Rifftrax DVDs

Once upon a time, a company called Legend Films, who specialize in colorizing old movies, decided to put out a DVD of their version of Reefer Madness. In their infinite wisdom, they hired Mike Nelson of Mystery Science Theater 3000 to do a humorous commentary track. And it was funny. The project proved successful, so more DVDs followed. Soon, Mike was joined by Bill Corbin and Kevin Murphy, also of MST3K. As the commentary tracks were proving to be very popular, RiffTrax was born, which allows you to purchase commentary tracks for a wide variety of movies, including the public domain fare Legend was releasing.

Soon, the old commentary tracks were remade with all three of the MST3K alumni. These tracks were available for download and synced to the appropriate movie as video on demand. But then someone had the idea to issue new DVDs with the so called "three riffer versions" of the old films as well as two collections of short industrial films the RiffTrax crew had been doing as well. You can buy these discs individually for $9.99 or as a ten pack, which I got for around $60 on Deep Discount.

The only of these I'd seen prior to these DVDs were the shorts and the original Reefer Madness with Mike solo. The shorts are absolutely hilarious. When films like this were shown on MST3K, they were always one of my favorite features and the RiffTrax crew hasn't lost its touch. Reefer Madness is also a hit with few jokes being repeated from Mike's version (or at least few that I can remember.)

After that however, the laughs slow down. I'd passed on Mike's versions of Carnival of Souls and Night of the Living Dead as I'd read some mixed reviews on these. The new versions are pretty mixed as well. The laughs are sparse and I'm not sure why that is exactly. My hunch is that those two movies, aside from being low budget, are fairly well constructed and among some of the best horror films ever made. It's not as easy to riff on something that doesn't give you much to work with.

On the other hand, Plan 9 From Outer Space is one of those movies that bad movie fans know so well, there aren't going to be too many jokes that haven't been thought of already. In an official MST3K FAQ, they said something to that effect in response to the question of why they hadn't done Plan 9. I think this RiffTrax disc proves it was a pretty wise move. Plan 9's jokes practically write themselves and unless you haven't seen the movie before, or if you have no imagination, there's not a lot of new chuckles to be had.

And then there's Swing Parade and Little Shop of Horror, which show the difficulty of riffing on comedy, even when the film is so threadbare as Swing Parade is. You just can't make that much fun of a film that isn't taking itself seriously.

On top of that, these DVDs are pretty barebones. You don't get the colorized versions and, in some cases, it looks like you don't even get the restored prints Legend used to make their colorized versions. Night of the Living Dead and Little Shop of Horror in particular approach streaming web video in quality. Other than that, you get a new song over the menu (meh) and a download code for a Riff on one of the Harry Potter films. Unfortunately, it's the same card in all the DVDs, so once you've downloaded it, there's not much point to the other nine codes you have.

As much as it pains me to slag anything MST3K related, I have to this time. It's pretty difficult to recommend buying all these. The Shorts are really funny and so is Reefer Madness, but if you buy just those, you're halfway to the ten pack in cost. On the other hand, I really can't see myself re-watching any of these other than those three and, my life would be no poorer having skipped the other seven. It's really a toss up. I think I'd say the smart move is to try to score those three used and do a video on demand rental of the rest if you must see them.

MST3K Redux

As much as I love Mystery Science Theater 3000, somehow I've resisted buying any of the Cinematic Titanic releases...until now. Yes, they broke me down with Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. Not only do I love this movie (it's sooo bad,) I found this a surprising and gutsy choice for the CT crew, considering this movie was riffed on MST3K back in the day.

Well, I'm happy to report this disc is a winner. Amazingly enough, despite the fact that most of these folks worked on the MST3K episode, the riffing is all new. And it's really funny stuff here. Check the trailer:



So, as I'm sure a million other MST3K fans have done, I have to contrast this to Rifftrax. It's not entirely fair, as I have more Rifftrax stuff than Cinematic Titanic, but here goes anyway:

Rifftrax was first, so they have that going for them. Since most of what they do is just an mp3 commentary track to be played along with a commercial DVD, their releases are cheaper and quicker to download. They have also done shorts, like MST3K used to, which are the whole deal.

However, most of the Rifftrax are for modern movies that I really don't care about. Since they're just mp3s, I'd have to acquire the movies as well. Aside from the shorts, I haven't really been interested in any Rifftrax in a while, though bringing guest riffers (like Fred Willard) on board has made me interested in checking out some of them eventually.

And speaking of the riffers, here's the big difference: the CT crew, is not only greater in number, but it's pretty much all my favorite people from MST3K. While I have nothing against the Rifftrax crew, there's just something about Joel, Trace and Frank (and the underrated J. Elvis, his riffing was the highlight of MST3K Season 1) that I find funnier.

So that's my two cents. I look forward to checking out some more Cinematic Titanic in the future. And I'll enjoy firing up the Rifftrax take on the Star Wars Christmas Special again this year and hope that they'll do more shorts in the next year.

