back. And assuming you can make it through the film (you know what they say about the word assume), there's a good chance someone will have to call 9-1-1 when you pass out on the floor from boredom, thus the reason for this full-length commentary. It just takes some of the edge off. You'll still probably faint from boredom, but there's a better chance someone won't mistake you for dead and send you to the waste disposal plant. Meanwhile, you'll be laying there with a smile on your face dreaming of tulips, deer, mountain streams, and other nature scenes. However, if you hear the music of Tchaikovsky or Beethoven while you're laying there on the floor, I recommend therapy when you come to.
I'm not sure what this series is about. I only seen the first eposdpde and thought to myself. "this so hads to be riff-ed. the episide was just asking for it.
The Sonic Screwballs (Andrew, Josh, and Ryan) take on the easily forgettable 3rd Season Doctor Who episode: "Daleks in Manhattan." There are pigmen, a spider-man, and everyone's favorite Captain from Naboo! We go from the top of the Empire State Building to the bottom of the New York's dungeony sewers in our quest to make you laugh through this hard-to-bear episode. So get the episode pulled-up on Netflix (paused at very beginning), press play on our audio track, and wait until the signal to start the video. It's just like we're right there with you! (No word on if that's a good thing or not). Extra Syncing Note: If you are not watching on Netflix, you'll need to sync with the first scene-cut chime. Here's how: 1.) Start the video. Pause the video when the scene cuts from the billboard with "New York Review" to the girls walking down the hallway. 2.) Start our audio track. Ignore the "press play" countdown. Instead, press play on the video when you hear the first scene4-cut chime. (It will be after Andy says "New York Review? I like the Old one better." 3.) Watch, listen, and enjoy!
About this episode: In this episode, the guys forget to pay their cable bill on Halloween, but do their best to impress their neighbor Vicky by installing rabbit ears on their set to get the local UHF station. However, they aren't prepared for the horror which is the 1945 thriller "And Then There Were None" by Agatha Christie. About the show: Not paying your cable bill has it's drawbacks. Join a bunch of college dropouts as they sit in their basement and have nothing to watch but "Channel 62," the local UHF station. These guys can't hold a job, but they can riff movies with the best of them!
Messiah of Evil is the kind of movie that results when ambition outweighs competency, when Hitchcockian suspense gets haphazardly gorilla-glued to a Night of the Living Dead-esque premise, and there is not enough money left in the film’s budget to shoot the intended climactic scenes because it had all been squandered on cans of red and blue paint, enough eerie pop art drawings to cover the walls of an entire house and a full 3 weeks of ocean footage. The film follows Arletty, played by Mariana Hill, whose bland expressions give Kristen Stewart a run for her money. Her character goes to visit her painter father, whose recent letters have been filled with bizarre ramblings, in Point Dune. And in a search that lasts all of five minutes, she visits the town’s art gallery and meets up with a group of hotel-dwelling strangers led by the perpetual white suit-wearing Thom. After this initial effort, Arletty goes to the beach house where her father was staying and tries her best to find him by sitting in his chair, sleeping in his suspended plywood bed and occasionally flipping on all the lights in the house. She puts so much energy into staying in one small cubic area that she doesn’t even notice the strange rituals going on outside of the house. Meanwhile, the citizens of Point Dune are all being turned into cannibal cultists, or zombies. We’re not really sure as this part of the plot is never actually specified. What follows is a series of scenes that combine all the excitement of looking for somebody with the comfort of lounging around in the house all day, finally culminating in a whole lot of slow-burning suspense that leads to nowhere and offers no payoff whatsoever.
MORTAL KOMBAT!!! . . . There, now that that's out of the way. Mortal Kombat, It was a hit in the 90's, unfortunately it's S#*t in 2013. Come with me won't you as we go back and "enjoy" the "classic" that drug the name of a beloved video game series through the mud, and broke the hearts of anyone who cared enough to watch. Sit back. Relax and Prepare to laugh away your 5$ bargain bin purchase regrets with. . . MORTAL KOMBAT ! . . .sorry did it again.
This is a riff on the 1947 social guidance film, Are You Popular.
Princess Jellyfish is either about a otaku obsessed with jellyfish or a drag queens love story. Heck we'll say it's about both and leave the rest of the explaining up to a qualified fan girl, but it's one of those series that breaks the standard relationship mold and there is no shame in that. This anime has been rated as weird for many reasons outside the fact it's almost a normal reverse ouron host club.
In his first full length riff, Dave Chadwick (aka Sugar Ray Dodge) takes on the 1966 film "Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter."
After being absent from school, Lizzie finds out that her project partner is none other than Kate Sanders, who was also absent on the same day. After their initial hostility, they both start getting along together. But after the project is over, they both take potshots at each other but not before sharing a secret smile and realizing that they still have a bond between them. Meanwhile, Matt is convinced that he has psychic powers and has a hard time convincing his mother about it....wait a second...that's not the plot to this AT ALL, but a synopsis to an episode of Lizzie McGuire. Our bad. Due to a freak science experiment, Dan has apparently been cloned, but none of the gang believes him. They are too busy watching the classic "Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla," while Duffy desperately tries to fix the cable. A wannabe Martin & Lewis act teams up with Dracula himself in this completely incoherant tale of love, mad scientists, and of course...gorillas! Or, as Bela would say: "Bluh!"
The American Medical Association has declared obesity to be a disease. Sadly, the AMA has never got around to saying that 1960s camp comedies are a pestilence. On a remote, deserted island, yards and yards from civilization, the long tentacles of corporate espionage have entangled a group of treasure hunting teenagers. Yes, the carefree youth of the day was caught in the crossfire of the competing factions of the cosmetics industry, searching every corner of Florida for the Fountain of Youth. Will the adolescents survive? Will the secret of ageless immortality be found? Is that Phyllis Diller? And Jayne Mansfield? Yeesh, they weren't exactly making Around the World in 80 Days, were they?
From a kinder, gentler time when everybody wore their underpants outside of their clothes comes Max Fleischer's Superman! This cartoon short has everything you expect from a modern Superman, minus Daddy issues, the deaths of thousands of innocent bystanders, and a hero who can't figure his way out of just killing the bad guy. Other than that, nothing has changed! Thrill as mild-mannered (and suspiciously bulky) Clark Kent saves intrepid reporter Lois Lane from the clutches of a mad scientist and his pet bird (on loan from a particularly annoying Heckle and Jeckle cartoon). That's right, it's Superman vs. Avian action, the way you demanded it! This short, the first of the famous Max Fleischer Superman cartoons, may be free of the casual racism of later shorts, but it makes up for it with a stunning lack of stakes, a predictable outcome, and a scene where a bird walks down a flight of stairs. Yes, this is what passed for action in 1941! Join Alan and Rob from Oh, the Humanity! as they take on the most public domainiest of Superman epics in search of truthiness, justicity, and other phrases that will keep the lawyers as far aways as possible.
When Jeff and Duffy go to Las Vegas for a Basketball tournament, Dan is left home alone. Out of boredom, he invents the "Channel 62 App" so they can all watch the film "The Basketball Fix" together on their mobile devices. The Basketball Fix has surprisingly little to do with Basketball, and more to do with college romance and illegal gambling. Add a coach who never stops eating, the most boring narrator in the world, and a slaughtered girl scout troupe, and you have the makings of a "classic." Vicky and Wyatt also stop by to play an epic game of Monopoly and watch the short film "Measure of a Man," which tells us that underage drinking is actually a bad thing (go figure?). It also features the most incompetant police officer in the history of film (and yes--we are including Don Knotts in that statement). So dig that old college sweater out of the moldy box it's been sitting in, hope it still fits, and cheer for Johnny Long* and the rest of "state" as they play for the championship!
Director Michael Bay goes in a delightful new direction with The Rock, in which Nicolas Cage and Sean Connery lend their voices to a herd of seals traveling to San Francisco to meet Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. No, just kidding, it's a cookie-cutter action flick, but that doesn't make it any less of a barrel of laughs. Nicolas Cage plays the FBI's most annoying scientist. Sean Connery plays a sexagenarian James Bond. (Pun intended. Rrrawr). The two have forty hours to infiltrate Alcatraz Island and stop Ed Harris, who plans on killing a bunch of people unless they all watch Pollock and like it. Starring guns and explosions, the Criterion Collection bestows The Rock with the honorable title, "a movie." No one is quite sure what it's a criterion of exactly, but it probably has something to do with military aircraft and sunsets.
In chapter two of this Green Hornet serial, our heroes continue to play dress up. When not doing that they try to rob some mobster's safe and somehow a police officer gets killed. Anyway the title for this chapter is The Thundering Terror. However no thunder ever appears and the only terror is the sorry quality of this film. Enjoy! Contains music by Kevin Macleod. Warning! Due to an extreme lack of talent bathroom humor is deployed throughout the film.
In chapter one of this movie serial Batman and Robin fight against The Wizard who likes to dress up in a mask and cape too. Warning: Due to an extreme lack of talent bathroom humor is deployed through out the film.
Batman and Robin play with planes and trains while The Wizard tries to steal some diamonds. Warning: Due to an extreme lack of talent bathroom humor is deployed through out the film.
Batman and Robin continue to battle the Wizard as he robs a train and kidnaps some scientist. Meanwhile Vicki Vale and Bruce Wayne discuss closets and how to come out of them. Warning: Due to an extreme lack of talent bathroom humor is deployed through out the film.
In chapter four Batman climbs a mountain. Robin plays hide and seek and the Wizard entertains his hostage with the wonders of hypnotism. Warning: Due to an extreme lack of talent bathroom humor is deployed through out the film.
In Chapter Five Robin Rescues Batman--Batman collapses after electrocuting his ass and then Robin wakes him up. So the term "rescue" is greatly exaggerated here. Meanwhile Vicki Vale gets into trouble the with seedy world of photography. Contains music by Kevin MacLeod. Warning: Due to an extreme lack of talent bathroom humor is deployed throughout the film.
After swimming with Vicki Vale Batman decides to play dress up as a gangster. Meanwhile Robin gets captured again so Batman shoots him. And the Wizard? Well he discovers that good help is hard to find. Warning: Due to an extreme lack of talent bathroom humor is deployed throughout the film.
In Episode 4, Johnny and the ghosts think they’ve gotten a break when Death assigns them an actual classic Hammer Studios horror film to watch. The catch?: The “classic” in question is COUNT DRACULA AND HIS VAMPIRE BRIDES, the last of Hammer’s Dracula films... possibly last for good reasons. Enjoy a little Peter Cushing, a little Christopher Lee, and a little bit of Satanism... okay, a lot of Satanism... actually, a little bit of Satanism that is then shown OVER AND OVER, because when you have Cushing and Lee in your cast, you need to cut the budget somewhere. It’s the vamp flick so nice they named it twice, COUNT DRACULA AND HIS VAMPIRE BRIDES (you see, it was originally named THE SATANIC RITES OF DRACULA, before it slipped into public domain limbo).
Here's the movie that inspired Night Of The Living Dead--The Last Man On Earth! Vincent Price stars as the only uninfected man from a plague that has turned humanity into a race of undead vampires. Well they don't drink blood --they don't turn into bats--sunlight bothers them but doesn't kill them and they have reflections but they don't like looking at them--but they do come back from the dead so there's that. Anyway despite being slow clumsy and mostly harmless Price finds them annoying enough to kill them. After a day of killing he goes home gets drunk while watching home movies and crying himself asleep to jazz records. Also as a bonus to this deal you get Chapter One of Flash Gordon: Space Soldiers Conquer The Universe! Flash tries to stop Ming's spaceships from pissing all over the earth. At the beginning of this film there is a brief trailer for my riff on Green Hornet Chapter Two. This film includes music by Kevin MacLeod.
You can't flush a rug. Intuitive? Perhaps, but the protagonist of our story, a 1950s hausfrau on the cusp of joining the landed gentry, finds herself with funds sufficient for either plumbing of the highest quality, or carpet from wall to wall. While initially tempted by the allure of fine, woven floor covering, the wise words of a sage pipefitter remove the StainMaster scales from her eyes. She chooses cast iron pipes of the highest quality, her deep pile dreams deferred for another day. NOTE: The explicit warnings are due to some double entendre's that might be awkward to explain to kids. Otherwise, it's nothing worse that could be shown on broadcast TV.
A mysterious robot arrives at the apartment, and the gang attempt to get to it's origin while watching "Zontar: The Thing from Venus." Although a captivating movie from 1966 about alien invaders, the gang are constantly distracted by a new roommate, Prospector Pete, who has decided to move in. And speaking of "captivating," Duffy has been abducted by terrorists. With it's profound plot rip off of "It Conquered the World," Zontar the Thing from Venus tells the tale of two scientists and how their life choices lead them to---oh forget it. There's some weird bat creature that resembles Count Chocula living in a cave and we were just happy that it was in color.
n this wonderful short made by the US Government during World War II, we learn (in great detail) just how to harvest marijuana, and all it's many uses. Don't forget you need a marijuana grower's license before you get started though! Be sure to apply today! We would say more about this short, but after putting the lessons learned to good use, we honestly don't remember much about it. HEMP!
Episode 5: Johnny prepares to answer the knock at the front door, ready to face the consequences of his ghost roomies shattering the living room window of their fifth-story apartment (again) and potentially hurling deadly shards of glass onto passersby. He slips into a flashback of Halloween. On Halloween, Johnny had watched the 1961 Larry Buchanan opus THE NAKED WITCH. That’s right, Johnny voluntarily viewed an early work by the director of ATTACK OF THE EYE CREATURES. His pain is your gain, though, because he and roommate Babs stripped THE NAKED WITCH bare with their cutting riffs. If that wasn’t enough, the two of them also present the short subjects SATAN IN PRISON and NIGHTMARE AT ELM MANOR. It’s an embarrassment of riches! A word of warning: Although there isn’t a lot of naked in THE NAKED WITCH, this feature does include a fair amount of nudity, mostly in the ELM MANOR companion short. Therefore, this episode is recommended for mature viewers only.
After watching a short film entitled "How to Keep a Job," the gang decides to embark on job interviews. Meanwhile, Dan convinces everyone to dress as Holmesian characters for the main feature film "The Woman in Green," which Vicky points out is a black and white film that never mentions what color anyone is wearing.
School Rules! Or does it? In this short, we explore the ins and outs of school rules, as well as horrible fashion sense and inner elementary school corruption.
Starring the entire cast and crew of Rabbit Ears, this Holiday Special shows the importance of using Zip Codes, and how they make life better for everyone.
What is coffee? Is it made from tomatoes? Is it phlem made from an alien caught in a time vortex? Perhaps it's just pure happyness? We just don't know. When the local teenagers decide to rob the apartment, they get more then they bargained for. Channel 62 is treating them with an educational short about how to make coffee. Enough said. Coffee.
Do you recall playing with toy cars as a child, staging your own little car chases in which the vehicles would fly off of tables and bounce off of walls? Now imagine that your stubby little hands have been removed from the picture and the little cars are full-sized, yet they still continue to perform acts of such absurd vehicular derring-do that it feels as if a child made it up. Well stop imagining because that’s pretty much what you get with Fast Five, AKA Fast and Furious 5, AKA F5, AKA Refresh Web Page. Tenacious as a cockroach, the F&F series has survived the loss and reacquisition of its hairless star, numerous rappers-turned-actors, and a little piece of fan fiction-turned-actual-movie called Tokyo Drift to become an unlikely box office BRO-hemoth. With no articles or coordinating conjunctions to slow them down, the filmmakers finally found the perfect balance of unnecessary breather scenes, obligatory drag races and a consistent distaste for the physics of planet earth. Drawback Productions (Dru Brock and his wife--the O’Conner to his Toretto--Megan) watch Vin “Pause to Seem Cool” Diesel, Duane “My father was ‘Mr. Rock’, just call me ‘The’” Johnson, and the rest of the rag-tag group of gentlemen bandits as they lay waste to countless innocent bystanders. Admire the automotive carnage as you pity the droves of Affliction-shirt-wearing dum-dums who paid money to see this crap un-ironically, then smugly pat yourself on the back for knowing how dumb this all is while secretly enjoying it anyway.
In Episode 6, the Ghosts and Johnny watch an especially crappy movie, while trying to ignore an annoying paranormal investigator (special guest actor Scott Zee, star riffer from THE TURKEY SHOOT) who is making life at the apartment even weirder than usual. Enjoy the wisecracks from the GHOSTS ON THE BIG BROWN COUCH as they face 1973's CHILDREN SHOULDN'T PLAY WITH DEAD THINGS, a zombie film that is about 10% zombie and 90% cutesy actors. Try not to throw something at the screen as screenwriter Alan Ormsby takes the lead role, one of the most obnoxious characters in movie history! Marvel at the fact that the film's director Bob Clark eventually went on to make highly successful films such as BLACK CHRISTMAS, PORKY'S, and even A CHRISTMAS STORY (weird, huh?).
Comedians Josh Bolotsky and Matthew Filipowicz present Atlas Riffed, a second-by-second running commentary on the notoriously awful film adaptation of Ayn Rand’s objectivist manifesto, Atlas Shrugged: Part One. We’re going to make one of the worst films ever made actually fun to watch - and slowly but surely advance our covert crypto-communist agenda on an unsuspecting public.
