FanFare

MST Club presents! Bridget Nelson and Mary-Jo Pehl riff this one, directed by Roger Corman himself. The purchase page asks, is it a hula movie with sharks, or a shark movie with hula? Released August 2024.
posted by JHarris on Nov 14, 2024 - 2 comments

MST Club presents! This is another of the riffs put together by the FilmRoasters guys, available on the Rifftrax site, but only if you know the URL ($2). Despite the title, it's not a D&D-themed movie mostly. It's about a computer programmer who runs afoul of that bane of all computer programmers: the demonic wizard Mestema, played by Richard "Bull Shannon" Moll! the riff year is unclear to me, but it's at least 13 years old, so maybe 2011?
posted by JHarris on Nov 7, 2024 - 2 comments

MST Club presents! Michael Myers tested positive in a routine soul smear for Pure Evil. He killed his sister as a kid, and as an adult has escaped from his institution and is stalking a babysitter. Fortunately psychiatrist Donald "Blofeld" Pleasence is on the case. I know the reputation is that riffing is for bad movies, but Halloween is effective, and it's always great to see Pleasence. The riff was released in 2006, so 90s-style content warnings apply.
posted by JHarris on Oct 30, 2024 - 4 comments

MST Club presents! The Devil Bat was released in 1940, and stars Bela Lugosi, who--get this--invents an aftershave lotion that causes giant bats to attack the wearers. All, um, according to plan? Premiered November 2022.
posted by JHarris on Oct 24, 2024 - 1 comment

MST Club presents! Some years ago Rifftrax piloted a means by which people could record riffs for movies themselves that they'd sell through the site, a program that they called iRiffs. It appears that iRiffs can no longer be found on Rifftrax site searches, but Google can still turn up the pages, and they can still be bought. That is how I purchased this riff of ill-advised Sean Connery vehicle Zardoz, produced by a group known as FilmRoasters. I don't know if FilmRoasters is still active, but they have a Youtube channel, which the address filmroasters.com redirects to. The most recent videos on the Youtube channel are six years old. I don't know how old the Zardoz riff is, but if it's six years old that would put its release at around 1998. FilmRoasters appears to be comprised of Eric Vinyard, Brandon Bates and Wes Allen.
posted by JHarris on Oct 3, 2024 - 3 comments

MST Club presents... the first of the many popular short compilations that "TV's" Frank Conniff and Trace Beaulieu have riffed for their Dumb Industries series. It's one of their longer bits at an hour and a half. The nine shorts riffed are: Are You Listening?, How Friendly Are You?, an episode of Mighty Mister Titan, Office Etiquette, Halloween Safety, More Dates for Kay, Health - Your Cleanliness, Danger! Poison and The Cautious Twins. First riffed in October of 2020. [more inside]
posted by JHarris on Sep 26, 2024 - 1 comment

MST Club Presents! The Rifftrax to a certain Star Wars backstory movie. A nobody smuggler called Han Solo teams up with a walking carpet to carry out a heist. Directed by Ron Howard! The riff was released on December 21, 2018.
posted by JHarris on Sep 5, 2024 - 0 comments

MST Club presents! That killer rabbit movie. From Wikipedia: "Widely panned by critics for its silly premise, poor direction, stilted acting and bad special effects, the film's biggest failure is considered to be the inability to make the rabbits seem scary." Of note, the Rifftrax site warns that the movie contains violence against rabbits. I don't know if that's just simulated or actual violence, although if it were the latter I'd imagine people would be rightfully up in arms. Notably contains DeForest Kelly, Star Trek's Dr. McCoy. Riff was released back in February 2014.
posted by JHarris on Aug 22, 2024 - 5 comments

