So on August 19th there was a RiffTrax Live Show of
Reefer Madness broadcast to hundreds of theaters nationwide as a special event. It was the third such RiffTrax special event, but the first that I saw (I missed the two prior movies due to being broke, but I have also seen the three guys live twice in SF) The RiffTrax guys are Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Bill Corbett, who you might remember from Mystery Science Theater 3000. Now they essentially do the same thing, except as downloadable mp3 commentaries you listen to as you watch the films.
I was a little wary of the Reefer Madness film, as I already own the Legend colorized DVD version with Mike Nelson commentary, and the Three-Riffers version that has commentary by Mike, Kevin, and Bill. So I was hoping for some new content.
Getting there early paid off, as instead of the normal lame “movie trivia” cards there were special RiffTrax movie trivia cards. Those were awesome. The soundtrack playing was also songs done by Mike, Kevin, and Bill (available as the RiffTones album on RiffTrax.com)
Before the flick there was
3 shorts:
More Dangerous Than Dynamite – a 1930s join that educated me that women used to use GASOLINE to wash clothes and do dry cleaning! Luckily, this awful short educated those women as to how they should have their clothes professionally washed in gasoline so they aren’t horribly burned by badly animated fire.
At Your Fingertips: Grasses – a 1970s educational short about how grass is totally neat. Grass grass, not marijuana grass. But being on marijuana might help you get through this mess. Did you know you can weave grass together and make headdresses? Because you can. And they’ll spend many many minutes making headdresses. And also horrific clay creatures that are the embodiment of Satan.
Some Cartoon – a 1930s cartoon about two dog-things (father and son) going to the north pole, complete with lots of side “jokes” of various arctic animals doing things. Eventually, the child dies and the father dog-thing robs his son, but quickly puts the money back when the child comes back to life, only to be murdered by what I think is a bear. The father abandoned his son again to hump the north pole or something, then the bear thing kills him. The end!
There was also two quick shorts done by Lowtax from SomethingAwful and his five year old daughter, which were pretty cute.
Finally, Reefer Madness begins. The story of an old creepy dude who lectures the audience. He tells a story that is the real story that is about some innocent kids who get drug into the world of Reefer and Madness. Smoking reefer will cause you to hit and run, uncontrollably laugh, have sex, get away with murder, go insane, get stds, be a forty-year-old high school student, fall in a fountain, get your girlfriend almost raped and then murdered, be framed for murder, and have an old judge yell at you. Then the old creepy dude returns to yell at the audience again.
As for the Riffs, sadly, some of the jokes I remembered from the other versions I saw. There were new jokes, including some related to a contest sponsored at RiffTrax.com. I was hoping for more newer jokes, but at least seeing them with an audience helped me enjoy the reruns better. RiffTrax also announced the next show will be a Halloween show on October 28 – House on Haunted Hill (Vincent Price Version) As this is another film that I have both the Mike only and Three-Riffers edition, I am not sure if I’ll go to this one. But possibly as I am seeing less films in the theater and it’s easier to justify special events like this than some random film that will be on DVD in a few months. I do hope they do some more original content for the special events in the futures.
