Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Rifftrax

[Rick's Beef Wellington]

Lines like that are always why I slightly preferred Mike to Joel. Especially as I can already hear his delivery of it in that perfectly pitched sarcasm tone of his.

Joel was great with references, Mike is the best at delivering jokes.

 

[Tor Lugosi]

Joel was great with references, Mike is the best at delivering jokes.

given that Mike was the head writer for most of MST3K, a lot of those references probably came from him, too

 

[Peaches the Wonder Cat]

Joel was great with references, Mike is the best at delivering jokes.

The jokes aged better than the references. There were some obscure ones even when the show aired, I can't imagine anyone getting them now.

 

[RollerGator]

The jokes aged better than the references. There were some obscure ones even when the show aired, I can't imagine anyone getting them now.

But when you do get a really obscure one you feel like a smarty-pants.

 

[Rick's Beef Wellington]

given that Mike was the head writer for most of MST3K, a lot of those references probably came from him, too

Oh I meant delivering the references, Joel always sounded happiest when he was doing an old announcer voice or repeating a line from some shampoo commercial from 1967. Like he had more energy doing impressions but his normal laconic delivery didn't work with jokey jokes. Mike usually sounds slightly irritated which sells jokes really well.

 

[ditto]

The jokes aged better than the references. There were some obscure ones even when the show aired, I can't imagine anyone getting them now.

Can't imagine many people getting the Firesign Theater references even back in the early 90s.

 

[Commander X]

Another holiday "treat", and perhaps the only other Christmas film featuring Martians (well he's not actually from Mars, but...), a steaming chunk of French-Canadian oddness entitled The Christmas Martian. If you're a fan of obnoxious and unpleasantly weird antics that were intended by the creatives behind them (probably) to come off as humorous and/or endearing then this is yet another Rifftrax'd kid's movie for you.

 

[Commander X]

Been going through of a few of the Rifftrax Christmas offerings both new and older ones I hadn't gotten around to watching.

I Believe in Santa Claus, an egregiously weird French kiddie production about a kid whose parents were abducted by an African warlord, and he and a friend run into Santa Claus, a snow fairy and an ogre and it was all a dream like the end of the Wizard of Oz film, or something, maybe, who the hell knows, or cares. Towards the end, after being joyfully reunited with his parents, we have a voiceover of the kid saying something he'd read aloud earlier in a letter from his father "If you wish for something really hard, your wish will always come true."

MIKE: "So! If your parents disappear and don't come back, it's all your fault because you didn't wish hard enough and you have no one else to blame!"

More recent shorts:

Santa and the Three Bears, a animated story about bears meeting Santa Claus, or something, anyways the mama bear is voiced by the same woman who was the original voice of Wilma Flintstone, and there's a park ranger voiced by the actor who played the town drunk on The Andy Griffith Show. Plus there's live action parts about an uncle who takes his nieces and nephews to see porpoises at a park that's part of Pirate's World, the now long-defunct park that Santa Claus and the Ice Cream Bunny was filmed at.

The Little Match Girl a short based on the Hans Christian Anderson story, and the Nelson/Murphy/Corbett trio get a lot out of the short being just as depressing as the source material.

 

[mlanguishi]

Been going through of a few of the Rifftrax Christmas offerings both new and older ones I hadn't gotten around to watching.

Be sure to check out Santa's Summer House. There is a joke about Santa reading to a kid one of the letters that he wrote him as a kid, and I was hoping they'd do it this certain way and it's perfect.

 

[XYZpdq Jr.]

Santa and the Three Bears,

I need to check that out. I had caught it a few times on a Christmas random stuff playlist without the riffs. I like how Mom Bear looks hung over and about to kill everyone most of the time.

 

[Flexo]

Y'all might enjoy these. GBF goes over movies saved from obscurity by MST3k.

 

[Commander X]

A last riff for 2023, Hansel and Gretel, from the director of Santa Claus and the Ice Cream Bunny, with all that you'd expect. Hansel and Gretel are played by two adults who in their mid-20s at least. It is all rather off-putting at the start, and remains so when they get to the witch's gingerbread house.

GRETEL: "And peppermint posts!"
HANSEL: "And candy flowers...and a lollipop fence!"

MURPHY: "Get ahold of yourself Hansel, you've got a master's degree!"

 

[Ralph Barnhardt]

They're still doing the MST3K stream on Youtube.

They're now showing The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies. I forgot about how they made men in drag jokes about the dancer in the beginning of the movie. I was really hoping for some premium outrage but was pleasantly surprised that there were only two comments from people not happy about trans jokes.

