901-The Projected Man

Film Year:  1966
Genre:  Horror, Science Fiction
Director:  Ian Curteis, John Croydon
Starring:  Bryant Haliday, Mary Peach, Norman Wooland, Ronald Allen, Derek Farr
MST Season:  9

The Movie

Devil Doll's Bryant Haliday stars as one in a series of MST movie monsters named "Paul" (see also:  Werewolf and Track of the Moon Beast), a scientist named Dr. Paul Steiner who is desperate to prove his teleportation "projection" device can work.  Since he has not seen The Fly, he insists on proving himself by using the device on himself, turning him into a mutilated man who can electrocute people with his touch.  He then goes on a revenge rampage to kill all he blames for his condition.

Given the fact that the film reportedly had a low budget and troubled production, I'd say Projected Man doesn't come off that bad.  It's mostly coherent and competent, and easy to watch too.  There are little production details not exactly measuring up, such as Haliday's monster makeover, which is a rubber mask that never quite looks that real and forces Haliday to slur his lines because he can't speak properly through it.  But the point that's he's hideously disfigured comes across fine, as the film takes a sort of Phantom of the Opera route and hides his face behind a cloth throughout most of the film, but the poor guy looks as if he still had to wear that shit underneath it.

The problem with The Projected Man is that it's not overly exciting.  I mean, we've already seen this story before and done better.  It's The Fly.  Just no flies.  Acting is fairly stiff, though nobody is overtly horrible, it's just nobody really grabs your attention either (despite excessive scenes of a pretty actress in underwear).  It's a movie that will allow you to sit and watch a familiar story play out if you're in the mood to let it tell that story you've already heard, only worse.  All things considered The Projected Man is fine for those who don't demand original content from every film they watch, but it probably won't win over many fans either.

The Episode

I'm assuming that Public Pearl fundraiser paid off in the eighth season climax, and Pearl put those funds to help get everyone back to their proper time and place.  That's right folks, the "Chase through time and space" arc of MST's Sci-Fi Channel run is over and we are now parked in neutral for the next two seasons above glorious Castle Forrester, an ancient castle of, you guessed it, Forrester family heritage.  Pearl promptly moves in...because free house!  And thus the ninth official season of Mystery Science Theater 3000 begins, and to celebrate we start off an unofficial British Horror Invasion of the theater with The Projected Man (which will later grace us with The Deadly Bees and Gorgo).

Entering the theater gives us an ominous sense of what's to come, as we're given a shot of a projector with credits running over it, while the crew throws quips at it that run a line in between clever and silly.  It's not horrible, but a tad dry, and leaves the viewer with the hope that the episode to follow will kick in once the movie does.  But the tone mostly stays consistent, as the film feels longer than it should be and as equally as dry as the credits, while the riffing never shifts out of that clever to silly range that will either make you smile or groan, depending on the moment.  It would be disingenuous to say that the episode isn't funny, as there is plenty that gave me a belly laugh, however The Projected Man is a long series of hot and cold water leading to a lukewarm experience.

"If you go in there, someone is going to get killed!"

"Any suggestions?"

"I'd like for it to be you!"

The host segments could stand to be better too, as our introduction to Castle Forrester really isn't that memorable, despite the best efforts of our crew.  Pearl's segments here seem clever in concept but so-so in execution.  I like the idea of her being "haunted" into playing an organ, but it really doesn't land in execution.  Her discovery of logs of previous "Mystery Science Theater" experiments throughout the ages is a bit better, but feels as if it needs more to blossom.  Some of the more enjoyable segments happen on the Satellite of Love, as trio take inspiration from the movie to use a projecting machine to destroy Mike's beloved possessions and Crow accidentally kills Mike with the "touch of death" (which actually leads to a decently funny conclusion in the theater).  But all is not sunshine on the SOL, as the biggest groaner of the episode is where Mike and the Bots call a character from the movie named Lembach and convince him to "stay," leading them to parade about "Lembach is staying!" for a while.  It's a reference to a passing line in the movie that they're obsessed with for some reason, and it's really not that funny.

The Projected Man might very well be one of the weaker season premieres in the show's history, though I'd say it's worth watching at least once for the average MSTie.  There are some funny lines offering great laughs and while the episode can be weighted by a dull movie, the highlights are worth staying for.  It's a bit of a disappointment after the late eighth season winning streak, however.

Average

The DVD

The Projected Man projected itself onto Shout Factory's Volume XXX box set, with solid audio and video.  The special features include one of Ballyhoo and Shout's briefest making of features (less than four minutes), Shock to the System:  Creating the Projected Man.  Tom Weaver narrates this small look into the tight but troubled production of the film.  Also included is a theatrical trailer.

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

👍