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McBain – New RiffTrax VOD film!


RiffTrax has released yet another VOD full feature movie, the Christopher Walker actioner McBain! Yes, the movie that has nothing to do with The Simpsons except sharing a name with their long-running joke series is now a RiffTrax event for the whole family! If you have one of those families that like watching Christopher Walken doing things like walking and talking and shooting people. So, buckle up and call up granny, because it’s Walken time!

WARNING! Contains naughty language and Christopher Walken impressions!

Let’s get this out of the way: Yes, this movie is called McBain. No, it has nothing to do with what you’re thinking: it’s not a biopic of Diane McBain, star of the 1960 TV series Surfside 6. Oh, or that Simpsons character either.

No, there’s no Mendoza for McBain to take out in this one. That’s just in the silly movie series The Simpsons came up with. Probably only took them a couple minutes too. Mendoza…Ha! This McBain is much more legitimate and creative. Its drug dealer is named Escobar.

Christopher Walken (Mousehunt, Joe Dirt, The Country Bears, Gigli, Kangaroo Jack) stars as the titular McBain. When the man who rescued him from a POW camp is executed by a Colombian dictator, it’s time for McBain to put together a ragtag group to avenge their friend. He rounds up a smooth talking technology expert, a black guy who is afraid of flying, and a guy who repeatedly asks him if it’s really a good idea to rip off The A-Team so blatantly.

Finally, they’re ready to take out the dictator and what follows is possibly the most incoherent mess of an action film there ever was. The body count soars, plot threads are introduced and discarded at a moment’s notice and a WrestleMania hat is given prominent screentime. Evidently, nobody ever told the producers of McBain that 80s action flicks were out of style, or that it’s not very badass to make your supposed action hero a welder (McBain is a professional welder, we forgot to mention that until now. Also, his first name is Bobby. Both of these things are true.)

McBain is the movie that will have you saying, “Seriously? Christopher Walken did this only three years before Pulp Fiction?” Join Mike, Kevin, Bill and Rainier Wolfcastle for McBain: Let’s Get Silly.

McBain RiffTrax

RiffTrax Presents Night of the Shorts IV: Riffizens on Patrol – RiffTrax Trip Report

Rifftrax Shorts SFSketchfest

It’s the time of the year when SFSketchfest puts on a bazillion awesome shows that would break my budget for life if I went to all of them. So instead I just go to the ones I can afford, and it seems every year the main one is the latest RiffTrax live riffing. This year is no different, as RiffTrax Presents Night of the Shorts IV: Riffizens on Patrol became the show to go see live.

As usual for a Night of the Shorts spot, we got a collection of “educational” films, of which the educational value is suspect at best, and non-existent for most. Several of the shorts are available for purchase off the RiffTrax site, though at least two are not available in any form yet. Seeing the live riffs adds an extra sense of enjoyment, as you are in a crowded theater full of energy (the wonderful Castro Theater) and the energy feeds the performers, who give it their all. Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Bill Corbett were joined by several guest riffers, though they did brave two of the shorts on their lonesome. So let’s dig in…

Welcome Home Norman – People will remember this short from the Manos RiffTrax Live (which was also replaying in theaters nationwide that day!), as Norman is a guy who can’t understand parking, parking lots, or putting suitcases in the trunk. What he can understand is giving a sigh that emotes the complete destroying of all happiness in the world.

Perc! Pop! Sprinkle! (w/ Guest Riffers Cole Stratton and Janet Varney) – A confusing short about teaching children body movement or something, by having them imitate random household appliances. And various different kinds of lawn sprinklers. The scenes of the children “moving” have a weird interpretive dance feel, and it’s obvious that most of this film’s budget when to whatever drugs the director was on.

Choking: To Save a Life (w/ Guest Riffer Kevin McDonald) – A very overly-explaining film about choking, complete with long demonstrations of man on man Heimlich and back-slapping. And then man on boy. Very, very long. Almost as if there was a different, hidden message for this short. Highlight was the Orson Welles character who stopped eating due to the narrator continually talking about how dangerous choking is.

More Dangerous Than Dynamite (w/ Guest Riffer Adam Savage) – When I first saw this short at the Reefer Madness Live Show, I couldn’t believe that people once used gasoline to clean clothes at home. But it happened enough the dry cleaning industry teamed up with the government of California to make propaganda films to scare people into knocking it off. It’s even more surreal seeing it again on the big screen, with Mythbusters and explosives expert Adam Savage also incredibly confused that gas was used in such a way.

