Rifftrax Live returns; & why you need to see it!

Those who can make movies, do. And those who can make movies, but not make them very good, can expect to end up getting the Rifftrax treatment. And this is why you should care.

First, the back story. The elder readers among us are probably be aware of a strange, funny program called Mystery Science Theater 3000 that started in the late '80s. Also known as MST3K, this was a TV show that took full-length movies of varying degrees of dreadfulness and added the one ingredient they needed to make them watchable: snark. Barely visible at the bottom of the screen were three silhouetted figures: a human host and his two robot companions who, in order to save their sanity, talked back to the movie. (Joel, and later Mike, and their 'bots Tom and Crow, were forced by a mad scientist to watch terrible the absolute dregs of cinema, like "The Creeping Terror" and "Manos: The Hands of Fate" because...you know, never mind why they watched the movies. Just go to the library or your mom's dusty DVD collection and grab a copy and watch.) The show was a scream...Joel or Mike and the 'bots picked on continuity errors, bad writing, and the general incompetence of the filmmakers, with plenty of accessible pop culture riffs, obscure references and other funny stuff tossed for extra laughs.

But as good as the show was, it's been over for more than a decade. Mediocre directors like Michael Bay might have felt some relief that their "Armageddons" and "Pearl Harbors" were exempt from the drubbing they would have gotten at the hands of Mike, Crow and Tom Servo. However, you can't keep a good idea down, so three of the actors from MST3K reconvened and formed an outfit called Rifftrax, which was no longer beholden to networks like Comedy Central and Sci-Fi (which aired Mystery Science Theater) for broadcast time. They also no longer had to worry about prima donna auteurs like Sandy Frank (of the Gamera series) withholding the rights to their masterpieces to revenge their hurt feelings. The Rifftrax formula consists of an audio track you download to your computer, which you play along to your DVD of "Twilight" or whatever. Hilarity ensues. There are tons of titles available on the website, and they are dirt cheap. For a few dollars more, there are also some movies you can download (Birdemic!) with the snark already included for your convenience. Check it out and sample some movie-riffing glory at Rifftrax.com. 

But there's more, and here we get to the point of the post: the good folks at Rifftrax, Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett, have put together a few live shows, where they skewer a movie in front of a lucky audience in some theater and the whole hysterical thing is broadcast live to theaters across our great nation. For the price of a regular movie (which could be really crappy, for all you know) you could watch a live Rifftrax event. In the past, the boys have eviscerated such gems as Plan 9 from Outer Space, Reefer Madness and House on Haunted Hill. They have special guests like Weird Al and Jonathan Coulton and some fun short films as well. All the while, they are onstage, mics in hand, dropping funny remarks left and right. One recent extremely wrong Christmas-themed short (see here: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer) made me laugh so hard I thought I was going to pass out. Every time I have gone to one of these, I have been rewarded with more belly-laughs per minute than any other entertainment experience I have ever encountered. Even the slides before the show starts are funny.

Funny thing, though. Each time I have been to one, the theater was nearly empty. No more than a dozen people were enjoying this premium comedy experience. I don't know how much longer the Rave folks will make this available if only a dozen people are partaking of it. So be in the audience this August 17th when the guys turn their best riffs on "Jack the Giant Killer." The show takes place at the Rave 14 at Fallen Timbers. Get a group of your friends and go. Laugh, a lot. You will enjoy yourself, I guarantee it. You may even find yourself downloading the Rifftrax version of "Armageddon" (it's therapeutic) or raiding someone's MST3K collection. Because bad movies will always be with us; Rifftrax just shows us we can fight back, and have fun doing it.