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RiffTrax Live: What Did You Think?Well, the big surprise, I guess, was the appearance by our pal Rupert Munch, the guy who is making the “Manos” sequel, as Torgo, and his music video at the end.
My theater was about 3/4 full and they seemed to really enjoy it. The shorts really warmed folks up nicely. Norman and his catchphrase will immediately enter the lexicon. There were a couple of points, where I heard, in my head, the MST3K riff, but for the most part I completely forgot about them. I really appreciated the moments where they just let the movie be the movie, and didn’t feel the need to say anything. What did you think? UPDATE: Chris Griffy of Examiner.com liked it. 173 Replies to “RiffTrax Live: What Did You Think?”Commenting at Satellite News
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All content posted on Satellite News is copyright © 2026 by Chris Cornell and Brian Henry, except where otherwise noted. This Date in MSTory is written and compiled by Steve Finley, Chris Cornell and Brian Henry. Copyright © 2026 All rights reserved. Please do not reproduce This Date in MSTory items in any form without express written permission from the authors. Items of MST3K news may be duplicated or reposted, as long as Satellite News is cited as the source. The views and opinions expressed herein are not necessarily those of Satellite of Love, LLC. No warranty is expressed or implied that the information given herein is completely accurate, and in fact this information can and will change at any time. So there. Mystery Science Theater 3000, its characters and situations are copyrights and trademarks of Satellite of Love, LLC. Banner image created by Larry Lee Moniz. |
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The Master Approves
Woo hooo! We survived another showing of “Manos” again!!
(Pssst – anybody got a cylinder handy?)
It was a blast. Hamilton, NJ was about 3/4 full also, I’d guess. There was lots of laughter and some applause. But I realized on the way home that I’ve seen Casablanca once. And now I’ve seen Manos probably six times. Great print, though!
I went with two buddies who haven’t seen the MST3K version; I’ve only seen that version once myself. So we really didn’t care about which was better. This was amazingly fun, though. We were at the AMC in Owings Mills and it was full but for the lower rows of seats closest to the screen.
Suggestion for the weekend discussion: The point/message of “Welcome Back Norman”. The three of us discussed it in the car and came up with many different explanations, and I think it would be a good conversation starter.
My theatre in Columbus Ohio was 90% full and we saw a great show. Somehow on the big screen it made the movie more goofy than creepy. The riffs were hilarious and the white trash “Twilight” parts were priceless.
I have no insight into why “Welcome Back, Norman” was made, but http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdUckp2EnZ8 presents it as part of a Showtime Shorts package from September 13, 1980, which certainly answers questions like … is that Detroit’s airport they’re filming at? And what the heck, Detroit?
My first Rifftrax Life in Lansing! About three-quarters or four-fifths full at the Celebration Cinema and there was at least one cosplayers dressed as the Master, who got applause on entering.
Went to the theatre in Montgomery Alabama, a little late. My son and I walked in and were suprised by a packed house, with only the first two rows empty. The riffs were great, so many good lines, lots and lots of clapping. Great job!!
I love you, you crazy mortal b!tch.
The Carbondale, IL Showplace was also probably 75% full & was thoroughly into it. The bonus song/preview at the end was unexpected. And my buddy & I immediately recognized one of the “stars” of the sequel as Gene Snitsky, former WWE wrestler.
Can’t wait for Birdemic in October.
Loved the shorts. I agree with Sampo. The urge to scream out “DO SOMETHING! GAH!” was unbearable. Very curious about this Manos 2: Electric Boogaloo.
It was great fun! I was in Webster, TX (outside Houston) and we had an energetic 3/4 full theater. Lots of laughs and applause (of course all the riffs about Texas went over well). Loved the white-trash Twilight sketch!
White Trash Twilight nearly reduced me to tears. Great show! I actually couldn’t QUITE expel the original riffs from my mind since it’s one of my personal go-to episodes, but it was still super fun. I think “Honey, you’re embarrassing me in front of Torgo” was the only re-riff?
Watching “Welcome Back, Norman” in Norman, OK made it that much better! :) I’d also love to know what the heck that short was about.
