Finally Super Mario Bros. gets the RiffTrax parody treatment!
The world, characters, music, even the sound effects of the Mario video games are among the most iconic entertainment creations of the 20th century. So naturally if you made a Mario movie, you’d want to abandon everything that people liked and recognized about them, and then just in case people were still willing to give it the benefit of the doubt, throw in The Happening star John Leguizamo.
Let’s say you went to the cinema hoping to see your favorite character from Mario 3, the red carnivorous fish Big Bertha. Ignoring the fact that you are a moron for your favorite character not being the King of Ice World when he’s been transformed into a seal, you might be disappointed to to learn that in the movie, Big Bertha is instead a large, violent woman with prodigious cleavage who wears S & M-esque garb. (Or maybe you’re into that. In that case, you’re probably not welcome in many of the theaters that were showing Super Mario Bros.)
So Big Bertha isn’t a fish, the goombas aren’t tiny, stompable, sentient mushrooms, and there’s nary a Tanooki suit to be found. No big deal, as long as the Mario Brothers are still brothers, right? What’s that? For no apparent reason Luigi is the adopted ward of Mario? Well, maybe it could still work as long as the movie isn’t an incoherent, hideous mess full of shouting and chaos and cheap sets and… Why are you shaking your head sadly?
Strap on your Kuribo’s shoes and join Mike, Kevin, and Bill up on Jugem’s Cloud for riffing on the best live action Mario property that doesn’t contain Captain Lou Albano.
RiffTrax blasts its way to television with Total Riff Off!
The three episodes premiere April 1st and are called Demon Bat, Badass Dion Bird, and Pig Love. Prepare your VCRs/DVRs/Google Glass Recording Programs!
No word yet on if the shows will be available on RiffTrax.com or if they are the trial run of a full series (or just an April Fools Day prank!)
Cyborg Cop 2 – New RiffTrax VOD!
But enough about how you owe me a bunch of money due to your terrible drinking problem, let’s talk about Cyborg Cop 2. It’s crazy, the trailer should be enough to sell you, and if you need more, their cool writeup is below. Cyborg Cop 2 is available on RiffTrax.com. It looks cool enough that I might actually make time I don’t have to get caught up with the RiffTrax VODs and check it out.
Cyborg Cop 2 is the special kind of terrible movie that has failed before you’re even done reading the title. That’s right folks, Cyborg Cop 2 does not even manage to contain a single cyborg cop. Technically, the main character, Jack Ryan (before his shadow was recruited) is a DEA agent, so he is actually neither a cyborg nor a cop.
The second thing we should tell you about Cyborg Cop 2 is that multiple characters wear gigantic fanny packs all the time. Like the kind a tourist without any dignity would wear instead of just sporting a sandwich board that says “Please pickpocket me and my idiot family.” The fanny packs are never addressed or commented on. Perhaps they are meant to distract from the fact that there is not a cyborg cop in the movie Cyborg Cop 2.
None of the RiffTrax performers have seen Cyborg Cop 1, nor have any members of the writing staff seen Cyborg Cop 1, yet we were able to follow the plot fairly well. This is not meant to imply that we did not have any questions. We did, namely “So is the cop a cyborg?” and “Seriously, is there a cyborg cop in this thing or not?”
Take David Carradine’s Future Force, remove the robotic remote controlled arm as it is makes the cop too much like a cyborg, and you’ve got Cyborg Cop 2. Strap on your fanny pack and join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for low budget action cheese at its finest.
Note: contains some pointless nudity.
Night of the Lepus – New RiffTrax VOD!
Buy RiffTrax Night of the Lepus here!
RABBIT! The very word strikes fear into the heart of anyone with a very strange definition of the word fear! Their very existence seems to bring terror, what with their gnawing on vegetables and hopping and…twitching their little tails… Starring in a surprisingly wide array of beloved books, cartoons, and other children’s entertainment, OK, look, rabbits aren’t scary, at all. But what if, through a combination of terrible editing and confusing camera angles, we pretended like they were very big? Hey, where are you going!
So it goes in Night of the Lepus (Latin for rabbit, as characters frequently remind each other and the audience.) When rabbits overrun a farmer’s land, he turns to a local scientist for a cure rather than poison them. Thus the true message of this movie: poison rules. When the scientist’s cure backfires, the rabbits grow to enormous size and the real conflict begins: that of the special effects team vs the movie producers who evidently budgeted next to nothing for the special effects team.
Using an innovative technique known as “replaying the same damn shot over and over again” the makers of Night of the Lepus manage to create the eerily convincing sensation that you are watching normal sized rabbits run towards a camera in slow motion. Occasionally they run across the screen right to left in slow motion. That Cadbury commercial where the rabbit clucks like a chicken is infinitely scarier. So is the mustache that DeForest Kelley sports in this movie.
Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for Night of the Lepus, the least scary thing involving rabbits since Bugs Bunny dressed up like a woman and seduced Elmer Fudd.
Treasure of the Amazon – New RiffTrax VOD!
Journey with us into the heart of the Amazon in this cheesy adventure film from…1985? Really? 1985? You’re sure this didn’t come out in 1962? You’re sure. This came out two years after Return of the Jedi? A year after Temple of Doom? The same year as Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend? What, B:SLL is a very common point of reference for people. William Katt fans consider it his “understated masterpiece,” his Bob Dylan’s “Oh Mercy,” his Coppola’s “One From The Heart,” the Birdie the Early Bird of McDonaldland characters.
We apologize for the direction the previous paragraph took. Despite being filmed in 1985, Treasure of the Amazon is not “instantly woefully outdated,” it’s old school! It’s from a time back when men had beards, other men wore really tiny shorts, and other men wore diapers. When every voyage into the Amazon had at least one medieval friar on board. Add in a whole bunch of classic National Geographic style toplessness, Donald Pleasance as a treasure hunting nazi, a diva who alternates between a southern and British accent, and a cast that can’t remember whether they’re supposed to be alligators or crocodiles, and you’ve got yourself one mess of a movie.
Book a ride at your nearest discount seaplane emporium, strap on a bulky diaper of your own, and get ready to defile an ancient burial ground. What could possibly go wrong? Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill, (who all pony up the 80 bucks for free Prime shipping every year) for Treasure of the Amazon!
Attention: Contains a whole bunch of National Geographic style nudity.
What are you waiting for, get that nudity and Nazi stuff now!
Dr. Who: Daleks – Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D. – New RiffTrax VOD!
The Doctor is in, and he’s less canonical than ever! Yes, Grand Moff Peter Cushing is back in this follow-up to fan favorite Dr. Who and the Daleks. Those cheerful, not-at-all-soul-crushingly-annoying Daleks have come to Earth, and they’ve brought along the longest, most ridiculous movie title in Rifftrax history. Luckily, the fate of the human race is safe in the hands of Dr. Who (an elderly human, not alien, no powers, possibly not even a doctor), his young granddaughter, and the menagerie of other people he’s chosen to recklessly endanger this time.
The Doc and his crew of allies/victims travel to 2150 AD for reasons that are, somehow, seriously, never explained. Once there, they find humanity dominated and subjugated by a race of heartless authoritarian overlords – so, y’know, a big bold departure for Doctor Who and sci-fi stories in general.
Will they save Earth? Will the title get any longer? Will our dashing hero get home in time for Matlock? Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill to find out in Dr. Who: Daleks etc. etc. so on and so forth AD!