You better not pout, You better not cry, You better not shout, I'm telling you why, Santa Claus is coming.... Santa Claus is coming.... OMIGOD! Santa Claus is coming!!!! That face! That...twisted...wooden...the eyes! THE EYES!!!!!!! Run! Scream! Shout! Cry! IT'S COMING! IT WANTS TO EAT YOUR SOUL!!!!!!!!!!
Come along with Team Swizzlebeef and learn about Traffic Safety the way we all did in the 70s - from a seven foot tall furry who is unsure of his species. Wait. You didn’t learn about traffic safety that way? I suppose next you’re going to tell me you didn’t take Sex Ed from a man wearing a duck costume and a ball gag. Kids these days. At any rate, enjoy Team Swizzlebeef’s brief escape from The Panda, and wonder why they let me write these blurbs!
In Chapter Seven of Batman And Robin our heroes suddenly realize it might be a good idea to know who the Wizard really is. Sadly they waste time running up and down the same road and get chased by thugs over and over in the same wilderness.
After finally watching a short film about Minnesota (much to Wyatt's delight) called "Iron Country," the gang attend Vicky's dance class. At the class, several of the students show interest in coming over to the apartment to watch "Teaserama," a 1950's burlesque film starring Betty Page and Tempest Storm. The gang unwittingly agrees, and the nightmare commences. "Teaserama" is quite possibly the most unerotic film in history (this includes Meet the Feebles and Mary Poppins). In between scenes of women "dancing" is some of the strangest, ugliest costumes of all time, we are treated to two "comedians" who seem to think that hats flipped up in the front is funny. But before Teaserama, we head of to the Minnesota State Faire for "Iron Country," which has very little to do with state faires and much more to do with Iron Ore mining.
Dru and Megan riff on this 1985 episode Highway to Heaven that guest starred a twelve year old Paul Walker. This riff was included as a bonus with Drawback Productions riff of Paul Walker's 2011 hit Fast Five.
With the help of the creepiest narrator in the history of film, we take a journey to discover what actually causes accidents, and how to avoid them. Apparently one of the chief causes of accidents is pie. No, seriously, they ACTUALLY include pie in the list of leading causes. What else should you avoid to ensure your own personal safety? You'll have to watch (but not too closely-after all, there could be an accident just waiting to happen).
It is said that a room full of monkeys with typewriters will eventually write the works of Shakespeare. If the Asylum's writing staff is actually following that policy, it will be some time before Shakespeare is in trouble, as Legion of the Dead continues their proud tradition of combining crap with...well, more crap. Professor Swatek (Billy Peltzer, aka Zach Galligan of Gremlins fame) has found an ancient Egyptian tomb in California...no, seriously, that's the plot...and has brought in his students, a former student, and an accent-changing professor from Cairo to help study it. Inside this tomb sit the remains of Aneh-tet, an Egyptian priestess who was banished from her homeland for being, well, power-mad and generally horrible. One Evil Dead set of words later, and bammo! Aneh-tet is awake, roaming the streets nude in search of souls to awaken her army...well, crew of six mummies, anyway...so she may conquer the world. But there to stop her is...um...the former student (who wears shirts too big and shorts too small), her sister Kevyn (yes, she's named Kevyn...no, there is no reason for this), and Bruce Boxleitner as the sheriff, who seems to be the only one concerned about all the death that keeps piling up (and, if one scene is any indication, lives in a garbage dump). Add in some bad cinematography, a nice, heaping helping of "I'm in another dimension" re-shoots, and editing that would make Neveldine/Taylor reach for the Tylenol, and you've got just another day of filmmaking at The Asylum. And that's not necessarily a good thing.
Join TCTT gang as they watch Bloody Pit of Horror, a slab of Italian cheese featuring Mickey "Mr. Universe" Hargitay as Travis the recusive lord of a castle with a dark past. When a publisher and his retinue barge in for a photo shoot, it becomes apparent that Travis is...quirky. His turn-ons include purity & medieval torture, his turn-offs sinfulness and trespassers. Hilarity ensues.
Gamera has invaded Channel 62 and the gang are completely unprepared for the absurdness which is the Japanese classic "Destroy all Planets." Aliens come to Earth and plan to take over the planet. When Gamera intercedes, they decide to use thier mind control ray to take over Gamera's mind and order him to set fire to Tokyo. What does any of this have to do with destroying a planet, let alone all of them? That's a good question. The gang gets so excited that they order pizza from Arizona, which is surprisingly good for being over a day old. Strap in and get set for cheesy rubber suited monsters, and badly dubbed little boys, in this Gamera classic!
Batman and Robin run around a pasture from different angles so it looks larger than it is.The Wizard hangs out in his cave and decides to extort the city for five million dollars. Meanwhile in order to make use of their plane footage Batman and Robin go sky diving.
Terminator 2 is widely regarded as one of the best action movies of all time. It surpasses the original in nearly every way from the story to the special effects to the enormous temporal paradoxes. Skynet has sent another Terminator back in time, this time to kill John Conner. This time it's a snazzy new model made of liquid metal and no, he's not a walking puddle somehow. But with Skynet security being what it is, the resistance found out and future John captured a T-800 (apparently they're pretty easy to get) and reprogrammed it to protect his younger self. So off through the municipal time transport he's sent to save an obnoxious young John Conner with no regard for the integrity of the space-time continuum. Can he learn the value of human life? Can he learn from John how to act like a douchey 90's kid? Can the Terminator save John Conner? Well yeah, of course; the hero always wins in these things. I mean seriously, have you ever gone to see an action movie wondering if the hero was going to succeed or not?
Matt, Kyle, & Joe riff their way through this sexy sci-fi romp about a Federal agent investigating a rash of mysterious deaths involving men dying with their beekeeping boots on, if you know what we mean. There's lots of nudity and laughs to be had for all. PLOT: In the small town of Peckham, California, many men die for excessive effort during sexual intercourse. When a scientist from the Brandt research laboratory is found dead in a motel, the government sends Agent Neil Agar (William Smith) to investigate the mysterious deaths. He suspects that the deaths may be related to some experiments of Dr. Susan Harris (Anitra Ford), who is researching bees in the Brandt facility. (Synopsis written by Claudio Carvalho)
What is Duck and Cover? Have you been hiding under a rock or skipping history class? It's only the film with the latest dance craze, wall slamming. Actually it is the 1951 Civil Defese propagand film that tells you how to leave a lovely corpse silloette when the atomic bomb goes off. Watch the stupidity unfold as from the view of two broke rednecks with a Southern twang. Learn about strange new skills your new extra apendages will grant you after you mutate from radiation. So you might wonder why would I want this. Well it is done by people who just might be the Harold P. Warrens of riffing. we too work on the most minimal budget. We too have poor equipment. And we too might be the worst riffers around. But we are having fun with it. So don't be afraid to take a look.
Advertising through the years has changed with the times. However these are some classic ads for products which you may or may not of heard of with a twist brought to you by Two Broke Rednecks (AKA the Harold P Warrens of riffing) Watch ads which will cause you nightmares with creepy puppets and cheap wine. So you might wonder why would I want this. Well it is done by people who just might be the Harold P. Warrens of riffing. we too work on the most minimal budget. We too have poor equipment. And we too might be the worst riffers around. But we are having fun with it. So don't be afraid to take a look.
When Dan decides to create a bomb in protest of the local grocery bag laws, Sgt. Friday and Officer Gannon are called in. In between interrogations, the gang watch 3 full episodes of Dragnet. The Big Bomb: When a crazy man decides to blow up city hall unless they let his brother out of jail (his brother, after all, has two months left on his sentence), Joe Friday must stop him at all costs...even if it means blowing up the mayor in the process. This episode answers the age old question: Can Friday operate an elevator? The Big Grandma: Joe Friday goes on the search for an elderly woman who has been forging checks throughout the city for the past 10 years. It's a wonder the police haven't caught her yet because they have an excellent description: "She's nice, with a good face." The Big Oskar: Friday goes on the manhunt over a thief who steals 3 pieces of silverwear. You herd that correctly, 3 pieces of silverwear. Along the way he meets the queen of all crazy cat ladies, and a man who wins the aware for longest incoherant mumbling monologue in history. Dum dee dum dum! We're getting down to just the facts in this installment.
In Chapter One Of Flash Gordon:Space Soldiers Conquer The Universe Flash attempts to stop Ming The Merciless from pissing all over the Earth. This riff originally was part of my riff on The Last Man On Earth but if you only want the Flash Gordon part well here it is.
Casablanca. Mr Smith Goes to Washington. Lawrence of Arabia. These are the legacy Claude Rains flushes down the toilet with his participation in Battle of the Worlds, an Italian Sci-Fi wreck that meanders through an exhausting plot only to wind up - oh wait, I'll ruin the disappointing ending! The Italian-ey film is all the more weird whe you realize all of Rains' lines are in English while the rest of the cast is overdubbed from the Italian. Clearly, Rains' casting was the big spend on the film, and he appears to have had a waiver that he didn't have to stand for more than five minutes or stay sober for shooting.
It's ladies night out and Vicky, Jen and Sarah are looking forward to a fun night free of the regular nonsense that happens around the apartment. However, (with Pete's help) they get hijacked by a short film about the US Stock Market called "The Big Board."
It's the Cinco De Mustache Shaving Spectacular from your friends in OneWallCinema! Join them as they perform an impromptu riff of some classic shaving commercials from yesteryear! Which products are the best? Who knows! They all seem terrifying! We can't understand why people seem so excited about them! So lather up & twirl that 'stache as you enjoy our holiday special!
I'm providing commentary for the 2013 film, Contracted. It's the latest entry in the classic "rot woman" genre. The first ever rot-woman role was played by Ingrid Bergman in 1941, where, newly arrived in northern Africa, she's exposed to the zombie plague by Nazi soldiers, and her husband Victor has to watch as she rots away right before his -- wait, I may be wrong about that. Sorry, I seem to be going a bit insane here. This one was hard.... Samantha is a young woman who can't make up her own mind about anything, so she lets everyone else do it for her. As a result, she gets drunk, drugged, and raped. Before long, she's bleeding from the vagina, puking up blood, losing hair and nails, and feeling the urge to chomp into moist, tender human flesh. But what's her main focus through all this? Patching things up with her self-absorbed ex-girlfriend and winning some flower show with orchids she doesn't even have! Vague themes, female-specific body horror, Brittany-level decision making, and a dramatis personae I all wanted to see dead made this movie a bit tough to watch. A second viewing allowed me to see the artistic, metaphoric beauty woven through the story, but this doesn't mean I'm going to show Contracted any mercy! You always riff the ones you love....
Hallmark Hall of Fame prese—What? This movie isn’t even good enough for Hallmark? Wow. Anyway... The Forger tells the story of a teenage homeless boy named Josh who’s abandoned by his druggy mom in a small upscale art town. What do you think the sad little homeless boy would do? a) Get a job. b) Call the police. c) Finish other people’s paintings, stalk pretty girls, punch the girl’s brother for no reason, and break into a house to finish yet another painting, later falling asleep in the house. If you answered C. then you are absolutely right! You win a NEW CAR!!! (Just kidding.) But the man who’s house he broke into wants to adopt him! See, this man is an art forgery dealer so this kid’s convenient, extremely specific, and somehow overly-utilized talent for imitating other people's artwork is very useful to him. He bribes the kid to recreate a destroyed masterpiece, which they fortunately have an incredibly detailed photo of. Their endeavor is of course, illegal, so who stands in their way? An overbearing social worker and a sweet old lady. You can cut the tension with a butter knife! There are several reason why the producers thought this would be a good movie: 1. Lauren Bacall! You know who she is right? She's totally hot! At least, she was in the 40's. 2. Alfred Molina! He was in beloved movies like The Da Vinci Code and The Sorcerer's Apprentice! And he was Octavius in Spider-Man 2! 3. Hadyen Panateeire—???? as the beautiful blonde who is absolutely fine with being totally stalked by a homeless loser! She's in Nashville and Heroes! And she was on the cover of SOUTHERN LIVING! LOVE HER! 4. And finally the incomparable JOSH HUTCHERSON, doing his trademark good-guy shtick...when he's playing an edgy homeless guy. He stars in the worldwide blockbuster Hunger Games! We only released this movie because he's in it! We delayed it two years just to ride on his thunder, just like instant classics like the new Red Dawn and Journey 2:
It's the highest grossing animated film of all time. It's developed a cultlike following of devoted parents and children. It's filled the radio with brain-rending earworms since its release. And statistically speaking, you already own 12 copies of it. Put on your winter coats and break out the hot cocoa as Cinester Theater takes on the latest Disney classic, "Frozen"! It's summer in the land of Arendelle, but there's trouble brewing in the kingdom. Queen Elsa, cursed from birth with uncontrollable ice magic, has an embarrassing public freakout and accidentally triggers an ice-pocalypse. As Elsa flees into the mountains to build herself a supervillain fortress, her younger sister Anna ventures out into the cold to bring her back. Along the way, she meets goon-faced ice salesman Kristoff and an enchanted snowman named Olaf, who almost definitely spends this movie in the throes of a psilocybin overdose. But will Anna and Elsa mend their relationship in time to keep everyone in Arendelle from freezing? Will Kristoff finally pop the question to his reindeer? Is seriously nobody bothered by how that snowman keeps rubbing himself on everything? Join Shawn, Keith, and Brooks as they brave the icy conditions and gale force musical numbers to find out! We live in Arizona, it's 105 degrees outside while we write this, and this movie mocks us with its very concept. So hold your loved ones close and make sure the kids are in bed, because the gloves are coming off as Cinester Theater Presents "Frozen"!
When Vicky's friends only hear one side of a phone conversation, they are duped into believing she's pregnant. Meanwhile, the gang watches the film "Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome," which actually might never happen.
Bela Lugosi stars in "The Devil Bat", playing a scientist who wants to get even with a company he feels cheated him. He uses his "devil bat", a rubber bat attatched to a wire hanger assisted by stock footage to terrorize the Heath family (Bout that time them Heath boys got attacked by The Devil Bat). Made in 1940 it could almost pass for an Ed Wood film, but then it would require more plot. Randy and Dwayne riff in the usual MST3k style so you can enjoy this with the whole family! This is the first feature picture Randy and Dwayne have riffed on
"Duck and Cover" was an educational film about how to "protect" yourself from a nuclear attack. Not only are you advised to duck and cover, but even what to use as cover, such as a building, small wall, or wooden classroom desk. Needless to say, the short is hallarious on its own, indeed even featured in the film "The Atomic Cafe"; but with these two rifffers, beware!
In part 1 of "The Brink of Disaster," Johnny is studying in the school library during a mass riot. He is suddenly visited by his own great great grandfather back from the spirit world. Instead of running out of the building screaming, he decides to have a long (very long) (very very long) debate over pretty much every social topic on the planet from freedom of speech to legalizing drugs. Nothing actually gets sorted out...we just hope things start to make more sense in part 2. Stay tuned!
Dru and Megan riff on this 1986 episode of Highway to Heaven about a neo-Nazi and a Holocaust survivor. This riff was a bonus included with Drawback Productions riff of Die Hard 2: Die Harder.
Riker is a perv, Worf is a sexist, God is a coffee maker and Picard is a huge dick. What more do you need to know? This is Bald Move's first and, potentially, not last iRiff.
In his second full length riff, Dave Chadwick (aka Sugar Ray Dodge) takes on the 1959 film "The Alphabet Conspiracy." This riff also features Playful Polar Bears and How to Keep a Job.
Hold on to your seats folks! It's time to revisit the college library for another debate about pretty much everything. Hopefully in this conclusion, we learn why Johnny is seeing his great great grandfather in a vision, and why the professor also sees him. We might also get the answers to whether or not rioters will ambush the library, and how much marijuana is too much. Who are we kidding...none of these questions will be answered. But at least they meant well, right?
Me and my pals Lucas and Shane will be providing commentary for the atrocity that is just so hilarious.....Nic Cage's, "The Wickerman"! There'll be lots of language in the video.
In Chapter 9 Of Batman And Robin, "The Wizard Strikes Back!" Actually all he does is burn out his remote control machine. Meanwhile Vicki's brother proves he's still a piece of crap. Contains music by Kevin MacLeod.
Chapter Two of Flash Gordon:Space Soldiers Conquer The Universe. Ming pouts and feels sorry for himself while Flash and his gang go hiking in the mountains.
A Dark Shadows Episode Guide For People Who Don't Watch Dark Shadows (Formerly titled "Dostoyevsky's Notes From 6 Feet Underground") Widows Hill Notes are a kind of Cliff Notes-style Episode Guide to the early, Monster-Lite days of the series, (the so-called 'Pre-Barnabas Episodes') but written in a Fractured Fairy Tales style, in order to accentuate the show's natural quirkiness. Each Rifftrack in the series will cover 10 half hour episodes, for an eventual total of 191. These will be the first Rifftrax .mp3's that do not need to be synched with the DVD for use. In fact, neither ownership nor any previous familiarity whatsoever with the Dark Shadows series is required. Like Cliff Notes, these notes are intended as a substitute rather than an aid for doing your homework. (And every college student knows there'd be no point in using Cliff Notes if they didn't save you from having to read the book.) Since the DVD is not required, you can listen to these notes while jogging, skydiving, in the car, or on the lam. In fact, if I didn't know better, I'd almost think we had invented the Book on Tape.
