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Now Available from RiffTrax…94 Replies to “Now Available from RiffTrax…”Commenting at Satellite News
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“The Fairy King of AR”?
I live in Arkansas. Fairy Kings are conspicuous in their absence.
Well, what about the Fairy Queens? After all we are in the era of #MeToo. (Notice how I cleverly avoided the gay cliche there. Ha!)
Yes, once they got a hold of “The Little Unicorn” and “Merlin: the Return”, RT won’t be satisfied until they go through EVERY single cheesy public-domain direct-video fantasy Paul Matthews ever directed. What would RT be without their Amazon Prime subscription and IMDb?
Written, if we can believe said IMDb, by Christopher Atkins. Yes, that one, as the riffing will no doubt cash in on.
Yeah, just like MST3K wasn’t satisfied until they’d gone through EVERY Gamera movie, every Hercules movie, etc. Apparently it’s ok when MST3K does it, but it’s evil when RiffTrax does it.
rock climbing … rock climbing … rock climbing … rock climbing ……..
Probably just drowned out by the screamin’ hawg callers …
MST3K didn’t charge us money for anal-retentively going over their old fairground hits.
You don’t get a better root of Evil than that.
Eric…I don’t get you.
And Rifftrax doesn’t charge anyone anything unless they’re actually BUYING something from them. Which I presume you would never do.
You’re not their customer, so what do you care what they riff? You holler and holler yet AFAIK you’ve never been hurt.
I wasn’t familiar with “The Little Unicorn” and “Merlin: the Return.” Thanks for the tip.
Me riffing the movie’s cover image:
How good a movie could it be if they couldn’t even be bothered to finish the title?
“Ha! Feel inferior now, Mr. Spock? We’ve out-eared you, nyah-nyah!”
You see, MST3K was on cable and cable cost…
You know what, just delete your account.
Eric J.:
You can go to Rifftrax.com and suggest films for them to mock.
Since you seem to have so much free time, it would give you something constructive to do.
By the way, have you ever even watched a Rifftrax? You might be pleasantly surprised.
I think one of the characters in the episode “The Way to Eden” actually had ears like that. He wasn’t gray, though.
It’d be mildly ironic if they riffed one of the films that he suggests when they haven’t riffed any of the films that I’VE suggested. ;-)
It seems to me that, human beings being as they are, any number of fans must have actually spent the time, money, and effort to SEND The Brains films that they (the fans) would like them to riff — not least of them films made by the fans themselves (after all, almost anyone can make a film these days, and they don’t even need actual film to do it) — but if they’ve ever riffed such a “donated” film, it’s news to me. But so many things are. ;-)
There’s no place like Hobgoblins!
There’s no place like Hobgoblins!
There’s no place like…
just think Malcolm McDowell was in some good movies.
More Rifftrax babble:
Something that I’d like them to do and which they almost certainly never will would be to have an occasional film riffed by Mike, Kevin, and TRACE. As I’ve stated with what I’m sure is very annoying frequency (unlike Eric, however, I’m at least AWARE of it), I think Trace made a much better Crow than Bill (now that I think about it, I think the new guy also makes a better Crow than Bill and, again, my very FIRST exposure to MST3K was with Bill as Crow; I just prefer light-hearted Crow to warped frustrated Crow, that’s all*). Maybe Trace could alleviate some of the bitterness that Mike and Kevin exude like the cold hard sweat from Cool Hand Luke (declared by the first episode of Cheers to be the world’s sweatiest movie, although that was admittedly a long time ago).
Maybe even some films riffed by Kevin, Trace, and JOEL, or even by Joel, Trace, and JOSH, which would be as old-school as you could get. If that won’t satisfy Eric, well…actually, I’m guessing that nothing will ever satisfy Eric, in any capacity, in any portion of his life whatsoever. Always that infinitesimal chance, though.
===
*Really, when you think about it (“So don’t think about it.”), the new Crow voice could just as easily have been “explained” as due to something that had happened to Crow during his own set of 500-years-of-space-adventure or even because he didn’t re-materialize quite right (“Hey, it’s not like returning to corporeal existence from a state of pure energy is something they teach you in traffic school, okay?!”). Maybe even The Brains were well aware of how bitter Bill’s Crow sounded in comparison to Trace’s and thus decided that he’d spent most of those years as a poster boy for Isolated Unnerving Loner Monthly instead. It also metaphorically forever set him apart from Mike, Tom, Gypsy, and Magic Voice, because he’d robbed himself of the sort of experience that all four them enjoyed. Oh, good one, Crow. But anyway.