For a change we're doing a "Just The Jokes" riff. The way these work, you use your audio player of choice to play the MP3 of Mike, Kevin and Bill along with the movie of your choice. Follow Mike's directions on when to start the file, then listen for "Disembaudio," their distinctive synthesized voice, to speak a line of dialog at the same time as a character in the movie. If Disembaudio speaks slightly early, pause the audio file for just a moment, and if the movie's early, pause it momentarily instead. Or alternatively, you can use the free Rifftrax app to do the syncing for you on your smartphone. Rifftrax got their start doing Just The Jokes riffs like these 18 years ago as an end run around releasing commentary on movies they didn't have rights to, and while these days they tend to focus on movies that they can legally mix their riffs directly into, they still release new ones from time to time. As for the movie, Ready Player One is a big ol' pandering mess that they managed to get Steven Spielberg to direct. Much of it is set in a virtual world where every 80s and 90s media property owned or licensed by Warner Bros can all interact, making it a special kind of crossover hell. I realize that sounds like Space Jam: A New Legacy, but that was actually three years after this movie. The riff was released October 18, 2018.
posted by JHarris on Aug 15, 2024 - 1 comment

MST Club presents! While one of the absolute worst movies ever to be featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000, The Creeping Terror isn't nearly as well known as Manos "Everyone Loves Torgo" the Hands of Fate, or Monster "Couldn't Think of An Ending" A Go-Go, or any of the Coleman Francis trilogy. This is a shame though, as The Creeping Terror features absolutely the most ludicrous headline monster of any MST'd movie, essentially a carpet with vacuum cleaner hoses attached to it, that eats victims by apparent dint of them actively crawling into its mouth. MST3K tackled the Terror while both Frank Conniff and Trace Beaulieu were still at Best Brains, so this is a second trip through this film for both of them. Riffed December 12, 2023, and available either standalone (for about $12) or part of a collection of nine other MST-featured items (70 bucks).
posted by JHarris on Aug 1, 2024 - 1 comment

MST Club presents... and yes, that's the title, Ouija Shark. The site tell us it's from the people who brought us (groan) Jurassic Shark. Riff first released on May 24, 2024.
posted by JHarris on Jul 25, 2024 - 6 comments

The Mads have been doing this for four years now, and the show begins with a roll of wellwishers! The before-show, and after-show Q&A, have special guests Kevin Murphy, Bill Corbett, Mary Jo Pehl and Felicia Day! The shorts this time out seem to all be from Coronet Films: How QUIET Helps a School (1953), Boy and Girl of BRITIAN (1976), CITY PETS: Fun and Reponsibility (1953), Rumpelstiltskin (1949) and Understanding Your Ideals (1950). The riffing premiered just two days ago, July 9, 2024.
posted by JHarris on Jul 11, 2024 - 1 comment

MST Club Presents! Oh wow. Cynthia Rothrock plays Kristi Jones, who seeks to avenge her sister's death at the hands of a character I'm just going to call a "crazed martial artist." It was made in 1993, which figures. Here's a Youtube video of the climatic fight, at about three minutes long. Again I say, wow. The riff premiered June 2024, just about two weeks ago.
posted by JHarris on Jul 4, 2024 - 1 comment

The Man does The Madster, uh, the Mads do The Manster in a riff from just a few days ago on June 11, 2024. An American journalist in Japan is given an injection by a mad scientist that causes him to develop an extra eye... that develops into an extra head... that eventually develops into an entirely separate person, and he's EEEEVIL. But Master Manster couldn't past muster even as a Munster mister.
posted by JHarris on Jun 20, 2024 - 0 comments

MST Club presents! A riff released in August 2023 of a Japanese movie made in 1967. One of the sillier-looking kaiju of riffdom, the promotional text describes the monster as looking like what the result would be if Gonzo ever sealed the deal with Camilla. The monster is the result of space spores, so beware if you have space allergies, or "spallergies."
posted by JHarris on Jun 13, 2024 - 1 comment

For some reason the title of this one uses the roman numeral for 10 instead of a digit. The shorts this time are Bookkeeping And You (1947), Special Days in February (1953), Why Study Industrial Arts (1951, a reriff from MST3K), Hoppy: The Bunny (1953), Joan Avoids A Cold (1947) and Life in a Medieval Town (1965). First streamed January 2023.
posted by JHarris on May 30, 2024 - 1 comment

