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Now Available from RiffTrax…37 Replies to “Now Available from RiffTrax…”Commenting at Satellite News
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Nothing says the holiday season like a welsh corgi and croquet, and when did Santa get into conspicuous consumption?
This looks Birdemic-bad. Which might be a good thing.
I can’t comment on the croquet part, but Welsh corgis definitely scream “holiday season”! Okay, it’s more of a bark, but when you combine that with a corgi that insists on sleeping behind the Christmas tree, preferably on a pile of presents, you’ve got Jack FluffyRump nipping at your toes. In fact, one of our corgis insisted on helping us by dragging off the empty wrapping paper rolls and carefully shredding them. I could always find her by following the wet cardboard pieces, usually to her spot under the tree.
It took me one look at the picture of this movie, and I immediately went to Rifftrax to buy it. Can’t wait to watch!
I really hope it’s exactly that kind of bad!
It’s worse. It’s “A Talking Cat!?!” bad.
This made me want to make my own Hallmark Channel Christmas movie. There seems to be many tools available to make your own. I used this…
https://www.theodysseyonline.com/baby-its-cold-outside-2622425571
and came up with this…
A spirited female publisher is unhappy because she’s being forced to babysit an incredibly disobedient child throughout the holiday season.
Everything changes when she meets a sassy male friend she hasn’t seen since childhood, while they’re fighting over the same item at the department store.
Through crazy circumstances and with a little help from a lovable dog,she soon discovers that your first love isn’t always the right love.
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Maybe a weekend topic could be to create your own Mst3k themed Hallmark Channel Christmas movie?
Mike Pipper’s a grizzled and lonely prospector spending another sad holiday season alone in his skid-marked stained cabin in remote Alberta, Canada. When a chance encounter with a whiskey soaked stranger and his festively attired friend turns everything upside down. Mike rediscovers the true meaning of Christmas with the help of these plucky new friends. It all culminates with a visit from Santa Crenshaw that’ll send your heart soaring.
Edit – Damn thing’s gonna need a title – Know Santa?! He Was Delicious!
DarkGrandmaofDeath – Welsh corgis definitely scream “holiday season”!
“On Monte, On Emma, On Linnet, On Willow!” – Queen Elizabeth. And don’t forget Holly, the most Christmas-est corgi of all. Pass the figgy pudding, please.
Well, David DeCoteau rears his ugly incompetence again.
It’s astonishing how many female directors can’t get their films funded or distributed, but that tool can use a feminine pseudonym and can burn up the straight to DVD market.
Then again, he hasn’t made a movie since 2017.
Depends what you mean by “movie” (ie. “Actually distributed in theaters”…Has he ever had one of those?) but whatever they are, IMDb lists about fifteen of them in ’17-’18 alone: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0213983/
Maybe he’s just slowing down with age.
FTR, he seems to have settled on “Mary Crawford” for the bulk of his “family” direct-video projects. It’s a grand old name.
As one commenter pointed out, it’s hard to tell how many porn videos had been shot at the house before, after, and during the making of the movie.
Eric J.:
I wrote he was burning up the straight to DVD market.
I had looked up his filmography on Wikipedia, which is just as well.
David DeCoteau is one ugly looking guy.
“Will you forget the SKID MARKS?!”
Actually, now that cult is gone and Sartoris got a major burn, he might have left his cabin by now, since the only reason he was there was to hide from the cult.
Which, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I didn’t quite “get,” because it seemed like the cult could’ve broken into his cabin and gotten hold of him at any time, but whatever. Maybe he spent a lot of time hiding under the sink OSLT.
:-)
Yes, but if RT is going to get into the business of riffing EVERY single “clean-porn” direct-video that Mary dumps onto Amazon Prime, just to exploit more self-aware Talking Cat? yocks (this one was from ’12), they are going to have their hands rather full.
I suspect the novelty is going to wear off sometime between “A Talking Pony!?!”, “My Stepbrother is a Vampire!?!” (the other two in Crawford’s acclaimed Punctuation Trilogy), and the B&MJ riffing of “Runaway Christmas Bride”.
This is worse than Talking Cat. Let that sink in. And the guys are actually pretty funny here, but the movie is relentlessly, soul-suckingly dull. I applaud the effort, but I won’t buy another one featuring this “director.”
I finally watched Santa’s Summerhouse today.
The movie is awful, but it committed the even more heinous crime of underutilizing a corgi. For shame, movie! Though perhaps Tess the corgi read the script thoroughly before taking the role, and insisted on a clause in her contract stating she’d only appear briefly in two or three scenes, and that no one was to touch her while she was on set. The end result is not enough cute dog, waaaay too much dull and stupid human interaction and dialog.