Theater in Portage, IN was at capacity, great crowd. This was the first broadcast as well where Fathom got the audio mix right; heard the movie and the riffs perfectly. The guys were top notch.
Making a planetarium as I type.
Plymouth Meeting, PA was 3/4 full. Audience seemed to really enjoy it! The Manos II guy was a surprise. Can’t say I’m excited for the sequel, but I like his Torgo. Really, I’m jazzed for the Kickstarter HD release. Anywho, great show!
That Norman *sigh* I really did think it was a educational film, until about halfway through when I realized it was just a kooky short film.
No mention of how “At Your Fingertips” is a nice connection to “Manos: The Hands of Fate”. Fingers… hands…
Whose heart lept a bit when they saw the Crow in the audience?
Our theatre was about 1/2 full and things were great until the movie started and the theater lost the satellite feed. After sitting there for 30 minutes waiting for them to get it back we were told it was hopeless. WHAT A RIP!!! I guess I now have to wait for the DVD.
Just got back from Burlington, NJ show. Wow. That was bizarre. Had a great time though. My dad like the show, also. There were some jokes that he didn’t get since this was his first exposure to Rifftrax. I actually recognized one of the cars in the first short. My family had a Plymouth Valarie when I was growing up and I was shocked that I knew what it was from the tail lights.
My theater had a bigger turn-out that I expected. Usually there aren’t many people at the Regal 20. I am very proud of my fellow Burlington County MSTies. Lots of laughs and clapping also.
Definitely going to see Birdemic in October! Keep up the great work guys!
I thought it was excellent. The shorts were fantastic (always happy to see another bat-**** insane short from ACI), and the new riffs were great. All-in-all, I think it was one of the best live shows they’ve done.
That said, I had a very hard time putting the original MST3k Manos riffs out of my head, because a couple of 20-ish guys towards the back of the theater (which was about three quarters full) kept loudly calling them out during the first 1/3 of the movie. Someone near them must’ve said something, because they were quiet for the rest of the movie. Unfortunately, there was another guy who must’ve mistaken the theater for his living room and kept making loud, idiotic comments of his own, like “HA! He’s got a zipper on his robe, look!” and “How stupid is this guy?” (which he said almost every time the Hal Warren character said or did anything).
There always seems to be amateur riffers at Rifftrax Live events, which seriously irks me. To them I say this: You’re in a public place surrounded by strangers who all paid to see a performance, not sitting on your futon back home surrounded by empty pizza boxes, overweight cats and Adventure Time plushies. Nobody wants to hear you make State Park jokes even your friends would get tired of after 30 seconds. I know, it’s a hilariously bad movie and sometimes you can’t believe the ineptitude on display. And yeah, sometimes the urge to comment on that is hard to resist. But since everyone (including you) is there to watch three performers make fun of an awful movie, how’s about you shut up so we can hear the PROFESSIONAL COMEDIANS do what we all paid to see them do?
If you can’t do that, just stick to midnight showings of Rocky Horror and The Room where the audience is actually encouraged to participate and leave Rifftrax Live for those of us who understand the social contract.
51 or so here in Flint,MI. Non stop laughter from a small spirited crowd. The scenes cut from the MST version add to the pain of a film that was even worse on the big screen. Deliciously worse. Best use of 12.50 for me ever.
It was great fun. Saw it at the AMC Lynnehaven in VA Beach, VA.
Other than a loud guy who thought we’d paid Fathom Events prices to listen to HIM riff other than the guys (fortunately, an usher quieted him down), it was a completely enjoyable evening.
The two shorts were golden. “Welcome Back, Norman” had everyone laughing at a lonely man’s self-destructive pain. *g*
The Cylinders short almost matched the weirdness of Grasses.
The prune juice commercial was an unexpected bonus.
As for Manos? They proved that like the Cinematic Titanic crew did with “Santa”, no cheesy movie is in danger of double-dip riffing. While nothing will quite replace the MST3K version in my heart, this was very, very funny.
That said, the “White Trash Twilight Skit” almost killed everyone in their seats. *g* So much fun.
About 4/5 full in Castleton, IN and we all laughed ourselves silly. The shorts were hysterical. The re-riff was extraordinary. Can’t say much for the Manos II bits as they kind of fell flat. Looking forward to the Rifftrax of it, though.