While watching the 70's made-for-tv movie of the week "Murder on Flight 502," Dan gets into the act by ordering a 70's Lincoln. In the middle of the scene where Farah Fawcett decides to slaughter Sonny Bono for being the most annoying man on Earth, Dan's order arrives...but nobody is prepared for the results.
Austin, Alex and Shane take a journey back into their "childhood" and riff, "Max Keebles Big Move!
Its been 70 years Since Avatar Aang has died, and the shenangins are still going! Join me on my First ever blind riff of the series, two at a time!
Austin and Shane go back to 1997 and rip apart arguably the worst superhero film of all time, "Batman and Robin"!
All good things come to an end. Also this. Freddy's Dead*: The Final Nightmare*, the last movie ever made in the A Nightmare on Elm Street series.* The one that ended it all.* the nail in the straw-filled coffin that broke the camel's back.* Freddy Krueger takes his ultimate bow in this classic of horror cinema.* Watch as Freddy murders children with everything at his disposal except for the deadly weapon we wears at all times. Uncover the top secret origins of Freddy's supernatural powers at the hands of demonic tadpoles. Follow the clues to the ultra secret identity of Freddy's own child from the pool of one age appropriate choice. Ronin Fox and Vamperica join Spencer, Carlos, Tracy, Maggie, Dopey and Doc as we shovel some dirt on this tired franchise. Now we leave it behind, never to return.*
The Devil's not getting any younger. Sure, the Prince of Darkness was wild and unruly in his misspent youth. And, yes, he had his fun, what with raising an army against the heavens, leading mankind into temptation, and inspiring sports bars to buy karaoke machines. However, even the Evil One finds himself maturing, and wanting to find a nice girl and start a family. The problem, of course, is meeting the right woman. Unfortunately for the Dark Lord of the Underworld, he decided to settle down in the 1970s. Before the internet transformed romantic pursuits into proprietary algorithms, all the eternally damned could do to find true love was to claim an unborn child as an intended mate, control her upbringing through a diabolical cult, and hope that she matures into a woman who is not distracted by the irreverant charms of a van-dwelling stalker with a heart of gold. Which, yes, still has a better chance of working than the craigslist personals, but only slightly.
When you think turkey, you think Thanksgiving, or Christmas. You think wrong. The festive fowl that graces your holiday table is no longer merely a seasonal entree. In modern America, you can now eat turkey whenever you want. Every day, in fact. All day, every day. In every way. This is news. Real news. Not a commercial. News. Armour, which is only coincidentally a meat company, wants to share this wonderful news in an informative, educational, and certainly not a twenty minute commercial way. This instructional, not-a-commercial short provides you with many ways to prepare and enjoy turkey, which you already wanted to do long before you watched this instructional film, which could not be less of a turkey commercial.
“The World of Tomorrow will be filled with wondrous things,” a dapper 50’s man tells us from the dimly lit corner he presumably calls his home. As a denizen of the World of Tomorrow, which is now known commonly as the World of Today, I think I can honestly type onto this virtual page accessible from anywhere via an interactive electronic device that fits into your pocket that this statement is pure garbage. Contrary to the gripping predictions and scenarios acted out by the Tales of Tomorrow writing staff’s extended family, we don’t have cool things like furious space cocoons or invisible, blood-sucking monsters. The problems we actually face, like phones that bend, are far more mundane and much costlier to produce, plus sexism and racism are on their way OUT, not thriving like the greatest minds of the 50’s so optimistically assumed. No, the World of Today simply pales in comparison to the World of Tomorrow of the World of Yesterday, but at least it beats the World of Tomorrow of Sky Captain. Make your World of This Evening a whole lot funnier by buying the riff that marks the end of QuipTracks' unofficial, year-long hiatus; grabbing a friend; and finding out just how furious a protective case of silk or similar fibrous material spun by the larvae of moths and other insects can be!
Today, Brad Jones joins the riffing, as they take a look at a short film that’s about, appropriately enough, snobs. Sit back and enjoy.
Today, The Other Guy joins That Guy again, as we take a look at a film about lunchroom manners, because…there was really nothing else to talk about back then. Sit back and enjoy…mmm, yes.
Disney's Atlantis The Lost Empire. A little movie that began the death of Disney's Traditional Animated arm. Join us for an "exciting" movie with a submarine that almost has as much screen time as Darth Vader in Episode III. Marvel at a Civiliation that speaks their own language, yet can't read it.
Ostensibly a prequel to the inexplicable 1979 hit The Amityville Horror, A2 tells the story of the Montelli family, who move into the infamous house of evil. The movie wants us to believe that Ultimate Evil took a fine, upstanding middle class family and turned them into dysfunctional, sexually abusive assholes, but the Montellis seem to have at least brought the abusive asshole part in with them. After engaging in a few petty poltergeistesque shenanigans, Ultimate Evil decides to take possession of the mind and body of the eldest Montelli son, Sonny. (It wasn’t hard. Both his mind and body were unclaimed at the time.) Soon after, Sonny’s sexually abusing his teenaged sister and acting slightly creepier en route to murdering his entire family. After the murders, a priest swings into the plot to try to perform an exorcism, which, for reasons known only to the screenwriters, has to be performed at the famous Amityville house. A few scenes of exorcism-fu later, Sonny’s dispossessed (though facing five consecutive life terms for his murders), and the priest now houses the soul of Ultimate Evil, though in the plus column that makes him the owner of a lovely three-story Dutch Colonial with a boathouse.
A series of unexplained murders has a small German village gripped in terror. Two wounds on the victims' necks! The bodies drained of blood! A mysterious figure seen lurking on the rooftops at night! Yes, the once-peaceful hamlet has found itself the victim of the dreaded, horrifying… Dracula ripoff! Or is it? Yes, thanks to the tireless efforts of a detective determined to get the truth even if he has to...well, whine a lot about not believing in vampires, it soon becomes clear that in fact the townsfolk are actually the victims of... A Frankenstein ripoff! How's that for a twist? Try pulling that one off, Shyamalan! No, kidding. Please, don't try pulling that one off.
The gang decide to indulge in Saturday morning cartoons, but aren't prepared for Channel 62's version of the time honored tradition. Peg Leg Pedro is an evil pirate who cares about nothing but treasure, dressing in drag, and abusing his pets.
Matt, Joe, & Kyle are pitted against schlockmeister Larry Buchanan (Attack of the the Eye Creatures) and his made-for-TV Curse of the Swamp Creature! Deep in the swamps of...Texas?...a mad scientific genius attempts to devolve man back to his primitive fish form through gill transplants and dry ice. The local voodoo natives have been the Doc's test subjects, but everything comes to an explosive confrontation when outsiders on a geological oil expedition cross the doctor's path. Stock footage, a maddeningly repetitive score, and a boozed-up John Agar who seems confused as to what he's doing in the film are but a few highlights of this turkey. The boys keep a stiff upper lip and riff, wisecrack, and skewer the movie and...maybe...learn a little something about themselves on the way.
John Caradine and refuges from Andy Warhol's factor put out a horror movie that's about as scary as the first four hours of "Sleep."
Hoods for hire Steve, Joe, and Dutch, aided by the ever FANTASTIC test pilot Johnny Stevens (he's GREAT!) , undertake possibly the most dangerous mission of World War II (ignoring of course Normandy, Iwo Jima, Midway, Monte Casino..this war was always topping itself, really!), when the four set out to bag the biggest game in the European theater..Adolf E. Hitler!
A movie where God is the bad guy. In most circumstances, this would lead to cries of sacrilege; in the case of Legion, all it led to was cries for money back. So utterly brainless, pointless, and idiotic, you'd be too busy wondering how this got greenlit in the first place to be offended. Thankfully, for those willing to sit through this, the One Man Band steps up and gives the movie the riffing it has long since deserved...and it only came out in 2010, for Pete's sake. God (who lives comfortably on his base on the moon, according to every establishing shot) has decided humanity has been rude to each other for quite long enough, and has decided to wipe out humanity the way the devil has for years: by having his angels possess them and run around tearing apart anyone they see (a plan that seems utterly foolproof when weighed against earthquakes, floods, meteor showers, and possessing the holders of the world's nuclear launch codes, doesn't it). Paul Bettany is Michael the archangel (and thoroughly British), who has willingly rebelled against this plan because he still believes in humanity. And how does it show it? By holing up in the dirtiest desert diner he can find and protect the unborn child of Charlie the Waitress. Can they hold out against the hordes long enough for the child to be born? Will Dennis Quaid take his paycheck and go home? Why is Charlie's boyfriend named Jeep? Can Doug Jones' career survive his 30-second appearance as a creepy ice cream salesman? Will somebody even more British than Paul Bettany show up and cause trouble? And really, the boyfriend's name is Jeep?
Dru and Megan provide commentary to this beyond so-bad-it’s-good, well into the so-bad-it’s-life-altering range masterpiece from 2012. Chris Martin (not the one from Coldplay) stars as federal agent John Thomas who goes undercover in the suburban mafia only to blow his cover immediately. For the rest of the movie, he just runs around shooting people. Robert Z’dar and Joe Estevez co-star.
Forget everything you know about witches! If you thought they were all old, hook-nosed, wart-covered hags, then boy are you gonna come out looking dumb after The Covenant blows the lid off witchcraft! First off, all witches are dudes—white, douchey, juvenile guys with six-pack abs. Pointy hats are definitely out, and cauldrons? Really? Did you really bring up cauldrons in a serious conversation about witches? Oh kay. You reeeally need to watch this movie to try and sweep the cobwebs of ignorance out of your bigot skull. ...What? Did you just ask me if they were too busy flying around on their brooms to do much sweeping? Oh. MY god. Witches fly huge SUVs and drive BMWs. Duh. Okay, they DO have spells, but it’s not sissy “magic,” it’s The Power. Witches are basically the most powerful dudes you could meet because they’ll just look at you, and the next thing you know, you’re hurling chunks on your best friend. Or you’ve got a spider in your ear. Or they’ll just throw a bubble at you. I’m not explaining it right, but it’s super bad ass. What? “What HAPPENS in the movie?” Oh. Uh… Well they’re basically just hanging out, being cool and sexy; getting into scraps and…swimming freestyle… There’s a dance number… Um… Features Tristan, Tracy, and Tegan
We've all heard Satan's pitch at least once in our lives. The offer's always a little different, but the price (you would find if you didn't slam the door in his face) is always the same: your soul. Sometimes it's a dependable new set of encyclopedias. Sometimes it's a "free" gift card. "Would you like to supersize your order for just a soul more?" According to a recent survey of 20,000 residents of Hell, these deals have accounted for less than .2 percent of Hell's incoming tenants. You might actually want to consider taking the deal, however, when you hear about a common side effect: Becoming a badass flaming skeleton with the power to kill demons effortlessly. Johnny Blaze discovers this 20-some years after wasting his deal trying to save his klutzy father from cancer—who immediately kills himself in a freak, 'Leap of Death' accident. Unfortunately, Johnny's super cool affliction manifests itself after he becomes Nicholas Cage, so instead of becoming the chick-magnet you would expect, he's stuck pining after his old flame, Roxie (played by porn actress Eva Mendez...wait, what? She's not in porn? She's been in other, real, shown-in-theaters movies? That can't be right...) Anyway. The devil overreacts when his son, Blackheart, comes out of the closet, and Mephisopheles hires Johnny to kick his candy ass. This is not something I'd normally condone reveling in, but Blackheart is also pure evil and trying to destroy the world or something, so it's okay to enjoy seeing his powdered face get punched from here to drama club. Features: Tristan, Tracy, and Cody
Kate and Leopold's massive dump on the concept of time travel was a pretty good start, but The Lake House perfected the art. With an omniscient terrier as cosmic referee, Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock, separated by two years, engage in a by-mail contest to see who can use their time-traveling mailbox least creatively and do the least good with their incredible discovery in this paradox-riddled puke stain on the fabric of time and space. Soon, the downright naughtiness of using such a scandalously obsolete mode of communication sets both of their hearts afire, and they decide that, continuum be damned, they're gonna find a way to be together! Amidst all the USPS-paced romance and action, will the two of them unlock the secret of the lake house and its incredible time-travelling mailbox?
At long last, the riffing project spearheaded by Ice On Mars to riff Star Trek: Voyager reaches season 2. Disc 1 of the season is a crossover between IOM and QuipTracks, with each episode featuring Michael T. Bradley and a different QuipTracks member. The 37s is a story about a different sort of crossover: Uninspired science fiction meets American history! When the crew of Voyager finds an antique truck floating in space, it leads them to visit the Delta Quadrant's most advanced Earth museum. Janeway is especially impressed with their vintage Amelia Earhart (NON-CLONE ORIGINAL ORGANIC COMPONENTS RARE MINT). Naturally, she can't resist waking her up, but hijinks ensue when the curators find out.
Anywhere – provided it's one of five budgeted locales – is possible. That's the staggering reality for chronic douche canoe David "Rice Bowl" Rice (the second worst Anikan) and all "jumpers" like him. For millennia, they've lived among us, teleporting from point A to B, acting like C's and D's. Using this power, David robs banks and ruins lives all across the globe. However, only so much filming can go on before Samuel L Jackson shoves his way into the story, and soon David find himself staring down the tooting end of an electric-steel-cable-shooting clarinet! As it turns out, "paladins" have been hunting jumpers since medieval times. They have more success now with their clarinets than they did with their spears (which they presumably just waved around in hopes of a jumper appearing around the sharp end), but fortunately for David, they mistakenly think the movie is rated PG, and won't use guns. Can he, a guy who can literally teleport anywhere in the world, escape a guy in a rental car? Will David's love interest Millie interest anybody? And most importantly, can David convince the audience that Sam Jackson is the villain, even though it's clearly David? The answers to these questions will be cheaply, artlessly, and incompetently answered in Doug Limon's career's suicide note, Jumper!
Cinester Theater returns to riff on the 2014 remake of a sci-fi classic! Join Shawn, Keith, and Brooks as they deliver hilarious running commentary on "Robocop". Not the original one, though. The new one. Try not to look disappointed.
In Time stars Justin Timberlake as Will Salas, a young man trying to survive in a future where people’s time is used as currency. If the words “stars” and “Justin Timberlake” aren’t enough to scare you away from this sorry affair, then consider the use of nearly every time-related phrase in existence. “Got a minute?” “Need a second?” “Clean his clock.” Etc., ad nauseam. Still not convinced? Two words: Olivia Wilde. With all the cinematic liabilities contained in this awful film, I am riffing it in the hopes that it won’t take away any of your valuable time. In addition to the riff, the zip file also contains an outtake and blooper reel.
With Pakra seemingly becoming more and more commercial each year, it can be hard to see through all the glitz and glamour to the core of it all. This Pakra season, take an hour to remind yourself and the whole family what the holiday is really all about with the immortal Pakra classic, Initiations. While Pakra carolling in his shuttle, Commander Chakotay tries to make a new friend in a young Kazon named Kar. After several lasers to the face, however, Chakotay can see that this child would rather spend his time killing his enemies than summon ancient spirits. The Kazon are strong and powerful, but they don't know much about Pakra, now do they? Can Chakotay teach him the true meaning of Pakra before Delta Quadrant runs out of Pakra spirit and Pakra is cancelled FOREVER?
When you’re a hologram in a hologram in a hologram having a holo-dream, it can be hard to tell what’s really virtually real. In this episode of Voyager, the ship’s holographic medical program boots up only to discover that things have happened, only to discover they haven’t. A Kazon is on a rampage, but he’s not. A guy shows up, but he doesn’t. Tough decisions have to be made, but they don’t. Nothing is at stake and it didn’t even happen, but at least it didn’t even happen to sort of an interesting character. Features Michael T. Bradley and Kelly McQueen
At 10:02 AM on August 27th, 1883, Krakatoa exploded. The result was the loudest sound ever recorded by human beings. It is said to have circled the Earth four times. The second loudest sound occurred in the evening of September 18th, 1995, when Voyager posed the question, “should Kes and Neelix have a baby together?” and 5.7 million households simultaneously bellowed “NO!” at their televisions. Now you can relive history! Bellow along at home with QuipTracks and Ice on Mars as they take on "Elogium." Plus, learn all about Astro-Sperm and why they like humping space ships so darn much!
Drawback Productions riffs the insipid, inscrutible, interminable Furious 7, the last ride of the lovably murderous chunk-heads and rappers-turned-blathering-comic-relief that have been launching cars over and into and out of and into again various X-treme objects and people and buildings and situations and emotions for the past 16 years. Yes, they're back for a montage as long as the previous sentence — and longer — of those same chunk-heads slapping into one another and launching their cars relative to that same list of prepositional objects (plus one tastefully X-treme funeral procession). So buckle yourself into your racing simulator chair, grab a bucket of Surge or Jolt or methamphetamines, and install a sturdy racing catheter because truly this is the last ride. No one could sustain this level of furiousness for more than seven installments, and indeed it has literally killed one of them, so their fate is decided here, and here alone, forever. For serious.