MST Club presents.... The Rifftrax people released just a week ago this fantasy movie that looks just like a bunch of LARPers decided to make a motion picture, much like first-season MST favorite Robot Holocaust. This is what Dungeons & Dragons has done to the world and why it can never be forgiven. The riff can be gotten here!
posted by JHarris on May 23, 2024 - 1 comment

MST Club presents.... Okay, this one requires some explanation. MST Club has lately been doing "expanded universe" riffs, like Rifftrax and The Mads Are Back, but has also been presenting fan-made riffing productions, like this one. Many old fanriffs are lost to the ages, sadly, but this one is quite recent, like two-weeks-ago recent! Mining Accident Theater is the story of Bogdan Smithee, a person trapped in an abandoned mine, with nothing but coworker Tom MacDonald and stranded rescuer Katherine Sprakehunter, and a bunch of old filmreels, to keep them company. There's no "Shadowrama" effect, their comments are just voiceovers. Up to this point MAT has only riffed shorts. This is their first attempt at riffing a full movie, and it's a doozy. It doozes. It's Alfonso Bresca's WAR OF THE ROBOTS, a movie where the robot army is composed of bodybuilders with Prince Valiant haircuts, the ultimate evil lady leader is named "Lois," and... well, you should see it for youself. On Youtube. Here. (1 hour 42 minutes) It was released April 2024. [more inside]
posted by JHarris on May 9, 2024 - 0 comments

A.k.a. "Marijuana - The Devil's Weed." "How bad can a good girl get?" "Stay up or stay dumb." One of those anti-drug movies, from 1949. A young woman's life is wrecked through the use of 'the reefer.' The actress playing the main character is Lila Leeds, who had been the subject of scandal after she and Robert Mitchum were arrested for smoking marijuana. Due to the scandal it would be the last film Leeds would appear in, and she left acting, while Mitchum would go on to receive multiple Academy Award nominations and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. I'll let you guess as to why Mitchum's career took off and Leeds' died, and here's a hint: it rhymes with "exism." Riff first shown September 19, 2023.
posted by JHarris on May 2, 2024 - 4 comments

MST Club presents... a riff of a frankly astonishing movie. You may think you know awful CGI. Well, the computer art in this movie makes Birdemic look like a masterpiece. Buildings made out of a few rectangles! Storefronts with names written out in Comic Sans--which is also what the credits are written in! And the titular Bulk combines all the worst aspects of both Playstation and N64 in-engine cutscenes. Sites say it's meant as a spoof, but, oof. It seems a lot like that's just them trying to justify their terrible decisions. Riff from April 2024, movie from 2012.
posted by JHarris on Apr 25, 2024 - 6 comments

MST Club presents this 2022 riff of a 1961 movie. It's referred to as Season 3, episode 1 of The Mads Are Back. A mysterious rogue planet called The Outsider is approaching the Earth, and everything but Professor Benson thinks it'll hit! Prof Benson is right, but that's only the beginning of Earth's problems. At the end, a little dog is sad.
posted by JHarris on Apr 11, 2024 - 1 comment

MST Club presents a 2024 Rifftrax of a movie from 1996. A karate monk doesn't want to do the karate-monk thing any more and leaves their evil karate sect. They come after in the evil karate sect way. So he transfers his soul into a passed-out hobo, giving him his karate moves. I didn't know it was so easy! Neo's skills in The Matrix don't seem so impressive now. Wait... maybe this is the Matrix, and the robots got their brain files mixed up? Agent Smith is going to have to pull overtime to fix this. You know most of the work the Agents do is going to be dumb gruntwork like that. Anyway, 1996 karate hobo action flick go.
posted by JHarris on Apr 4, 2024 - 0 comments

Tonight on MST Club.... The Mads Are Back's Night of Shorts 7 was on sale recently, so I took the opportunity to purchase a copy. The five shorts shown are mostly from the late 40s and early 50s. The initial stream was on April 12, 2022. [more inside]
posted by JHarris on Mar 28, 2024 - 1 comment