Cooking Terms – Women, don’t know nothing about words, even words from fancy books like recipe books. Cooking Terms will teach those women the important words like “boil” and “brown” so they can get back to what they do best, making cake for lunch.

A clown makeup short that I can’t remember the name of (w/ Guest Riffer Kristen Schaal) – Who wants to watch a short where a talking mirror convinces a sad mime and some ICP acolytes that being a clown isn’t what’s down in modern America? Well, too bad, because that’s what this is! If you enjoy children in freaking clown makeup acting like hooligans, then you will love whatever the name of this short was. As it doesn’t seem to be for sale, perhaps we are all saved from the clown invasion.

At Your Fingertips: Cylinders (w/ Guest Riffer Paul F. Tompkins) – At Your Fingertips is the greatest series of films that were ever made, so it’s fitting that we watch as children construct garbage from old oatmeal canisters and toilet paper tubes. Worth watching for the ridiculous zebra and the robot torture.

Another fun year with some fun shorts, in a packed house. Mike’s return after a two year absence was also welcome. I am looking forward to next year already.

PACIFIC RIM

Christmas with RiffTrax: Santa’s Village of Madness – new RiffTrax VOD

Santas Village Madness RiffTrax

Christmas is a time where many live broken lives, the horror of Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny flashing in their brains. But if you thought that was the end of it, you are mistaken. Because the RiffTrax guys have dug up some of K. Gordon Murray’s Christmas shorts and put them together in Christmas with RiffTrax: Santa’s Village of Madness. Yes, the animal suits are strong in these. And you will be afraid. Very afraid. I’ve seen these shorts. I know them. They are among the worst things made by man or monster.

Ah, Christmas. That magical time of year when Santa travels all over the universe by means of the fifth dimension, (which his close friend Merlin invented in a floating space castle), delivering toys that were made by a skunk in a factory overseen by a wolf in a village whose head of security, Puss in Boots, occasionally has to fend off giant ogres.

A story so familiar and comforting, it’s like wrapping yourself in a warm blanket. By which we mean it’s so insane and twisted, it makes the Ice Cream Bunny look like Tiny Tim Cratchit.

Christmas with RiffTrax: Santa’s Village of Madness is three shorts from the mad mind of K. Gordon Murray, who brought you the MST3K episode Santa Claus. Featuring cheap mascot costumes, terrifying music, an utter lack of coherence and a Santa who appears to have been dead for most of the shoot, they are some of the most astounding things we have ever laid eyes on, and will quickly become a new yuletide tradition, provided your eggnog is adequately spiked.

Mike, Kevin and Bill will be your hosts throughout your journey, introducing each short with their best brave faces as they stare into the abyss of Christmas Skunks and magic flowers that subvert the space/time continuum!

You can order it here

Check out a sample:

Tourist Trap – new RiffTrax VOD title!

With a new RiffTrax VOD release I will once again randomly complain about how I’m behind on catching up with the RiffTrax VOD releases. So now let’s get even further behind with Tourist Trap! Of course, I’d rather have a wealth of RiffTrax titles than an empty table, and if you need extra titles for your Turkey Day MST3K marathon, here is a late entry just for you! Make your guests feel trapped…Tourist Trapped! That will teach them for bring imitation cranberry sauce. How dare they!!! This isn’t what the Pilgrims killed the Germans for!

As the description says:

Capitalizing on the widely-publicized series of unsolved murders that occurred at the Liberace Museum in Las Vegas in the late 1970s*, Tourist Trap is a slasher film with all the classic elements. It’s got a big beefy killer in overalls and a mask, portrayed by Chuck Connors, known primarily for his television role as The Rifleman but also for his 400 pound chin. And, of course, a couple of scantily clad babes, including replacement Charlie’s Angel Tanya Roberts, who would later make MILF history as the neighbor in That 70s Show.

For some reason the babes are on a road trip with a girl who’s sort of a more conservative version of Sarah, Plain and Tall when their car breaks down (you don’t say!) near a freaky roadside museum. It’s full of creepy mannequins that big Chuck operates via his never-explained telekinesis, proving that if people started developing X-Men style mutant powers in the real world their first impulse wouldn’t be to rule the world OR try to save it, but instead to perv out and build a giant whackin’ emporium full of RealDolls.

The girls, naturally, trust museum owner Chuck completely. They don’t realize he’s the killer picking them off one by one, a ruse that even Scooby and Shaggy would immediately see through, even with red-rimmed eyes after hotboxing the van. Throw in a twist ending so shocking it’ll leave you saying “huh, I guess that was the ending,” and you’ve got a Tourist Trap even more perplexing/disappointing than Santa Cruz’s famous Mystery Spot (where, incidentally, the Colby Jack cheese blend was first invented**).

