Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Rifftrax

[Starscreams Cape]

I remember once participating in a rifftrax Q&A where the answers were given on twitter. It was really awesome to see Mike & Kevin reply when my question got chosen!

Then I eventually figured out I wasn't seeing Bill's.

Bill had blocked me.

I had NEVER talked to any of them (I always tweeted at the main account IF I tweeted at all). I'm betting Bill ran a block bot that tagged me.

That broke my heart pretty bad I tell you. Thank goodness I'm a robot without any feelings.

You never know if they're going to be edited...

Keep circulating the tapes! Don't let them alter history.

I tried to reason with Bill a few times on Twitter and it went about as well as you'd suspect. Frank Conniff is possibly the only guy more lefty than Bill. I never even bothered with him. I expected most of them (except Mike) to be pretty liberal, so my bar was pretty low. But those two really are something else.

I met Trace Belieu at Gencon some years ago and, even though he's liberal, he seemed like a very decent guy. That was when it was Cinematic Titanic vs RiffTrax. I asked how they got along with the RiffTrax guys and he said great, only professional rivals (at the time). Went to each other's Christmas parties, etc.

 

[Commander X]

Also recently watched the Rifftrax of "The Frozen Scream", where some badly dubbed scientists operating at a college are implanting what look like miniature drive-through speakers into the sides of peoples' necks, this somehow aids in their quest for immortality.

Among the casual low-budget awkwardness is the scene at a outdoor dance where the band launches into a blatant ripoff of Bill Haley's "Rock Around The Clock", which someone clipped here.

 

[Dom Cruise]

It would be if there wasn’t a ridiculous monthly fee.

I’m not saying that they shouldn’t have one, $10 (the single-month price, per the add-ons) is really approaching the higher-end services and is far too much for what they’re offering.

Rifftrax has a great thing going at $6, something like that would work far better for this kind of thing.

That is a pretty high price but if it's every episode of MST3K plus new ones then we are talking a lot of content, right?

 

[Tor Lugosi]

That is a pretty high price but if it's every episode of MST3K plus new ones then we are talking a lot of content, right?

I guess it depends on how much you really love MST3K. A standard Netflix subscription is like $14 a month for around 15,000 titles to stream. This will be $10 a month for just barely over 200 episodes.

Even worse is that other streaming services constantly refresh and update their selection. This'll maybe get 12 new episodes a year. I think their best bet would be to partner up with Rifftrax and all the smaller riffers to make the service into the Netflix of riffing instead of solely focusing on MST3K.

 

[ln18]

Gizmoplex to me seems like a scam/money grab without a good answer for not putting Nu MST behind a paywall on Shout Factory's platform. But it's not my money.

 

[Flexo]

I guess it depends on how much you really love MST3K. A standard Netflix subscription is like $14 a month for around 15,000 titles to stream. This will be $10 a month for just barely over 200 episodes.

Even worse is that other streaming services constantly refresh and update their selection. This'll maybe get 12 new episodes a year. I think their best bet would be to partner up with Rifftrax and all the smaller riffers to make the service into the Netflix of riffing instead of solely focusing on MST3K.

Which is funny because Rifftrax is doing a streaming service too.

They really should combine.

 

[Tor Lugosi]

Which is funny because Rifftrax is doing a streaming service too.

They really should combine.

It's also cheaper ($6 a month) and they put a consistent stream of new content.

 

[silverstacks]

This is probably a long shot, but did anyone here see the Rifftrax version of "Doctor Who - The Five Doctors"? I just find it curious that apparently there's no way to watch it anymore. Like, after the theater showings it pretty much ceased to exist and possibly was destroyed.

 

[Tor Lugosi]

This is probably a long shot, but did anyone here see the Rifftrax version of "Doctor Who - The Five Doctors"? I just find it curious that apparently there's no way to watch it anymore. Like, after the theater showings it pretty much ceased to exist and possibly was destroyed.

Is this what you're talking about?

 

[Dom Cruise]

How come Quest of the Delta Knights, one of my favorite episodes I saw as a kid, never got a home video release?

What I like about the Quest of the Delta Knights is that movie, while being cheesy and perfectly riffable, is by MST3K standards not that bad of a movie, I probably would have liked it as a kid even without the riffing, it also weirdly reminds me of Assassin's Creed.

"I'M COMING! I'M COMING!"

EDIT: in a weird coincidence, Quest of the Delta Knights is what they're livestreaming on the MST3K Youtube channel, unbeknownst to me when I wrote this post.

 

[silverstacks]

Is this what you're talking about?

Wow, thanks so much! I can't believe I didn't know about that forum until just now.

 

[Deadman]

New update today, where joel goes into more detail about how this production "actually" works. its a fascinating read if nothing else; if it actually works, i have no idea.
A mini update that goes into even more detail, with a illustrated scene demonstration;

 

[Flexo]

How come Quest of the Delta Knights, one of my favorite episodes I saw as a kid, never got a home video release?

What I like about the Quest of the Delta Knights is that movie, while being cheesy and perfectly riffable, is by MST3K standards not that bad of a movie, I probably would have liked it as a kid even without the riffing, it also weirdly reminds me of Assassin's Creed.