So is Birdemic going to be identical to the one they already did, or are they revamping it?
Those of us watching at the Livonia 20 (Michigan) got a kick out of Norman’s Michigan license plates. Theater was easily 3/4 full if not more. Good crowd (except one guy behind me that I think was trying to prove he had memorized the MST version of Manos and recited it word for word during the first part of the movie). Cylinders any one?
Looking forward to Birdemic.
#14 – Definitely had a reaction to the signed Crow in the audience.
This was my first RiffTrax Live event and it was a doozy. They were all on their A game tonight and I can only remember noticing one line get flubbed. This was also my first time seeing Manos in general. I waited to pop my Torgo cherry for the three amigos and all I want to do is go out and buy the Manos re-release so I can have the original AND a version I can play the eventually released RiffTrax mp3 with!
I went to the AMC at the Garden State Plaza in Paramus NJ and was surprised by the nearly full capacity when the show began. I brought along two noob friends of mine and they were eating it up. Half way through the movie I couldnt laugh hard anymore because I felt stiff! The experience was made all the more satisfying when we left the theater and both of them agreed that it was hilarious.
MORE LIVE STUFFZ PLZ!!!!!
Eden Prairie MN represented! (My two kids were wondering if we’d be the only ones in the theater) Near capacity crowd and lots of laughing (especially from the guy behind me). We saw a Servo in the audience and my kids were drooling over it. I’m gonna be saving up my cylinders for the kids to make robots and tie them to kites to fly. And White Trash Twilight was great! The only riff I thought of from the original was “hmmmm, tastes like Cherry Robitussin.” The music video at the end was a delight, we loved the time clock counting the number of seconds it took for Torgo to get up from his dirt bed.
I saw the Manos episode just a few months after it initially aired in ’93 when I was in 10th grade. It has been one of my faves ever since and I was so excited about tonight I was practically giddy. Our theater was about 2/3 full and it was a great crowd. We laughed through the whole thing and I am really worn out now. The shorts were great and I think the Norman short has got to be the strangest and most pointless short they have ever done. Now I’ve got to go make some jointed toys with cylinders or the master will slap me to death!!
As expected, this was a blast. Just enough new material and new gags to make it a whole new experience. It really is interesting just how accustomed I got to watching this thing on a VHS tape in the 90s. It isn’t the heads or the generations, it really IS constantly blurry and badly dubbed.
Upsides:
– I have no idea what the “Welcome back, Norman” was supposed to be about. Not. a. Clue. I expected him to Hulk out and smack someone or throw a TV from his apartment window.
– You know, actually kind of a cool robot kite. Boring way to get us to it, but still…
– Redneck Twilight will go down as a classic MST/Rifftrax sketch.
– I’ve never seen this thing uncut, and the “Death” of the wife was actually a bit creepy. Tom Reynolds may not have been much of an actor, but his stare was effective.
Downsides:
– I had the original lines in my head. I kept getting them stuck. This is kind of like an awesome band with two awesome vocalists in their career singing each others’ songs. They’re both good and you’d totally go and hear the band, but one is the iconic one.
– No shorts in the digital goodies downloads this time :(
If/When this comes out on DVD, I’ll look forward to it. It’s perfect when you’ve seen MST’s Manos too many times and want a fresh take on it. You will laugh at love. Again. (If by “love” you mean “slave women fighting,” of course)
Okay, so first of all, this was hilarious. While I personally prefer the original MST3k version, it’s not really because of better riffing.
So what was better in the MST version? Well, that’s my second point. I’ve finally seen a worse movie than Manos: The Hands of Fate, and it’s Manos: The Hands of Fate. You know how films are edited for content and time when syndicated for television, and the Brains usually had to edit them a little more to fit in the show? Well, if you were ever wondering if that editing made Manos more incomprehensible, as it’s done with some movies, the answer is a big fat no. The cut-down MST version of Manos was actually more gripping than the more complete version shown tonight. Almost all of the new-to-me footage was unnecessary (and badly faked) violence, REALLY BAD pauses, and Torgo trying to stand up. While some of that led to some good riffs, as Steve 2 said above, “DO SOMETHING” came to mind regularly throughout the show.