Oh, and it’s a bait-and-switch corgi, at that. The box shows a pretty little red and white Pembroke, but Tess is a tricolor, perfectly nice but not at all what I was expecting to see. Bummer.
But Mike, Bill and Kevin do a decent job, and I found their riffs funny enough to make it all bearable. Still, I don’t think this will ever replace Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny or Whizzo’s Christmas Circus.
Eric J.:
I’ve mentioned this to you before, but you can email, tweet, or post to Rifftrax your movie suggestions.
Something I’ve occasionally wondered: What if you submitted not just suggestions but the actual physical FILMS (whether as VHS or DVD) to the Brains, either by mail or in person at a Live performance? I’d have to think people have tried that (I mean, it’s either just the cost of postage or, hey, you’re THERE, in the auditorium with them, what have you got to lose?), but I have no idea if it’s been at all effective.
I’m presuming that MST3K itself, which must adhere to Netflix standards and practices Or Something Like That, wouldn’t be as open to that sort of thing.
(I’ve wondered if that sort of thing would work for Movies with the Mads too but this isn’t a Movies with the Mads forum.)
;-)
Ugh.
I immediately bought, watched and loved it. Instant RiffTrax classic. Santa’s laugh might be the worst performed bit of acting I’ve ever seen.
Most companies of ANYTHING don’t take unsolicited suggestions as a general policy, on the fear that the greedy loser will come back and sue for a portion of the profits saying “Hey, it was my idea!”
Even if you did send them a cheesy low-rent Public Domain title that RT has been forced to raccoon-scavenge Amazon Prime for, to duck the copyright fee they normally have to Kickstarter for something like Starship Troopers or Krull.
Me, I have only one suggestion for what RT can do next, it’s free of charge and has long since been made public. :)
What does “clean porn” mean, anyway?
Eric J.:
Yes, you’ve let us know here over and over what you think of Rifftrax.
While you bathe in your sea of self-importance, I’ll convey this bit of information for everyone else here.
“Jeopardy” champ and author Ken Jennings is a MSTie and a Rifftrax fan.
Check out his new book “Planet Funny: How Comedy Took Over Our Culture.”
He gives praise to both endeavors and mentions the first “MST3K” episode he watched.
(Shh, that’s considered insensitive to Native Americans.)
Ah, well. See, I haven’t watched Jeopardy lately, because they don’t pay me no more!
It means you do a three-day shoot in the same all-use company-owned Malibu-hills house as “Crazy Rich Asian Geishas”, just that you whip up a script for “Patches the Talking Christmas Dog” over the weekend and try branching out into “Family movies” as a mainstream sideline to retain your clean market.
And not just direct-video producers either: Barry Mahon discovered Santa, fairytales and Ice Cream Bunnies after a career in “Nudes a Go-Go” and “Fanny Hill Meets Dr. Erotico”.
He’s even more obnoxious than usual today, isn’t he, folks? I’m not sure that I even knew that was a potential development until today.
Off-topic (how unexpected):
Josh Way of “Fun with Shorts” and “Fun with Films” frequently uses MST3K callbacks as riffs. Maybe Eric would like his work. I sure do.
Eric J.:
Ken Jennings has published four books since his appearances on “Jeopardy.”
Since he won over three million dollars during his “Jeopardy” runs, he isn’t strapped for money.
You’re obviously not an intellectual.
Touches:
I don’t think Eric enjoys much of anything, except for being a grouch.
However, he thinks he wears the Kerwood Derby.
“That’s a weapon?!”
“No, that’s THE weapon.”
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I idly wondered why he keeps coming into a forum where no one likes him before realizing that such a description would probably match any forum that he visited. Too bad. Too, too bad. Then again, I suppose some people just don’t feel the need to be liked.
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The references to porn (even “clean” porn) made me wonder how deeply one would need to dig (so to speak) to find porn films that were (1) not intended to be funny, (2) earnest enough to be riffable, and (3) had enough of a plot for there to be something TO riff — just because one’s audience doesn’t insist on plots, that’s no reason not to include them every now and then, just for the heck of it — before I recognized that of course any and all Brains would probably think riffing porn films would be far more troublesome than it would be worth. From porn, I briefly moved on to just momentarily contemplate the use of teenage sex comedies ala “Porky’s” before realizing that well of course THOSE were intended to be funny because they’re frickin’ COMEDIES so that’s no good. Then I just…sort of…trailed off for a while.