I enjoy Rifftrax and MST3K. But when Rifftrax riffs something just because it’s there and they can make money off of it, that’s when I question their business practices. I understand they need to keep a roof over their heads, I get that. And that’s why I’ll always be okay with whatever they pick. But just because something is public domain does not mean it needs to be riffed. From the standard of we can make money off of this, fine. From the point of this was actually a decent, and in some cases seminal, movie and it doesn’t require riffing, I’ve always kinda scratched my head about. For me, it’s more about comedy than marketing, but if it meant it kept me away from the day job, then I guess you just make the best of it.
Night of the Living Dead and Carnival of Souls don’t need riffing. Neither does Star Wars. True, there is some fun to be found in those riffs. The real gold of Rifftrax is taking on movies such as Over The Top and RoadHouse, you know, cheesy fun. But unfortunately, that alone does not pay the bills.
“So don’t buy it!” is the familiar battle cry. But, we’re all addicts here. We have to buy it, we need our next fix. Sometimes, the fix is stepped on pretty heavy with baby laxative. Some can get off on it, and others can’t so much. But we keep going back to the dealer for more, regardless.
Basically, I’ve always enjoyed the formula of MST3K=old, weird, forgotten flicks and Rifftrax=big budget flicks that weren’t so great, thus having plenty of holes to poke through.
Of course, Your Milage May Vary, and I’ll never besmirch you for that. It just makes me wonder though how much life Rifftrax has left in it. From a business point of view, their choice of re-riffing Space Mutiny was not as well-received as previous live Kickstarters were, and it makes me think live Rifftrax will soon be a thing of the past. I mean, when your core go-to movie actually starts turning off fans, you know you’re in trouble. But, Space Mutiny was more than likely very cheap to secure the rights to. I am curious about Krull, and will be attending that event.
I think the problem with doing a live riff of Space Mutiny is that a lot of folks just don’t care to see them redo old material. I myself don’t see the appeal of it, as in most cases the BEST possible riffs have already been done, and the new riffs tend to feel like their B squad.
(I felt the same way about Cinematic Titanic’s re-riffs, too.)
Let me add slightly to that last post:
Rifftrax has stated in the past that we should see all the public domain stuff they could do, and pass on! With that in mind, it makes sense when something remotely entertaining comes down the pike. It must be almost refreshing to them when they find something worth doing.
So I get that. But, it makes me think their business model is upside down. I don’t think Rifftrax was ever conceived as a company that would be around for 10+ years, and have a huge back catalog. Hence, the grasping at straws. Which takes me back to my first point. Just because you can riff it, should you? Well, we can make money off of it. And the cycle continues, because we are hooked.
Yep, riffing for profit with quantity over quality seems like an odd experiment. Rifftrax is the only faction of the Brains that went that route. Cinematic Titanic was only 12 movies, and mostly live tours. The Mads are just live shows. New MST3K is only 14 episodes. Rifftrax is the only group that went no, less is not more, more is more, more or less. Makes me wish The Film Crew had continued instead.
But it’s all personal tastes. Some prefer Rifftrax to all the other incarnations.
Johnny Drama:
Well, you certainly wrote a doctoral thesis. Hmm. Where to begin?
1) The Film Crew ended largely due to Jim Mallon. He sued.
2) I liked Rifftrax’s “Carnival of Souls.” At the same time, I can see how it’s an under appreciated horror classic.
3) Do you know about the Pluto app and twitch.tv? You can watch the Rifftrax genres you enjoy. For free.
4) I didn’t care for Cinematic Titanic. I found it kind of stilted.
5) You should feel lucky you can still attend a Rifftrax Live show. The theater where I saw Rifftrax Live shows closed awhile ago, leaving no theaters near me to partake in the fun of Rifftrax Live.
6) Rifftrax does mock obscure films. I recently watched “Beast of the Yellow Night” and “Tourist Trap.”
7) You don’t have to purchase everything Rifftrax does. I’m cash strapped, so I tend to focus on buying the shorts.
8) Sometimes the rerifffed films are funnier than the MST3K originals. For example, “The Magic Sword.”
9) New MST3K has been picked up for another season.
10) You should be pleased there is such a bounty of post-classic MST3K endeavors to enjoy. I’ve been a MSTie long enough to remember Doug Herzog’s blatant ridicule of MST3K and Gramercy Pictures’ terrible sabotaging of “MST3K:TM’s” marketing and release.
Nobody. Wind. Baby. :)
Thanks to our good friends at PlutoTV, I’ve stumbled across SO many RiffTrax’s past, present and feature, I’m not only long past the point of “surprise”, I’ve now got feet planted well into the complete other territory–Where, if I channel-click out of curiosity to see if they actually might have done a good one, I find myself calling out most of Blil’s and Kevin’s auto-riffs before they make them.