Doubly funny is how this episode was made in released in 1997, roughly 20 years before all this trans shit popped into existence. Hearing Crow yell "YOU'RE NOT A WOMAN" to the dancer feels like I'm watching something from another world. The jokes in this episode is incredibly refreshing even if I've seen this one movie probably a dozen times already.

 

[XYZpdq Jr.]

They're still doing the MST3K stream on Youtube.

They're now showing The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies. I forgot about how they made men in drag jokes about the dancer in the beginning of the movie. I was really hoping for some premium outrage but was pleasantly surprised that there were only two comments from people not happy about trans jokes.
View attachment 5607836
Doubly funny is how this episode was made in released in 1997, roughly 20 years before all this trans shit popped into existence. Hearing Crow yell "YOU'RE NOT A WOMAN" to the dancer feels like I'm watching something from another world. The jokes in this episode is incredibly refreshing even if I've seen this one movie probably a dozen times already.

yeah pulling your punches on people who didn't pass wasn't a thing yet

 

[Ralph Barnhardt]

I guess they are just gonna show MST3K/Cinematic Titanic/Rifftrax forever now.

We're on like week 2 of this and I'm ok with this. I think I'd even be willing to drop five bucks a month to keep this going. Maybe that's a more sure fire way to fund the next set of MST3K episodes instead of asking for millions of dollars.

 

[Stab You in the Back]

A last riff for 2023, Hansel and Gretel, from the director of Santa Claus and the Ice Cream Bunny, with all that you'd expect. Hansel and Gretel are played by two adults who in their mid-20s at least. It is all rather off-putting at the start, and remains so when they get to the witch's gingerbread house.

GRETEL: "And peppermint posts!"
HANSEL: "And candy flowers...and a lollipop fence!"

MURPHY: "Get ahold of yourself Hansel, you've got a master's degree!"

Its a great short. I laughed out loud at Hansel drinking the pitcher of milk.

 

[Commander X]

Its a great short. I laughed out loud at Hansel drinking the pitcher of milk.

The director's oeuvre has made great material, like Santa Claus and another favorite, their take on The Wonderful Land of Oz which was actually somewhat faithful to the book it adapted, considering how shabby and shoddy a film it is.

"In this movie, instead of a welcome song [to Emerald City], there's just a janitor squeezing out his mop and coughing."

 

[Commander X]

Rifftrax has taken on The Little Mermaid! A 1970s production from Japan, that is. One that hews pretty faithfully to Han Christian Anderson's original story, and also leads Murphy to conclude that the story's theology seems kind of random.

 

[Commander X]

Also finally got around to checking out this current "Deal of the Week" riff, of Aladdin. A 1990 TV-movie that aired on the Disney Channel a couple of years before Disney's more famous Aladdin adaption, directed by former Monkee Micky Dolenz (Murphy gets the line that there's a movie involving a Dolenz that's even worse than She's Out of Control) and starring Susan Egan as a "Chinese" princess, a few years before she would voice Megara in Disney's Hercules and starring some guy as Aladdin who it would seem starred in nothing after this.

Barry Bostwick as the Genie of the Lamp, however. Hoo. Robin Williams' spastic schtick as the Genie looks almost underplayed in comparison to Bostwick's hamming it up here, and since this adaption includes the Genie of the Ring, Bostwick briefly gets a dual role by putting on a moustache and a voice that sounds like a generic sleazy guy character from an episode of an 80s sitcom.

 

[Flexo]

Also finally got around to checking out this current "Deal of the Week" riff, of Aladdin. A 1990 TV-movie that aired on the Disney Channel a couple of years before Disney's more famous Aladdin adaption, directed by former Monkee Micky Dolenz (Murphy gets the line that there's a movie involving a Dolenz that's even worse than She's Out of Control) and starring Susan Egan as a "Chinese" princess, a few years before she would voice Megara in Disney's Hercules and starring some guy as Aladdin who it would seem starred in nothing after this.

Barry Bostwick as the Genie of the Lamp, however. Hoo. Robin Williams' spastic schtick as the Genie looks almost underplayed in comparison to Bostwick's hamming it up here, and since this adaption includes the Genie of the Ring, Bostwick briefly gets dual role by putting on a moustache and a voice that sounds like a generic sleazy guy character from an episode of an 80s sitcom.

Fun fact but that movie is entirely free on youtube if anybody wants to enjoy it raw.

Like that bit about the book-accurate Return to Oz? This Aladdin is weirdly faithful as well because the original story does take place "in one of the cities of china" yet still involve Arabs.