Travel back to a time when wenches were simple, ones were dark, and kings greeted you with a smile. When Granger (Dolph Lundgren, OMG YES) hurt his shoulder in Non-Specific Conflict II, he swore he was done with conflicts for good, no matter how specific. But when his house is swarmed by flailing ninjas, he’s forced through a mystical portal and finds himself lumbering for his life in medieval Canada! Soon he’s mumbling anachronisms to Smiley King (the king what things are in the name of), who seems like a good enough guy, but something’s not right. How does the king keep his teeth so white? Why are all the women slathered in makeup? Granger will need all three synapses firing to get to the bottom of these mysteries and more in Uwe Boll’s direct-to-the-two-dollar-bin epic, In the Name of the King 2: Two Worlds!
What if everybody had just finally managed to forget your smarmy son after he died fourteen months ago? Would you bring him up again? Would you really be “that guy”? You would, wouldn’t you. You’re like the person that brings up the Spice Girls just when everybody starts to feel good about music again. Listen, your kid Sam was such a crappy jackass that ALIENS made the long journey to Earth just to erase our memories of him running shirtless around the neighborhood. Now please shut up about him. Get a hobby. You could rejoin the country club now that they don’t remember Sam peeing in the pool. You can have a life again, lady! For Pete’s sake, don’t you know a good thing when you see it? Features Tristan, Tracy, and Kevin
How do you follow up a commercially successful PG-13 version of an R-Rated videogame? Why, with a commercially UNsuccessful PG-13 version of an R-Rated videogame! Like a sinking ship that replaces its fleeing rats with small, confused frogs, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation replaced most of its original cast with people who really had no idea what they were in for. And what a shameful pile it is: Shao Kahn (Brian Thompson, that guy who played the big creepy guy in The X-Files) is trying to merge his realm with ours with the vast powers of purple tinting. He does this through the use of Sindel, the Skunk Queen (Musetta Vander, the one who played that one with the whip in Oblivion), who he brought back to life in order to keep portals...you know what? Forget the plot. It all exists to put together a loose volley of fight scenes, glued together by appearances of characters from the games who disappear as fast as their paychecks will carry them. The One Man Band faced down the threat once before, and he'll do it again. And in the process, he'll find answers to all the big questions, like: What IS the secret power of Banana-Phone? What does Shao Kahn put into his smoothie mix? Who keeps setting the throne room on fire? Who blackmailed Robin Shou and Talisa Soto into coming back for the sequel? And why, oh why, are you stronger without cybernetic strength enhancers? Don't miss the antics as the One Man Band's top brass decide to do a little 'replacing' of their own...including a very cranky Sarge Crumley. Also, the PPD-3200 shows off his new language skills and the slight hint of a competitive side. But through it all, the One Man Band always manages to land on his feet...even if those feet are still in a military grade bunker deep underground. Poster art by Piobman. iRiff file formats NTSC mp3 (60.45 MB) PAL mp3 (57.97 MB) Text File (2.59 KB) Text File (2.87 KB)
A group of Riffers from the fan forums at Rifftrax.com agreed to riff The Great Alaskan Mystery, a public domain serial from the 1940s. This first of thirteen installments is narrated by Intrepid Asylum.
A group of Riffers from the fan forums at Rifftrax.com agreed to riff The Great Alaskan Mystery, a public domain serial from the 1940s. This second of thirteen installments is narrated by Drawback Productions
A group of Riffers from the fan forums at Rifftrax.com agreed to riff The Great Alaskan Mystery, a public domain serial from the 1940s. This third of thirteen installments is narrated by QuipTracks
A group of Riffers from the fan forums at Rifftrax.com agreed to riff The Great Alaskan Mystery, a public domain serial from the 1940s. This fourth of thirteen installments is narrated by One Man Band
A group of Riffers from the fan forums at Rifftrax.com agreed to riff The Great Alaskan Mystery, a public domain serial from the 1940s. This fifth of thirteen installments is narrated by The Incomparable Podcast.
A group of Riffers from the fan forums at Rifftrax.com agreed to riff The Great Alaskan Mystery, a public domain serial from the 1940s. This six of thirteen installments is narrated by The Incomparable Podcast.
A group of Riffers from the fan forums at Rifftrax.com agreed to riff The Great Alaskan Mystery, a public domain serial from the 1940s. This seventh of thirteen installments is narrated by The Incomparable Podcast.
A group of Riffers from the fan forums at Rifftrax.com agreed to riff The Great Alaskan Mystery, a public domain serial from the 1940s. This eighth of thirteen installments is narrated by Team Swizzlebeef
A group of Riffers from the fan forums at Rifftrax.com agreed to riff The Great Alaskan Mystery, a public domain serial from the 1940s. This ninth of thirteen installments is narrated by Intrepid Asylum
A group of Riffers from the fan forums at Rifftrax.com agreed to riff The Great Alaskan Mystery, a public domain serial from the 1940s. This tenth of thirteen installments is narrated by Scott Zee of The Turkey Shoot
A group of Riffers from the fan forums at Rifftrax.com agreed to riff The Great Alaskan Mystery, a public domain serial from the 1940s. This eleventh of thirteen installments is narrated by Toast and Rice
A group of Riffers from the fan forums at Rifftrax.com agreed to riff The Great Alaskan Mystery, a public domain serial from the 1940s. This twelfth of thirteen installments is narrated by Toast and Rice
A group of Riffers from the fan forums at Rifftrax.com agreed to riff The Great Alaskan Mystery, a public domain serial from the 1940s. This final episode of thirteen installments is narrated by Intrepid asylum
Join Mike, Jay, and Rich Evans as they discuss a movie you probably already forgot came and went! Start the commentary right at the fade in on animated Batman at the beginning of the DC logo intro (which is right after the Access Entertainment logo, which itself is right after the Warner Brothers logo. So many logos!).
It's safe to say the only thing that should ever be based on Newsong's insufferable "The Christmas Shoes" is a class-action lawsuit. Despite this, in 2002 CBS decided it would try to top the previous year's saddest television event, 9/11, by adapting the most quickly turned-off song on the radio into the most quickly turned-off movie on TV (by way of the most quickly hurled-across-the-room novelization). Rob Lowe lets his acting muscles atrophy as the guy that was "not really in the Christmas mood" who helps a young boy buy a pair of shoes for his dying mother. Why wasn't he in that mood, though? And how sad, exactly, is a dying mother? The answers to these questions were glaringly omitted from the song, and the movie addresses the issue by devoting an hour and a half to establishing this crucial context. CBS's The Christmas Shoes delivers more schmaltz, empties more tissue boxes, and kills more characters than the song's format ever allowed. And if it's the case that the more sadness something elicits, the more meaningful and heartwarming it is, The Christmas Shoes is more meaningful and heartwarming than a stillborn bunny rabbit.
Cinester Theater is taking on Tim Burton once again in their latest riff, "Cinester Theater Presents: Planet of the Apes"! Space zookeeper and monkey-torture enthusiast "Marky" Mark Wahlberg has a problem. He knows he's got the right stuff to be a big time astronaut, but the eggheads upstairs keep telling him he's less qualified to operate their multimillion dollar equipment than a chimp that's been trained to flip levers in a sequence. So when a mysterious space anomaly appears just outside their space station, Mark steals a ship and flies himself right into it, while also kind of vindicating the total lack of faith his superiors had placed in him up to that point. He crashlands on a mysterious planet populated exclusively by humans, apes, horses, and Paul Giamatti. Hunted by the personal-space-ignoring General Thade, Mark must navigate this strange new world as he attempts to find a way home, after taking a slight detour through one of the most eye-rolling twists in cinematic history. Will Mark Wahlberg ever see Boston again? Why does that girl monkey keep looking at him like that? And what are any of these characters' names again? Some of these questions will be answered as Cinester Theater Presents: Planet of the Apes!
The date is December 31, 1999. An enormous danger looms that threatens to destroy the earth. No, it's not the Y2K bug, it's The Master! The who? For those of you not familiar with Doctor Who, the Master is the Doctor's rival Time Lord? Doctor who? Ha ha, you're funny. What's a Time Lord? Look, if you don't know I don't have time to explain it to you here. Go read the Doctor Who Wiki and get yourself caught up.* The Master has been executed for his long list of crimes but somehow manages to sabotage the Tardis, forcing the Doctor to land on Earth. Once there he hijacks a human body and begins work on stealing the Doctor's body, which is more suitable to him than the human body he's stolen. Well wouldn't you know that in order to do this the Master has to open the poorly named Eye of Harmony which now threatens to suck the Earth inside out if the newly regenerated Doctor (did I mention he gets shot and then an inept doctor kills him in surgery?) doesn't get it closed toot sweet. So the Doctor and his new companion, Grace, the inept Doctor who killed him, race against the clock to stop the Master and his dumb as a post side kick Chang Lee, from accomplishing their goal. Can the Doctor stop the Master in time? Well, seeing as we're now three Doctor's along since this one I guess that's kind of a silly question. How much ridiculous crap will this movie try to introduce to the show's cannon? Okay, it's just two ridiculous things but they're really stupid. Join me as I riff this sad attempt at re-launching this British show in the US.** *Actually the movie requires little to no knowledge of the long running show's cannon to follow so you should be fine. **Airing opposite the Rosanne series finale probably didn't help much either.
In perhaps his greatest cinematic achievement that did not involve the eyewear stylings of Rowdy Roddy Piper, John Carpenter changed the world by making everyone afraid to go to Antarctica. Because of this, scientific study on the continent fell and we had no way to learn the truth about climate change until it was too late. Perhaps that was the alien invader's plan all along. It's The Thing! A retelling of the classic 50s horror film that made the bold move that the antagonist should look more like a monster and less like a carrot. The gorefest that Roger Ebert described as a "great barf-bag movie" while intending to insult it, but instead inspired a generation of special effects makers. The paranoia-soaked story that makes that guy in your group of friends who keeps talking about communism metaphors so damn annoying. Also, there's doggies. Ronin Fox and Vamperica join in the accusations of alien assimilation in this story that said all that was important to say, but filmmakers milked a prequel out of it later anyway.
In 1982, America embraced a special effects driven movie featuring an extraterrestrial life form visiting Earth. Unfortunately for John Carpenter, that movie was E.T. Whereas years earlier, Steven Spielberg's Jaws made America afraid to go into the water, John Carpenter's The Thing made America afraid to go into theaters with a serving of nachos. The term "Gorn" (pornographic levels of gore) from TVtropes.org was inspired by The Thing, which pioneered the Too-Much-Information approach to autopsy imagery almost 20 years before the pilot for the first CSI series began principal photography. The Citizen Kane of Gorn, John Carpenter's The Thing was met in 1982 with an indifference normally reserved only for the public education system, the WNBA, and global warming. Eventually, the film found its true audience the way most cult classics not named The Rocky Horror Picture Show often do... through home video. While not Carpenter's most commercially successful film, The Thing remains a work in which he takes great pride and is now recognized as one of the greatest horror movies ever made. This iRiff is done "Fan Boy Style". It seeks not to laugh, point and snark mockingly at John Carpenter's The Thing; it seeks instead to laugh, point and snark mockingly with John Carpenter's The Thing. This iRiff conspicuously (and often narrowly) avoids stepping on the original film's dialogue. To facilitate making the iRiff as funny as possible, that is the only courtesy extended to the original film. This iRiff doesn't include any bonus features such as skits, songs, or a Corinthian leather interior. It just riffs on the movie and then stops.
Of all of Seagal’s movies, Hard to Kill is one of them. It stars his then wife/long-term hostage, Kelly LeBrock, who most people remember from the “Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful” shampoo commercials. (Okay, but can we hate your taste in men?) It also stars the naked Tai Chi guy from Die Hard 2, and he also played Death in Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey. Remember the part where they parody The Seventh Seal by playing Battleship and Twister with the grim reaper? That was pretty fun. What ISN’T fun is Steven Seagal, so let’s just focus on how awful he is.
There are two kinds of movies. There are entertainers and there are challengers. Considering the way it completely breaks apart 73 seconds in and goes on to be regarded as one the most shameful and preventable disasters ever recorded, Uwe Boll's Alone in the Dark is decidedly a Challenger. Indeed, the film challenges both its audience and the culture surrounding it. Particularly bold are its alien monsters, which Uwe has unapologetically dubbed "Xenos", daring you to compare them to the more well-known and highly regarded Xerox subsidiary, Zeno Office Solutions. Bolder still is the casting of vapid space case Tara Reid as an ostensibly competent archaeologist, sending the uplifting message that dumb girls can be smart too. But perhaps the most challenging aspect of the film is the way Uwe expands and evolves the frankly played-out "unreliable narrator" convention to also include an unreliable prop department, unreliable captioning, and a bevy of unreliable lighting rigs. What is the plot? Uwe won't tell you, and by doing so, he cheekily holds up a mirror to you, the sole viewer in the empty theater, to reveal that it is YOU who is alone and in the dark.
In The Perfect Weapon, Steven Seagal is The Director – not to be confused with the director of The Perfect Weapon, Titus Parr, who thought we would not be confused when a character under The Director’s control called The Controller directs the perfect weapon to kill The Director. (Watch out: There’s a spoiler in that sentence, so don’t work too hard trying to parse it). This aforementioned perfect weapon is a stoic, bald, tie-wearing, dual-silenced-pistol-wielding hitman – just like Agent 47 from the Hitman video game franchise, but even easier to control (he really puts the "pawn" in "weapon"). Oh, and don’t go looking for a barcode on Axon “Condor” Ray’s neck; Unlike Agent 47, this agent can’t be price checked... Nor is he particularly good at hitting men. Indeed, everyone seems readily capable of making Condor look like an imbecile, from his dead girlfriend (Sasha Jackson), to a villainous gourd from Veggie Tales that grew a big, flabby body (Steven Seagal). Even within the movie, exactly which “perfect weapon” criteria could be abstractly attributed to him is a matter of some debate... but everyone agrees that, after multiple scrubbings of his already sparsely populated mind, he is The Perfect Putz.
Episode 2 presents one of the most jaw-droppingly dreary versions ever to hit the silver screen. 1935’s Scrooge starred Sir Seymour Hicks, a British thespian famous for his many portrayals of Ebenezer Scrooge, both on film and on the London stage. With all that practice (including starring in an earlier 1913 silent film adaptation), you might expect Sir Hicks to give a pretty good performance. Yeah, dream on, Tiny Tim. His acting alternates between hysterics and sleepwalking, most of the time while on a single set that looks like it cost about fifty bucks... er, pounds, to hammer together. The best way to enjoy the scenery-chewing antics of Sir Seymour Hicks is with three or four smart-a**** beside you to share your misery. Fortunately Johnny and his friends on the Big Brown Couch have volunteered! Join Dori, Becky, and Babs as they ease some of the celluloid pain.
Basically this is not my usual gig. I do anime Iriffs and thats what I do but This movie is special to me because it reminds me of my dad. He loves Tom Clancy. so in honor of my dad I have to riff this movie a new one. So what is there to say about this movie. well besides it is filled with cold war fear and is filled with the ideology of the time it was in. Tom Clancy new what he was Doing when he made this movie and I knew what I was doing to riff it a new one. So set back. grave youre soldier of fortune magazine and enjoy this wonderful Iriff.. or else.. lol.
H.P. Lovecraft fans have had the benefit of watching his works adapted in films like The Re-Animator, In The Mouth of Madness, Cthulhu Mansion... although, in most cases, "adapted" is too strong a word.So in 2005, the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society stepped in to create a true-to-the-text adaptation of The Call of Cthulhu. And decided to make it as a silent film.Then, in 2011, the Kids on the Street got their hands on it. And the madness began.... Written and produced by C. Glen Williams, and performed by C. Glen Williams and Charles Hagy.
Prior to TripAdvisor.com, travel was a risky proposition. One could easily book a hotel in a large city, only to find that the hotel pool in fact was not heated. A vacation brochure might show a lovely lakeside cabin, which, upon arrival, was in fact delapidated and subject to flooding during inclement weather. The seaside hamlet boasting a vibrant downtown district and burgeoning art community might turn out to be a haven for satanic cannibals. The final scenario befalls our heroine, who, while searching for her wayward father, finds herself surrounded by lunatics, devil-worshipers, and, yes, eaters of human flesh. But does she run from the evil hoardes who occupy this seaside hamlet? No! She stands her ground! She stares into the darkness and laughs! She... well, actually, she doesn't do much of anything. She's rather passive, truth be told.
Three things come to mind when you think of suspense. Hitchcock, an old lady, and a vase! What? You had a different answer? Well then you certainly are in for a surprise. Thrill as a mad man wheels around a handicapped elderly person! You'll be on the edge of your seat as you find the meaning to the mystery of how to properly pronounce "Vase". (Frankly we're still not sure.) Brace yourself for suspense like you've never experienced before as Alfred Hitchcock Presents: The Cheney Vase!* *Actual feelings of suspense, surprise, and thrill not included.
Matt West of Intrepid Asylum riffs the classic 1963 James Bond film starring Sean Connery.
