Gamera vs. Viras (Fan MST Projects)

Film Year:  1968
Genre:  Kaiju, Science Fiction
Director:   Noriaki Yuasa
Starring:  Kojiro Hongo, Toru Takatsuka, Carl Craig
Fan Project:  MST3K vs. Gamera:  Round II

The Movie

*I HAVE SURVIVED WATCHING THIS MOVIE UNRIFFED*

I thought I was out of the Gamera fire once Mystery Science Theater ended.  Boy was I wrong.

Aliens with a space ship that looks like a bunch of bee abdomens linked together come to Earth for world domination.  Part of their plan is to kidnap a pair of Boy Scouts for no reason, feed them sandwiches, and then brainwash the giant monster Gamera into attacking the Earth for them.  If Gamera isn't up to the task, their leader, a giant space squid, will be unleashed.

Oh god, how I hate this one.  This is the worst Gamera movie by a mile, and now I have to relive it.  There is so much reused footage in this movie, and while it's true that Super Monster Gamera has more, that film at least had the decency to build a half-assed movie around it.  Gamera vs. Viras uses its stock footage as padding, flashing back to Gamera's previous battles just to fill out time (this sequence is cut from this particular version) and then adding more into the third act to make Gamera "rampage" because...why not?  We've already have a quarter of the movie as stock footage, let's go for broke!

Viras is one of the sillier designs in Gamera's rogues gallery.  A giant squid may not seem silly on paper, but it's really the weakness of Japanese special effects that makes him look goofy.  Two tentacles are mobile because the suit actors legs are in them, and the others flop around like stiff foam.  Because of how stiff Viras is, it's hard to consider him a threat to the turtle that farts fire and flies, no matter how many times he tries to stab Gamera through the heart.

The whole Gamera vs. aliens thing gets repeated exhaustingly as the series progresses.  Gamera vs. Viras has the virtue of doing it first (mostly because Godzilla vs. Monster Zero did it to great success), but Gamera vs. Guiron and Super Monster Gamera did it more memorably and more entertainingly.  Viras is about as bland an alien saga as Gamera vs. Zigra, but with more padding.  That's a recipe to test the patience of this kaiju fan, let me tell you.

The Riff

"What's a Gamera?"

There was always that gaping hole in Mystery Science Theater's filmography in that there were three Gamera films that they had never riffed (of the "Showa" era, at any rate, as there were four more made after MST did their episodes).  But that hole exists because Sandy Frank had only licensed the five movies featured on the show for broadcast and home video rights, while the remaining films found their way to the US via other means.  I think there are a few iRiffs out there for the remaining Gamera films, but there is always that little heartache knowing that we'd really like to see them under the MST banner.

Enter this fan series called MST3K vs. Gamera:  Round II, which isn't exactly an "official" MST episode, but merely fans of a series seeking to right a wrong.

Now fan fiction projects can be a tad bit scary, as when they're done poorly, they can be painful.  There is always the potential for fans to be so blinded by their love for the series they're paying homage to that they could potentially throw nothing but references from that series out and call it good because they've made themselves laugh with something that the other series did.  On the other hand, it's also easy to offer up your own material and completely miss the mark because they hadn't really refined their script.  I can find myself hesitant about diving too deep into them because I might not have the patience to sit through the entire thing and if I did I would find something that a group of people had worked really hard on with all of their hearts and poured their hard earned money into and I'd have to write paragraphs in a matter of hours about how I didn't like it.

Not today though.  I enjoyed the hell out of this little fan film.

So the premise is this:  Dr. Forrester at some point hires a man named Helmutt Crusoe (interesting name) to willingly take part of his experiments along with Tom Servo and Crow, while taking on a new second banana named The Crimson Weirdo.  Dr. F doesn't actually make an appearance, instead this Crimson Weirdo character does all the interaction with Helmutt.

If I were to state a shortcoming with all of this, it would be things that aren't exactly this production's fault.  It's a fan film made with spare change because a group of people just really, really wanted to do it.  All things considered the production looks pretty good, if a tad simple and cardboard-y on the SOL.  The stuff filmed for Crimson Weirdo stands out though, since any sort of set resembling a Deep 13 or Castle Forrester isn't even attempted and it's just filmed in some guy's room with a whole lot of toys and collectibles.  I'm willing to play with the fakey illusion, but the shift in feel between the two sets is a tad jarring.

There are a few technical details the people who made it didn't seem to find a way to work around, as the doors to the theater don't open and we instead cut away to a computer animated replica of Mike's door sequence.  There are no shots of the characters entering the theater or exiting either, which isn't too bothersome with the exception of a mid-episode commercial break where the characters are still in the theater but in the following scene they're on the bridge.

Also, I'd personally say it's hard to get used to new voices for Servo and Crow (voiced by Andres Perez and Andrew Battaglia, respectively) since we had just gotten used to a voice change not too long ago for the relaunch.  I know it's unfair to expect them to hire Baron and Hampton for this series, but I'm getting old and I don't like change!  That said, these voices do fairly well, and there's a cute opening segment that plays on Servo's alternating voice.  They even help work with this change by incorporating archival audio of Kevin Murphy at one point (a portion of it is taken directly from the intro to the Rifftrax of Twilight Saga:  Eclipse).

But the star of the show is the riffing, and I'm pleased to say it's quite funny.  Star Brayton Conner (who plays Helmutt) and his robot chums bring a spirit to this project that brings me all the way back to season three MST, and I found myself laughing quite consistently as the movie just got goofier.  Jokes are flung casually and with flair, making me wish these guys would give both the revival and Rifftrax pointers on how to deliver a joke and make it sound natural.  The jabs at the film always seem at their funniest when Gamera is onscreen though, with big laughs coming as Gamera frees a duo of children from captivity, and the crew gets angry at them when they don't return the favor.  There's a moment in the film where there is a shot of Gamera flying in the same frame as the alien space ship, and Helmutt quips exactly what we're all thinking:  "You know, I can't decide which one is sillier."  And there is a delightful reaction to a climactic impaling that just made me howl.

Of note, the film is edited a bit.  I think it's interesting that this series created its own opening credits for the film to help match the Sandy Frank edits featured previously.  They also cut a lengthy, yet painful, stock footage recap of previous Gamera adventures which really made this film a tiring slog (though they keep a climactic stock footage rampage, because it's actually integral to the plot).  Because of this, I might say they've possibly made the best possible version of Gamera vs. Viras.

There are host segments too, and I thought they were pretty fun.  Probably the highlight of the episode is a fun segment in which Helmutt calls a hotline to try and air grievances to Dr. Forrester and gets stuck on a recording ("If you're an unwilling subject of mine:  Bite me.  If you're a willing subject:  Please press one."), meanwhile the Crimson Weirdo begins talking over him like the aliens from the movie.  There is some fun with Helmutt and the Bots creating their own monsters as well, while Servo's Schwarzenegger voice provides some laughs as well.

One thing I will say is that the placement of the segments is a tad off-kilter.  The first host segment comes a bit later than it normally does, as does the second, while the third is placed weirdly close after the second, making the episode seem bottom heavy.  This wasn't uncommon during the KTMA days, though the episode is trying to primarily mimic the Comedy Central era of the show.