For ex., if you see a drunken character, two sips for every Nick Nolte imitation Mike makes, and if you hear an offscreen scream, one sip for every Bill or Kevin riff of “Yeah, that would be ME, after the new season premiere of Westworld!”
(Although I’ll admit it’s getting harder, now that the riffs don’t seem to…make sense in the context of the movie anymore. They’re just sort of there, for the mere sake of keeping constant radio chatter, and for sounding like that snarky/gay celebrity-joke “target” thing on the back page of Entertainment Weekly.)
But I digress–Here, in this clip, we only get the Kevin “Devouring your soul” reference for any scene in which a fantasy creature appears.
Yes, folks, no matter where it begins, sooner or later, the case for the RT defense ends with “But there’s MORE of it now!”
Ahem.
/cough/ATTACKOFTHEGIANTLEECHES/cough/
Eric J.:
Explain to me then, if you dislike Rifftrax, why spend time posting here?
Why don’t you devote time to learning a new hobby instead? How about volunteer work or tutoring a disadvantaged student?
There’s no need for a defense because there’s been no attack. No credible one, anyway.
Haters gonna hate.
Wouldn’t having Eric as a tutor just make them even more disadvantaged?
Touches:
Well, I thought he might have something useful to contribute to society.
Maybe not.
Because I sort of missed the point at which Sampo officially turned the site into RiffTrax News.
Well, exactly.
EricJ is the poster child for “Stop Liking Things That I Don’t Like!!!!!”
Well, it’s not too late. You can leave the site now. Save yourself and the rest of us. It amazes me (and apparently everyone else) how you are one of the first ones to jump on any and all Rifftrax threads. Why don’t you just leave them alone so the rest of us can enjoy them? Really, try it for a couple of months.
Now, am I the only one who wishes this movie was called “The Fairy King of Arrrrrrrrr” and had some pirates in it?
Eric J.:
Well, obviously, when there’s news about the new MST3K season, there’ll be info posted here.
Sampo and Erhardt do a great job covering all the announcements of the post-classic MST3K projects by the alumni.
You’re just too bitter and angry to realize that.
As far as I could tell, there were no Atkins/Blue Lagoon jokes. Just like there were no Sidehacker jokes in “Wonderwomen” or “Eye Creature” jokes in “Beast of the Yellow Night.”
This and “Dark Future” were actually pretty good choices, as opposed to some of the other Matthews/Graydon movies which were a bit of a slog. “Breeders,” “Angels” w/Bridget and Mary Jo, “Univited” all worked for me. “Merlin,” “Unicorn,” redoing “Final Justice” and the One with Graydon’s Kids did not. Everyone has different tastes. So it’s a bit of a gamble every time you buy a riff, but that’s the case with movies in general, even the best studios/directors/actors/genres/etc. produce duds.
Well, tsk-tsk to him but ultimately he did us all a favor because The Brains (both the three and the Cinematic crowd) finally realized that they could just riff WITHOUT an underlying premise (Bob Honcho, the underground facility), which turned out to be just a, literally, complete waste of time. Intros and host segments? Without cute robots, who needs ’em?!
;-)
Actually, I was thinking that someone must have died whilst formulating the title:
“We’ll call it… the Fairy King of Aaaaaaaaar………”
Yeah, and here’s a pretty good clue: if the thread says “Now Available from RiffTrax…”, ummm… it’s probably going to be oriented on RT. Might be something to avoid for the good of the community.
Just sayin’… ;)
Yes, we should see a list of those. We really should. I very much want to see it. :-)
In fact, since it should be mind-numbingly obvious that public domain stuff would be EASY to release on DVDs — which just as obviously earn more money than downloads (unless I’m wrong) — they should post such a list of that same public domain stuff and let fans vote on which ones they should do anyway. Hopefully fan enjoyment and $$$ would make up for however much they might genuinely dislike such movies. I mean, technically, these guys ARE *actors*, right? It shouldn’t be THAT hard for them to turn down the bitterness and fake a LITTLE enthusiasm.
Even Eric might get into something like that, which admittedly isn’t necessarily a point in the idea’s favor…
And, as I’ve said at some point (maybe even on this very thread, I’m insufficiently motivated to check), some “amateur” filmmakers have probably (with admittedly near-cosmic-level optimism) mailed the Brains their OWN films for potential riffing. How hard would it be to arrange for permission to release THOSE on DVDs (as a one-time deal, rights automatically reverting back to the filmmakers after the Rifftrax versions are released)? Professional release of one’s film to potentially encourage interest in MORE of one’s films, maybe even into ALSO getting those films on DVD (without Rifftrax), who’d turn down a deal like that? :-)
I was hoping more for a Blood Beast of Arghhhhhhh…. joke myself. No such luck. Maybe focusing on filming in the Carmargue.