MST3K does General Cinemas

One of my favorite MST3K host skits, for obvious reasons.



(PS- I'm using this clip for non-commercial purposes under what I believe to be Fair Use. Thanks.)

The Incredibly Shrinking MST3K

It should come as no shock to anyone reading this blog that I love MST3K (or Mystery Science Theater 3000, to be exact.) However, the show has been off the air for years. The only way to watch it anymore is either through the beauty of tape trading/file sharing or the DVDs and videos Rhino has released.

Despite feeling they are a bit pricey and sometimes a little carelessly assembled, I do genuinely appreciate the Rhino releases. Recently, I've become a little concerned about the future of MST3K at retail. I'm not going to claim it's all over for the cowtown puppet show, but I do have to wonder if we're seeing the beginning of the end.

Part of the problem is licensing. See, MST3K has got to be the most difficult TV show in terms of rights and licensing anyone ever could have created. Since each episode encompassed an entire movie, the broadcast rights for that movie would have to be secured and renewed to keep that episode on the air. If Rhino wanted to release that episode, additional rights needed to be secured.

Rhino has been an excellent home for MST3K if for no other reason than they already have the rights to a lot of movies featured on the show. The problem is, over time those rights expire and if the owners of the film chose not to renew, that episode would go out of print.

This first happened in the VHS days with Amazing Colossal Man being the first episode orphaned. No real surprise, considering that movie and it's sequel War of the Colossal Beast (also featured in MST3K) have been embroiled in rights tangles for years. Next to go was another single episode release, The Beginning of the End, which went out of print when the rights to the movie went over to Image early last year.

Though there was a considerable gap of time between those first two casualties, the deletions have been fast and furious since. In the last year, Rhino lost the rights to all four films on the Vol. 1 set and Sidehackers for Vol. 3 (orphaning three other discs in the process.) Vol. 10 was pulled almost as fast as it was released (though we still don't know why, the assumption being Godzilla vs. Megalon wasn't licensed properly to begin with) and a few weeks ago fans discovered Vol. 9 is MIA as well.

If these were all older releases, it wouldn't be so shocking, but the fact of the matter is, the two most recently released MST3K sets are out of print, one within weeks of hitting the shelves. I've also noticed the release date for Vol. 11 keeps getting pushed further and further and still no titles leaked. One has to wonder what the heck is going on at Rhino.

The other problem is stores just aren't stocking these things any more. I recently spoke to someone at Best Buy and he told me he didn't think they were carrying any MST3K discs anymore. Despite all the shelf space they're giving to TV on DVD, apparently they can't spare any room for MST3K. It's a similar situation at the other box boxes out here. Cult releases, like MST3K, are getting pushed out for more room for triple dips of Hollywood's latest CGI-fest.

With rights vanishing along with self space, I have to wonder what the future holds for MST3K on DVD. Even at best, these can't be huge sellers anyway. With dwindling retail placement and nightmarish licensing, releasing these things can't be much more than a labor of love. I just have to wonder how much longer Rhino is going to feel that love.

Update 3/19: Looks like I Accuse My Parents may have slipped over to the land beyond. Good luck trying to score a copy, all the sellers on half.com and Amazon appear to be "warehouse" sellers who list tons of crap they don't actually have on hand. If this is truly OOP, I don't exactly know why...

Review: The Deadly Mantis (WTF-flim)

You can't deny Universal Studio's might in the world of monster movies. Dracula, Frankenstein, the Mummy, the Creature and on and on and on. Classics all. Then you discover something like this lurking behind the Universal globe and you have to wonder what the hell they were thinking. Were they trying to fill the lower half of a double bill and didn't feel like re-running one of their classics? Was the market for Z-grade flick like those that Astor and Lippard cranked out that lucrative?

Anyway, the key with these bottom of the barrel monster movies was suspense and advertising. Give the movie a name like "The Thing that Killed" or "Hell Creature of the Sky" and keep the audience guessing as to the creature looks like. Of course, it's going to be silly and cheap, but there was always that anticipation that it might be scary. However, even the title of the Deadly Mantis gives it away, so when the characters spend half the movie trying to figure out what's taking down airplanes, we already know.

Aside from that, you can go down the Z-grade monster movie check list and pretty much check the box by every cliche. Three main characters; scientist guy, military guy and reporter girl. Check. Cold war underpinnings? Check. Atomic energy as the trigger? Check. Narriator? Check. Copious stock footage? Yep. Giant bug? How's this guy for ya?


I know a lot of people like to take the piss out of Bert I. Gordon, but watching this movie seriously makes one appreciate what he could do in the giant bug genre. I'm not going to suggest Mr. BIG was a great filmmaker, but you could never accuse him of being less than entertaining. I fell asleep twice during the Deadly Mantis. No lie. There's only so much army stock footage a man can take.