In their first episode, the Ghosts (and new, living roommate Johnny) have to face 1985's HOWLING II: YOUR SISTER IS A WEREWOLF. The horror! Shudder as the usually-reliable Christopher Lee shares the screen with Reb Brown, finding himself trapped in one of the silliest werewolf films ever made! You'll say to yourself, "Reb Brown? Isn't that Dirk Hardpec?" You'll feel slightly better as Sybil Danning is all sexified as Stirba, Queen of the Werewolves! You'll wander into the kitchen for a snack as you realize that there aren't actually a lot of werewolves in this werewolf movie!
In GOTBBC episode 7, Johnny joins his secret Ghost crush Babs in watching the 2011 box office misfire GREEN LANTERN. WATCH! As Ryan Reynolds tries to make the "non-heroic hero" bit look like something other than a complete cliche! WAIT! While the good guy fights the bad guy, or actually mainly talks to him, because by the end of the movie the bad guy's a lot like Rocky Dennis driving a Rascal. WONDER! How Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively could get married a year after this movie came out, and STILL have no onscreen chemistry.
In GOTBBC episode 8, GOTBBC goes big, with the first entry in a special three-part epic that guest stars CINEMA INSOMNIA's Mr. Lobo! It also, goes, well, naked, with a riff of the 1961 nudie "classic" DIARY OF A NUDIST. This episode is Not Safe For Work, but plenty safe if you're looking for hearty laughs at what Baby Boomers considered to be a spicy, shocking film! Yes, there are naked people present, but the whole business is about as spicy as a kale smoothie.
GOTBBC episode 9 presents the second episode in a special three-part epic guest starring CINEMA INSOMNIA's Mr. Lobo! What goes well with an event this big? Well, how about a sci-fi movie that is really, REALLY small? 1965's HORRORS OF THE RED PLANET may not have action, or good special effects, but it has all the John Carradine that money can buy. So at least that's something... right?
A twenty-eight going on forty Steve McQueen plays a teenager fighting off an indestructible and ridiculous threat from the stars - The Blob! Phoenixville, Pennsylvania's police force is stumped, unable to defeat the creature with their usual tactic of "wait until morning" so it's up to Steve and his pack of aging teenagers to run around screaming and shouting until someone takes notice. There's only one thing that can save the world from this ridiculous booger from beyond the stars - the hosts of "Caustic Soda: The Podcast!"
As the ghosts are held captive by a madman, they have time to take in the 1972 oddity ENCOUNTER WITH THE UNKNOWN. Watching what the late, great Rod Serling was willing to do for a quick paycheck is ALMOST as horrifying as the fate which awaits our spectral hosts. Why, Rod, WHY? The final episode of Ghosts on the Big Brown Couch, featuring appearances by Cinema Insomnia’s Mister Lobo and Aaron M. Lane.
In this alternate Seventh Episode of Ghosts on the Big Brown Couch, Johnny & the gang riff the 1944 Captain America serial, after the realization that we couldn’t host Ryan Reynolds’ Green Lantern on OSI-74 for legal reasons.
Follow the trials and travails of one nerdy 13-year old as he puzzles over the age-old questions such as the normalcy of wet spots on his bed, mysterious throbbings in his Toughskins, not to mention clumsily propositioning the school librarian by uttering the “P Word”. While also witnessing very disturbing Dali-like images of animated masturbation and hair growth in previously unknown areas of the body and beating off the affections of his not-yet-legal Charlie's Angels girlfriend. All the while trying to stay “cool” with his less than hip school “gang”.
In 1960, Italy became the birthplace of a mildly shocking horror film known as "Seddok." It came to the U.S., re-edited and dubbed, as "Atom Age Vampire." And by "re-edited," I mean "cut entire important parts from the movie and reassembled them in whatever order they fell on the cutting room floor" and by "dubbed" I mean "hired several mumbly hobos who could speak like the Micro Machines guy to do all the dialogue." What may have once been a nice bit of creepy pre-"Zombsploitation" Italian horror became a laughable mess that even Ed Wood would think was excessive and poorly done. Dr. Albert Levin (Alberto Lupo) is a man of SCIENCE! Having studied the effects of radiation on atom bomb victims in Japan, he believes he has finally found the cure for destructive skin diseases in his Derma-26. His latest victim...er, patient...is one Jeanette Moreneau (Susanne Loret), a club dancer who was once famous for her good looks before an explosive car accident ruined everything (and by ruined I m
What happens when a TV show has a premise so far-fetched, so outlandish, that it shouldn’t make it through one season, yet it somehow gets to seven? Dexter Episode 701 happens. After a suck-sational 6th season, the show re-ignited audience interest with a Hail Mary of a cliffhanger. The problem is, there’s only one way off of that cliff, and, regrettably, it’s down. As the show’s writers fail to free themselves from the corner they’ve painted themselves into, Dexter continues to kill off evildoers while the increasingly bored supporting cast just try to kill airtime. All of your favorite time-wasters are there, including the guy with the hat, the guy with the Boston accent, the lovably pervy Asian guy, the bitchy chief of police, and the always-about-to-cry-due-to-extreme-hunger sister. But, at the center of it all is Dexter, running out of things to say in the voiceover but going ahead and saying them anyway. Join me, Dru Brock, and my side-kick/wife as we give what for to this
In this thrilling movie serial The Green Hornet fights crime with the help of his long time companion and life partner Kato. Now the Green Hornet is not jealous or eco-conscious and he's not a bug. He's really a spoiled rich brat who inherited his father's newspaper but the newspaper business is boring so he plays dress up with Kato.
A fun riff I just finished involving the school short, Sniffles and Sneezes (1955).
My first Riffing attempt. This is a school short made in 1940 on how children can avoid a cold. I love Rifftrax.com, MST3K, and Cinematic Titanic. It's always been a dream of mine to make fun of films and shorts like they do. Where as I can only do my best to imitate, I hope I do them justice. Please enjoy, won't you?
Everyone say hello to Flash Gordon! He'll toss women out of planes, he'll believe everything crazy scientists tell him, he'll mispronounce words you just said to him... and he's our Hero! I actually feel better about making fun of Flash. His voice, his face, his nose, his missing shirt.. all ripe for the picking on!
Is there Terror in the Tunnel... spoilers: Not really. There is a guard captain that really pissed off Ming though. The amount of talcum powder he needed on a daily basis really strained the budget. Never the less, this is the 2nd episode of the wonderful serial Flash Gordon, that was played in movie houses during the mid 1930s and early 1940s!
Can a man fight when his toes are so waterlogged, they look like prunes? Is a Shark Man really a shark man? Does Ming really just want to kill his daughter off? All of these questions and more, aren't really answered... Otherwise, episode 3 is our most water filled yet. Opening soon, the Water Logged Wrestling Federation (WLWF). Episode 3 is in the books, and boy am I having a good time making fun of this wonderful old serial.
Never before had an epic battle between man and beast splashed across the silver screen... mainly because this was made in 1936. Will Flash be able to fight his way out of a huge carnival dunk tank? Will the black gunk at the bottom that has suddenly sprung to life be the end of him? The answers are yes and no. Don't let the name Space Soldiers fool you, this is still a Flash Gordon serial for the next 9 episodes.
In this episode we discover there is actually a limit on how much fabric you should have when wearing a pair of shorts. The reasons for things are overdubbed fast and furious, even though the plot isn't. It's blonde meathead vs unfortunate shorts side-o-beef in this episode, The Destroying Ray!
Tossed into the fiery depths of King Vultan's furnace, our pasty hero's toes finally dry out; saving them from a fate worse than gherkins. It's afterthought dubbing on a massive scale when Flash is faced with Flaming Torture.
Princess Aura continues in her plot to drive a wedge between Flash and Dale... But they're not believing it. It's sensible to think it's either because they constantly see through her rouse, or the pace of the serial doesn't allow for ample time for them to buy it. Either way, we are heading towards Shattering Doom!
In what should have been named "The Sandstorm of Sword Fighting", Flash meets his match in not one, but TWO grueling battles to the death? Will our hero be able to overcome these odds? We have 5 more episodes, so you make up your own mind about that.
The Batman of the old west! And here I am poking fun at him. Lets laugh together as I put down a commentary track under this fun and campy TV series.
Welcome back to round 2 of the fun making! Season 3 saw John Hart replace Clayton Moore as the Lone Ranger for a time. So lets make fun of him! Warning: Surprise blanket design could cause triggering... as well as an extra special villain appearance by Lee Van Cleef... that could trigger some folks.
This is less making fun of the Lone Ranger and more wincing at what Tonto is willing to do when asked. Villains have kidnapped what they think is the grandson of a sheep rancher, little do they know the rarity that is a natural blonde Latino teenager... at least in the 1800's.
In this forth episode, our hero finds himself face to face with the Kansas Kid. Will a bumbling deputy spell trouble for not only the Lone Ranger, but the man accused of a crime he didn't commit?
Today, we'll be looking at a short called "Boys Beware," an anti-gay film that deals with how the 1950s was… anti-gay. Enjoy.
Today, we'll be looking at a That Guy With the Glasses: Casper cartoon* that's so joyous and cheerful it will make you want to slit your wrists. Sit back and enjoy.
Today, That Guy looks at what happens when you take cleanliness and mix it with the worst images of your nightmares. Sit back, and enjoy.
Today, Noah Antwiler joins the Riff as they look at what happens when party etiquette is told by the spawns of Satan. Sit back, and enjoy.
Today, That Guy looks at the first cartoon ever to be made about Superman entitled...Superman. Sit back and enjoy.
It's time to celebrate the Holidays "Rabbit Ears" style. In between watching "Miracle on 34th Street (sort of)" and a mysterious short film called "Holiday from Rules," the gang does their annual holiday gift exchange. Oh...and someone might get poisoned. Come celebrate the holidays with the gang at Rabbit Ears!
MST3K-style riff on an old 80's cartoon
Killer Shrimp ‘N Friends - no, it’s not a new appetizer platter at your favorite casual dining restaurant, but it IS a smorgasbord of strange creatures, people, and underwear! From a ball-breaking mantis shrimp, to the seemingly-named-by-Wes-Anderson Geographer’s Cone Snail, to a dog with a penchant for unmentionables, to the UTTERLY HORRIBLE thing baby koalas put into their mouths, there’s plenty of weird stuff in the natural world for us to sink our, er, teeth into. All that, plus an old man and his seal (strange reboot of the classic Hemingway novel), terrifying dino-birds, and tasmanian devils - not quite as tornado-y as cartoons have led us to believe, much more into “killing things and living inside them.” There’s a lot to love in this episode, almost too much really, so get to it and join Mike, Kevin, and Bill (and, seriously, some utterly disgusting koalas) for National Geographic's TOTAL RIFF OFF: Killer Shrimp ‘N Friends!
A giant demon bat is terrorizing a Mexican village! Well, it’s actual fairly normal sized, as far as bats go. It’s really no more a demon than any other bat, now that you mention it. And “terrorizing” is being a bit sensational. It bit a cow. Maybe. But it’s good that there’s not a giant demon bat, because the guy National Geographic sends in after it is woefully under qualified to handle such a thing. We’re frankly uncomfortable letting him near the cow. Richard Terry is a certified Poor Man’s Colin Farrell, with luxurious hair and a talent for pretending completely normal everyday scenarios are fraught with peril. He thrusts his camera in the face of irritated Mexicans and demands information about the demon bat that these people have never heard of, since they presumably are spending all their time dealing with real threats, such as the Chupacabra. This episode was so goofy we ended up riffing the entire thing. Enjoy Total Riff Off: Demon Bat.
Meet Dominic. He’s in love with a goose. What’s that? You’ll be right back after you alert the authorities? We completely understand. So like we were saying, this guy is in love with a goose named Maria. He slowly walks around a park and she follows him. It’s riveting. The goose even flies next to him as he rides around on a Vespa. Eventually, Dominic has a severe Vespa accident, possibly because there was an enormous goose flapping around right next to his head while he was trying to drive. Oh, and at some point in time Maria appears in an OK Go music video. You can’t make this sort of stuff up, nor can you flesh it out to an entire hour long show, so we also riffed some alligator wrangling rednecks and a corpse sniffing dog named Bullwinkle. It’s a whole gaggle of laughs! Watch it with your loved ones, (who are hopefully not geese.)
Never one to let something like “not finding the made up creature we all knew never existed in the first place” discourage him, monster hunter Richard Terry is back on the prowl again! This time he’s seeking out the Mekong Flesh Eater, a creature that if it were real* would have the Thai people living in utter terror!** When a Thai woman is attacked by the creature while gathering shellfish in the river, Richard leaps into action and visits a cave that is not on the river. He bravely manages to get himself stuck almost immediately. Upon making the shocking discovery that the creature that attacked the woman in the river is not in an unrelated cave, he’s left to bumble around Thailand harassing the natives in search of a constantly changing goal that is at various times: a catfish, a cobra, a legendary creature called the Naga, D.B. Cooper, a fearsome catfish, and someone to lend him money for a plate of curry. Will Richard track down the legendary Mekong Flesh Eater? Will he button his shirt? Will he mistake a floating log for a monster in a particularly chilling scene? The answer to one of these questions is YES! Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for another episode of Man V Monster, as originally seen on National Geographic. *It isn’t. **But it isn’t so they aren’t.
Oh, those weird wacky animals, will they ever learn? The answer is no, no they won’t, because they are weird wacky animals and weird wackiness is all they know. As the ancient ape prophet Chimpicles once said, “Let he who is without wackiness fling the first poo.” And further, well-behaved animals rarely make history, or even amusing headlines, and they CERTAINLY don’t make it into our Animals Behaving Badly special which, ultimately, is what this paragraph is all about! You like cheetahs? We’ve got one pooping in a sunroof. You like raccoons? We’ve got one gettin’ tossed like a frisbee. You like orangutans and/or cigarettes? We’ve got a segment that brings them together at last. You like rats with a penchant for devouring their young? We’ve got… wait, let’s go back to why you like that. Are you doing okay? No matter where you stand on weird wacky animals and the moral quality of their behavior, you’ll be happy you joined Mike, Kevin and Bill for this hilarious riff of Animals Behaving Badly!
Richard Terry is back, and the soup is thicker and browner than ever! Shrugging off the embarrassments of the Demon Bat turning out to be a Regular Bat and the fearsome Naga river monster turning out to be just some ripples on the water caused by his cameraman taking a leak, Richard unbuttons half his shirt buttons, flips his camera to night vision mode, and heads to Brazil! This time he’s in search of the Mapinguari, aka the Brazilian Bigfoot, aka, Probably A Slightly Larger Than Average Coyote or Something. It’s been terrorizing villagers. They will not leave their huts for fear it might thrust a camera in their face and demand they sign a release form—Oh wait, that’s just Richard. The Mapinguari on the other hand is constantly pretending he’s in danger and making perfectly normal situations seem fraught with peril—Sorry, sorry, that’s Richard again too. Along the road to eventual disappointment and inevitable humiliation, Richard will scoot along a log, drug an anteater, and get drenched by a waterfall. It may be his most successful monster hunt yet. Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for another baffling snipe hunt with our favorite intrepid explorer in Total Riff Off Episode 6: Brazilian Bigfoot!
RiffTrax Live! RAD Planning Webinar
RiffTrax Live! RAD Theatrical Preshow Slideshow
The stars of Mystery Science Theater 3000 meet the worst movie of all time to bring you RiffTrax Live. Join Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett live and onstage at the historic Belcourt Theater in Nashville as they riff along hilariously to Ed Wood’s classic B-movie blunder Plan 9 from Outer Space. Hosted by internet superstar Veronica Belmont, and featuring geek troubadour Jonathan Coulton, RiffTrax Live offers non-stop music and laughs. Also included is Flying Stewardess, a 40’s travel short that gets subjected to the guys’ signature brand of rapid-fire riffing.
The stars of Mystery Science Theater 3000® have a sackfull of delightful and demented shorts to riff live onstage. Some of the forgotten gems of Christmases past prove to be the perfect targets for the rapid-fire riffs of Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett. And if that wasn’t enough, they’re even joined by comedy legend “Weird Al" Yankovic for a musical short about the wonders of pork! It’s funnier than Ernest Saves Christmas and far less creepy than The Polar Express!
In RiffTrax Live: Reefer Madness, Mike, Kevin and Bill deliver their trademark form of rapid fire comedy in front of a live audience! Lines could be flubbed! Tomatoes could be thrown! Mountain lion attacks are entirely possible! The performance not only includes the classic anti-marijuana propaganda film Reefer Madness, but also three shorts which quickly became instant classics: More Dangerous Than Dynamite, Frozen Frolics, and At Your Fingertips: Grasses. Among the most insane things the guys have ever riffed, they’ll clear up any questions you might have about washing your clothes in gasoline and whether corn is grass.
Yes, horror classic House on Haunted Hill provides a mesmerizing walk down “people actually used to find this SCARY?!?” lane. Join the RiffTrax guys as they bring their special brand of rapid-fire comedic commentary to every skeleton-hanging-from-visible-wires, clumsy sexual overtone, and a stunningly inept test pilot whose “heroics” typically lead him to bloody his own nose after locking himself in a broom closet! The guys are joined by guest riffer Paul F. Tompkins, comedy person extraordinaire and quite a snappy dresser to boot! They also riff two vintage, never-before-seen shorts live on-stage: Paper and I, in which a small boy is haunted by a talking paper bag, and Magical Disappearing Money, about a supermarket witch whose main concern is that you don’t spend too much on rice. No, seriously, that’s what they’re really about! Join Mike, Kevin, Bill, and Paul for an unforgetttable All Hallow’s Eve of mind-melting comedy!