But if this fan film had anything in it to capture your heart, it actually goes the extra mile to include vintage commercials during the breaks.  Boy, that was a trip down memory lane!

One thing I think I realized while watching this is that I don't think I'm a huge fan of the Gamera episodes of MST.  I think the original and Guiron are must-sees, but I don't think the others really do much for me.  I realized this because at one point during this fan film I realized I was enjoying it more than the vast majority of official Gamera episodes.  Now, I'm not necessarily saying these guys are just as good as our heroes from the other series, because that's an impossibly high bar for me to set and that would be asking you to be disappointed in this series from the getgo, but if you watch this riff with an open mind you might just see that talented people who understand the show they love actually made it.  These guys are funny, and should they develop an iRiff group of some sort after their MST homage is over I'd be among the first to give it a listen.

Good

"Fahrenheit Cine-A-Sorrow" (ICWXP)

Shorts Featured:  "The Haunted Mouth," "The Power to Serve"

The Shorts

The Incognito Cinema Warriors have two shorts to contend with today.  The first is The Haunted Mouth, a dental short film starring Cesar Romero as a ghost who laughs at all the foolish children who have cavities.  Thinking himself victorious, he gloats like a Bond villain and tells all the children how easily they could have beaten their poor dental hygiene, to prove that they still won't do it.

This short is presented in a horror movie setting, in order to help children associate bad teeth with "scary."  It's not wrong, bad teeth can be horrifying.  Just look at hockey teams.  The short's presentation does get slightly obnoxious, as our main character is an egomaniac who is daring children to do something healthy and then mocking them for not doing it.  I suppose that's the point, because you want to prove this asshole wrong.  But I myself would prefer to grab him by his invisible neck and knock his invisible teeth out, and then ask him "Who has better teeth now, bitch?"

Did you want more narration after this but this time over a documentary footage recruitment film?  The Power to Serve is for you!  This appears to be a film made to charge up (pun intended) the power economy in the state of Ohio, boasting what it consists of and what the future might hold.

If you're interested in working in an electric plant, The Power to Serve has several details of what you might be doing in your day to day work.  Mostly it wants to make sure you realize just how much of a future you might have in the mundane world of power supply.  It even touches on the exciting future resources of atomic power!  What could go wrong there?!

I can't believe I'm saying this, but bring back the plaque ghost.

The Episode

Whew.  That YouTube ICWXP episode really took a lot out of me.  But I've licked my wounds and I'm ready to see if I'm past the low point of this indie franchise.

With two shorts on the roster, ICWXP has now pushed it's running time past the ninety minute mark.  So far this "second season" has left me slightly underwhelmed, making me wonder whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, but at least their episodes are no longer in the self indulgent two hour plus realm.  Ultimately while I've always appreciated ICWXP's attempts at being more story driven, at it's heart it fails to break away from it's sketch comedy roots.  I've always been more responsive to efficient humor that knows where it's joke is and doesn't take too long to tell it, and doesn't belabor itself to make sure the audience knew what the joke was.  That's why the most important element of comedy is called "timing."  ICWXP has a few bits where I can tell what the joke is, but it takes forever to get there, or they just push it past it's logical conclusion.  Part of this is because of their ambition to rise up and have their outside-of-the-theater segments be more grandiose than your traditional MST style host segment, but it falls a bit flat when their basic story for each episode really just amount to a series of skits with more dynamic camera angles.

For example, most of the episode piggy backs on Cylon making his "movie," which he decided is going to be a documentary and follows people around for talking head interviews.  Sometimes the interviews are funny, sometimes they aren't, and in the end this whole plotline doesn't really go anywhere (maybe it pays off in a future episode, I don't know).  Really it's just an excuse to get the characters to say funny nonsense into the camera and kill time.  Other moments include the captured henchman from previously on the show trying to escape captivity, as he just kind of mulls around in his room for quite a while in several spread out scenes leading up to the single joke that his "locked" door was open the entire time.  I get it, but it shouldn't be eating away time as much as it is.

The most successful story point comes at the end where the disembodied voice from a few episodes ago contacts Rick and states there is a virus in the Cine-A-Sorrow and they need to press their pet zombie head Zed for information, who has decomposed to the point where he can't speak anymore.  There is a fun interrogation scene with a translation device, though while it runs a bit on the long side this type of comedy infused with plot events is a step in the right direction.

Inside the theater, we are given a tour of The Haunted Mouth, which is some of the funnier theater work in a while.  The horror movie setting of the short inspires some great horror movie references, from Texas Chainsaw Massacre to Evil Dead,  and the also show off some uneasiness to the voyeuristic tendencies of our narrator, which they of course turn into a fetish.  The quirkier moments of the short are usually the funniest, with the dentist dartboard giving me one of the biggest laughs of the presentation.

After a short break they enter the theater again and are greeted with concession shorts, causing Rick and the Bots to digress in a discussion on anthropomorphic food selling it's kin for consumption, but after that we are slingshotted into The Power to Serve, which is mostly dull cityscape shots that are narrated.  It would be easy to trip up with this short, but the guys do pretty okay here.  I don't think I laughed as much as The Haunted Mouth, but whenever the short threatens to become even more monotonous, the gang is usually game to start ripping apart the state of Ohio.  It continues even until after the short has finished, which has Cylon trying to encourage the others into admitting that there is something good about the state, though they come up a blank.

Final things I can point out about this episode:  Topsy is upgraded to a new, more expressive design.  Re-reading my original Bride of the Gorilla review I recalled complaining about how inexpressive the Bots were, which it's good to see they've taken steps to change.  However I don't know if it's that I've gotten used to Topsy's design, but the new eyes somehow make his face less interesting and maybe arguably less funny, with the static readjustments to his eyes in between cuts being somewhat amusing to me.  Dunno.  I guess I changed my tune on that.  The episode also ends with a rather odd scene between cultists and a zombie, which I guess is supposed to be a cliffhanger but takes so long to tell so little that I wasn't even sure what was going on or why it was here.  But misgivings aside, this was probably one of the more consistently humorous episodes since this new "season" started, but they need work on their editing at the scripting stage.

Good

The DVD

Like all episodes of ICWXP, this episode is offered on DVD and digital through icwxp.com.  The audio is good and the video is a sharp widescreen presentation (complete with stretched format for the shorts), and the disc comes loaded with special features.

We start off with a group of features devoted to behind the scenes shenanigans as well as construction of updated production.  The first feature is called Let's Go to Transworld, which is disappointingly not a transvestite theme park of some sort.  Instead we watch series creator and star Rikk Wolf walk around a horror special effects showcase and buy props.  Candy Counter 2.0 is the next featurette, chronicling the construction of an updated set piece.  The Eye of Zed is a brief look at a special effect I was curious about, which showcased a moving eyeball in Zed's skull, and also the construction of the skull prop.  Eyes for Topsy is a little skit where Topsy is forced to thank the backers for his new, more expressive head.  We also have a brief YouTube channel promo skit featuring the characters from the show.  Finally there is a memorial feature on the demolished movie theater the series used as the Cine-A-Sorrow exterior.