Next up for MST Club.... this is a fairly recent release, both in movie (2000) and riff (February 2024). Hi-tek hakker kidz, and their dog, are recruited by a government agent to foil the plans of a nefarious video game company to put a mind control weapon on the internet. Think about what it implies to have a movie about hacker kids on the internet in the year 2000. I think a little more kindly of the movie knowing that nowadays the kids would be in their 30s and cursing the name of Elon Musk.
posted by JHarris on Mar 21, 2024 - 1 comment

A radioactive monster wreaks havoc; for some reason the heroic scientist has to develop a relationship while saving lives from it; also, the monster's maker has to perish in his attempt to stop his creation. All these things the way they have to be in 50's monster movie world. (Riff from 2024, earlier this week)
posted by JHarris on Mar 14, 2024 - 3 comments

MST Club presents! We're going back and forth between The Mads and Rifftrax in this phase of our riff watching project. This week Rifftrax is up, with the movie Prisoners of the Lost Universe. You may have seen a bit of it before: when Film Ventures International repurposed Ator the Fighting Eagle into Cave Dwellers, they gave it a generic fantasy scene behind the opening credits: that, it turns out, was from Prisoners of the Lost Universe. IMDB says: "Three people are transported into a parallel reality, where they find they must use modern technology, but medieval weapons, in order to save the citizenry from a murderous warlord." Selective technology, got it. For more on Rifftrax, see inside. This riff was released in 2012. [more inside]
posted by JHarris on Mar 7, 2024 - 2 comments

Next up on MST Club's current mostly random sequence of further riffing as we can get it is The Mads' showing of (gulp) Manos The Hands of Fate. Infamously one of the worst movies MST3K ever did, this return to the trough has Trace Bealieu and Frank Conniff tackling it by themselves. Rifftrax also covered Manos, in a live show, but we'll save that for a future date. As for the movie... yeah, its Manos. A family of three on a vacation trip unwisely stay the night at the mysterious Valley Lodge, run by "Torgo," a balking goat-man with intrusive theme music. Turns out Torgo is in league with the forces of darkness, which include The Master and his undead wives out in the desert. Things don't well, either for the family or for the viewer. Good luck, once again, everyone. [more inside]
posted by JHarris on Feb 29, 2024 - 7 comments

The Mads are Trace Beaulieu, who played Dr. Clayton Forrester and was the original voice and performer for Crow on Mystery Science Theater 3000, and Frank "TV's Frank" Conniff. They partner with Dumb Industries to riff movies and shorts! We are doing some of their shows in our continuing exploration of the wider universe of riffing. Their most recent show was Mutiny In Outer Space. The Commander of Space Station X-7 has come down with a bad case of space raptures, and his crew has to mutiny to save their station from being destroyed.
posted by JHarris on Feb 22, 2024 - 3 comments

The second of a set of three fan productions; the first two were made in 2019, the third was delayed but is said to be almost ready for the world. (When it is released, we'll try to show it if possible.) When this production was made, MST3K Season 11 was fresh in people's memories, but Gamera vs Jiger had yet to be riffed in Season 13. Crow and Servo are joined by hapless test subject Helmut Crusoe, who is subjected to Gamera movies by a goofy second banana-wannabe called the Crimson Weirdo. The makers place these episodes in continuity between the Comedy Central and Sci-Fi Channel eras of the show.
posted by JHarris on Feb 15, 2024 - 1 comment

In 2019, some fans of our favorite cowtown puppet show took it upon themselves to riff Gamera movies that the show (at that time) never touched. Tonight we're watching the first of these, GAMERA VS VIRAS. It's got the same kind of content as Gamera vs Guiron and Gamera vs Zigra: it's a kids' film starring a giant mutant flying turtle. Meaning, look out for the return of the Gamera Song!
posted by JHarris on Feb 8, 2024 - 1 comment

What, again? Before the new MST show covered Starcrash, Mystery Fandom Theater 3000 did it, and that's what we're watching tonight!
posted by JHarris on Jan 4, 2024 - 2 comments