If you’re into cheesy stop-motion dragons, leprechauns in bottles, drunk Vikings, and Giants-Who-Need-Killing, then Jack the Giant Killer is for you! Actually that’s an odd set of things to be into, hypothetical person reading this, and frankly it’s about time you let us get to the point. Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Bill Corbett riffed this vintage 1962 epic live in Nashville, and now you can enjoy the show in the comfort of your own home, castle, or bottle you share with a leprechaun! Also! The guys riff the supremely weird short What Is Nothing? (spoiler: we still don’t know what nothing is). Plus two hilarious cartoons from Rich “Lowtax” Kyanka of somethingawful.com, a Behind-the-Scenes slideshow, and movie trivia slides done RiffTrax style! Make sure all these giants didn’t die in vain - join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for a full evening of great live comedy.
For those who missed it in theaters, this is a completely new riff of “Manos” The Hands of Fate, the Texas-fertilizer-salesman-directed classic made famous by Mystery Science Theater 3000. All new jokes, same old Torgo. See Mike, Kevin and Bill riff it all on stage in front of a live audience at the Belcourt Theatre in Nashville! PLUS! Two extra-demented shorts. At Your Fingertips: Cylinders and Welcome Back, Norman which introduced us all to revolting folk hero Norman, along with his now famous (and also revolting) catchphrase.
If you loved the live show the first time you saw it, or missed it because you were too busy hangin' out, hangin' out with your family, now’s your chance to own it! There will be solrpnls, bark beetles and animals such as seals! Plus, the show kicks off with everyone’s favorite lovable loser, Norman, in the short Norman Checks In. Birdemic is one of our favorite bad movies of all time, and there’s no better way to watch it than RiffTrax Live. So grab a coat hanger, fire up your solar powered TV and for the love of god fully vest your stock options! Birdemic!
For the first time ever, Night of the Shorts, our live SF Sketchfest show, is available as a VOD! Watch Mike, Bill, Kevin, and an all-star crew of hilarious guest riffers take on seven classic less-than-educational shorts, filmed LIVE onstage at San Francisco’s Castro Theatre in January of this year, in all its gritty, low-light, shakey-cam glory! Show includes: Welcome Back Norman Perc! Pop! Sprinkle! - with Cole Stratton (Pop My Culture Podcast) and Janet Varney (The Legend of Korra) Choking: To Save a Life - with Kevin McDonald (The Kids in the Hall) Cooking Terms More Dangerous Than Dynamite - with Adam Savage (Mythbusters) If Mirrors Could Speak - with Kristen Schaal (30 Rock, Bob’s Burgers, Flight of the Conchords) At Your Fingertips: Cylinders - with Paul F. Tompkins (Best Week Ever, Mr. Show, Tangled) We had a blast doing this show with such brilliantly funny folks, and we know you will too. RiffTrax: bringing Sketchfest to your Couchfest. Don’t miss it!
A true cult classic -- and one of the scariest movies of all time. The dead are walking, and they hunger for human flesh. A group of panicked survivors are barricaded in a deserted farmhouse while the army of flesh-eating zombies hovers outside their door. Now experience the bone-chilling terror in color for the first time on DVD! With a 5.1 surround sound remix, and a hilarious commentary track by Michael J. Nelson, this is the most fun you'll ever have with the living dead!
Many have forgotten (or choose to forget) the Santa/Martian wars of 1964: Santa Claus Conquers the Martians bravely attempts to set the record straight. Martian parents Kimar and Momar become concerned that their children Bomar and Girmar (are you picking up the “mar” theme? BECAUSE IT’S VERY SUBTLE!) have become too attached to television programs from earth. Their solution is brilliant, if a bit of a non sequitur -- they launch a plan to kidnap Santa Claus! The nasty Martian villain Voldar (his face is coated in green oil and he has a huge mustache, therefore he’s evil) captures two earth children, Billy and Betty, who don’t hold out for even a minute but rat out our fattest, jolliest elf without a struggle. Voldar takes Santa and the children prisoner and heads off for Mars. Only the bravery of Billy and Betty and the bumbling of a stowaway and “the laziest man on Mars”, Droppo, can foil Voldar’s evil plans! Throw into the mix an insane short featuring a pixie named Snoopy, a horrific life size Jack in the Box, and a lion who is oh so proud of his candy eating ability, and you’ve got one of our funniest live shows to date. Please join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for RiffTrax Live: Santa Claus Conquers the Martians!
Finally, the acclaimed smash hit RiffTrax Live event of 2014 is now available to own! Considered by many critics to be one of the greatest movies ever made in the “Tornado full of sharks” genre, Sharknado debuted in 2013 to unprecedented buzz. Not since Snakes On A Plane had the internet been so excited about a movie, and not since the late 90s had anyone been so excited about anything starring Tara Reid. From the moment it debuted, Sharknado was one of the most requested titles in RiffTrax history. It makes Jaws IV look like Jaws III, and Jaws III look like Jaws. Riffed LIVE from the State Theater in Minneapolis and broadcast to over 700 theaters across North America, this hilarious live event also features an all-new take on the Mystery Science Theater 3000 fan-favorite short A Case of Spring Fever starring Coily the Spring Sprite! Look, why are you still reading this? It has chainsaws, helicopters dropping bombs, and the aforementioned TORNADO FULL OF SHARKS! Make this new classic a part of your RiffTrax Library today!
There’s riffs out there this big?? One of our favorites, the movie that’s been called “Probably one of the top four films in the Anaconda series,” Anaconda! Anaconda stars a pre-fame Jennifer Lopez, a post-fame Eric Stoltz, and an Owen Wilson who even then was somehow ashamed of his role in The Internship despite it not happening for another sixteen years. With the help of Ice Cube (Straight Outta Compton, F@%& Da Police, Are We Done Yet?) they set off into the Amazon in search of those drones they claimed were going to revolutionize package delivery.
Get your magic eye ready as Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Bill Corbett (also known as the stars of Mystery Science Theater 3000) present a jolly ol’ riff that will keep you laughing all holiday season long!
In 2015 we kicked off The Crappening by riffing The Room live! Due to a certain litigious cast member who will remain nameless (OK, it’s the guy who says “Lisa looks hot tonight” during Johnny’s birthday party) we’re unable to release that live show on our site. But this studio MP3 of the live show is the next best thing! Consider it a “Special Edition” MP3. Tons of all new jokes, fully riffed sex scenes, and Denny even shoots first! Just borrow a laugh track from Fuller House and you’ll feel like you’re watching it live! Alley football, underwears, breast cancer, doggy, barbecue chicken rice, framed spoons: The Room has contributed so much to our culture, way more than suckers like Van Gogh or Thomas Pynchon. It is one of our all time favorite bad movies and this MP3 version is the definitive riffing! Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill-R for this studio MP3 of our The Room live show! Do it quickly, before Mark moves to a bigger place - word on the street is he’s making some pretty good money these days. A broadcast of the never-before-seen riffing on the hilarious “classic” The Room, from Nashville, TN.
Performed live at SF Sketchfest to rave reviews, now available for download, it’s Night of the Shorts: A Good Day to Riff Hard! Mike, Kevin, and Bill take on some of the funniest, most unbelievable vintage shorts we've ever found, live in the beautiful Castro Theatre with a crew of hilarious guest riffers! Hilarious guest riffers, you ask? Like who, you go on to ask? Hey, thanks for asking both of those questions! Joining the guys on stage we've got John Hodgman, Paul F. Tompkins, Todd Barry, Janet Varney, and Cole Stratton! Laughs are laughed! Friendships are formed! Affectionate attachments between certain guest riffers and certain educational short characters are also formed! (ahem Hodgman ahem) And for the finale, in an insane gambit we've never attempted before, the entire crew of guests on stage at once for an all hands on deck riffing of perhaps our favorite and most inexplicable short of all time, Setting Up a Room. What results is the best kind of madness, and a one-of-a-kind show you don’t want to miss!
Following the success of RiffTrax Live: Sharknado in 2014, the internal shark chainsawer Ian Ziering is back! This time the titular weather event hits the city of New York, right as all the gruff and busy inhabitants are trying to walk, over here! And no famous landmark is safe from their wrath, including perennially grumpy New Yorker Judd Hirsch.
The year is 1987. Motorcycle ninjas tighten their grip on Florida's narcotics trade, viciously annihilating anyone who dares move in on their turf. Multi-national martial arts rock band Dragon Sound have had enough, and embark on a roundhouse wreck-wave of crime-crushing justice. When not chasing beach bunnies or performing their hit song "Against the Ninja," Mark (taekwondo master/inspirational speaker Y.K. Kim) and the boys are kicking and chopping at the drug world's smelliest underbelly. It'll take every ounce of their blood and courage, but Dragon Sound can't stop until they've completely destroyed the dealers, the drunk bikers, the kill-crazy ninjas, the middle-aged thugs, the "stupid cocaine"... and the entire MIAMI CONNECTION!!! If you put everything about the 80s in a blender, then somehow ran the resulting smoothie through a translator that only speaks languages from another dimension, what you’d wind up with still wouldn't be half as hilarious, weird, and oddly charming as Miami Connection. Featuring a group of motorcycle-riding ninjas as they take on the band Dragon Sound, this one is impossible to explain but also impossible to forget.
“What a story!” This was the original studio tagline for Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny. You will have to ignore, of course, that Santa & the Ice Cream Bunny barely contains a story, let alone a coherent thought. But you’ll be willing to let this pass, since it does contain pigs, gorilla suits, paper mache birds, soiled Santa costumes, pervy moles and, of course, an Ice Cream Bunny. What is an Ice Cream Bunny? We’re not quite sure, and the movie doesn’t really bother to explain. Evidently he has a fire truck with an air raid siren, and lives at a place called Pirates World. We also know that we are strongly in favor of ceding all power to it and letting it enact whatever foul agenda it desires, just as long as it lets us take a ride through Pirates World in that sweet, sweet fire truck. It’s one of the strangest and most baffling pieces of outsider art that Mike, Kevin and Bill have ever riffed. Please join us in experiencing: Santa & the Ice Cream Bunny.
On January 7th, 2016, the comedy world was forever changed. Some said it was the sheer wattage of star power assembled in one place. Others said it was the relentless volume of hilarious jokes delivered from the stage of the Castro theater. But one comedy historian, speaking for the first time in months from a comedy hospital bed, simply uttered the the four words “David and Hazel....LIVE!” before slumping over. Clown doctors with oversized stethoscopes rushed in, but were unable to revive the patient with a rubber chicken IV. He was pronounced dead from acute laughter intoxication. We are not saying that you will die if you don’t watch this show! In fact, we’re saying that you may die if you do… Hm, that could be worth revising. Eh, I’m sure one of our interns will get around to that! Anyway, what you have here is quite possibly our funniest Sketchfest Live show of all time! Chortle at the deterioration of a Canadian marriage! Slap your knee as horrible hell monkeys die one at a time! Howl with laughter at the sight of Ned Blandford! Mike, Kevin, and Bill were joined onstage at SF SKetchfest Live 2016 by very special guest riffers Bridget Nelson, Mary Jo Pehl, Cole Stratton, Janet Varney, Adam Savage, Paul F. Tompkins, and John Hodgman including a gigantic, possible world record TEN PERSON riffing grand finale! Riffed shorts include: The Trouble with Women Dining Together David and Hazel One Got Fat Improve Your Pronunciation Batman: Robin’s Wild Ride
Time Chasers, the story of a man named Nick who turns his airplane into a time machine with the aid of his beloved Commodore 64. With it he woos the woman of his dreams, despite the fact that he doesn’t own a car and his wardrobe consists only of a pair of jeans and a threadbare t-shirt from Castleton State College. The two run afoul of GenCorp, an evil mega-corporation run out of the mezzanine lobby of a small local library in Rutland, Vermont. Its ruthless CEO, J.K. (you can tell he’s evil because his hair is gelled back) will stop at nothing to steal Nick’s priceless secret.
The RiffTrax trio of Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett are joined on stage by their MST3K colleagues at the State Theatre in Minneapolis to bring it back to their roots in an MST3K cast reunion the likes of which have never been seen before! Joining the guys are their old cohorts Frank Conniff (TV's Frank), Trace Beaulieu (Crow, Dr. Forrestor), Mary Jo Pehl (Pearl Forrester), Bridget Nelson (Nuveena, Mr. B), as well as Mystery Science Theater 3000 creator Joel Hodgson, AND the host of the revived MST, Jonah Ray, for a hilarious night of riffing for RiffTrax's 20th Live event. Taking turns in various permutations to riff on a slew of old-timey shorts, the show culminates in a Super Riff-A-Palooza finale with all nine riffers on stage!
By day, he’s a mild-mannered milkman with thick-rimmed glasses. But, when duty calls, he becomes something even less thrilling - Measuring Man! Does he remove the thick-rimmed glasses when he becomes Measuring Man? No he does not! Apparently when your only powers involve measurement education, you don’t have to worry about super-villains figuring out your alter ego. Besides, look at him, he definitely needs those glasses. [Stand-Alone Live Version, taken from the Miami Connection Live Riff]
The guys who make movies funny, Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett, bring their comedy chops back to the big screen when they take on one of most beloved (and bizarre!) of the Japanese monster classics, 1961's Mothra. Mothra tells the story of a group of explorers who travel to a remote island, kidnap two tiny women, thereby inciting the wrath of a giant larvae which then swims the ocean, cocoons itself in downtown Tokyo, emerges as the titular Mothra and destroys everything in its path.
Rifftrax Live: Carnival of Souls! Mike, Bill, and Kevin riffed this spooky midnight-movie cult classic live in Nashville, and now it's available for you to download or stream in Anywhere-Ville! When young Mary survives a horrible car crash, she tries to start her life over with a new church organist job in a small Utah town, as one does. But along the way she’s haunted by a gaunt pale figure in a nice suit who leads her to an abandoned old pavilion on the shores of the Great Salt Lake. Soon Mary doesn’t know if she’s awake or dreaming, alive or dead, which makes her really dull at parties. Fans of Rifftrax Live: Night of the Living Dead will love this one. Weird, creepy and very silly, our live riff of Carnival of Souls is not to be missed! The show also includes live riffs of TWO hilarious shorts. The Dirt Witch, probably one of the top films ever made about witch cleanliness. And the unforgettable Masks of Grass, a disturbing trash-crafting follow-up to the Rifftrax classic, At Your Fingertips: Grasses!
RiffTrax takes on one of the most loved Z-grade action films of the early 90s: Samurai Cop. The cop they call Samurai takes himself and his fabulous hair (really, it is an amazing thing to behold) to Los Angeles from a faraway land they call San Diego to bust up a gang whose stated goal is putting someone’s head on their piano. Samurai and his partner, whose main task is to shamelessly mug to the camera, run up against MST3K fan-favorite Robert Z’dar for some insanely awful and hilarious fight scenes. Decapitations, explosions, poorly subbed in stunt doubles, mangled dialogue, prominent lion heads, and unfortunate banana hammocks abound in this extremely eighties-y nineties movie. Join Mike, Kevin, Bill, and Alfonso Rafael Federico Sebastian for RiffTrax Live: Samurai Cop!
We're heading back to Nashville, the Beach Party Capital of the South, for one hilarious night of educational shorts - riffed LIVE in front of a huge audience at the Belcourt Theatre! Mike, Kevin and Bill return to the stage with RiffTrax regulars Bridget Nelson and Mary Jo Pehl, along with some special guests, to take turns riffing shorts in various permutations. The live show will culminate in a RIFF-A-PALOOZA with everyone on stage at the same time!
The Doctor is in the house! The RiffTrax house, that is! The stars of Mystery Science Theater 3000®, Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett, are back on the big screen for a legendary riffing of the 1983 Doctor Who film "The Five Doctors." Someone is taking the Doctor's past selves out of time and space, placing them in a vast wilderness - a battle arena with a sinister tower at its center. As the various incarnations of the Doctor join forces, they learn they are in the Death Zone on their home world of Gallifrey, fighting Daleks, Cybermen, Yeti and a devious Time Lord Traitor who is using the Doctor and his companions to discover the ancient secrets of Rassilon, the first and most powerful ruler of Gallifrey. Join Mike, Kevin and Bill as they join the Five Doctors for one of the most thrilling Doctor Who adventures ever!
Riffed in its entirety for its first time ever, more Space Mutiny means there's even more Reb Brown to love. We'll also pay a visit to "The Magic Shop", a short that is not only written by H.G. Wells, but which also likely landed him on several neighborhood watch lists! AND you'll get an exclusive look at the legendary hippo-gorilla hybrid that Dr. Moreau called "Way too unholy an abomination, even for me!" One of the most popular episodes of MST3K is now one of the funniest RiffTrax Live events we've ever done. Join Mike, Kevin (yes, he's wearing a muumuu), and Bill for RiffTrax Live: Space Mutiny!
