Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Rifftrax

[King Dead]

Saw Rad yesterday. Mostly unexceptional. Movie was pretty boring and the guys sounded tired. Couple of easy Lori Laughlin jokes did hit well, though.

Only weird thing I'm going to remark on is that they apparently connected the house lights of my theater to the beginning of the film and not the beginning of the show. So all the lights were on throughout the intro and the two Gumby shorts. Weird.

Must've been something with your theater, mine dimmed properly at the start of the intro.

Personally, I had the opposite experience, I thought it was one of their better live shows in a while. The movie was full of 80s cheese, the producers trying their damnedest to make BMX biking look RAD (so rad they had to underline the title!) that it just comes across as corny but fun. It was kind of meandering at times, but the jokes were pretty solid overall, especially anything to do with Lori Loughlin giving college advice. Neat that the star made an appearance at the show, seems like he enjoyed their poking fun at the movie. And the Gumby shorts were, naturally, a fever dream.

It's a shame it's the only live show we're getting this year, I don't think they're doing any replays of old shows either. Dunno if the guys just aren't up to doing as many anymore or what, but I miss when we had three or four a year.

 

[Flexo]

The movie was full of 80s cheese, the producers trying their damnedest to make BMX biking look RAD (so rad they had to underline the title!) that it just comes across as corny but fun.

It helps that it was directed by the same director who did Smoky & the Bandit and Megaforce.

 

[XYZpdq Jr.]

"any more of this faux Dead End Kids patois and I'll teach you the REAL meaning of lexi-fetishism"
this is probably the most intelligent thing ever written about the Bowery Boys

 

[mlanguishi]

Once again, I'm sad to see this. Kenvin's looking and sounding real rough.

 

[bifftango]

Once again, I'm sad to see this. Kenvin's looking and sounding real rough.

Kevin's actually looking and sounding a lot better there. You should go back and look at him from 2021 to early 2023.

 

[Tor Lugosi]

Mike slowly transforming into TV's Frank.

 

[The Nothingness]

Having recently seen, on Tubi, the Rifftrax versions for both Carnival of Souls and The Last Man on Earth, I am quite disappoint with how Mike, Kevin, and Bill covered them, especially with the latter. It seems to have been recorded around or after 2020, when the China virus was dominating the world. Not only did they get topical, such as Kevin making a remark about Trump "recommending" bleach as a treatment, but also mocked the bouts of depression and loneliness from Vincent Price's character, along with him getting physical with Ruth.

 

[Commander X]

Recently watched one of the more recent Riffs, their take on the pilot episode for the 1994 Robocop TV series, a first-run-syndicated show with the stench of "early 1990s show produced directly for syndication" as well as the bacony stench of Canada all over it. It's a softer, gentler take on the franchise, complete with a streetwise yet still somewhat naive urchin, and instead of bloody ultraviolence, we see in the opening Robocop take down villains holding a retirement home hostage with maneuvers like shooting the chain on a chandelier to bring it down on one gunman's head. Then he shoots out the legs on a cabinet to bring it crashing down on another criminal. As Murphy notes, sounding incredulous "So Robocop learned how to take out bad guys from Kevin McCallister."

Key to the plot is people actually noticing homeless men vanishing from the streets of Detroit - a cartoonishly evil OCP executive and a cartoonishly evil mad scientist (played by Cliff De Young, who played "sensitive guy" roles in the 70s and co-starred with Jessica Harper in the Rocky Horror follow-up Shock Treatment) are hunting for an intelligent brain to plug into the man/machine interface to be used to fully automate Detroit's city functions, but homeless guys aren't working out so they murder and plug in the brain of the exec's assistant, who manifests as a holographic ghost in the machine (played by Andrea Roth, who would go on to play Dennis Leary's bitchy sort-of-but-not-exactly-ex-wife in "Rescue Me"). Included in the villain's gallery is the lumpy-featured Pudface Morgan, who has a grudge against Robocop and ends up getting sent flying through the air more than once for his troubles. As summed up through Murphy: "Robocop might be in trouble, if he ever has to go up against someone who ISN'T a deranged moron." There's also some nonsense about an OCP run shelter for homeless children, and a lot of "humor" that will make viewers long for the sharp and witty satire of Robocop 3.

 

[marvlouslie]

Having recently seen, on Tubi, the Rifftrax versions for both Carnival of Souls and The Last Man on Earth, I am quite disappoint with how Mike, Kevin, and Bill covered them, especially with the latter. It seems to have been recorded around or after 2020, when the China virus was dominating the world. Not only did they get topical, such as Kevin making a remark about Trump "recommending" bleach as a treatment, but also mocked the bouts of depression and loneliness from Vincent Price's character, along with him getting physical with Ruth.

Kevin's always been this way though. Bill's like this too, although, he doesn't have nearly as much TDS as Kevin does. It just seems like he has a rabid obsession with it. I can just imagine Mike just staring at him during that exchange as if to say, "what the fuck is wrong with you?"

