Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Rifftrax

[ln18]

I watched The Gauntlet today. My favorite episode Killer Fish had my least favorite thing, an awful song from fake new Gypsy in the middle of the riffing.

 

[Starscreams Cape]

I watched The Gauntlet today. My favorite episode Killer Fish had my least favorite thing, an awful song from fake new Gypsy in the middle of the riffing.

They REALLY got carried away after the (perceived?) love for the monster song from Reptilicus. There are so many musical bits. And nobody has the singing chops of Kevin Murphy, either.

 

[Johnny Bravo]

I watched The Gauntlet today. My favorite episode Killer Fish had my least favorite thing, an awful song from fake new Gypsy in the middle of the riffing.

I like Gypsy's new voice. It's not as charming as Jim Mallon's rendition but as it's own thing it's a nice change. Jim's voice was funny but it could get annoying in big doses, whereas the new voice lets Gypsy participate in more skits and get in on the riffs. If I had to choose one I'd pick Jim for nostalgia's sake.

 

[ln18]

I like Gypsy's new voice. It's not as charming as Jim Mallon's rendition but as it's own thing it's a nice change. Jim's voice was funny but it could get annoying in big doses, whereas the new voice lets Gypsy participate in more skits and get in on the riffs. If I had to choose one I'd pick Jim for nostalgia's sake.

I'd be fine with new fake Gypsy if they had made her a different color and given her a different name. That ain't Gypsy.

 

[XYZpdq]

My headcanon is that Gypsy ate Magic Voice.

 

[Someone in a Tree]

I watched The Gauntlet today. My favorite episode Killer Fish had my least favorite thing, an awful song from fake new Gypsy in the middle of the riffing.

I feel that having musical numbers in the theater where they mute the movie to sing the song kinda violates the rules of the show. This happened last season during Starcrash, too. Overall, I thought this season was much stronger than last year's, and I think they did a much better job establishing a rapport between Jonah and the bots.

 

[Intelligent Calcium]

I never was a fan of the skits in any of MST3K, sometimes I'd chuckle or enjoy a joke or two but they never were a selling point for me so I skip these ones, too.

I rarely found them actually funny, but I think they did a lot for the pacing, especially when they were doing one of these "bad in a bland way" films. MST3K always had a sort of variety show charm to it which makes it great to relax to, and the cast segments dividing up the movie plays a big part in that, especially when they were directly referencing the movie. Even if they're not always funny I appreciate them and I love the practical effects if nothing else. Just started season 12 though so I have no idea how annoying those musical numbers are.

 

[Picnic_Boy]

Oh boy , more shit I won’t see just because I don’t really find the cast that funny.

The Crow guy is...okay. But the other two really don't have the presence to compete with Joel, Mike, Weinstein and Murphy. And boy howdy do I loathe the anti-humor produced by Felicia Day. She ruins every scene she's in. One of the skits from The Beast of Hollow Mountain had me exploding with laughter at first, but then she showed up, and it felt so forced that it sucked all the humor out of it. And somehow, they've really managed to ruin Gypsy, which takes a lot of effort. A part of me wonders if they changed Gypsy's voice to avoid angering troons who would (threaten to) kill themselves at the thought of an audience laughing at a silly man-doing-a-lady's-voice scenario. And the constant easy layup references to mainstream video games is incredibly patronizing.

I dipped into the current season to watch some movie that was a ripoff of Pacific Rim, but a skit where the writers fellate themselves for writing the dull, embarrassing musical number from Reptilicus made me feel dirty inside. It felt like a naked attempt to appeal to consumerist geeks, with no edge whatsoever.

I want to like these new episodes so much, I really do, and there's obviously some really funny people behind the scenes. The thought of MST3K surviving forever with a new cast every five years really appeals to me. And maybe they do get better and I've just picked the wrong episodes to watch, but thus far, the bad movies they've shown are way more entertaining without their riffs and bad skits. I mean, I'm thankful they introduced me to Cry Wilderness, but it's such a joke I really don't need the Street Fighter II or whatever references.

There's a lot of talent here, but it's being buried by bad casting and nerdspoiltation.

 

[Belmont]

For me, the movie experiment of the week has to be either mildly entertaining(The Cave Dwellers), really out there(Oblivion), Classically B(This Island Earth) or just batshit crazy(The Final Sacrifice). It's hard for me to engage in something like Side-Hackers or Ready Player One, no matter how funny the snarkbots.

 

[RumblyTumbly]

The host segments were usually the weakest part of the show even back in the old days. Except for Trace as Dr. Forrester and the occasional solid musical number (The Gamera songs, The Canada song, etc), there wasn't really much to write home about.

But for me, it was always about the movie. The host segments were always like the 7th inning stretch to me. Time to get up stretch a bit and get the blood circulating before the fun begins again.

Felicia Day could be as bad as rancid milk left out in the sun, but again, I really enjoyed the movie selection for the Netflix episodes and the humor they were able to get out of them. I haven't checked out "The Gauntlet" yet, but I'll be sure to give that a look.

 

[Commander X]

I was generally amused by the host segments back in the days of Joel/Mike and The Bots but every segment featuring Day and Oswalt they come off very much like deer caught in the headlights and those segments are all miss as in "hit or"

The new crew aren't quite up to par with the previous crews but they at least started clicking together better as Season One went on, and the film selection helped. A particular favorite of the feculent gems was Carnival Magic, which was as good as any other movie MST3K did which had originally sat in storage for ages before being found again...so, "The Dead Talk Back" and..."Carnival Magic".

The grubby film and talking monkey that only grumbled and said unfunny things and the main character, Markov, being a Marty-Stu style fount of wisdom and super-competence, ingredients for a perfect target film for MST3K in any era.