We also have a bonus riff here by Josh Way, who provides a bonus Fun With Shorts selection called A Day of Thanksgiving, which features a turkey-less family on Thanksgiving learning the true meaning of the holiday.  Like always, I hope to cover Josh Way on this blog in the future so I won't go into many details, but I will say I liked it.

Concluding the disc is a commentary by series creator and host Rikk Wolf.  Rikk admits he's in a hurry because apparently the DVDs were shipping soon and he needed to get this thing recorded.  The result is very rambly, jumping from one topic to another, sometimes far ahead of a scene before it happens, as he just tries to cover as much as he can as fast as he can.  It's a solid listen for fans though.

Coffeehouse Rendezvous (Rifftrax Shorts)

Rifftrax Year:  2008
Riffers:  Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy, Bill Corbett

♪♪"Oh, I'm a teenage teen and I'm in my teens!  I'm a teenage teen and I'm really mean!"♪♪

Coffee.  Won't you?

This appears to be some sort of college promotional short made by a church to encourage students to socialize in the warm, friendly environment of a local coffeehouse and not the drug, sex, and violence filled streets (though I imagine one of the bathrooms is reserved for all of those at the coffeehouse).  It's a very static production, filled with people who say to the camera that they're having a good time with the most dead and soulless looks in their eyes.  Meanwhile actual coffeehouse footage is blurry, quick edited, and focuses on a lot of ill-framed closeups of people, making the coffeehouse look like the most unappealing place in the world.

Okay, I get what this short is selling, but it's sales pitch needs work.  Everything they try and do to sell the coffeehouse to us just makes it seem like the most boring place on Earth.  But what really annoys me about how boring this short is is that Mike, Kevin, and Bill get dragged down with it.  There is some killer stuff sprinkled throughout this short, as every once in a while they latch onto one of the talking heads and random images and go to town on it, but the short is such a fuzzy wave of random images and dull monologues that they sometimes really reach for something to make fun of in the whirlwind that doesn't already sound like a joke they've already made before.  Coffeehouse Rendezvous is long and repetitious, and the riffing feels long and repetitious as well, making this one cup of coffee that's hard for me to stomach.

I this is a Rifftrax fan favorite, but I find myself unable to jump on board.  I did get a good laugh at the "Mike, is that you?" and "Kevin, is that you?" bits and the like, but this short just doesn't anchor my attention and it gives me a headache.

Thumbs Down

👎

"Iron Doom" (MST3K Comics)

Issue Number:  5
Release Date:  March 20th, 2019
Adapted From:  Johnny Jason, Teen Reporter #2; Black Cat Comics #1; Horrific #2
Original Publication Dates:  July/August 1962, June/July 1946, November 1952

Looks like my fears that Crow's Horrific tales were being cut off last issue were premature, since Synthia devises a way to get the slouching bots back into their respective positions.  Crow gives us yet another Horrific tale to climax us this time, and while it's his weakest and somewhat most incoherent yet, it's a devilishly playful read, if nothing else.

But first we are long overdue to check in on Tom Servo's Johnny Jason, Teen Reporter story, and for me that highlighted this particular book.  After Servo and his actress companion crash land, they camp out and try to survive the night, only to be kidnapped by the same men who tried to kidnap her in issue one.  Finally some plot movement happens!  I really found myself enjoying this portion of the issue, of which the totally quaint and keen 50's tale really suits this mockery format, and hanging around with Servo for a good chunk of time after spending so much of the comic run ignoring him really hammers home what I loved about this comic from the beginning when this story introduced it to me.

More Servo and less Jonah, please.  If this comic series has any fateful flaw it's that it has too much of Jonah's adventures in Black Cat Comics, which usually feel incoherent, aimless, and lacking in the comedic writing.  I find myself frustrated when I'm into Servo's story only to switch to the less consistent vigilante tale.  This issue concludes Buddha story from the previous issue, which basically just amounts to Black Cat beating up bad guys.  Toward the end it feels like it's starting another story, with Black Cat being kidnapped by some bad men and her father getting stabbed, but Kinga and Max cut away because of course they did.

That random cut away kind of describes the last third of the book as a whole, which is a little chaotic and confusingly put together for me.  Crow is back in Horrific, giving us a taste of a tale called Iron Doom, which is about...I'm not really sure.  It seems like a man has inherited a family castle which he desires to turn into a horror museum of some kind, and when he comes there he find a dead body, of which he kills a caretaker over for some reason and discovers there are ghouls who live in the basement...?  This is a case where I really wish I read the original story for a point of reference, because the storyline here lacks any sort of narrative logic and I'm not sure how we get from point A to point B in it.  To make matters somewhat worse, Kinga comments that maybe Crow is manipulating the comic into an entirely different story, which is really hard to tell without knowing how the original story goes.  I can tell something went haywire at some point, but it's hard to figure out if it's Horrific's bad writing or just MST trying to convey a concept that doesn't seem to play that well in paper form.

The one proper saving grace of that last story is that Crow is by far the most fun character in this comic series, so even if his story lacks, it makes it difficult to completely flounder.  But as I look at the issue as a whole, I got one solid story and two mediocre ones, and feelings of incompleteness to all three.  The sole reason this issue might be worth picking up is just how little we've seen Servo until this issue, but the issue as a whole isn't the full package.

Average

R.O.T.O.R. (Rifftrax)

Film Year:  1987
Genre:  Science Fiction, Action, Comedy (?)
Director:  Cullen Blaine
Starring:  Margaret Trigg, Richard Gesswein, Jayne Smith, Caroll Brandon
Rifftrax Year:  2014
Riffers:  Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy, Bill Corbett

The Movie

In hopes to reduce casualty rates among police officers, a scientist (who apparently thinks he's an action hero) works on a new robotic police officer named R.O.T.O.R.  But his superiors are unhappy with how long the project will take, fire him, and look to push the deadline into the near future.  Soon enough R.O.T.O.R. is activated by accident and heads off to punish some criminals.  His first target is a speeding pedestrian, who R.O.T.O.R. shoots through the head.  The victim's girlfriend is then targeted by R.O.T.O.R. for aiding and abetting, and he then goes in pursuit of her.  Action scientist then learns that R.O.T.O.R. has been activated, calls an even more buff action scientist to his aid, and sets out to save the woman's life.

I've seen lots of bad movies in my many years of being a MSTie, but R.O.T.O.R. left me somewhat speechless.  This movie isn't just a lesson in how wrong movies like RoboCop or The Terminator could have gone if they weren't guided by talent, but rather an exorcise in making the most obnoxious movie it can out of it's premise.  Reading over the premise of the film in preparation for this review I expected just a cheap, cheesy cash-in movie, not too dissimilar to films like Escape 2000 or Robot Holocaust.  R.O.T.O.R. does something worse than that, it feels like it's aware it's going to be bad so it makes up for it in smugness.  With self-referential and overdone humor that wouldn't be too far out of place in a soft-core porn film, R.O.T.O.R. always feels like it's proud of itself for knowing it's a bad movie and bragging about it.  This is seriously one of the most smarmy bad movies I've ever seen.