I still wonder about the many just plain drama/crime films (of the same type as Girl in Lover’s Lane, High School Big Shot, Racket Girls, and others) that the MST3K Brains considered but ultimately didn’t use. I’m likely to have at least heard of several of the SF/fantasy/horror films that MST3K considered but ultimately didn’t use, but the drama/crime list would probably mostly feature titles unfamiliar to me (it might even feature dramas that didn’t have anything to do with crime). Kind of a shame that no set of Brains seems interested in riffing films like that any more. Yeah, I s’pose.
Personally I’m not a huge fan of the drama/crime films unless they have some element of silliness to them. Without bothering to look through the list, I’d guess that half the MST crime movies fit that description, like the Mamie van Doren films, the female wrestling one, the one with the very deep-voiced lady (sorry my mind is blanking on some of these titles). Movies like “Kitten with a Whip” and “I Accuse My Parents” just drag me down so that I don’t really enjoy the riffing as much as I do for the silly movies. Who knows, maybe the Brains think most of their audience feels the same way.
Silliness is very subjective. ;-)
If the Brains think that most of their audience isn’t interested in crime/drama of the kind I mention, well, for all I know they’re absolutely right. I just enjoyed the extra bit of variety while they had it, though. They were films that I would have been very unlikely to watch on my own un-riffed, which is not the case with many of the “genre” films (SF et cetera).
(remember, folks, no one’s making you read any further, and at least I’m not going out of my way to denigrate anyone or anything)
I never really thought about it before but I suppose that even the color “non-genre” films that MST3K featured (“The Hellcats”, “The Rebel Set”, and however many others) also qualify as crime/drama comparable to “Racket Girls” and the rest. Even the SFC era’s sole example “Girl in Gold Boots” so qualifies (“Final Justice” is, like “Mitchell” and others, an outright action film (well, technically, anyway) that’s CENTERED on the crimes, so I myself personally would categorize it differently than the ones I’ve mentioned so far; YMMV). Which filled me with dull surprise. I suppose one kind of drama-NON-crime film would be a romance film. Plenty of those. As for others, I’m not sure.
Which brings me to something (else) that I’ve mentioned before (now, see, when I repeat myself, I, as I’ve told the forum before, acknowledge that I’m repeating myself): There are WAY more drama (or drama/crime, or drama/romance, or…) to choose from than genre films, because the studios of earlier in the 20th century, particularly in the 1930s and 1940s (hey, war films, THAT’S another drama sub-genre) used to churn out dozens of films a WEEK (even moreso back then than now, some people would indeed watch anything). SF et cetera films throughout the early decades of film have long since been singled out by genre experts (general fandom was at least vaguely familiar with “The Beast of Yucca Flats” long before MST3K existed), but much of the (if you’ll pardon the expression) strictly mundane/muggle fare remains unexplored.
I wonder if it would be workable for one set of Brains or the other (or The Mads, or Josh Way, or any of the other riffers extant) to riff silent films. They at least wouldn’t need to worry about talking over the dialogue. ;-)
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I remember (and I’ve mentioned this before too but what are you, paying me for new and groundbreaking insights?) that one film the Brains are notorious for considering but ultimately rejecting is “Child Bride” (another drama/crime type). As I’ve mentioned before (but now I’m just repeating myself), it might be interesting for one set of Brains or another to tackle it now.
IMHO they’d need to keep the general “ewww!” comments to a minimum — yes, it’s an icky topic, I get that, but people watch these shows to laugh and/or be bemused by obscure comments, not to hear moans of disgust and dismay — and make sure the host segments (which Rifftrax at least wouldn’t have to deal with anyway*) had nothing to do with the film, but if they were willing to consider getting away with it back before they were the popular culture giants they are now, before they could blot out the sun like GODS!, they could surely pull it off today.
They might even use it to get all social-issue-y and call attention to the fact that child marriage is STILL legal in some parts of the USA (or they might not, I have narrowed it down to those TWO possibilities).
Just freeforming or blue-skying or whatever one calls it, though. Not something I’m going campaign for or anything like that.
The riffing of, say, “Interface” (1985), now, THAT I might campaign for. Or I might not. ;-)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087476/?ref_=ttloc_loc_tt
(I just noticed that “Interface” was filmed in Texas, which I suppose makes its overall theme just that much more appropriate…)
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*”Child Bride” is a film I think would be very much NOT suitable for live riffing because there’d be no way to keep the audience from ewwwwwwing…or from making REALLY inappropriate remarks…
So true, and something a few people who post on this site fail to understand or appreciate.
And probably contradicting myself, but I think it would be interesting to see them tackle a couple of war dramas for something new. Unless I’m failing to remember one (or more) they’ve already done?
