Duck and Cover (Rifftrax Shorts)

Rifftrax Year:  2015

Riffers:  Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy, Bill Corbett

The most infamous educational film of all time gets roasted at long last.  Duck and Cover is a film designed to give false hope to children during the Cold War, telling them that the best way to survive a nuclear attack is to drop down and take shelter.  With the children confident that they will survive they will ascend into heaven without knowing what hit them.  Unless they die a slow and agonizing death of course.

False hope is better than none.  Maybe it's best that the adults tried to give the impression that children shouldn't worry about silly little things like arms race politics and just let them feel as happy and safe as possible.  The short does what it sets out to do in that regard.  But consider this:  the duck and cover method isn't entirely meaningless, as a lot of the advice featured is fairly helpful in other disastrous events that might occur.  Ducking out of the way, taking shelter, or dodging potentially harmful items is great advice in several instances.  It's just that in this case it's practically useless.

The issue I have with riffing this short is that it's funny all on its own, what with the poor advice during a hopeless situation and hilarious depictions of a bomb drop, which just show a flash on the screen and a loud bang with no repercussions.  Mike, Kevin, and Bill get some quality jabs in, but for the most part they don't seem particularly enthused by the short.  But that's probably because it's child's play and the experience of the short with the riff maintains a pleasant presence throughout.  I don't think I laughed out loud, but I was constantly amused.  Maybe that's good enough.

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