With all of that emphasis on poorly placed and executed humor, the script is straight up garbage.  But even if it weren't the execution probably would have destroyed it anyway, because the first half of the movie is almost nothing, as plot points are belabored beyond reason to get the film past eighty minutes.  R.O.T.O.R.'s charm might lie in how charming you find it's caricature-style performances, as every actor in this film feels like they're doing an over-exaggeration of a trope (especially our lead actor, who is doing his best bad Clint Eastwood impression).  The only actress who can be semi-taken seriously is Margaret Trigg, the lead victim who R.O.T.O.R. is chasing, because she has taken the task of being the token screaming and running girl.  She's not a great actress by any means, but she's pretty much the only anchor of credibility in this heap at all, so good for her.

Being a crappy 80's action movie junkie, I went into R.O.T.O.R. hoping to love it.  But at every turn R.O.T.O.R. rubbed me the wrong way.  It's attempts at being smug and clever just sucked all the fun out of it, and I might just have found my least favorite movie of the decade.

The Trax

I love the 80's.  I love everything about it, and I love the aesthetic of it's bad filmmaking.  It usually doesn't take much for me to love an 80's film on a riffing project, but watching R.O.T.O.R. unfold as slowly as it was I found myself craving riffs to make the movie as enjoyable as it should have been.  For the first forty-five minutes I found myself unfortunately let down because nothing they were doing was hitting the spot.  Mike, Kevin, and Bill are in a silly mood and throw silly, upbeat remarks at the film for a while.  It's really all they can do, because for the longest time the movie is giving them nothing to work with.

"Bribe is too cheap.  Sentence:  Death!"

Once R.O.T.O.R. finally hits the screen, the quality of the quips finally begins to upswing, and while the movie pain can bleed through on this one, the fact that the movie is finally resembling an actual movie makes our boys feel less lost than they were in the first half.  There are some solid laughs at the expense of the chase between R.O.T.O.R. and the woman, and the absurd situations that either get in the way or escalate it.  There are also some hilarious quips at the second scientist who comes to the rescue, who is a female bodybuilder with the most 80's striped mullet you'll ever see, and it swells into an absolutely insanely incompetent climax.

If I were to judge the riff based solely on it's high points I'd give it a pass, but for me that opening forty-five minutes is a problem.  I was constantly checking the time and wondering if maybe I should have selected a different riff for today, because I was getting a little antsy waiting for something to happen in the movie or for our boys to really give me a good laugh.  I'll even it out and say maybe check this one out if there is nothing really all that better that's readily available.  But I'd conclude by stating that my reaction to this riff may have been the movie's fault and not the riff itself.

Average

Story-Telling: Can You Tell It In Order? (Rifftrax Shorts)

Rifftrax Year:  2013
Riffers:  Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy, Bill Corbett

Likely the short that Christopher Nolan consulted before he made Memento, Story-Telling:  Can You Tell It In Order? has Pennywise the demonic clown teaching children about the proper way of telling a story.  He relates two stories:  one about a boy getting ready for bed and another about an epic quest for a rubber band.  He then asks the children to tell the story in order the exact way it occurred, and if they fail he will eat them.

Well, maybe that last part doesn't happen onscreen, but it's implied, I think.

Ultimately this is a rudimentary short about a rudimentary skill.  I don't know how important this lesson was in my overall education, as it seems to me I probably would have learned it on my own.  Or perhaps I'm taking for granted the education that prevented me from rambling on stories with constant uses "Did I mention that this part happened first?  Well it did, and it's important."  It also might have been a fun puzzle activity for kids, to put things in proper order, so it would be unfair to dismiss it.

Too bad about that terrifying clown.  We all float down here...

And that clown gets the bulk of the jokes from Mike, Kevin, and Bill here, exclaiming in horror initially then just trying to understand his rambling as he goes on, as well as adding more of a psychotic personality.  While occasionally there's a break from the clown impressions as he tells his simple little stories, which allows our comedians to help narrate the simple stories that are unfolding, but in the end it always falls back on the clown.  He is the backbone of this short and the riffing.  Is it funny?  Yes.  The short as a whole doesn't offer much else, but they wring him for ten minutes full of good chuckles.

Thumbs Up

👍

423-Bride of the Monster

Film Year:  1956
Genre:  Science Fiction, Horror
Director:  Edward D. Wood Jr.
Starring:  Bela Lugosi, Tor Johnson, Tony McCoy, Loretta King
MST Season:  4
Featured Short:  "Hired!" (Part I)

The Short

Chevrolet's automobiles can't sell themselves, and they've got salesmen to do it!  But customers seem to be hesitant of buying the product, but it can't be that they're selling a commitment of thousands of dollars door to door.  It's the salesman's fault!  Or is it?

This vintage training film was split in two, with Part II being featured in "Manos" The Hands of Fate.  It's hard to get invested in this portion of the film because it distantly concentrates on failure without going into the portion that attempts to contextualize it and correct it.  This short doesn't quite go anywhere, but becomes better when viewed back to back with it's followup.

The Movie

Bride of the Monster might very well be Ed Wood's second most well known motion picture, the first obviously being Plan 9 from Outer Space.  It's probably a toss-up between Bride and Glen or Glenda, since the making of both were both portrayed in the Tim Burton biopic film Ed Wood.  In Bride's favor it has far more Bela Lugosi.  However Glen or Glenda has "PULL ZEE STRINGS!  PULL ZEE STRINGS!" so maybe it wins.

The legendary Bela Lugosi stars as Dr. Eric Vornoff, a mad scientist who intends to create a race of atomic supermen to do his bidding.  His assistant Lobo, played by Tor Johnson presumably reprising his role from The Unearthly, rescues a beautiful reporter from a car accident and Vornoff takes her prisoner, keeping her subdued via hypnosis.  But her police officer fiancee searches for her and stumbles upon Vornoff's house and his experiments.

When you watch an Ed Wood movie it's safe to assume you know what you're going to get:  Lackluster special effects, bad continuity, flubbed lines galore due to a lack of takes, and tons of simplistic editing tricks to help convince audiences that two entirely separate things are in the same vicinity via MOVIE MAGIC!  As usual for Ed Wood, all of this is bad filmmaking, but none of it hurts because it's too damn funny.  Unfortunately Bride of the Monster isn't as hilariously incompetent as Plan 9, though it has Wood's most fleshed out and taken advantage of uses of Bela Lugosi and Tor Johnson, which makes it probably the Wood feature I'm most fond of.

All of this and the movie has a killer octopus too!  With a thoroughly convincing combination of stock footage and a rubber prop, we get to witness the joys of watching victims fall to their doom and roll around on top of tentacles while pretending they're being strangled to death.  If a movie isn't worth watching for that alone, I don't know what is!  Yes folks, Bride of the Monster is well worth your time!

The Episode

Oh boy.  Dr. Forrester has finally tapped the films of Ed Wood for his experiments.  I don't know whether to be excited for terrified.