 

[XYZpdq Jr.]

it's also worth remembering that Trump has been a living punchline since the 80s. I don't recall any in KTMA off the top of my head, but MST had "Trump is rich and evil" jokes at least as early as the first cable season in Moon Zero Two

 

[grapeshark77]

Oh dear.

https://showmaker.mst3k.com/makeseason14

https://archive.ph/wip/oHk9W

This is through a platform called "Crowdfundr". I'm wondering if there were complaints after the massive delay/surprise charges in shipping physical rewards and they can't legally go back to Kickstarter. Joel makes a BIG POINT of saying that you are not paying for a product.

More money for less episodes and "upscaled" old episodes (why?? There are jokes referencing the bad visual quality in a few). You can have at it, it's a lot.

Also you can't see the amount raised on the site (sneaky) so you have to go to the main Crowdfundr and search. Right now it's $678k out of 7.4 million. I thought they'd wait until the SAG strike ended because I know at least Jonah's in that.

https://crowdfundr.com/find?search=mst3k

 

[Evil Peter Griffin]

 

[Flexo]

Also you can't see the amount raised on the site (sneaky) so you have to go to the main Crowdfundr and search. Right now it's $678k out of 7.4 million. I thought they'd wait until the SAG strike ended because I know at least Jonah's in that.

Interesting. I clicked on the link you posted and it shows the fund goals:

Hm. To pledge or not....

I must admit, that quite amused me.

 

[Rick's Beef Wellington]

Interesting. I clicked on the link you posted and it shows the fund goals:
View attachment 5441883
Hm. To pledge or not....


I must admit, that quite amused me.

It's funny, the email from Joel asking for more money to make something I don't want came in while I was listening to Mike's 372 Pages podcast and I thought about how Mike's never stopped entertaining me since I was a kid. He wrote two books of essays and a novel that were all funny, was genuinely innovative figuring out how to do Rifftrax as a listen-along track so he didn't need to worry about rights, Audio Mullet was a great podcast and 372 Pages is really fun.

Joel...did one episode of The TV Wheel and I saw his live one man show where he couldn't figure out how to make the slide show work with his phone as a remote. I have a friend who still kept giving him money after the Netflix series fiasco and it sounds like Joel tried to invent streaming fifteen years too late for a service where if you're a fan you already have all of the old episodes and you'd probably think the new ones aren't worth a monthly fee.

 

[grapeshark77]

Small Joel update, nothing big but two interesting things:



I think the plan was that it would fund itself and that didn't happen. There aren't even any live events as part of the new season, it's just a storefront.

Also this REALLY makes it sound like they aren't allowed back on Kickstarter.



https://archive.ph/q1OTG

 

[Rick's Beef Wellington]

Small Joel update, nothing big but two interesting things:

View attachment 5444562

I think the plan was that it would fund itself and that didn't happen. There aren't even any live events as part of the new season, it's just a storefront.

Also this REALLY makes it sound like they aren't allowed back on Kickstarter.

View attachment 5444564

https://archive.ph/q1OTG

I mean, glancing again at my previous post in context of this, I feel really bad for Joel having no business sense. I pay $10 for a Rifftrax I want and ignore the others, it's the simplest business model and somehow they can make it work without CBS funding their production costs.

KTMA era was passion and desperation, I'd rather see Joel talking to a plunger in front of a greenscreen than unfunny Millenials in jump suits because they feel like they have to contemporize. We could all produce episodes of MST3K with our laptops now, Joel misunderstands what it is that people want. I'm not a nostalgia slave but hearing Mike, Bill, and Kevin is comforting. I just want things to work out for Joel, he was so happy after that first Kickstarter and we were all so hopeful until that 8 minute monsters around the world nonsense song came on screen.

 

[grapeshark77]

They *just* hit a million, it's going very slowly. I'll check back on it near the end of the campaign. Kickstarter takes more money but you also get better visibility.

It's funny - I was looking at their official forum and it's what people call "toxic positivity". Oddly enough the MST3K Reddit is surprisingly logical and a bit negative. I have no idea why they can't just do what Rifftrax does and charge for episodes/shorts.

Good comment example:

 

[Commander X]

Just in time for the season, I checked out the Rifftrax of "Amityville Dollhouse", their second visit to the string of Amityville-related films, as a blended family moves into a new house, but there's a dollhouse in a shed that looks just like the famous house which is apparently good enough for whatever's responsible when something that looks like a boy's dead father appears to him in his closet and other shenanigans like the large spider that comes out of a pinata at a party and lands on a boy's face. It's not the worst film made with Amityville in the title, not while there's films like "Amityville In Space" (seriously) around.

 

[MirrorNoir]

So can someone give the 411 on what happened to get MST3K kicked off of/banned from Kickstarter?

Also, wasn't one of the reasons for Shout Factory buying the franchise the fact that they could just use their own movie library to avoid having haggle over film rights issues that keep them from making their money back via DVD release of the episodes?

 

[Crescent Fresh]

So can someone give the 411 on what happened to get MST3K kicked off of/banned from Kickstarter?

Also, wasn't one of the reasons for Shout Factory buying the franchise the fact that they could just use their own movie library to avoid having haggle over film rights issues that keep them from making their money back via DVD release of the episodes?

While it isn’t exactly confirmed, the by far most likely culprit was them holding rewards hostage until additional shipping costs that were on top of those paid earlier were paid. Failure to pay the costs by a deadline would cancel the order, which is not fulfilling it according to KS, which to them is far worse than any delay they could’ve done.