Anyway, I'm sure you're all going to want to run right out and secure a copy of this for your very own, so let me tell you a little about the DVD. As usual, WTF-film does a great job with the disc. From cover to menus, the whole thing looks great. The transfer (which, I'm assuming comes from the old Universal Sci-Fi laserdisc set) is slightly windowboxed full frame and looks really good*. This looks about as good as the Sci-Fi set Universal put out last year and has extras (trailer and photo gallery) that Universal didn't bother with to boot. Unless they decide to put out another Sci-Fi collection, I think this is going to be the best way to own this movie, even if I can only really recommend it for genre completists.

Available from WTF-film. Use coupon code cdr10 at check out for 10% off.


* note, if you were reading message boards around the time Universal released This Island Earth on DVD, you'd know there's a ton of controversy over the correct aspect ratio for the Universal Sci-Fi and Horror films of this era. I'm in the camp that believes these were meant to be cropped to 1.85:1 widescreen, but transfers like this that are full frame rather than pan and scan don't bug me too much.

Some video clips from KTMA TV23

UPDATE: these are all dead thanks to YouTube's take down first, ask questions never policy. Sorry, they're not going back up because I don't have the files or the time to make them again.


I mentioned a while ago my cool thrift score of a cache of old over the air TV recordings. Well, I've had a little time to upload some clips to YouTube and here they are.

I started with some stuff taped off KTMA TV23. Why I chose this one to begin with is that it was, to me, the most interesting stuff in the lot. KTMA was the channel where Mystery Science Theater 3000 was born and began. Because KTMA was a small UHF station no longer on the air as such, not a ton is known about the station by people like myself who don't live in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area.

I like this stuff for two reasons, one of which being the MST3K connection, shame there's nothing directly MST3K related here though. The other being, I just miss the general lo-fi feeling of UHF television. Now it seems like it's too slick as all the UHFs here are network affiliated (assuming you consider UPN a network.) There's too much reality TV and infomercials and hardly any local flavor to it.

The broadcast I took this from was an airing of the 1961 3D movie The Mask from late 1988. I love this movie. Really, I do. It's a great thinly veiled LSD flick from the time before they got all hippy, it has some cool 3D sequences and was the only 3D flick Canada made. How about that?

Before I dug into these tapes, I assumed they were all locally taped (meaning Indianapolis, for those of you who have no idea what you're reading here.) I was hoping this was the same broadcast of the Mask I'd taped off of WTTV 4 (I think) hosted by Bob & Tom on the old Betamax way back in the day. Well, it wasn't, but whatever.

Two more things, and then we roll film. Someone taped over the first part of the film meaning I've lost the intro and apparently there was a 3D Three Stooges short broadcast as well. I'm really disappointed about that, as I've never see either of the 3D Stooges shorts and I'll never get to see the Movie at 8 intro. Secondly, this TV version of The Mask had commercial bumpers by famous magician Harry Blackstone. Cheesy doesn't begin to describe them. I could throw them up if someone really wants to see them.

The first two commercials are all over this broadcast. One or both appear every commercial break. (Sidenote: TV used to have a lot fewer commercials. Either that or KTMA had a big problem finding advertisers. Maybe a little of both.) Steve's Warehouse Discount Foods is a great example of a local no budget commercial that pretty much ruled the roost on UHF TV. Seriously, would you buy a head of lettuce from this guy?



Then we get to the Rax Workburger. "Fast food with style" = "We can't compete with McDonalds so here's pseudo-sophistication." Is Rax even around anymore? I've heard rumors of one still operating in the Muncie/Anderson area which, frankly, woudn't suprise me a bit.



Next up, 10,000 Auto Parts (who counted them all?) stores, another heavy KTMA advertiser. Or at least they were on my tape. Not really local commercials, as the local content is just tagged on at the end, but, hey, CHUCK YEAGER!!! AMERICA, FUCK YEAH!





Now, let's get serious. Here's the goods. If there's one thing I will always associate with UHF TV, it's cheesy movies. (There's a reason MST3K started on UHF.) So, here's a couple of ads for then upcoming films on KTMA. Neither of these are on DVD, so watch and marvel at these RARE OMG L@@K clips.

Tell me the Plutonium Incident couldn't have been an episode of MST3K.



This one for Catlow looks a little more pro. I'm guessing this commercial was included as part of the movie package they purchased and all they did was slap their logo at the end.



Here's a commercial for some great locally produced content. I'm not a huge wrestling fan, but these shows were all over the UHF stations in the late 80s. This commercial features Jim Cornette and lots of shots of the old NWA wrestlers. I remember some of this stuff.



Finally, here's the end of the movie. Barry ZeVan, who hosted this showing, was as best I can tell the weather guy on KTMA. I guess he was one of those local celebrity types. I love his delivery here. If only he would have thrown in a "who loves ya baby?" at the end, I would marry this man, assuming out type of love is legal in the Minneapolis area.



Top of the hour, so here's the KTMA station ID. Boring, but here for posterity.



And with that, I'm signing off. Enjoy. There's more where this came from.