Third, was I the only one who noticed the holes in the riffing right where some of the best MST riffs were? There was also one point where Kevin made essentially the same riff as in the MST version, but he said it in a very convoluted way, almost as if he were trying to avoid the original riff.
@Barry #14 — I almost laughed out loud at the Crow in the audience, because one row back and two seats over from where I sat (in Brunswick, Maine) sat a Tom Servo!
Framingham MA was about 3/4 full. My brother was happy to see Crow in Nashville. Lots of laughing and almost everyone stayed to hear Torgo singing at the end. Best responses were to the “White Trash Twilight” and to “You make me feel like dancing” when Torgo was struggling through the door. I at first feared that there would be technical problems when we got to our seats around 7:25 and the screen was blank – the Master was pleased that everything came off without a technical glitch.
Hmm…
I got there early, so I saw both the transmission test using several minutes from “Jack the Giant Killer”, and all the joke slides.
The shorts were great. I started to feel sorry for Norman, and I’m also kind of vague on what the educational point was. Regarding the cylinder short, I actually though what the kids came up with were pretty clever.
The prune juice commercial was funny, and I recognized the pitchman was Olan Soule, who did a lot of radio drama and appeared in several “Dragnet” episodes. And the guest appearance by Torgo and the Master was good.
As for the movie…as impossible as this sounds, the movie seemed worse here than it was on MST3K. Thankfully, the riffing was great and got us all through it.
And, as for the unexpected music video (which some audience members missed by leaving too quickly), I thought it was pretty funny. And I noticed callbacks to “Star Wars” and “Plan 9” in the sequel footage. One thing, though: the last shot was actually very unnerving.
All in all, I had a good time. I’m looking forward to “Birdemic”, and I might just go see the “Frankenstein/Bride of Frankenstein” showing that was pitched before the show.
AMC Woodlands in Oldsmar was at least 3/4 full, maybe more (even the front neck-breaker seats had a few souls). I think I saw RaptorX8 in her Torgo’s Pizza shirt (assuming Raptor is female and was wearing a hat?). Didn’t want to shout “Hey Raptor” across the theater in case I was wrong. :D
I too was expecting “Welcome Back Norman” to eventually be… about… something. Guess we’re so used to them riffing educational shorts that it was odd seeing one produced simply for “entertainment” purposes (in bizarro universe). Funny stuff though.
And I’ll never look at prune juice the same way again. Not that I’ve ever looked at it.
Oh… and my given name is Aaron, so I appreciated that particular pre-show slide (BUT I WASN”T EATING ANYTHING!!).
It was great! About 80% full in Westfield, NJ (50-60 folks or so) and a great crowd. I took 4 kids (the whole extended family), all 12 and under and they loved it, too (glad I wasn’t the only bad parent there as well, too). It was the best of the last 4 live shows. Outstanding.
Had a fantastic time with a packed house in West Lafayette, IN. It’s great to see such a great turnout to these live shows!
I’m thinking of trying to get tickets to go to Nashville for Birdemic. Does anyone know if the guys do a meet & greet or autograph signing at the Belcourt like the CT crew does at their shows?
Trekked to Danville, VA, maybe 25-30 people, same as last year. The Norman short was one of the funniest shorts that I have ever seen. Manos was a little slow starting, but eventually they seemed to find a groove and never let up. Great fun!
Another thing about tonight I just remembered: As I was walking out, I heard a group of younger guys complaining that a) Joel wasn’t involved (“They should’ve gotten Joel involved somehow, it didn’t seem right having Mike there”), and b) they didn’t do any of the original MST riffs. I can only assume they don’t know Cinematic Titanic exists and don’t understand the point of Rifftrax/CT re-riffing MST-era movies.
The Cimemark Theater #4 in Lawnside, NJ was FULL.
I was laughing until I had to stop and use a napkin to wipe the tears out of my eyes.
My friend next to me just stopped laughing for a few minutes because he just didn’t have anything left.
I went to this thinking I was “burned out” from the MST3K version but. . .WOW!!!