The question that enters my head when I hear Mystery Science Theater is riffing Ed Wood is whether or not it's worth the trouble.  Wood's films are funny on their own, and a good riffing might not add much to the experience.  Luckily the right approach seems to have been found, as the commentary isn't too mean-spirited and perfectly willing to let the film speak for itself.  Instead they play on it's level and keep things goofy, gleefully mocking the poor filmmaking on display as well as breaking out those reliable impressions of Bela Lugosi and Tor Johnson (with a few Unearthly callbacks thrown in for good measure).  The synergy between the commentary and the movie works quite swell, and when we have a movie that can't be taken seriously and a riff that has no intention of doing so the laughter comes rolling quite often.  For Ed Wood's first riffed picture, Bride of the Monster sets the bar for which all other Ed Wood riffs must be judged.

In a brilliant moment of coincidence, Crow mistakes a character for Johnny Depp at one point.  The following year Depp would play Ed Wood himself in Tim Burton's Ed Wood!

As for the short, Hired! is a MST classic, though when most say this most point to Part II, which is not only hilarious but paired with one of the most infamous movies of the series.  It must be said that Part I is no slouch either.  It's not as funny as Part II, but it's quite fun and the riffing keeps great momentum with the short.  You can't go wrong with either in my book.

The best host segment in my opinion is the Invention Exchange, which sees a delightfully evil Tough Love Seat perfectly executed by Dr. F and Frank, while Microwavable Faith Popcorn is a dated reference that is still kind of funny.  Highlighting the rest of the segments we have Joel and Servo witnessing the horror of what Crow dreams at night ("TURN IT OFF!  TURN IT OFF!") while Hired the Musical is a little bit of fun.  But as the episode goes on the segments get lighter and more lacking, with a rambling discussion, a silly return of Willy the Waffle, and a re-editing of the ending of the movie.

Bride of the Monster solidifies a late season four winning streak with a classically bad movie and some wildly fun riffing.  If one is in the mood for some Ed Wood this weekend, pop it in and laugh yourself to tears!

Classic

The DVD

Bride of the Monster was featured on Shout Factory's Volume XIX set, featuring good audio and video.  The special features included Citizen Wood:  Making the Bride, Unmaking the Legend, which is a documentary hosted by Tom Weaver on the filming of the movie.  Talking heads include MST creator Joel Hodgson and also George Steele, who played Tor Johnson in the film Ed Wood.  Also featured is Inventing the Invention Exchange, a brief retrospective of the Invention Exchange by Joel, who talks about being a prop comic and the idea of the segment.  Rounding out the disc is a trailer for the film.

Part one of Hired! was featured on the compilation disc Mr. B's Lost Shorts, featured in Rhino's Volume 6 collection, which was eventually re-released by Shout Factory.  The short was also edited together with it's followup into one glorious whole in Shout Factory's "Manos" The Hands of Fate special edition release.

1106-Starcrash

Film Year:  1978
Genre:  Science Fiction
Director:  Luigi Cozzi
Starring:  Caroline Munroe, Caroline Munroe's lady parts, Marjoe Gortner, Judd Hamilton, David Hasselhoff, Christopher Plummer, Joe Spinell, Robert Tessier, Nadia Cassini
MST Season:  11

The Movie

Ever wonder what Star Wars would have been like if it had a tenth of the budget and Han Solo were a chick in a latex bikini?  Italian films to the rescue!

Starcrash was directed by Luigi Cozzi, who bad film lovers will note is the director of the Lou Ferrigno Hercules films and Godzilla fans will recognize as the guy who re-edited the first movie and "colorized" it (for the lack of a better word).  The film stars Caroline Munroe and David Hasselhoff, which doesn't surprise anyone, but also features Christopher Plummer for some reason.  Munroe plays a space smuggler who is enlisted by a galactic emperor (played by Plummer) to find a super weapon of a villainous rival.  She is aided by a robot, a dude that can pull any random power out of his ass, and Prince Baywatch himself, David Hasselhoff.  The group encounters many challenges, such as giant robots, space Amazons who are jealous that her clothing is skimpier than theirs, cave men, and a giant space station shaped like a hand.

Starcrash is a rushed film hurried to cash in off the Star Wars craze, made by people who didn't understand it nor desired to put the effort necessary into it.  All things considered the film does have some neat spaceship models, though the execution of the special effects doesn't flatter them.  There are also points where it feels like a blatant copy of Star Wars, up to and including igniting a lightsaber of its own.

But, credit where credit is due, there's something about Starcrash that I like, and it's not necessarily the skin it shows.  It can be said that the film is something of more direct copy of serial filmmaking than Star Wars was, often coming off as theatrical, cheap, and cheesy, but providing fun for the undemanding viewer.  It's spirited in a Buck Rogers kind of way, and adapts it to a trashier sort of filmmaking without losing that campy soul.

Starcrash in general is very much a Saturday Morning Cartoon genre style, only with a lot of cleavage to keep daddy's attention.  It feels like a movie kids would watch and love as it tries to play at their level, yet it's made by people who feel as if a movie like this needs sex appeal.  Because of this Starcrash can seem a little confused as to who it's catering toward at times, but winds up catering to a cult fanbase instead.

The Episode

"I feel like I'm watching a community theater production of Guardians of the Galaxy."

Starcrash is something of a heavenly SCORE for the new Mystery Science Theater season, as it has echos of Rocky Jones, Space Mutiny, with a little bit of Viking Women in that Roger Corman style.  This movie is fun by itself, but adding the sarcastic commentary on top of it just makes for an incredibly good time.  The riffing has a constant stream of laughs as the movie hugs every sort of trope the best MSTed movies deliver and keeps them on screen for Jonah and the Bot's viewing pleasure.  The one downside is that the movie probably would have benefited from a more precision style of the original series a bit more than the speedy delivery of the new cast, though it's a tiny nitpick about us settling for a good episode instead of a great one.

One thing to note about this episode is that they experiment a bit with the riffing format.  There is a fun point early on featuring Caroline Munroe boarding a space ship which is lengthy and silent, to which Jonah pulls out a guitar and jam out an original song in the theater.  It's a creative way of making monotonous dead air fun.  They would take this idea to the next level in the following season's episode Killer Fish.

WE HAVE CELEBRITY GUEST STAR SIGN!  I think it's funny that in the years of being a part of the online community, I've heard a lot of slams on Jerry Seinfeld from my fellow fans, claiming his show Seinfeld was some sort of nadir of television (I've always enjoyed it myself).  Little did most seem to know that the creators of both Joel Hodgson and Jerry Seinfeld were actually good friends in real life which actually lead to Seinfeld guest starring on our favorite show.  Seinfeld has a brief role that he's pretty good in as he visits the Mads as Freak Masterstroke, a capitalist idea man who listens to the pitches of Kinga and Max and turns them into something profitable.  I liked it!  What a masterstroke!

