While truly memorable (or at least halfway entertaining) comedies are few and far in-between on big and small screens alike, it’s nice to know that the lads at RiffTrax are able to keep on-a-truckin’ by tearing into some of the strangest and sorriest works of “art” ever produced by man. Of course, the whole “made by man” thing is debatable, as master riffers Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett occasionally attribute some of the shockingly-bad movies and shorts they bear witness to as works of Satan.
And there are a lot of said “works of Satan” out there, too. From misguided educational shorts to fractured feature-length films, one of the main reasons Mike, Kevin and Bill (all proud graduates of Mystery Science Theater 3000) can afford to continuously heckle these monstrosities is the mere fact that they’re available in abundance. That, and these three are pros at issuing masterfully-timed cons.
Here’s a quick peek at four new titles from the RiffTrax catalogue (distributed by Legend Films), two of which mark their first ever venture into the waters of High-Definition!
Enjoy.
· RiffTrax Live! Reefer Madness
It isn’t the first time the RiffTrax crew have set their sights on the horrendously erroneous “enlightening” anti-marijuana feature from 1936, but this special Live presentation — which was broadcast live in select US theaters on August 19, 2010 — does emerge as being the most memorable. The crew first take on three mind-bogglingly weird shorts: More Dangerous Than Dynamite, an “educational” short that tries to deter housewives from washing their clothes in gasoline(!); Aesop’s Sound Fables: Frozen Frolics, a terrible ‘30s cartoon where characters bop up and down continuously; and At Your Fingertips: Grass which — as Mike, Kevin and Bill point out — isn’t about marijuana, but surely must have been made by people that were high on it. Then, following the premiere of two magnificently-bizarre shorts from Something Awful’s Richard Kyanka (as told and conceived by his five-year-old daughter), we get down to boiling an outrageously colorized version of Reefer Madness — complete with old jokes and new gags galore (including a few which are rightfully aimed at the then-new M. Night Shyamalan flop, The Last Airbender). Those of you who have already heard some of the “older” jokes might not get as much of a kick out of the feature film, but the new riffs and extras make it worthwhile. Also available on DVD.
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