When we went through Cinematic Titanic, we passed over one episode to save it for the Holiday Marathon: their re-riff of Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. A weird conceit (the lives of Martian children are too regimented so they need Santa to break them out of it), the actors give it their all but the low production values have given it a reputation of one of the worst movies ever made. Among the actors in this are a young Pia Zadora as Girmar the Girl Martian, and Bill McCutcheon, who later appeared on Sesame Street and in Steel Magnolias, as the childlike Martian Dropo.
posted by JHarris on Dec 24, 2023 - 3 comments

We conclude our review of the four Film Crew episodes with another peplum, directed by Mario Bava and starring Steve Reeves as the hard-to-say Phillipides. This one's focus is more historical than the usual, with the events shown dating to the Medic Wars instead of the general mish-mash of places and people these movies usually give us. Wikipedia informs us that Bava was forced to reshoot some scenes when extra were spotted on camera smoking cigarettes, proving he's a cut above our usual grade of director. Also, this movie was actually considered to be pretty successful at the time!
posted by JHarris on Nov 30, 2023 - 1 comment

Possibly the most awkward of the four movies Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy riffed as The Film Crew, it's 1959's version of a crazy sex comedy. Mother Nature and Father Time muse on the situation of the island of Wongo, where the menu are ugly and the women are beautiful, and of Goona, where the reverse is true. In the end those of matching levels of comeliness are paired up, and 1959 societal expectations are upheld.
posted by JHarris on Nov 16, 2023 - 7 comments

We're in the final weeks of MST Club's ten-year mostly-weekly run, although we'll probably do other shows from time to time. Tonight's episode is the second Film Crew production (R.I.P. Mike Dodge), about a guy who's killed in a crash, kidnapped by aliens, then forced to aid them in their plans for world domination... which involves irradiated giant lizards. It's like the backstory to a kaiju movie.
posted by JHarris on Nov 9, 2023 - 1 comment

After Mystery Science Theater 3000, some of the performers/writers/crew (a lot of them filled multiple roles) moved on to other things. One of these projects was a series of riffing-related projects they called The Film Crew, with Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy. They did a few different things, and of them all the one that has best survived is a series of four direct-to-DVD movie riffs, done with a framing story and a sketch at a mid-movie break. This is the first, Hollywood After Dark, a.k.a. Walk The Angry Beach, starring later Golden Girl Rue McClanahan as Sandy, "stripper who aspires to become an actress but ends up being taken advantage of by the industry," sez Wikipedia. My how times haven't changed. While originally made for Rhino Video in 2006, the Film Crew disks weren't released by Shout Factory until 2007, and the character of "Bob Rhino," voice played by late MST3K writer Mike Dodge, had to be renamed to Bob Honcho. It's another MST-related project from MST Club.
posted by JHarris on Nov 2, 2023 - 1 comment

It's the last of the 12 episodes of Cinematic Titanic (we have skipped one to save for Christmas). The movie: rattlesnakes in a mineshaft are affected by abandoned military nerve gas that causes them to start attacking people. I don't know, seems like a negative quality of a military nerve gas, to make its targets attack people, but then I'm not a military nerve gas contractor. Next week we'll start in on the four episodes of The Film Crew!
posted by JHarris on Oct 26, 2023 - 2 comments

a.k.a. "Genocide." In this Japanese-made horror movie, the bugs hate people. The bugs attack people. There's an atomic bomb involved too, that can't be good. Released on DVD in 2011.
posted by JHarris on Oct 19, 2023 - 1 comment

Renamed for the Cinematic Titanic release from its original title, "Brides of Blood." The movie's plot is pretty crazy, involving radiation, a monster that requires sacrifices, dismemberments, and butterflies and banana trees turning into monsters. Released on DVD in 2010.
posted by JHarris on Oct 12, 2023 - 5 comments

Does anyone still read these? We're doing another poll of favorite Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes! I'm not sure how we're going to use it this time, but it'll help pick out episodes rather than go through the entire show again, heh.
posted by JHarris on Oct 10, 2023 - 0 comments

MST Club's quick jaunt through Cinematic Titanic continues. The movie's about aliens landing and attacking the residents of a small town. In the world of cinema, this appears to be a statistically significant problem.
posted by JHarris on Oct 5, 2023 - 2 comments

a.k.a. Dynamite Brothers. MST Club keeps rolling with a martial arts blaxploitation movie. It's the first Cinematic Titanic DVD that was filmed before a live audience.
posted by JHarris on Sep 28, 2023 - 2 comments