Greenville, SC was at about 85% capacity, and the crowd ate it up. At first I thought the Riff rate was way down, almost reminding me of a Season 1 episode. But that only allowed the movie’s own odd pauses and segments to stand out and illicit laughs on their own. The shorts were……just bizarre. In a way they matched up well to Manos in their sheer randomness. Definitely had a wonderful time.
I was going to see it as the Rosedale AMC Theater in Minnesota but the tickets were actually sold out there. I ended up seeing it at the Regal Stadium Theater in Eagan instead. I thought that the “Search for Valley Lodge” guys really grabbed a great opportunity to promote their Manos sequel. I enjoyed the new riffing and the inclusion of the brief bits that were deleted from the old MST3K episode. Maybe it’s been too long since I’ve watched a Rifftrax, but I was a little surprised by how many riffs there were about dark things like sex crimes, animal abuse, and killing sprees during the shorts and the main feature. I loved some of the great topical references such as “This is what happens when you go to a book club and say that you didn’t like Fifty Shades of Grey” and I really laughed when Debbie was revealed as a bride and they said “Well, still better than Toddlers in Tiaras.” They also seemed to make a lot more observations about the logical flaws in the movie such as the teenagers driving down the road that everyone kept mentioning went nowhere. The running gag about their “First vacation” was fun too. I still prefer the MST3K version, but the experience of watching a riffing of that movie in a nearly full theater was absolutely priceless!
Attended the screening of the film at my regular “Rifftrax Theater” in Bowie, MD. There was a decent crowd attending the screening. Probably not the best of the “Rifftrax Live” events IMO (as I didn’t find Welcome Back, Norman to be that funny, and there’s some moments where the MST3K riffs were stronger than the Rifftrax riffs), but it was still a lot of fun. Among the highlights (spoilers for the West Coast):
-The pre-show card featuring the Movie Haiku for Transformers: Dark of the Moon;
-The Catherine the Great joke in the Cylinders short (heck, the short itself has the same amount of bizarreness common in the At Your Fingertips shorts);
-“Are cylinders grass?”
-Torgo going “You Make Me Feel Like Dancing”;
-The white trash version of Twilight;
-The jest that the reason the Master’s wives were fighting was because Torgo was wearing Axe body spray;
-Torgo’s burnt hand being referred to as “how a McRib is made”.
BTW, it appears that there won’t be a freebie short this go round (was expecting Rifftrax to offer Welcome Back, Norman for free, given their tradition in previous “Live” events).
Saw it in Reading Pennsylvania. We had 25 in the theater but this wasn’t to bad considering that the theater didn’t even appear on the Fathom events page until two days ago. I went with my 12 year old son and it was first time to see the movie. His laugh is pretty loud and I was trying to quiet him down but others were laughing along with him.
Then there is Norman.. ugh…
Saw it in East Windsor, NJ multiplex. About 30-35 people in total.
Great show! What the heck was up with Norman! :-)
Somebody in the audience kept doing their own riffing, until somebody shouted “keep quiet, you’re not funny” – trust me, he wasn’t.
We loved the show!!
Surprised that the theater was 80% full in Huntsville Alabama Regal Hollywood 18. The show was A plus material. The shorts were also just as great. The crowd was a mix of us old folks and twenty somethings. I think with the right material they could do a show every two months. Can’t wait for Birdemic. It would be nice to see the attendance numbers for the live show.
Theatre was about 3/4 full here in Birmingham, Alabama. Loved it. It’s been a couple of years since I’ve watched the MST “Manos,” and I had surprisingly forgotten how truly, horribly, awfully bad it was.
Loved the shorts. “Norman” was just bizarre, and like others, I wonder why, exactly, it was made?
“Cylinders” was a classic non-educational educational film. I kept waiting for the joke “They’re making a Tom Servo!” when the kid was building a cylinder robot. I guess the Rifftrax guys maybe stay away from such direct MST/BB references, huh?
But the Futurama callout — “bite my shiny cardboard ass” — was outstanding.
Really great, our first Rifftrax Live experience, and we loved it!
