Bad movies are like zombies: numerous and relentless. No matter what you do, they always manage to come back bite you. Now, whereas George A. Romero would advise you to fire a bullet into the head of your would-be undead assailant, the fellers over at Rifftrax have a different approach: humiliate it. Yes, nothing throws off an attacker quite like an insult. Trust me, it’s something I found out way back in high school. My point? Well, none really — except that Michael J. Nelson and Rifftrax have teamed up with Legend Films to release two more Rifftrax titles for us to add to our DVD collections.
The first title, 1944’s Voodoo Man, hails from Poverty Row studio Monogram Pictures. The film stars the great Bela Lugosi as a mad doctor (what else?), intent on transferring the soul of his dead (yet still kinda alive) wife into the body of a much livelier woman. Using state-of-the-art methods such as hypnosis, mixed with a l’il of that ol’ black magic from Haiti — courtesy of local gas station attendant (!) George Zucco. Their previous attempts at a soul transfer didn’t amount to much, so Lugosi has a hoard of zombie chicks standing around in specially-designed cubicles in his ginormous basement. John Carradine takes a few bites out of the scenery as Lugosi’s dimwitted servant.
For the Rifftrax version, our host Mike Nelson tags his guest riffers Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett into the ring, and the three offer up yet another uproarious comical commentary, capping on everything from George Zucco’s embarrassingly-bad “rituals” to sheriff Henry Hall’s bizarre line, “Gosh all fishhook!” Even on its own, Voodoo Man is a fun film to watch — so, should you decide to do so (and you should), you can watch it without the Rifftrax commentary (a great big “Yes!”). As a side note, I should point out that Voodoo Man is a “Rifftrax Exclusive” — and this is the only official DVD release out there.
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