Other segments skew more referential to the movie, as the mid-segment has Jonah dressing up as Akton and in the close they play with space torpedoes (the latter segment is much better than the former, honestly).  Crow also lets his screenwriter persona take over for the first time in a while, as he writes another movie called "World War Space," in which he curiously rips off Candyland.  The Invention Exchange involves a salsa sombrero, while curiously the idea of ripping on Star Wars seems to have infected Jonah and the Bots before they even get to the movie, as Jonah turns Servo into a clone of the droid BB-8.  Hilariously this only lasts mere seconds, because after a cutaway Servo is back to normal and crying...

"I know, buddy, I know.  Those LucasFilm lawyers move so fast."

::weeps softly::  "They said they'd smash my globe!"

Regardless of whether or not this movie could have inspired a better commentary, I find myself loving Starcrash unconditionally.  The movie is just dumb fun, the riffing enhances it quite well, and I have such a good time overall.  This is one of my favorites of the season.

Good

The DVD and Blu-Ray

Starcrash hits DVD and blu-ray as a part of Shout Factory's Season 11 collection, of which mine is the #WeBroughtBackMST3K Collector's Edition blu-ray offered to Kickstarter backers.  Video is crisp and audio is swell.  Like all episodes in the eleventh season, the disc features no bonus features, though it shares it's space with the previous episode, The Beast of Hollow Mountain.

1105-The Beast of Hollow Mountain

Film Year:  1956
Genre:  Western, Horror, Fantasy
Director:  Edward Nassour, Ismael Rodriguez
Starring:  Guy Madison, Patricia Medina, Carlos Rivas, Mario Navarro
MST Season:  11

The Movie

Once upon a time King Kong creator Willis O'Brien woke up with an idea.  That idea was "Dudes!  Cowboys vs. Dinosaurs!  Let's make it happen!"  O'Brien came up with a story called Valley of the Mist playing with his concept and sold his idea with the intention of doing special effects for the film, but had to drop out.  The show must go on, but in some cases maybe it shouldn't.

The Beast of Hollow Mountain tells of an American cowboy living in Mexico as a cattle hustler who suspects some of his cattle to be missing.  Adding to his problems is locals trying to bully him out of the country and back into the States.  As he contemplates his life in Mexico things take a turn for the unexpected when a Tyrannosaurus Rex shows up, exposing itself as the creature that had been eating the cattle, and a few ranch hands on the side.

One thing that the film boasts as being is that it's the first color film to use stop motion animation techniques.  This would be much more impressive to me if the stop motion in the film were any good.  The titular Beast can often vary from shot to shot, with close-ups usually coming off more impressive than far away shots, which can look shoddy at best.  The full body puppet looks like a child playing with Play-Doh, and things take a turn for the worst when the film attempts to liven the puppet up with a tongue, which flails around in a squiggly fashion.  If the film were more abstract I'd cut it some creative license slack, but by combining this dinosaur with a mostly straight drama there needs to be an attempt at making it feel real.  The actors and the special effects unfortunately look as if they're from two entirely different worlds.

And the sad thing is that the best part of the film is the dinosaur.  The rest of the movie is dull and dry, though fans of westerns might get more of a kick out it, but it's really just a dull drama in a desert landscape.  The dinosaur act is out of nowhere and out of place, but for the most part it saves the film from audience interest waning.

After the drastic disappointment of Beast of Hollow Mountain, O'Brien continued to revise his Valley of the Mist until his death in 1962.  These concepts were later turned into the far superior Valley of Gwangi in 1969, with special effects by O'Brien protegee Ray Harryhausen.  Watch that one instead.

The Episode

This episode doesn't seem to have much time for pleasantries, as it mostly seems to be in a hurry to get into the theater whenever it's out of it.  For most of the episode's runtime it's difficult to see why.  The meandering Western/Mexican setting doesn't seem to inspire a lot in our trio, who chip away at it the best they can, but it's fairly dry and too inert.  Every once in a while they'll pipe up with a slick reference or two, I personally enjoyed a shout out to a classic King of the Hill line "THAT'S MY PURSE!  I DON'T KNOW YOU!" which got a fair laugh out of me.  But overall the movie is winning for quite a while because they seem a tad lost and not entirely sure what to do with it.

It's not until the fourth and final theater segment that the titular Beast of Hollow Mountain finally makes his appearance and the viewer can finally say to themselves "Okay, THAT'S why they chose this movie!"  The creature is so poorly realized and the action is now so frantic, quick, and lacking dialogue that the jokes come heavy and fast and the laughs start flowing at a generally excellent pace.  The experience of this episode is not unlike the second season episode Godzilla vs. Megalon, which was a pretty meh episode for a while itself before it's final segment redeemed the experience entirely.  Whether twenty minutes of laughter makes the hour before it a worthwhile to break through is up to the viewer, but boy that segment is a gem.

As mentioned above, the host segments are slight but fun.  We have brainstorming new monster movies (as well as putting dinosaurs in other movies later on), a movie inspired fashion showcase, and Servo and Crow playing festival while disturbing Jonah and the Mads.  The Invention Exchange is equally slight but amusing, with Jonah's Disco Cannon being a fun visual gag, though Kinga adding hot water to the Titanic is mostly just set-up for a vaudevillian gag (but it made me laugh anyway).

I can be a bit on the fence about Beast of Hollow Mountain, because the episode dangerously walks the line into boring territory at its worst moments.  However it catapults us into traditional Mystery Science Theater delights for its hectic third act that closes up with a lot of guffaws and leaves me with a stronger impression of the episode as a whole.  If I were thinking about this logically I would say that the majority would win out and this were merely a mediocre episode but holy crap is this episode fun when it finally kicks into high gear.

Good

The DVD and Blu-Ray

Shout Factory unleashed The Beast of Hollow Mountain on their complete Season 11 set, which is available on both DVD and blu-ray.  My copy is the #WeBroughtBackMST3K Collector's Edition blu-ray, which was available to Kickstarter backers of a certain tier.  Audio and video are aces and there are no bonus features on the disc.  It does however share its disc with the following episode, Starcrash.

The Heat (Audio Commentary)

Film Year:  2013
Genre:  Comedy, Action
Director:  Paul Feig
Starring:  Sandra Bullock, Melissa McCarthy, Marlon Wayans
Commentators:  Joel Hodgson, Trace Beaulieu, J. Elvis Weinstein

The Movie

I want to make something very clear right here and state outright that I have not watched The Heat outside of this commentary.  My mother, a Sandra Bullock fan, once tried to get me to watch this movie and wouldn't let me leave her house unless I borrowed it.  It sat in my apartment untouched for about six months because I just could not work up the desire to pop it in the blu-ray player (at the time I had no idea there was a Joel, Trace, and J. Elvis commentary on it).  Finally after months of harassment from my mother to give it back I admitted defeat and told her that I was unlikely to crack it open any time soon.  I don't watch many comedies anymore because unless they hook me with a neat concept (like Horrible Bosses or Game Night) or a performer(s) I enjoy (like Shaun of the Dead or We're the Millers), then I just don't have the patience to sit through it.  Granted I might be missing out on some surprises because of this, but considering how much crap I'd have to wade through to get to those surprises I'm going to consider missing out to be well worth it.  And even still, it's no guarantee that I'd respond to the films other people respond to as well.  The Hangover was considered one of the funniest movies since the turn of the millennium, yet I found it to be aggressively unpleasant.  In the case of The Heat, I had seen so many buddy cop comedies in my lifetime that I wasn't really actively looking for another one, and while I like Bullock just fine, Melissa McCarthy has never made me laugh once at anything she's ever done (I'm completely serious, people have bore witness to my befuddled dead silence while watching her).  The Heat did nothing to hook me, so I didn't take the bait.