(Markov trying to give Alex the talking chimpanzee a hospital-bed pep-talk after he was poisoned)

MARKOV: I can't stop death.
(Crow): Thank you. Finally, Markov's admitting something he can't do.
MARKOV: If you die-
(Jonah): I don't want to tell Markov how to do his job, but now would be a pretty good time for some carnival magic.

 

[Someone in a Tree]

I was generally amused by the host segments back in the days of Joel/Mike and The Bots but every segment featuring Day and Oswalt they come off very much like deer caught in the headlights and those segments are all miss as in "hit or"

The new crew aren't quite up to par with the previous crews but they at least started clicking together better as Season One went on, and the film selection helped. A particular favorite of the feculent gems was Carnival Magic, which was as good as another other movie MST3K did which had originally sat in storage for ages before being found again...so, "The Dead Talk Back" and..."Carnival Magic".

The grubby film and talking monkey that only grumbled and said unfunny things and the main character, Markov, being a Marty-Stu style fount of wisdom and super-competence, ingredients for a perfect target film for MST3K in any era.

(Markov trying to give Alex the talking chimpanzee a hospital-bed pep-talk after he was poisoned)

MARKOV: I can't stop death.
(Crow): Thank you. Finally, Markov's admitting something he can't do.
MARKOV: If you die-
(Jonah): I don't want to tell Markov how to do his job, but now would be a pretty good time for some carnival magic.

One of my favorite riffs is in Carnival Magic after Markov tells the story about his murdered family. "We never found the talking chimp that did it."

 

[Your Weird Fetish]

Crow and Servo sound way too similar in the new version. I have trouble telling them apart.

 

[BrunoMattei]

There's another Rifftrax thread but this one's more recent.

https://www.rifftrax.com/rats-night-of-terror

The guys have FINALLY riffed on a Bruno Mattei flick and it's probably one of his most entertaining. Either Rats or Hell of the Living Dead could be his best.

 

[Picnic_Boy]

I'm a pretty big fan of Rifftrax, though sometimes the jokes can be overwritten in the older episodes, and I don't like Disembaudio.

 

[Commander X]

372 Pages We'll Never Get Back, the podcast Nelson and Rifftrax writer Lestowka have been working on has been a good, and humorous listen. Initially they were reviewing "Ready Player One" and then "Armada" (wondering why, despite essentially being the same novel, Armada was considered Ernest Cline's 'bad' novel by many reviewers). Then they followed up with The Eye of Argon, Tekwar by William Shatner (and journeyman author Ron Goulart) and the past two entries have both been something special.

First off is the self-published work [The Forensic Certified Public Accountant and the Cremated 64-SQUARES Financial Statements by Dwight David Thrash (CPA FCPA CGMA)

The magical world of Forensic Accounting comes to life as Titus Uno, Certified Public Accountant, Forensic Certified Public Accountant, and Chartered Global Management Accountant along with the other 3 members of his Forensic Certified Public Accountant Team: Drew Samson, Dena Hope, and Veronica Jackson try to catch the "cat burglar terrorist" of the 64-SQUARES skyscraper building and help 64-SQUARES reconstruct the financial statements.

It's that very special sort of self-published fiction written by someone who only seems to have a passing acquaintance with the concept of a "novel" and "writing". It's absolutely nonsensical and drifts off into all sorts of odd little observations. The executive with a Western obsession who kept referring to himself as "The Sheriff of 64 Squares", that the building apparently had a chess theme in it's design and there was a space laid out with tables for playing in the lobby and noting that some prankish souls would occasionally smuggle in...checkers. Among other details, the main character keeps referring to himself as "I, Titus Uno, Certified Public Accountant, Forensic Certified Public Accountant, and Chartered Global Management Accountant-" more than once.

The most recent one is a humdinger. A terrible vanity book that has them wanting to tell the author when he gets caught up in a particularly overwrought description, rant about how America is just a shopping mall with a flag, maaaaaaaan or piece of alliteration to "settle down, now". The author is none other than Sean Penn and the book is his half-baked stab at a satirical, surreal novel entitled Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff in which the titular Bob Honey, a former teenage carny turned engineer goes on a rampage murdering elderly people with his old carnival "Test Your Strength" game mallet as part of a secret government program to eliminate people who are a drain on society. He Forest Gumps about visiting Iraq and other countries and New Orleans after Katrina and engages in bizarre conversations with an investigative reporter who might be on to him. Plus there's a chapter (called "stations") in the book titled "Mein Drumpf". It's a real mess.

 

[wabbits]

FWIW, Trace and Frank have done a podcast on films for a couple of years with Carolina Hidalgo. They don't riff but are pretty funny a lot of the time and sometimes talk about behind-the-scenes MST3K stuff.

 

[Someone in a Tree]

Between MST3K and Rifftrax, Nelson published three books that I found hilarious. The first two were collections of movie reviews and observational essays. The third was Death Rat! a novel about a failing author who has to convince a small town in Minnesota to play along with a ruse after he accidentally sells his novel as a real life survival tale. He's a very gifted writer and I don't think he's been funnier than he is in those books. I think we lost a gifted comedic novelist once Rifftrax took off.

 

[XYZpdq]

been watching more rifftrax lately over on cytube
seems a pretty reliable thing that the more they're working with some random weird older movie the better they end up

 

[Furina]

been watching more rifftrax lately over on cytube
seems a pretty reliable thing that the more they're working with some random weird older movie the better they end up

I've noticed this as well. I think they struggle with movies made by competent filmmakers just because there's less stuff to make fun of, so they have to focus and exaggerate the smaller, fewer bad parts. I think the shorts are were they're best, but I haven't looked through their catalogue recently.
364 Pages is really good. I'm currently listening to their take on The Mister by E.L James. It's her "bad" novel, apparently.