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

👍

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.

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