My lack of having watched this movie by itself might make my opinion of the film forfeit, because this riff in general is recorded more in a commentary style, which mutes the movie a bit and makes following it hard to do.  If you wish to dismiss my words on this movie I absolutely understand and support that decision.  If I wanted to do this more properly I would have watched the movie unriffed beforehand, but honestly life is too short and I really didn't care.  From what I made out of the movie through the commentary I'd say I made the right call.

The plot as far as I can tell:  Sandra Bullock stars as a straight-laced FBI agent assigned to a drug case in Boston, where she is forced to team-up with a brash and angry detective played by Melissa McCarthy to take down a drug lord.  Shenanigans ensue.

Melissa McCarthy feels incredibly miscast in this film.  Her attempt at a loose cannon shtick amounts to a lot of swearing and pretending she can kick your ass, but if you look her in the eye you can see this dead look in it that just makes her come off as a comedian stumbling through a role.  Her comedic timing, as always for me, becomes an issue as well.  She delivers her lines as shrilly as possible and belabors a joke far longer than it needs to go on for.  There is an early gag in the film where she "humorously" looks for her superior's "balls," and calls out for everyone to help her look for them...and it goes on forever.  I fucking get the joke.  Thomas Wilson's line "She's looking for my balls" is all you needed for this to be funny, or at the very least you could have just cut to her waving the Tic Tacs around screaming "I found his balls!" and that might have worked too.  Instead what we have here is punctuating it needlessly to give McCarthy the punchline because she's the star.  Humor should be efficient, not stretched.

The physical comedy also looks stressed and tired.  Bodily movements in these select comedy bits feel unnatural, as if they're struggling to make it look possible (this is far from the only time I've held this opinion of McCarthy's physical comedy, mind you).  Physical comedy should look fluid and natural.  Look at the greats like Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, who made it look effortless.  Look at the Three Stooges, who were living cartoons but adapted themselves and the world around them into that animated style to make it work.  Here, it looks staged and forced, which robs the bits of any laughter that they might have.

Sandra Bullock at the very least is a strong straight man for McCarthy's absurdity.  If a bit almost works it's because Bullock's reactions are on point and a lot of the moments in the film that did make me laugh were fueled by her.  There's a botched attempted tracheotomy job that I thought was pretty well staged and a brief scene where she scolds a tracking dog for not finding drugs that got a legit laugh out of me.  If you do find McCarthy funny then I'm sure this pairing offers some incredible chemistry.  I wish I were less of a comedy snob so I can at the very least have fun with the interplay between the duo.

Sigh.  I tried.  The films of Feig and McCarthy have a fanbase, but I am not among it.  There's nothing really about the film that I found appealing and it really lost my interest about thirty minutes in.  By the time it concluded I was just kind of glazed over and barely felt like I had watched anything at all.  Comedy should bring me joy, this movie left me a little dead inside.  It's not the worst thing I've ever seen, but it's passionless, overlong, boring, and just not that funny.

The Commentary

I remember many times in my online fanhood of Mystery Science Theater that quite a few of us always said if we were ever lucky enough to make a movie of our own we would have the cast of MST do a commentary on it.  A lot of this was just pipe dreams and boasting to ourselves, but director Paul Feig found a way to live the dream.  Good for him.

But...there's a problem...

See, Feig directed a comedy.  A bad comedy, yes, but still a comedy.  Comedy is a riffing 101 no-no, and Feig's desire to see his own comedy riffed shows a bit of a misunderstanding of the format.  But Joel, Trace, and J. Elvis are friends of his and I imagine this was just him bringing his buds in, goofing around, and probably having a beer afterward, so the fact that this commentary exists really isn't at the expense of a creative decision.

Considering that there is a lot riding against them, Joel, Trace, and J. Elvis actually do a fairly decent job here.  It doesn't feel as if this commentary is scripted, which gives it a fair KTMA flavor, only these comedians are so seasoned at this point that their off-the-cuff improve (with maybe some prepared gags for good measure) has gotten a lot stronger at this point.  If nothing else The Heat is an argument for these types of comedic audio commentaries to be common place and for that I'd say it's a worthwhile listen.

The only real issue is that the commentary mutes the film somewhat and talks over the dialogue, making the film difficult to follow overall, as I've stated above (Wikipedia summaries are my friend).  There are even times where they seem to note it themselves as they talk over plot points then wonder what they missed.  It's clumsy, but at the same time it's slightly charming in that it reinforces that this is a live viewing and not a line recording/edit job.

I think I can safely say I laughed more at the commentary than I did at the actual movie.  There's a fairly blah scene where McCarthy and Bullock argue about touching breasts, which just sat there for me as a barely anything bit, but Joel cracked up and said "It's 'tit for tit'" and made me laugh also.  J. Elvis at one point mocks the movie's staging with lines like "Okay, there's hooker inconsistency:  They don't hang around when they see a badge."  Late in the game there's a point where Paul Feig cameos and they roast him relentlessly, and you can tell they're being fueled by the fact that Feig is likely in the other room overseeing this commentary and probably laughing his ass off.

But the slight misconceptions of the riff add up in the end, what with the movie being talked over and the genre of the film not really setting them up for great material.  If you've seen the movie and maybe even enjoy it I imagine this commentary might be a lot funnier to you than it was for me.  I'm not sorry I've listened to it, in fact I enjoyed it more than I thought I would, but it's not a must listen.

Average

The Blu-Ray

This audio commentary is a blu-ray exclusive on 20th Century Fox's release of the film, leaving those who stuck with DVDs in the dust.  The video of the film is pretty good, and the audio of the commentary is fair.  I imagine the audio track to the film is fine, but I haven't listened to it.  The disc is loaded with special features, but I have no interest in watching any of them.

I mean seriously...there are four more audio commentaries on this movie.  I'm not watching this fucking thing four more times!

Other special features include an extended version of the film, bloopers, featurettes titled Mullins Family Fun and Acting Master Class, and deleted, alternate, and extended scenes.  If you like the movie, go nuts.  I'm just going to huddle in a corner and cry because I failed at blogging about this thing.

Drugs Are Like That (Rifftrax Shorts)

Rifftrax Year:  2008
Riffers:  Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy, Bill Corbett

Drugs Are Like That has two children playing with Legos, and while whistling and humming they grumble little details about drugs without any context.  Honestly, if these kids are casually contemplating drugs while playing with toys, I'd consider this a warning sign, but they have a narrator to help toss out analogies to remind them that drugs are as bad as screaming toddlers, jumping over cracks in the street, getting cookies, and spinning around on a swing before playing baseball for some reason.