We loved it and all the really funny new jokes and the well-timed and executed performance. These Rifftrax Live shows just keep getting better. The new shorts were abysmal and greatly amusing as Rifftrax fodder. Now that we’ve seen Manos so many times since it first aired on MST3K I have become inured to its awfulness and have really started to enjoy some of the actual movie moments in all their badness each time I watch it. I noticed some scenes and extended bits of scenes that were cut from the MST3K version that made it in tonight’s show and they only made the movie seem worse and more hilarious. A young friend of ours who we got into MST3K and Rifftrax joined us for his second live show and his girlfriend came along for her first Rifftrax Live. Neither of them had seen Manos before and they both thought it was hilarious.
I noticed that the theater is more crowded with each show as opposed to the earlier shows that were usually near empty. Arundel Mills Cinemark Egyptian was packed tonight and they showed it in TWO theaters instead of one. Next time I’ll buy our tickets ahead of time as it might actually sell out.
Great show saw it in Clifton,NJ theater was 3/4 full good crowd.The hardest part was trying not to think of the mst3k jokes while watching. The rifftrax gang did a fantastic job! The shorts were weirdly great and all the new riffs were super indeed! The print was so good its the first time i blood when theMaster tookTorgo’s handnoticed
To me, I just thought it was okay. I did laugh out loud several times but not nearly as much as the Joel version. Seeing it again reriffed was enjoyable but to me just didn’t have the same pizzaz.
The wife really liked the cylinder short and she’s already commited to Birdemic.
Celebration Cinema Rivertown in Grandville, MI was about 75% full, with the front three rows empty, save one seat (got there late). They unfortunately had a technical problem and showed the whole thing at the wrong aspect ratio (I think everything was about twice as wide as it was tall). The screen went blank for about 30 seconds to a minute, where they were apparently trying to fix the problem, but when the image came back, it was still in extrawidevision.
My theater in White Plains, NY was 3/4 full and the house really enjoyed the show. Lots of clapping along with the laughter.
I actually like prunes and prune juice. I don’t eat/drink them often but I don’t mind the taste at all. So the prune segment was really funny to me because of the incredibly strong reactions everyone else had to the guy in the commercial. I busted a gut when he filled his glass right back up so nonchalantly, to everyone’s disgust.
My favorite riff from the shorts was the bit about making the cylinder into a kaleidoscope. The way Kevin skeptically/accusingly said “Is it REALLY?” just killed me.
Favorite riff from the movie…can’t even choose. There were so many good ones. I honestly enjoyed this take on Manos better than the MST version, even if some of the riffs in that version were better than the ones used at the same points here. The Norman running joke helped break up the monotony of riffing on Torgo, the bad acting, and the bad editing.
Call me a killjoy, but I think most of the sketches that Mike, Kevin and Bill do during the movies they riff seem to go on too long or aren’t that funny to begin with. The Redneck Twilight sketch, though…bravo, sirs. That was beautiful.
Birdemic…oh man…that is going to be amazing.
My 2nd, and my 13-yr-old son’s first Riffrax live show, also at the Cinemark at Montage. Riffing was really good and did not recall the original. I second the notion that BBI’s edit actually helped the movie by limiting the dead air shots, and by dumping the brutal beating that the Master gave Wife #1 at the end.
Little sad that there’s no shorts in the digital goodies.
The Rave theater in Ann Arbor lost power right before we arrived so we had to rush to the other side of town to see the movie. Missed 1.5 of the shorts which was upsetting. Loved the riffs.
Since our theater is located (sorta’) near Philidelphia, one riff got a HUGE groan;
The master’s dog is a few inches from the camera and we hear:” I miss living with Michael Vick!”
Capacity turn out in Milford, Ct., which I could not believe. I’ve been to about 4 of these and it’s always been half or under. What happened?? But anyway, I was really ticked off when buying the ticket and told $15! When did they make THAT leap!? C’mon. that’s a little steep guys! Anyone else ticked off at that price?
Anyway, my hardest laughs were not even riff-induced. I laughed my hardest watching the make-out couple taking turns making long facial twitches that defied logic. And I never tire looking at Diane Mahree. The manos II clip did nothing for me and the ‘take it easy’ song was embarrassing. Looking forward to Birdemic and fathom’s The Birds and Frankenstein events.