Put on your Hawaiian shirt, fanny pack, and Teva sandals with socks, then join Mike, Kevin, and Bill in the Tourist Trap!

*not factual, this is just an urban legend we’re trying to get off the ground
**this is another one

Get it at RiffTrax.com!

Tourist Trap RiffTrax

Nightmare at Noon – new RiffTrax VOD

It’s time once again for another RiffTrax VOD release! It is . This time, we return to the world of Wings Houser, who somehow had a movie career made up entirely of films about corporations mutating rednecks! Somehow, this happened, and Nightmare at Noon was born. Mutant was hysterical, Nightmare at Noon can only be a nightmare of laughs. At 12pm.

Nightmare at Noon might sound like what happens a few hours after trying items from Taco Bell’s breakfast menu, but in fact it’s a movie! A totally 80s movie that reunites two stars from our VOD release Mutant: the terrifyingly-faced Wings Hauser and his gruff, permanently drunk pal, Bo Hopkins. And, weirdly enough, they are once again facing off against a rural town full of people turned into ghouls by environmental contamination. But whereas Wings played a young whiny sarcastic yuppie in Mutant, this time he’s…a slightly older whiny sarcastic yuppie. And while Bo played a small town sheriff in Mutant, this time he’s…a cop who lost his job for doing the right thing. But it’s not a sequel! Somehow! Basically, they took what made Mutant such a good movie (nothing), threw in George Kennedy (yes, that George Kennedy), some cleavage (not George Kennedy’s) and a ridiculously long helicopter chase that was probably pulled from an Airwolf rerun, shook it all up and poured a big glass of Nightmare at Noon!

It’s worth noting that this movie is also known by another title, Death Street U.S.A. (kinda like how Mutant also had another name, Night Shadows). It’s also worth noting, according to the movie itself, that Wings Hauser’s character loves croissants, but HATES them when they’re microwaved. Might we fixate on this bizarre character detail? Oh, we might. We just might.

Help Mike, Kevin and Bill stuff croissants into a microwave until Wings drops to his knees in despair at this Nightmare at Noon!

Nightmare At Noon Rifftrax

There is no parking in the Future Zone – new RiffTrax VOD!

RiffTrax VOD titles continue to come out faster than I can watch them, to the point where sequels to ones I haven’t watched yet now exist! Obviously, this is a conspiracy to get me to take time off work just to watch RiffTrax VOD flicks. Which is a good idea…

Future Zone is the sequel to Future Force, in which David Carradine is a cop with a Nintendo Power Glove that fights crime. In the Future. With Force! Except now, he fights crime in the Future. With Zone! Whatever that means. Probably something about loading and unloading. Let’s let this copy/paste from RiffTrax.com explain the rest…

When we last left him, things were looking up for John Tucker. He had landed a babe way out of his league. That nerdy kid who was always bothering him had been gunned down. He owned the world’s most powerful glove, which he occasionally admired as it sat in a box in the back of his dirty Jeep.

But Tucker’s world is about to come crashing down when a mysterious visitor shows up at COP headquarters. (Unable to decide whether the acronym was COPI or COPS, the creative team* behind Future Zone just dropped the fourth letter altogether. Also, they may have moved from LA to Mobile, Alabama. The movie is very unclear about this. Oh, and the main bad guys in this one were in Future Force, but we’re pretty sure they are playing different characters here. Lest these changes scare off the potential sequel viewer, do not fear: Carradine’s beer belly remains very much intact.)

Anyways, the mysterious visitor shows up. He’s wearing a mesh shirt and seems to know a little too much about John Tucker. Who is this mystery man and where did he come from? This is a question you will ponder for exactly four milliseconds before you, like every other non-brain damaged person, quickly realize “That is obviously his son from the future.”

How did he travel back in time? “My friends built a time portal,” he casually mentions, never to address it again. Yeah. It’s that kind of movie.

But the family affair doesn’t just stop there! In a delightful twist, Carradine’s real life wife plays his onscreen wife. The chemistry between Carradine and the woman who sold him out to the media after his death with quotes like “He had his kinky moments” and “He would go to a hardware store and buy the stuff” really is the emotional heart of Future Zone.

Mike, Kevin and Bill splashed a fresh coat of mud onto their Chevy Blazer and make sure any and all gloves are firmly secured in an out of the way box as they hop on the highway to the Future Zone!

*hahahahahahahahahahaha

So if you enjoy Zone-related future, check out Future Zone today!

Future Zone