While I'm not 100% up to date on how our school system currently tries to educate on drugs, I for the most part hope they're more informative about it today than they were when I was a kid.  Granted, I'm not sure if my little brain could have processed what drugs were and what they did, but just having people walk into my school every other day and say "Say NO to drugs!" and then leave always left me a little confused due to subject ignorance.  In retrospect, it does feel like that ignorance was something of a power play move to hammer in that this thing you know nothing about is a BAD THING, and while I can see how the end justifies the means it's also a scenario that led to me getting angry at my parents for going to a "drug store" for prescription medication and my discomfort in said store which made me feel as if I were some sort of criminal.  Sometimes clarification can do wonders.

Drugs Are Like That at the very least tries to inform on the way drugs are habit forming, which I can appreciate personally, but it also scoots around the subject haphazardly.  It throws analogies at us once again without telling us what drugs are, and while I can see the points the short is trying to make as a (barely) more educated adult, as a child these things would have flown well over my head because I had nothing to compare them to.  Drugs are habit forming is the moral of the story, but the way my brain would have processed these messages would be that if I took drugs I'd cry like a baby, skip around like an idiot, eat cookies, and go swimming.  I've long since learned that I don't need drugs to make an ass out of myself.

I understand most of these analogies, but they can reach pretty hard at times.  I recognize that the short has good intentions, but it comes off a little strange and stumbles when it tries to provide its point because it never directly states it.  Drugs are habit forming and can destroy your life if you let them, this is true, but I learned that through other means and not films like this.  In fact in comparing drugs to things like a grown adult playing "Don't Step on a Crack" it would be very easy for a child to misinterpret as "Drugs are goofy, funny things!"

Speaking of funny things, I pretty much knew this was going to be a classic short when it opened with this exchange as we hear the two mumbling children while the camera is focused on the interior of a closet...

"Movie?  Are you in the middle of something?"
"We could come back!"
"Sit down, you two!  If I have to sit through this, so do you!"

Mike, Kevin, and Bill do their best to follow the logic of the short, but mostly come up a little bamboozled.  They take the analogies at their face value and play with the validity of them, and their commentary is hilarious.  But at the same time they have fun comparing the two scenarios, as the short shows us a baby who loses his pacifier and starts crying, while Bill overdubs the child with drug withdrawal symptoms.

The riffing also targets our two lead children, who mumble obnoxiously while the camera zooms in on their hands or their eyeballs, who constantly go "Huh?" "What?"  "What's that?" to every other sentence.  They find the meandering nature of these segments frustrating and infuriating as they often at times get flat out angry at the duo or mock their strange digressions.  It's pretty hilarious.

This is one of Rifftrax's best.  You know what drugs are like?  This short.  I gotta have more, man!  I got the shakes!

Thumbs Up

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The Night That Dracula Saved the World (Rifftrax)

Film Year:  1979
Genre:  Comedy, Horror, Fantasy
Director:  Bruce Bilson
Starring:  Judd Hirsch, Mariette Hartley, Henry Gibson, Jack Riley, John Schuck, Robert Fitch, Josip Elic
Rifftrax Year:  2015
Riffers:  Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy, Bill Corbett

The Movie

Originally titled The Halloween That Almost Wasn't (not to be confused with The Christmas That Almost Wasn't from that other riffing show), The Night That Dracula Saved the World (neveryoumind that Dracula doesn't actually save the world) is a 70's television special starring Taxi's Judd Hirsch as Dracula.  Halloween is threatened with cancellation because the Witch who flies over the moon each year is sick of being called ugly, and will refuse to do so unless Dracula gives in to a list of demands.  Dracula refuses and conspires with other monsters to bully the Witch back into flying over the moon.

The Night That Dracula Saved the World won an Emmy for "Outstanding Achievement in Children's Programming."  All I can say about that is that children's programming must have had a very low bar in 1979 if this was considered an "Outstanding Achievement" in anything.  This is 24 minutes of character whining and lackluster slapstick comedy.  While I understand it's simpler to make a child laugh than an adult, children could laugh harder if there were actual craft put into a slapstick gag.  That's why I think the Three Stooges find popularity with children so easily.

The special really isn't much to talk about.  Actors wear costumes, speak in broad accents and snarls, and do their best to convey the story as theatrically as possible, often facing the camera and DECLARING their lines.  Given what he's asked to do, Judd Hirsch is actually pretty good as Dracula.  In fact the entire cast does fine.  They're just being sucked down the drain in a low rent production that has no desire to be better than it is.

The Trax

Is there a line between a short and a feature Rifftrax?  Sometimes riffs like this or Nestor, the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey can blur it.  Though the shorts in Rifftrax initially started adhering to a strict ten minute limit, a lot of the more recent ones can be even longer than The Night Dracula Saved the World.  Though I think the fact that both Nestor and Dracula are self-contained stories told in a sitting is what makes them a feature Rifftrax as opposed to a short.

Whatever the case may be, specials like this may offer some fun to the riffing format, but it's best to tread carefully.  The Night That Dracula Saved the World is a broad and childish slapstick comedy and I'm not entirely sure what the powers that be at Rifftrax saw in it.  It's stupid, yes, but it causes way too many groans in it's humor for me to consider it genuine riff material.  I find most of their humor bounces off of it because the special seems to have a lack of genuine concern for itself and is just bouncing around like a rubber ball.  Because of that bouncy nature it's hard to catch and play with.

They do try though.  There are some great jabs at the cheapness of the production, especially when a house in the suburbs is used to represent a Transylvanian home.  Kevin gets the biggest laugh of the special by pointing out that the featured Zombie of the movie looks exactly like Observer from Mystery Science Theater (and I mean exactly).  It just feels all for naught, as they're trying to push the movie and it's ignoring them.  There are some laughs but mostly I found my attention drifting.

Average

Sailing a Toy Boat (Rifftrax Shorts)

Rifftrax Year:  2012
Riffers:  Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy, Bill Corbett

Do you have trouble sailing a toy boat?  Luckily we have a short that's perfectly capable of man-splaining it to you!  Here we have a family relaxing next to a pond with the boy having trouble sailing a little boat, as a narrator drones on and on describing what's happening onscreen.

Just when you think they've covered all the subjects they possibly could for educational short films this little film pops up.  I'm fairly curious about why this short was made and/or what venues they showed it to kids at.  Is it for crafting projects?  If it is, why can't the teachers just teach?  Why do they have to set up a projector to show off seven minutes of two kids and a dog playing with a toy boat?  I mean, I get it.  The laws of physics are something a kid needs to learn, but this educational tool feels like it's not really teaching them much.

"Sailing a Toy Boat..."
"Rated R for graphic nudity."

Sailing a Toy Boat is so brief that there's not much time for our riffers to get a rhythm going, so they just stay silly.  Considering there isn't a lot of subject for them to take in and comment on, this is the right approach.  This short is mostly just slight gags shot fast at a bland nothing of a short, and they maintain a fairly good laugh ratio.  I don't think I was ever not smiling during this, even when I was trying to size up just why the short exists.  It's just seven minutes of a bland family having a personality projected upon them by comedians.  I'll take it.

Thumbs Up

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