Many years ago, my buddy Ash and I went to the video store in an attempt to find something we hadn’t seen yet. What we settled on was Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie. Making Comedy Central available was not a big priority in my small town, so I had never watched an episode of the television show, and had no idea what I what to expect. MST3K: The Movie made me laugh harder than I could remember, and it instantly became one of my favorite “go to” movies. For those of you who don’t know what the show is; it is basically a man and two puppet robots that watch terrible movies and make fun of them. Simple and brilliant. Sadly, like most television shows, MST3K had to come to an end. And while there are almost 200 two hour long episodes, I found that after a few years I wanted something new. Luckily I wasn’t the only person who felt this way, and where there is demand, supply usually follows. What was born was Rifftrax. Rifftrax is made up of several of the people who made fun of movies on MST3K, and is essentially the same formula of making fun of movies. What makes Rifftrax different is that they are no longer bound, mostly because of copyrights, to just watch bad older movies. The cast takes on current and classic blockbusters like the Star Wars films and the Harry Potter series. They sidestep copyright laws by just recording a commentary that listeners can download and play along with the film. It is kind of like the whole Dark Side of the Moon/Wizard of Oz thing, but much cooler, and fewer velvet black light posters.
On occasion Rifftrax will also do live events that are streamed into theaters around the country. I have been fortunate enough to attend a few of these screenings, and they do not disappoint. Most recently I went to see them make fun of a movie that I used to watch all the time as a child, Jack the Giant Killer. This certainly isn’t as famous as many of the movies used by Rifftrax, but it still holds a special place in my heart. It turns out the movie wasn’t as good as I remember it being when I was 7 years old, but it provided perfect fodder for the Rifftrax crew. Explaining the show would be too difficult, so just watch the clip below, and visit Rifftrax.com when you get a chance. They even show you which movies are available on Netflix streaming in case you don’t own every movie they riff about.
I do appreciate that my last post was about how much I hate people talking during movies, and then follow it up with a post about how much I love certain people talking during certain movies.