(I honestly didn’t realize that my preceding post would turn out to be so long; sorry about that, folks)
AFAIK not outside of a SF context. “Invasion U.S.A.” was a war film but It Was All A Dream…
Personally, I’d like to see them riff more westerns. But I’ve mentioned that before. ;-)
I just discovered that TV Tropes offers a short list of films that the Brains ultimately didn’t use, but many of them went unused because the Brains ended up not being able to acquire the rights to them, which IMHO isn’t at all the same thing as seriously considering them and then rejecting them.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Trivia/MysteryScienceTheater3000
It’s probably naive of me but I’d think that, nowadays, with the Brains astride select portions of the narrow earth like Colossuseseses, film rights holders would be willing to themselves pay at least a modest fee to get MST3K and/or Rifftrax to riff their films (particularly the ones that are self-evidently “awful”, which a great many direct-to-DVD films are evidently generally considered to be).
Seriously, it would almost guarantee further interest in whatever OTHER films said holders own the rights to. I mean, how else is the general public going to even hear about such films? Now, THOSE are the kind of films that I’d think filmmakers (in contrast to just general audience members) would be trying to press into the Brains’ hands at some Live performance or another. Sometime attention is its own reward. :-) Heck, I’d pay the Brains a very modest fee just to guarantee that they afforded genuine attention to my suggestions and/or insights (such as they are; I don’t have any overwhelming illusions about my own “brilliance”).
The possibilities to be had from student films alone must be staggering (without MST3K, would “The Final Sacrifice” even be a footnote somewhere?). The next Hal Warren (i.e. a director who has allowed audiences only one look into his/her troubled soul) is waiting to be noticed…somewhere…
And I just this minute thought of another good point: The do-it-yourself films of the past few decades are bound to include many more female directors, so that would be nice.
Incidentally, marginally back on-topic, I recently watched Rifftrax’s “Santa’s Village of Madness” and I can but presume that it’s what Eric believes to be typical of Rifftrax fare. WAY too many comments based on nothing but the theoretically comedic premise that some of the film’s bizarre material qualifies as genuine Christmas traditions of yesteryear to the detriment of actual humor (let alone obscure references). Seriously, they went on for MINUTES like that and certainly didn’t do themselves any favors by further expounding upon the concept in the host segments. If they’d restricted it to JUST the host segments, I wouldn’t have considered it a big deal. :-|
They certainly never let that sort of stuff get out of hand on MST3K with “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians” or K. Gordon Murray’s “Santa Claus.” From what I understand, “Santa’s Village of Madness” constitutes one of K. Gordon Murray’s lesser efforts, though, so a lower quality of dubbing might have been a contributing factor. Personally, I don’t “get” an “antagonist” who’s solely motivated by wanting his employees to GET BACK TO WORK, what is Santa paying you people for, anyway?
On yet another note, Josh Way’s “Fun With Shorts: Volume 15” features a cameo by one of the Bots from the pretty much an MST3K-clone “Incognito Cinema Warriors XP”, which according to Wikipedia has some sort of direct if kind of vague tie to MST3K itself. So that’s sort of a continuity thing. Sort of. If you’re into that kind of thing.
Lawgiver: the last 20 minutes of “Neptune Men” was stock war footage. Does that count? :)
Still yakking away, I realized that after moving from porn to sex comedies, the next logical step would be “coming of age” films, the majority of which tend to (I think) be much more drama than comedy. Searching for films in that genre would be an excellent reason to turn attention to European films, since they tend to get more into the subject (so to speak) than American ones.
Although, to second-think myself, I suppose European films are more likely to have nudity by underage actors (not necessarily in the context of actual S-E-X), so the Brains would need to be careful about that. They can only shake the heck out of their paradigm so much.
Really, when you think about it (“So don’t think about it.”), the fact that so many coming-of-age films involve sex (whether explicit or implicit) sends two not-good messages:
That sex automatically makes one an adult.*
&
That one can’t be both an adult and a virgin (while being both is admittedly not often considered optimal, it’s certainly possible).
Meanwhile, a noticeable percentage of slasher films teach the lesson that virginity is all that keeps a girl ALIVE, so figure that stuff out.
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*If, as some people seem to think should be the case, maturity was a requirement of sex, the human race would have died out a long time ago…
It would if I could remember that ;) For some reason that movie/episode just doesn’t stay in my brain for very long, even though I do like it.
That’s been debunked:
“Many of the invasion scenes in Tokyo were edited from World War III Breaks Out (1960). The appearance of a giant billboard of Adolf Hitler has led some viewers to believe that the stock footage is taken from documentary footage of World War II Japan. However, according to August Ragone on the special features of the DVD for the episode, only one shot of the Diet building as stock footage, and the rest all purpose-built for the Neptune Men series[1] (see “Trivia” below).”
https://mst3k.fandom.com/wiki/MST3K_819_-_Invasion_of_the_Neptune_Men