"Dad, where's mom?" Dad: (refuses to tell kids she's locked in the basement and is now a vampire) This is the last Cinematic Titanic with the original premise of being locked in a bunker and being forced to watch bad movies. The remaining episodes were all recorded live before an audience.
posted by JHarris on Sep 21, 2023 - 1 comment

Frankenstein's trying to set up shop again but it doesn't go too well. The Doctor is a bit hornier here than the typical Frankenstein movie; this episode has the "Breast Blimp," as a way to cover up some in-movie nudity.
posted by JHarris on Sep 14, 2023 - 0 comments

a.k.a. Blood Legacy or Will to Die. John Carradine, as shown in a video will, has left a mountain of cash to his descendants, but his servants will get it if they all croak. As you can probably guess, the rest of the movie resembles the sound of a marsh at sunset. Sadly a dog is among the first to go. This is Cinematic Titanic #4; #5, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, we're holding off on until the holiday season.
posted by JHarris on Sep 7, 2023 - 1 comment

Roger Corman produced and directed this movie about a woman who's given wasp jelly to make her young, but also turns her into a violent bug person. Movies are products of their times, and this one certainly is so. Third in the series of Cinematic Titanic direct-to-DVD features starring many of the original cast of Mystery Science Theater 3000.
posted by JHarris on Aug 24, 2023 - 0 comments

China's working on a machine to destroy all life on Earth, for some reason. The military gets involved in a space mission to Venus to replace half of its crew with women. It turns out to be because when the machine activates, the probe can preserve human life on Venus. Implying that people will have to boink a lot for noble reasons is a prevailing theme of science fiction from the time. This was the second episode of Cinematic Titanic, released in 2007.
posted by JHarris on Aug 17, 2023 - 1 comment

MST Club, or whatever you want to call it now, rolls on, with showings and descriptions of the 12 episodes they made of Cinematic Titanic! A short-lived riffing project with Joel, Frank, Trace, Mary Jo and J. Elvis Weinstein, in his long-awaited return to riffing! Their website has been taken over by scammers and their store no longer functions or exists, but it seems you might be able to watch some of them at certain free streaming channels, like maybe Tubi or PlutoTV? The Oozing Skull, like many Cinematic Titanic riffs, is renamed from the original title, which was Brain of Blood. [more inside]
posted by JHarris on Aug 9, 2023 - 1 comment

"A Magical Journey to Save Christmas." This supposed kids movie opens with a kid's parents getting killed by a dragon. Merry Christmas! But wait, this is a fantasy world, with magic and dragons, do they have their own version of Jesus? In theme it can't decide if it wants to be Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings, but whatever it is it went straight to DVD. Joel, Jonah and Emily hatch a daring plan to escape from Kinga's captivity, but they'll need a little help from an unlikely source. We're at the end of Season 13, and with it we're once again at the end of our trip through all of MST3K. Please see inside. [more inside]
posted by JHarris on Aug 3, 2023 - 0 comments

"A visual science fiction experience that will boggle your mind." "SPACE VISION a step beyond 3-D" This is one of those movies that makes nonsensical and arbitrary things happen, but tries to excuse it by passing them off as mysterious. Well duh, anything's a mystery if there's no possible explanation for it! A plane with three people (one of the a pregnant woman) is downed by a storm, but ends up inside a huge hollow chamber with invisible walls, in which live zombie-like people who go through the motions of their lives. Like The Mask, this was made for 3D, so there's a bunch of in-your-face effects. Unlike that film though, only the 2D version is riffed on here. Joel riffs this one! The subplot has Jonah, Emily and Joel planning their escape, through the gimmick that the Mads, for some reason, can't hear anything spoken in rhyme. I like the episode, but the movie basically just toys with its characters throughout, until the unexpectedly happy ending. Premiered November 11, 2022, in the Gizmoplex. [more inside]
posted by JHarris on Jul 27, 2023 - 0 comments