Privateiron:
YouTube has many “Best of Rifftrax” compilations that feature 15-20 minute clips of the riffed films.
That way, you can see if the film is to your liking before you buy it.
And also convinced Shout Factory that they were better off acquiring the original MST3K license for disk, than trying to make their own from scratch. (For which we may now all be grateful. :) )
When Kevin can go through six FC episodes and force Renfest jokes into all of them regardless of the movie, the band’s better off doing their own reunions.
But FC became the dinosaur-comet that permanently screwed up the fan-evolution of MST3K:
Cinematic Titanic was about live shows, and the energy of a rowdy audience (and their videos also got better after they dropped the self-aware “underground bunker” concept and went to live-concert disks).
But without Mads in Deep 13 to force the FC/RT’ers, and the threat that the movie would “destroy their sanity”…just why WERE our comics so happy to pile jokes on the movie, let alone dump gleeful high-school abuse on it? To be smug in their spare time? Because the movie, quote, “Had it coming”?
It’s easy to see a “List of Public Domain titles”–Just surf Amazon Prime on any given night. In fact, I’ve been harboring a sneaking suspicion that’s EXACTLY what RT has been doing, by the suspiciously fortuitous timing with which new PD discoveries like “Fairy King of Arrgh” and “Whizzo’s Christmas Circus” premiere on RT shortly after surfacing on Prime.
Kind of ironic, when you remember how RT first went independent after being Legend Film’s public-domain prison-beeyatch–so that unemployed-Mike commentary could give Legend one more weaselly excuse to colorize “House on Haunted Hill”, “Little Shop of Horrors” and “Swing Parade”–and set off on their new business of giving us “hip, current!” riffs of Twilight, Avatar, the Transformers, and other movies that Only Nerds Watch.
Until it turned out that “Santa & the Ice-Cream Bunny”–and, ahem, “Reefer Madness”–became their biggest franchisable hits with the paying crowd, and then, hey kids, we’re bringing you the wackiest Public Domain titles and shorts that can be gotten fer free, hyyyuck!
…I don’t know whether to appreciate the irony, or compliment them that their bold career move turned out so well.
Look, if he was dying, he wouldn’t bother to type “Aaaaar” in the screenplay, he’d just say it!
DVD sales are heavily in decline. If Rifftrax DVDs were more profitable than VODs, we’d probably get more than two or three a year (all tied to Kickstarters. DVDs have upfront costs for production, require storage costs and are carried by fewer and fewer outlets.
Sadly, much like just the jokes riffs, I don’t think we would see DVD releases without Kickstarters.
I don’t think Mallon sued (but if someone can find the court records, we can find out for sure). The story I’ve seen is he told Rhino he’d move MST3K to another label if they released The Film Crew titles.
Majorjoe23:
You are right. I stand corrected.
From Wikipedia:
The episodes were produced in association with Rhino Entertainment, which was to distribute the episodes on DVD. However, Jim Mallon of Best Brains approached Rhino, and threatened to pull future releases of MST3K from Rhino’s distribution unless they passed on The Film Crew (Mallon claimed that it was “too similar to MST3K”, forcing Rhino to choose between MST3K or Film Crew). Rhino then ended its relationship with The Film Crew.
Eric J.:
You need this.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vHONGTquHSk
We’ll all feel better.
Uh…because there’s an audience to be entertained? A *paying* audience? That’s certainly the purpose of live riffing by both Rifftrax and Cinematic Titanic; it’s the purpose of almost every live performance of any kind ever. And inasmuch as the Brains are, well, INTELLIGENT, they’re capable of extrapolating the existence of an audience even when the audience is not physically present.
(Performer: “Hey, you think I’m up here for my health?!”)
(Heckler: “Not so far…”)
But, uh…significantly less easy to see the Brains’ list of public domain titles, which was what I meant. That…should have been so easy to infer.
0 for 2.
On a separate note, I’d be surprised if Kevin hasn’t been offered at least a few singing contracts. No matter what sort of nonsense he sings on the shows, he really does have a GREAT voice. :-) I guess that’s just not our music professor’s bag…
Maybe he was talking into a tape recorder. And whoever transcribed the tape was just…really focused…
REPRISE/ALTERNATE
You should really just relax.