For the first time in this or any other galaxy, the RiffTrax crew is delighted to take on the sci-fi fantasy classic KRULL. Directed by Peter Yates, who also made BULLITT, THE DRESSER, and BREAKING AWAY comes this thrilling, swashbuckling space opera. Travel to the magical planet Krull, where people travel freely through time and space, and yet everything is still lit with torches. Here Princess Lyssa and Prince Colwyn plan to marry and rule the land. But wait! The fair kingdom is invaded by a beast, appropriately named The Beast, and his army of Slayers, who slay a LOT. Princess Lyssa is kidnapped and it’s up to Colwyn to rescue her. Naturally he assembles a rag-tag band of misfits to help him. A wizard! A cyclops! Another wizard! A Robbie Coltrane and a Liam Neeson! Will Colwyn save his Princess from the clutches of dark magic? Probably! And he’ll do it with the help of his magical throwing toy, the Glaive. Join Bill, Mike and Kevin on their epic joke-fueled journey to the land of KRULL!
Bill and Kevin are joined onstage by the great Paul F. Tompkins, and together they host and riff an amazing set of bizarre short films. The shorts cover every subject under the sun (y’know, because “Day”), from workplace safety to childhood safety to sentient talking pillow safety. And that’s not all - we’ve got more guests, riffing teams and legends galore! John Hodgman, Frank Conniff & Trace Beaulieu, Cole Stratton & Janet Varney, and Bridget Nelson with Sean Thomason, RiffTrax Senior Writer, making his live riffing debut. No semi-educational short subject is safe from this crew, as they take on party-going, farm-familying, and an old cartoon about the dangers of being a kid that must be seen to be believed. The show culminates in an “all-skate” with all 10 riffers taking the stage for the vintage conspiracy theory hysteria of Flying Saucer Mystery! It’s a big, crazy show you don’t want to miss, and you don’t have to, because here it is, right now, where you can get it! What luck! Riffed shorts include: The Hothead and The Forgetter Cindy Goes to a Party Beginning Responsibility: Taking Care of Your Own Things Farm Family in Spring Mighty Mr. Titan Are You Listening Cautious Twins Play Safe Flying Saucer Mystery
Deep in the Mexican jungle, a legendary creature lurks in a radioactive swamp. Is it a man? Is it an octopus? No, it’s OCTAMAN! Okay, it’s a man in an octopus suit, but he’s really angry and decides to go on a light killing spree. A scientific expedition sets out to study this atomic mutant and stop it before it kills again. They’re not very good at it, since Octaman kills quite a lot — probably because THE DUMB SCIENTISTS KEEP STEALING ITS BABIES! It seems there’s no stopping the monster until it develops a crush on the plucky lady scientist Susan Lowry (Pier Angeli) and does what all mutant sea creatures like to do - it knocks her out and carries her away. Will the rest of the team be able to rescue Susan before Octaman picks them all off one by one? Looks pretty doubtful! Directed by the writer of Creature From the Black Lagoon, and featuring costumes and effects by a young Rick Baker, Octaman is a wonderfully awful rubber monster B-movie. Join Bill, Mike and Kevin live as they risk life and limb to deliver the laughs from the clutches of Octaman!
It’s the year 2762. The galaxy is plagued with warring factions using hokey special effects to destroy each other. Out of this chaos a hero rises: the dashing, exquisitely bearded Captain Saber Raine (Casper Van Dien). Saber and his elite squad of commandos (other actors) embark on a dangerous quest to save the Prince and Princess of an unnamed planet from the clutches of the Evil Overlord Sinjin - an overlord so evil HIS VERY SKULL IS FILLED WITH CHERRY JELL-O. Can our heroes fend off Sinjin’s army of mutant androids and rescue the Prince and Princess? Probably! After all it’s Space Opera, but you never know! Join Mike, Kevin and Bill for an unforgettable Sword-And-Laser Swashbuckling-ly fun time, beamed to theaters nationwide!
The Giant Spider Invasion, one of the most popular MST3K movies ever, is coming to a Theater near you along with the mighty men of RiffTrax! There’s a monster in Wisconsin, and it’s going to slowly, VERY slowly, strike TERROR INTO YOUR HEART! Sure, your grandma could outrun it, but TERROR is more fun! When a fiery meteor lands in the woods, strange things begin to happen in this small Wisconsin town — even weirder than usual, and that’s a pretty high bar! While the townspeople are picked off by spiders of varying sizes, two esteemed scientists ramble around the countryside in a late model sedan, where they find friendship, romance and a big mechanical spider built on a Volkswagen Beetle chassis! Starring Alan Hale Jr, the (Skipper from Gilligan’s Island), Barbara Hale (Perry Mason, and no relation to the Skipper) and Robert Easton, who’s been in more movies than a No Smoking disclaimer, Bill Rebane’s The Giant Spider Invasion explodes across the screen in a pristine new digital transfer. Join Bill, Mike and Kevin as they serve up the cheesiest cheese America’s Dairyland has to offer, LIVE in movie theaters nationwide.
At an abandoned old movie studio, security guards keep getting mysteriously murdered. The mystery: Why are there so many security guards for an abandoned old movie studio?! But forget that; the real secret is Hobgoblins! Cheap rubber puppets from outer space! Who vaguely resemble Gremlins! But not enough to bring on a lawsuit! Their power: they’ll make your wildest fantasies come true, and then you die, laughingly and embarrassingly. The studio’s new security guard, Kevin (no relation) quickly learns the secret of the Hobgoblins, and even more quickly lets them escape. Now it’s up to the inept Kevin and sexually-obsessed pals to thwart the Hobgoblins before they take over the world, or at least various neighborhoods in the Greater Los Angeles Area! Back in the era of Mystery Science Theater 3000, Hobgoblins nearly destroyed Mike and the Bots. But the combined powers of Bill, Mike and Kevin will turn this wretched chunk of cheese into comedy gold!
There’s still evil up there at the old Amityville house. A group of priests gathers to quell the demon that has long plagued this lovely five-bed, four-bath Dutch Colonial full of old-world charm and lots of curb appeal. BUT - the evil escapes! Which should have been made obvious by the movie’s title. And how does it escape? Like all evil does: by possessing a tacky floor lamp, getting sold at a garage sale and shipped to Los Angeles, where most evil household décor eventually finds a home. Soon the demonic floor lamp begins its reign of terror in the home of an innocent family, killing pets and home repairmen, forcing children to use power tools in unsafe ways, and possessing the soul of the youngest sister Jessica, who immediately begins to act like a total jerk. It’s up to the young priest Father Kibbler to save the family and confront the evil lamp, face-to-bulb, before more people die. Okay, more people DO die, but can Father Kibbler finally put an end to it?
He’s back! You probably didn’t know that he was gone, but he was and now he’s back! Swamp Thing, AKA Swampington Montgomery Thing, returns to thwart the sinister plans of the evil Doctor Arcane, who apparently is also back. But! Here for the first time is Heather Locklear, the young woman who is drawn to the mysterious charms of Mr. Thing and desires a love that is both human and plant-based. A sequel to the Wes Craven cult classic, The Return of Swamp Thing is decidedly NOT Directed by Wes Craven, but that’s fine, because it means this one is bigger, more fun, and way more riffable. Plus, to kick things off, a puppet goes to the dentist in Danny's Dental Date, a short that's way scarier than anything you'd find in Dr. Arcane's lab. Join Kevin, Bill, and Mike as they chase down a hoodoo in front of a live audience at the Belcourt Theatre in Nashville for RiffTrax Live: The Return of Swamp Thing!
Teens! Bikes! Feathered Hair! Leotards and acid-washed denim! Ass-sliding! It’s all here in the legendary Eighties BMX-racing action-drama-romance RAD! Starring Rocky’s Talia Shire, Olympian Bart Conner, and Defendant Lori Loughlin, RAD tells the saga of Cru, a small-town kid who dreams of making it big in the elite world of professional Racing Around in the Dirt on Tiny Bicycles. When an international race called Helltrack comes to town, he’s ready to leave everybody in his dust… As long as he can get his mommy’s permission to compete. Can he overcome the obstacles? Can he win the respect of the World Champion Tiny Bicycle racers? And can he win the heart of the Tiny-Bike-Racing girl? You’ll also get to see two Gumby shorts featuring witches, dinosaurs, and a complete disregard for cohesive storytelling! Join Mike, Bill, and Kevin as they spin, flip, and bike-dance into your hearts with RiffTrax Live: RAD!
This footage from the RiffTrax panel at the 2010 San Diego Comic-Con was included as a bonus on the Maniac DVD. Includes a live riffing of the short 'Buying Food'. The panel was hosted by Veronica Belmont.
Although it was made in 1936, Reefer Madness didn't become a cult hit until 1972 when the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) rescued it from the Library of Congress film archive. Thereafter, it was a mainstay on the midnight movie circuit. And it's easy to see why. The ostensible story involves a group of upstanding young high school students who succumb to the allure of the "killer weed." What follows, as if by natural progression, is a catalog of crimes that includes hit-and-run driving, loose morals, rape, murder, suicide, and my personal favorite, permanent insanity! The action is at times so hysterical, in both senses, that you may forget to inhale. Honors go to the wild-eyed, cackling hophead David O'Brien; his performance reaches a raw intensity that is hard to imagine. One measure of this film's pervasive influence is the extent to which its title continues to be invoked in news stories about decriminalization and medical marijuana. Such posterity for unintentional humor must be rare. A great film to see stoned, man. - Amazon.com
About the DVD: Every care has been taken to ensure that this DVD is of the highest quality. It comes with a rich, machine-tooled plastic case, top-grade polycarbonate coating, and reflective layer, rafted from only the choicest Sri Lankan aluminum. In order to provide you with the finest viewing experience, each of the more than 27 million pits in the reflective layer of your DVD has been hand-carved by craftsmen, one pit at a time, using old world methods. Before packing, the disks were sent to Roger in Product Management who viewed each and every DVD in its entirety to assure quality. (Nearly 8,700 viewings into the process, Roger went mad and attempted to claw his own eyes out with the plastic fork that came with his Baja Beef Gordito. Luckily, Roger was wearing glasses, the tines of his cheap fork broke, as they so often do, and his eyesight was saved. He has been reassigned to the Custodial Department.)
One of the strangest, most baffling Christmas movies ever made, Santa and The Ice Cream Bunny defies logic, reason, and we believe several laws of physics. Santa’s sleigh is stuck on the beach, and only one creature can help him: The Ice Cream Bunny! Unfortunately, the fire truck that the Ice Cream Bunny drives needs repairs, so he’ll be a little late coming from Pirates World, the run down theme park that he lives in. We’d like to take this moment to remind, that yes, this is a real movie that people actually made. Never fear though, because Santa has a great story to pass the time: the tale of Jack and the Beanstalk! He'll recount to the nearby children how a Used Cow Salesman sells Jack a bag of magic beans. providing him with beanstalk-based travel to the clouds where he breaks into a Giant's castle and proceeds to steal back his stuff. The Giant is unable to react much beyond alternately eating, sleeping, and hunting for the source of a strange smell. (Hint: it's Jack.) Filmed in front of a live audience at the historic Belcourt Theatre in Nashville, Mike, Kevin, and Bill are delighted to inflict, er, present it LIVE for the very first time! What you may not know is - there’s more. That’s right, over 13 more minutes of Bunny that have, until now, gone totally unriffed! This time, we leave nothing out. This time, it’s Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny: Extended Edition. Mike, Bill, and Kevin will host and perform an in-studio riff of the complete film, including those 13 never-before-riffed minutes. They’ll also present a free preview of our next slice of holiday weirdness, upcoming VOD release The Magic Christmas Tree!
Mike Nelson, the star of MST3K, and his RiffTrax crew riff on Epic's Gears of Wars 3.
The guys behind Mystery Science Theater 3000 make fun of one of the worst video game movies of all time. Watch as they add color commentary to choice cuts of the terrible Super Mario Bros. movie. Which, if you haven't seen it, is really terrible. Seriously. It's like watching cats die. Seriously.
RiffTrax gives their special treatment to Starship Troopers.
Killer Shrimp ‘N Friends - no, it’s not a new appetizer platter at your favorite casual dining restaurant, but it IS a smorgasbord of strange creatures, people, and underwear! From a ball-breaking mantis shrimp, to the seemingly-named-by-Wes-Anderson Geographer’s Cone Snail, to a dog with a penchant for unmentionables, to the UTTERLY HORRIBLE thing baby koalas put into their mouths, there’s plenty of weird stuff in the natural world for us to sink our, er, teeth into. All that, plus an old man and his seal (strange reboot of the classic Hemingway novel), terrifying dino-birds, and tasmanian devils - not quite as tornado-y as cartoons have led us to believe, much more into “killing things and living inside them.” There’s a lot to love in this episode, almost too much really, so get to it and join Mike, Kevin, and Bill (and, seriously, some utterly disgusting koalas) for National Geographic's TOTAL RIFF OFF: Killer Shrimp ‘N Friends!
Decades before somebody had the revolutionary idea to do a Godzilla remake that was “good” or “cool”, Hollywood hired the director of 2012 to make one that would be neither of those things but would instead have an ad campaign co-starring the Taco Bell chihuahua. Matthew Broderick stars as Dr. Niko Tatopoulos, because obviously when you have a character named Niko Tatopoulos, you get Matthew Broderick to play him. Co-starring is the hit Puff Daddy single “Almost Certainly the Low Point of Jimmy Page’s Career” (Sample lyrics: Uh-huh, Yeah, uuh / Uh-huh, Yeah, uuh.) And in all the commercials they showed that part where the guy gets stomped on. Somehow this is a two and a half hour long movie. About as scary as the Tamagotchi you had back in 1998 and about as loud and obnoxious as the Prodigy CD you were listening to that summer, Godzilla was one of the biggest RiffTrax Live titles we’ve ever done. Join Mike, Kevin, Bill, and roughly 82% of the cast of The Simpsons for this studio MP3 version of Godzilla!
There’s riffs out there this big?? One of our favorites, now available as a studio riff, the movie that’s been called “Probably one of the top four films in the Anaconda series,” Anaconda! Anaconda stars a pre-fame Jennifer Lopez, a post-fame Eric Stoltz, and an Owen Wilson who even then was somehow ashamed of his role in The Internship despite it not happening for another sixteen years. With the help of Ice Cube (Straight Outta Compton, F@%& Da Police, Are We Done Yet?) they set off into the Amazon in search of those drones they claimed were going to revolutionize package delivery. Then Eric Stoltz gets stung and paralyzed by a venomous wasp, so things are really looking up for our crew when they encounter Jon Voight. Voight has been obsessed with hunting down a deadly anaconda ever since the snake tricked him into selling his beloved Chrysler LeBaron to George Costanza. From then on, things spiral into a deadly game of cat and mouse, one where the cat is played by a snake, and the mouse is played by Danny Trejo. And, as if that wasn't enough, at one point the anaconda spits a monkey right at a man’s face! How many movies can say that? Don’t miss out!
Please enjoy our new RiffTrax Animated Intro - the theme song is written and performed by Jonathan Coulton, and the animation is by Harry Partridge.
The 1966 Peanuts Halloween classic probably gives you the warm fuzzies every year, but it's not exactly LOL.
Carnival of Souls has all the elements of a crowd pleaser: slow motion car crashes, middle-aged men wearing pancake make-up and heavy eyeliner, greasy guys bearing unsanitary coffee, and loads and loads of creepy, tuneless organ music. Director Herk Harvey certainly knew his audience and knew how to deliver the goods. The fact that Carnival of Souls is now sold in color will increase your enjoyment tenfold! (To be precise, the data from the National Enjoyment Council shows a 10.85-fold increase, but I rounded down.) Grab the unsanitary drink of your choice and begin the enjoyment!
From the strange and ridiculously colorful world of K. Gordon Murray comes the 1959 Holiday classic Santa Claus. Made in Mexico and dubbed into glorious English, Santa Claus tells the story of, well, Santa Claus, who lives in a big white castle above us in Geosynchronous Orbit and watches over us all in a way that would make the NSA jealous. It’s Christmas Eve, and on Earth poor little Lupita wishes for a doll. Santa hears her wish and prepares for his yearly visit, helped by the heavily medicated Merlin the Wizard and Santa’s unintentionally creepy mechanical reindeer. But wait, who’s that trying to foil Santa’s plans and ruin Christmas? It’s the Devil of course, who sends his leotard-bedecked demon Pitch to turn the children against Santa and ruin Christmas. Pitch endlessly plots, and fails, to thwart Santa’s magical ride. The tension mounts - will Santa be able to foil Pitch and his minions, will he save Christmas and get poor Lupita her doll? The answer is Yes, of course, this is a Christmas movie, people! Come on!
Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett of Mystery Science Theater 3000 write clickbait headlines, name #BoringRealityShows and riff on awful movies on Vine.
Rifftrax riffs themselves from @midnight
A classic tale of boy-meets-girl, plant-eats-people featuring Jack Nicholson in one of his first film roles. Seymour's exotic plant has an insatiable appetite for blood and flesh. As the ruthless plant grows larger and larger with each feeding, so do Seymour's affections for shop girl, Audrey. The madness culminates with Seymour and his bloodthirsty plant in a feeding frenzy of epic proportions. This timeless cult favorite is pristinely restored in high definition from rare 35mm elements.