"I'M COMING! I'M COMING!"

EDIT: in a weird coincidence, Quest of the Delta Knights is what they're livestreaming on the MST3K Youtube channel, unbeknownst to me when I wrote this post.

The answer to your question is always "rights". Whoever owns the film rights now either won't permit it to be rereleased or is asking too much for a rereleased

 

[King Dead]

This is probably a long shot, but did anyone here see the Rifftrax version of "Doctor Who - The Five Doctors"? I just find it curious that apparently there's no way to watch it anymore. Like, after the theater showings it pretty much ceased to exist and possibly was destroyed.

Like @Flexo said, it's a rights issue. The BBC sold the rights for the original show, but either refused to sell streaming/home video rights or were demanding more than the Rifftrax guys were willing to pay. So in classic MST fashion, the only way to watch the show is to keep circulating the tapes. It's a shame it didn't get a home release afterward, it's probably one of my favorite live Rifftrax shows. "Heil Hitler, guys."

Speaking of live shows, there haven't been any recent updates about the live shows they Kickstarted for last year before the coof. Last update, they were planning on June for Hobgoblins and October for Amityville Horror 4. Hopefully they'll have actual dates soon.

 

[Tor Lugosi]

ShoutFactory started streaming Quest of the Delta Knights sometime last year on their site, so I'm assuming they (or maybe Joel himself in preparation for the Kickstarter) worked out the rights issue with it. Hopefully there'll be a proper DVD release sometime in the future.

 

[Flaming Carrot]

Like @Flexo said, it's a rights issue. The BBC sold the rights for the original show, but either refused to sell streaming/home video rights or were demanding more than the Rifftrax guys were willing to pay. So in classic MST fashion, the only way to watch the show is to keep circulating the tapes. It's a shame it didn't get a home release afterward, it's probably one of my favorite live Rifftrax shows. "Heil Hitler, guys."

Speaking of live shows, there haven't been any recent updates about the live shows they Kickstarted for last year before the coof. Last update, they were planning on June for Hobgoblins and October for Amityville Horror 4. Hopefully they'll have actual dates soon.

I backed the Kickstarter, and I got an email on February 15 saying the tentative date for Hobgoblins is August 17th, and Amityville is October 26th. Obviously those could still change, but it seems like most studios are pushing forward with actually releasing movies, so I'm thinking we'll actually see them this year.

 

[Starscreams Cape]

ShoutFactory started streaming Quest of the Delta Knights sometime last year on their site, so I'm assuming they (or maybe Joel himself in preparation for the Kickstarter) worked out the rights issue with it. Hopefully there'll be a proper DVD release sometime in the future.

It's making the rounds on their Pluto channel too, which surprised the heck out of me the first time I ran across it.

 

[BootlegPopeye]

What I like about the Quest of the Delta Knights is that movie, while being cheesy and perfectly riffable, is by MST3K standards not that bad of a movie, I probably would have liked it as a kid even without the riffing, it also weirdly reminds me of Assassin's Creed.

They actually played it, pre MST3k riffing, on the Sci-Fi channel not long after it came out. I remember the pre teen me liking it strangely. Then it got the MST3k treatment a few years later and I thought wtf was I thinking liking it.

And yet, you're right. It's one of the better movies they did. I also though Overdrawn at the Memory Bank wasn't that bad (just confusing af).

My least favorite films that they riffed were those 60s trash movies, way too many of them and they didn't make any sense.

 

[Dom Cruise]

They actually played it, pre MST3k riffing, on the Sci-Fi channel not long after it came out. I remember the pre teen me liking it strangely. Then it got the MST3k treatment a few years later and I thought wtf was I thinking liking it.

And yet, you're right. It's one of the better movies they did. I also though Overdrawn at the Memory Bank wasn't that bad (just confusing af).

My least favorite films that they riffed were those 60s trash movies, way too many of them and they didn't make any sense.

What Overdrawn at the Memory Bank and Quest of the Delta Knights have in common is that they're both not great, but have interesting ideas.

You can see with slightly reworked scripts and much, much bigger budgets they could actually have been good movies, there was a kernel of a good idea there, Overdrawn at the Memory Bank especially is kind of amazingly ahead of it's time for 1985 what with the whole theme of virtual reality and other stuff like "scrolling up cinemas" on the computer predicting stuff like online streaming (I have in fact sometimes joking refer to watching something on streaming as ""scrolling up cinemas")

And Quest of the Delta Knights is just flat out a cool plot wasted with a low budget, you can very easily see the kind of movie the screen writer had probably hoped it would be versus what got filmed.

If there's one issue I have with MST3K it's that the vast majority of movies they played were absolute garbage that would be unwatchable without the riffing (Manos: The Hands of Fate being a perfect example), the best episodes tend to be the ones where the movie would be pretty entertaining on it's own even without the riffing.

 

[BootlegPopeye]

I actually think the concept behind 'The Screaming Skull' is a fantastic idea for a horror movie. The problem was that it was done just about as incompletely as possible. The plot should have been shopped around to a better writer/director and it would have been a great 50s horror flick.

There are some other 'fair' MST3k movies that are just boring, paint by numbers action flicks (made funny by riffing - Mitchell being the best example).