William: From Georgia to Harlem. At last, the prequel to RiffTrax classic Guy From Harlem the world’s been screaming for! Sure, we all knew he was from Harlem, but where was he from before THAT? Answers at last! Country boy and overalls-with-no-shirt-underneath enthusiast William finds his world turned upside-down when his family picks up and moves from drab rural poverty in Georgia to bleak urban poverty in Harlem. Ohhhh, so THAT’S where they got the title from! Because, you see, William moves from Georgia to Harlem. I get it now. It’s a very subtle title. Harlem is a strange new world for William, as he struggles to get along with Calvin, a kid with an inexplicable and extreme hatred of tractors. When a terrifying hardcore gang (aka, a few kids who smoke cigarettes) attacks William and Calvin in the park, his small town values are put to the test. Will he survive? Will he remain “from Georgia”, and if not at what point does he technically become “from Harlem”? Will Calvin ever get over his weird tractor thing? Find out with Mike, Kevin and Bill as they take a trip with William From Georgia to Harlem!
One of the best things about litter used to be its versatility. You could just throw it anywhere! Plus, it encouraged improvisation: If you put your mind to it, anything could be litter! Food scraps, old batteries, syringes, grandpa. Just toss it at the feet of an emotional roadside Indian and be on your way! But then the hippies had to come along, and everyone got all “groovy” this and “let’s not let the rest of the country end up like New Jersey” that. They started by indoctrinating our children with shorts like The Litter Monster, and the next thing we know our children are spouting propaganda like “Let’s paint garbage cans and put them in the park!” and “Dad, can you help us remove the rusty car parts someone dumped on the baseball diamond?” and “What happened to all those rusty car parts you had in the garage that mom’s been hassling you about getting rid of?” The short culminates with the construction of the titular Litter Monster, a hulking abomination that begs passersby to shove their litter into its gaping mouth. It’s like a robotic homeless Cookie Monster with severely lowered dietary standards, and to be honest, we really wish there was one on every street corner in our home town. Join Mike, Kevin, Bill, and thousands of pounds of delicious litter for The Litter Monster!
Sharknado 2! Our smash hit summer live show is now available for download and streaming! Including the delightfully bizarre puppet-and-invisible-boy short, Parents: Who Needs Them?, which raises all kinds of important questions regarding parents and the needing of them. When you heard about the first Sharknado in 2013 you thought, “A movie about a tornado filled with sharks? It’s too good to be true!” But it was true; and then the next year when you heard they were making another you thought, “A second movie about a tornado filled with sharks? It, too, is too good to be true!” Guess what, it’s true! Internal shark chainsawer Ian Ziering is back, along with Tara Reid as his ex-wife who kind of likes him now, ever since her douche-y boyfriend got eaten by a shark in their living room. This time the titular weather event hits the city of New York, right as all the gruff and busy inhabitants are trying to walk, over here! And no famous landmark is safe from their wrath, including perennially grumpy New Yorker Judd Hirsch. And there’s a fun cameo from a certain sandwich spokesman who you probably won’t be seeing in too many more movies, if we had to guess! Live audiences loved it and now you can too, forever and ever in digital form. Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill as they button up their raincoats and dive headlong into Sharknado 2: The Second One!
RiffTrax takes on Mega Man, Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy X, and Sonic.
If you put everything about the 80s in a blender, then somehow ran the resulting smoothie through a translator that only speaks languages from another dimension, what you’d wind up with still wouldn't be half as hilarious, weird, and oddly charming as Miami Connection. It's 1987, and the Biker Ninjas behind the Miami drug trade are finding themselves facing the newest heroes in town: the Taekwondo-loving rock band Dragon Sound! They'll focus all of their black belt skills, alongside performing their hit songs "Friends" and "Against the Ninja" at a popular Orlando night club - to end the threat of Ninja Biker violence once and for all!
Richard Terry is back, and the soup is thicker and browner than ever! Shrugging off the embarrassments of the Demon Bat turning out to be a Regular Bat and the fearsome Naga river monster turning out to be just some ripples on the water caused by his cameraman taking a leak, Richard unbuttons half his shirt buttons, flips his camera to night vision mode, and heads to Brazil! This time he’s in search of the Mapinguari, aka the Brazilian Bigfoot, aka, Probably A Slightly Larger Than Average Coyote or Something. It’s been terrorizing villagers. They will not leave their huts for fear it might thrust a camera in their face and demand they sign a release form—Oh wait, that’s just Richard. The Mapinguari on the other hand is constantly pretending he’s in danger and making perfectly normal situations seem fraught with peril—Sorry, sorry, that’s Richard again too. Along the road to eventual disappointment and inevitable humiliation, Richard will scoot along a log, drug an anteater, and get drenched by a waterfall. It may be his most successful monster hunt yet. Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for another baffling snipe hunt with our favorite intrepid explorer in Total Riff Off Episode 6: Brazilian Bigfoot!
Time Chasers, the story of a man named Nick who turns his airplane into a time machine with the aid of his beloved Commodore 64. With it he woos the woman of his dreams, despite the fact that he doesn’t own a car and his wardrobe consists only of a pair of jeans and a threadbare t-shirt from Castleton State College. The two run afoul of GenCorp, an evil mega-corporation run out of the mezzanine lobby of a small local library in Rutland, Vermont. Its ruthless CEO, J.K. (you can tell he’s evil because his hair is gelled back) will stop at nothing to steal Nick’s priceless secret. Note - In certain parts of the movie, the audio is a tad out of sync with the video. This is actually part of the restored HD master video element from David Giancola. Welcome to Time Chasers!
Mike, Kevin and Bill were joined on stage by their MST3K colleagues at the State Theatre in Minneapolis to bring it back to their roots in an MST3K cast reunion the likes of which have never been seen before! Joining the guys are their old cohorts Frank Conniff (TV's Frank), Trace Beaulieu (Crow, Dr. Forrestor), Mary Jo Pehl (Pearl Forrester), Bridget Nelson (Nuveena, Mr. B), as well as Mystery Science Theater 3000 creator Joel Hodgson, AND the host of the revived MST, Jonah Ray, for a hilarious night of riffing for RiffTrax's 20th Live event. Taking turns in various permutations to riff on a slew of old-timey shorts, the show culminates in a Super Riff-A-Palooza finale with all nine riffers on stage at once!
The guys who make movies funny, Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett, bring their comedy chops back to the big screen when they take on one of most beloved (and bizarre!) of the Japanese monster classics, 1961’s Mothra. Mothra tells the story of a group of explorers who travel to a remote island, kidnap two tiny women, thereby inciting the wrath of a giant larvae which then swims the ocean, cocoons itself in downtown Tokyo, emerges as the titular Mothra and destroys everything in its path. Yes, it's a tale as old as time, but Mothra does it best! Just as Gamera became one of MST3K's most beloved series, Mothra promises to be an instant RiffTrax classic!
See how many things the 1967 short film “The Home of The Future: Year 1999 A.D.” gets right by playing along on this special bingo card! Kickstarter 2016 reward.
The metric system. You got an angry feeling in your stomach just thinking about it, didn’t you? The world has been trying to shove this probably-better-but-who-cares system down our stubborn American throats for DECADES, but we won’t have even a centimeter of it. Kickstarter 2016 reward.
When you think of truckers you think of a lot of things: CB Radios, speed, pee bottles, ridiculous arm wrestling training contraptions. Rarely would “The Uplifting Power of Song” be high on your list. Truck Song aims to change that! Part of the Cyber Bonus Pack 2016.
Young Mary survives a horrible car crash, tries to start her life over with a new church organist job in a small Utah town, as one does. but along the way she’s haunted by a gaunt pale figure in a nice suit who leads her to an abandoned old pavilion on the shores of the Great Salt Lake. Mike, Bill, and Kevin riffed this spooky midnight-movie cult classic live in Nashville The show includes live riffs of two shorts. The Dirt Witch, probably one of the top films ever made about witch cleanliness. And the unforgettable Masks of Grass, a disturbing trash-crafting follow-up to the Rifftrax classic, At Your Fingertips: Grasses!
The cop they call Samurai takes himself and his fabulous hair (really, it is an amazing thing to behold) to Los Angeles from a faraway land they call San Diego to bust up a gang whose stated goal is putting someone’s head on their piano. Samurai and his partner, whose main task is to shamelessly mug to the camera, run up against MST3K fan-favorite Robert Z’dar for some insanely awful and hilarious fight scenes. Decapitations, explosions, poorly subbed in stunt doubles, mangled dialogue, prominent lion heads, and unfortunate banana hammocks abound in this extremely eighties-y nineties movie. Join Mike, Kevin, Bill, and Alfonso Rafael Federico Sebastian for RiffTrax Live: Samurai Cop!
“Summer. Summer, summer, summer, summer,” as The Cars famously sang. What they were really saying is, “Summer. It’s the time for a RiffTrax Live: Summer Shorts Beach Party!” Yes, put on your shorts and come out and see Mike, Kevin and Bill taking on some of their favorite short films - a selection of hilarious, skewed and sometimes downright bizarre educational shorts. And because it’s never a party without guests, the guys will be joined by RiffTrax’s own duo of Bridget Jones (MST’s beloved Mister B Natural) and Mary Jo Pehl (Pearl Forrester). And to ensure the party gets a little mad, we’ve got The Mads themselves: Trace Beaulieu and “TV’s” Frank Conniff! We've also got Mr. Paul F Tompkins! Slap on some SPF 30 and join Mike, Bill and Kevin for the RiffTrax Live: Summer Shorts Beach Party!
People Soup is the first short we’ve done that has been nominated for an Oscar. (Yes, Henry Slinkman’s moving performance in Buying Food was rudely snubbed.) Evidently, when Alan Arkin points the camera at his kids while they waste a bunch of food, it’s "art," but when one of us does it it’s "the last time you ever babysit." Seemingly shot without a script or purpose, People Soup gives hope to the maker of every pointless educational short that your efforts will one day be rewarded with critical acclaim. Best Cinematography for What is Nothing? Best Special Effects for Drawing for Beginners: The Rectangle? Best Supporting Actor for Norman Spear Jr. in Parade of Aquatic Champions? OK, maybe not every pointless short… Join Mike, Kevin, Bill, and the Arkin boys, Matthew and Adam, for People Soup! Kickstarter 2017 reward.
Be warned: if you haven’t watched this serious and important 1950s safety short yet, YOU MAY ALREADY BE DEAD! ...So, please take a second to check. No? Still alive? Good! But if you want to stay that way, you’d better take a close look at your life and make sure you don’t hold any of the SIX MURDEROUS BELIEFS! These beliefs are bad, and not just “the Tim Burton Planet of the Apes is the best version” bad. They’re seriously bad. Like one of the beliefs is “Safety is for Sissies” and then there’s a cartoon of the Grim Reaper sitting on a football player. See? You get it now??? This is serious, hardcore stuff, and you need to stop messing around or the dang Grim Reaper will SIT ON YOU. But football isn’t the only thing that can murder you. You know what else can get you all Grim Reapered? Basic carpentry! Doing science! Going outside! You’re doomed!!! Kickstarter 2017 reward.
Space Mutiny! The very title conjures up many memories: tiny cars, writhing spandex-witches, deadly railings. Oh, and we guess there's a mutiny in there somewhere... Riffed in its entirety for its first time ever, more Space Mutiny means there's even more Reb Brown to love. We'll also pay a visit to "The Magic Shop", a short that is not only written by H.G. Wells, but which also likely landed him on several neighborhood watch lists! AND you'll get an exclusive look at the legendary hippo-gorilla hybrid that Dr. Moreau called "Way too unholy an abomination, even for me!"
James is on his way to school when he gets a small cut on his finger. And if you don’t for one second believe that that thin, thin gruel got turned into a seventies educational short, then what the hell have you been watching us riff for the past thirteen years?? Bleeding makes James feel Just Awful, which frankly, is good news. If it had been the opposite, say, if James felt increasingly stronger and confident as he watched his lifeblood seep out of his fingertip, the lawsuits would probably still be working their way through the court system. Instead, James gets to pay a visit to the school nurse, who is just relieved to for once have a student who is not going to barf up his Snack Pack on her.
Holiday fireplace videos. We all love them, they bring comfort and cheer to our living rooms and family gatherings. But have they ever made you laugh? We’re proud to present a new kind of fireplace video, one filled with festive comedy and music to be enjoyed by all! And yes, don’t worry, there is still a fireplace -- Kevin Murphy's actual Minnesota fireplace! The RiffTrax Yule Log burns brightly for over two hours. Enjoy the fire while along the way lots of fun RiffTraxy moments pop in -- such as bits of new Christmas riffs, original songs written and performed by the guys, classic carols, nose flutes, skits and excerpts from beloved RiffTrax hits of holidays past! There’s truly nothing like it, and no better way to keep your loved ones happy and smiling as the egg nog kicks in. Even the Ice Cream Bunny gives it his “HURR HURR HURR” seal of approval! Spend your holidays nice and cozy with Mike, Kevin, Bill, Bridget, and Mary Jo, it’s the RiffTrax Yule Log!
The RiffTrax Yule Log Behind the Scenes - Part of the Cyber Monday 2018 Cyber Pack
The Doctor is in the house! The RiffTrax house, that is! The stars of Mystery Science Theater 3000®, Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett, are back on the big screen for a legendary riffing of the 1983 Doctor Who film \"The Five Doctors.\" Someone is taking the Doctor's past selves out of time and space, placing them in a vast wilderness - a battle arena with a sinister tower at its center. As the various incarnations of the Doctor join forces, they learn they are in the Death Zone on their home world of Gallifrey, fighting Daleks, Cybermen, Yeti and a devious Time Lord Traitor who is using the Doctor and his companions to discover the ancient secrets of Rassilon, the first and most powerful ruler of Gallifrey. Join Mike, Kevin and Bill as they join the Five Doctors for one of the most thrilling Doctor Who adventures ever!
A never-before-seen short!
A hilarious short featuring Ronald McDonald and his pals(?) Stinky the Skunk and Merlin the Magician, who you may remember from our Christmas with RiffTrax holiday short.
Two children are thwarted in their attempts to throw their cat into a kiddie pool for a bath.
Senior citizens fight back against petty theft and gun-toting 70s teens with phones and whistles.
A clip of Mike Nelson singing the hits from RiffTrax Live: Stranger Things, released as part of the Cyber Monday 2020 bonus items.
Released as part of the Cyber Monday 2020 bonus items, a short preview of the 2020 Kickstarter reward featuring the riffers out fishing.
We're just swinging by hard to starboard to let you know that our most anticipated fish-based product since Matthew Broderick uttered the phrase "That's a lotta fish!" in Godzilla (1998) is finally here! No, it's not the launch of our very own line of RiffTrax Brand Sardines, it's Fishin' With RiffTrax! Hop aboard the boat as we test the old adage, "If it was about getting fish, it would be called catching." This was a ton of fun to shoot, and we know you'll have a great time watching us struggle on the shores of Minnesota. If you backed this campaign at the $85 level or the $100 level and above, this sea-worthy excursion is a part of your rewards!
Bonus version of "A Boy of Mexico: Juan and his Donkey" riffed by Cole Stratton and Janet Varney.
Bonus version of "Borrowed Power" riffed by Cole Stratton and Janet Varney.
Bonus version of "At Your Fingertips: Boxes" riffed by Cole Stratton and Janet Varney.
Behind the scenes footage from Nashville during Hobgoblins Live pre-production
Mike Nelson from RiffTrax and Rich "Lowtax" Kyanka of SomethingAwful.com present this alternate dialogue take from the Academy Award-nominated film, "The Departed." Part 1 and 2 combined
Finally, the acclaimed smash hit RiffTrax Live event of 2014 is now available to own! Considered by many critics to be one of the greatest movies ever made in the “Tornado full of sharks” genre, Sharknado debuted in 2013 to unprecedented buzz. Not since Snakes On A Plane had the internet been so excited about a movie, and not since the late 90s had anyone been so excited about anything starring Tara Reid. From the moment it debuted, Sharknado was one of the most requested titles in RiffTrax history. It makes Jaws IV look like Jaws III, and Jaws III look like Jaws. Riffed LIVE from the State Theater in Minneapolis and broadcast to over 700 theaters across North America, this hilarious live event also features an all-new take on the Mystery Science Theater 3000 fan-favorite short A Case of Spring Fever starring Coily the Spring Sprite! Look, why are you still reading this? It has chainsaws, helicopters dropping bombs, and the aforementioned TORNADO FULL OF SHARKS!
Animated Riffer edition of "Shake Hands with Danger" featured only on the RiffTrax Shorts Vol. 1 DVD.
Kickstarter exclusive short.
The RiffTones with Brian Murphy sing, "Your Ever-Lovin' Swamp Thing"
Music video for "Good to be Rad" by The Rifftones to accompany the Rifftrax LIVE: Rad! show. Made available to Kickstarter backers.
[2023 Kickstarter Reward]
RiffTrax Live! RAD Trivia Slides