iJust Finished Watching

[WhyDontTheyLook]

Quiptracks -- "The Covenant" (2006) -- If you ever wanted to see a movie where some Abercrombie & Fitch models had warlock powers and used them in the silliest and douchiest ways possible, here's your movie.  They jump really far, levitate their SUVs, flip skirts, throw kegs, and worry because apparently, magic equals drugs, but only if you're old.  Oh, and there's a fifth warlock who's trying to kill them all, the adorable shirtless scamp.

Quiptracks is great in their takedown of this weak stew of rejected leftovers from 'Charmed.'  Particularly near the end, where the effects-heavy final battle would've provoked laughter as it is, they upped it to near-hysterical.  (The movie started streaming on Netflix in the U.S. not too long ago, so if you ever wanted to check Quiptracks out, this is a good place to start.)

[ https://orderoftheleague.com/products/the-covenant ]

FireRiffs -- "The Amazing Spider-Man" (2012) -- Peter Parker has problems.  The main one being he's being played by Andrew Garfield, sure, but there are others.  They're solved, or at least changed, by getting powers and putting on a mask (though the solution gets tested because he's always taking off his mask).  He fights a lizard man who, improbably, is not David Icke, and spends the rest of his time failing to figure out why his parents ditched him, and why his girlfriend hasn't died yet.

This film wasn't nearly as good as I vaguely remembered it being, with Garfield's Parker being far more cringe-inducing.  I'm glad FireRiffs gave it the consistently-funny mockery it had coming to it.  Lots of great lines throughout, frequently sending up the logical failings of the concept, or the scenes, or the script, or... you get the idea.

[ https://gumroad.com/l/FireRiffsSpiderman ]

[fireyf]

FireRiffs -- "The Amazing Spider-Man" (2012) -- Peter Parker has problems.  The main one being he's being played by Andrew Garfield, sure, but there are others.  They're solved, or at least changed, by getting powers and putting on a mask (though the solution gets tested because he's always taking off his mask).  He fights a lizard man who, improbably, is not David Icke, and spends the rest of his time failing to figure out why his parents ditched him, and why his girlfriend hasn't died yet.

This film wasn't nearly as good as I vaguely remembered it being, with Garfield's Parker being far more cringe-inducing.  I'm glad FireRiffs gave it the consistently-funny mockery it had coming to it.  Lots of great lines throughout, frequently sending up the logical failings of the concept, or the scenes, or the script, or... you get the idea.

[ https://gumroad.com/l/FireRiffsSpiderman ]

Very glad to hear you liked it.  Perhaps someday the sequel will get riffed too.  That one was Spider-man 3 bad!

[WhyDontTheyLook]

J.C. Walsh -- "Werewolf in a Girls' Dormitory" -- The owner (or chief admin, or top creep, it's never quite clear) is blackmailed by a student he's having an affair with.  He's trying to cover it up, but has to deal with some inconvenient attacks by a rubber-mask-wearing creature that's supposed to be a werewolf.  Several characters are bored to death before the truth is discovered.

Solo riffer J.C. Walsh does a bit better going against this one than ICWXP did, but the dull, talky nature of the movie works against him as well.  The riffs themselves are entertaining, but this film drags them down more than the riffs lift the viewing experience up.

[ https://www.rifftrax.com/iriff/werewolf-in-a-girls-dormitory ]

Ice on Mars -- "Star Trek: Voyager - 'Emanations' -- Some Voyager crewfolk visit an asteroid, hoping to mine some MacGuffinnium, only to discover there are dead, mummified bodies just showing up at random.  Harry Kim screws up, and the rest of the episode is about finding him, and wheezing on about death and the afterlife.  Michael Bradley and Scix Maddix are funny throughout this dull and silly episode, even though the show barely gives them enough to work with.

[ https://www.rifftrax.com/iriff/star-trek-voyager-emanations ]
[ https://orderoftheleague.com/products/stv-108-emanations ]

Ice on Mars -- "Star Trek: Voyager - 'Faces' -- A Voyager away team is farting around on an asteroid (yes, again) when Torres and Paris get kidnapped by the pizza-faced Vidiians (aka 'those dorks from 'Phage'').  They do some mad science stuff to Torres to split her into two beings - an all-human version and an all-klingon version.  Which is either the worst idea for a Doublemint gum ad, or the best.  The riffing (this time from Michael Bradley and Kaisha Medford) is even better, which may be because Vidiian stories are always full of wtf-ery to react to.

[ https://www.rifftrax.com/iriff/star-trek-voyager-faces ]
[ https://orderoftheleague.com/products/stv-113-faces ]

[Darth Geek]

I just realized I only got up to Part 9 of the Great Alaskan Mystery (and I missed part8). I will try to finish these this weekend.

Wow, I completely forgot about this. I still need to catch up on the rest of these.

[WhyDontTheyLook]

Ronin Fox Trax -- "Batman" -- Michael Keaton dresses up as an inflexible bat-like person and goes around punching people. Jack Nicholson gets doused with chemicals which make him both more murdery and more Jack-Nicholsony.  They fight over Kim Basinger while Prince sings.  Not a terrible movie, by any means, but not nearly so far from Schumacher-land as you might remember.

The riffs from Ronin Fox and Vampirica are excellent, and made the whole rewatching very entertaining. I especially enjoyed the long section about Batman and how he drew a clear line at refusing to kill and why that made him a great hero (and the payoff at the end).  Fun from beginning to end!

[ https://www.rifftrax.com/iriff/ronin-fox-trax-batman ]
[ https://gumroad.com/RoninFoxTrax ]

Toast and Rice -- "The Fat Spy" -- A group of teenagers look for a sunken Spanish galleon on an 'uninhabited' island (with its own fully functional docks and airport). Twin brothers and Phyllis Diller search for the fountain of youth. Everyone sings a lot, including people who have no business singing. Jayne Mansfield and Brian Donlevy show up to remind us they used to be in better movies.  If this doesn't sound coherent to you... it's even less so when watched.

There is a school of thought in riffing that one shouldn't riff comedies, or farces, or spoofs. But does that still hold if the movie contains nothing that's actually funny? Toast and Rice does a good job taking this one on, providing the only laughs in an otherwise cringeworthy sixties snooze. He also gets angry at the movie, a lot, but you know what? It deserves every bit of it.

[ https://www.rifftrax.com/iriff/the-fat-spy-vod-movie-from-toast-and-rice ]
[ https://gumroad.com/toastandrice ]

[WhyDontTheyLook]

The Turkey Shoot with Scott Zee -- "Hitler: Dead or Alive" -- In possibly the least successful video game adaptation ever, several characters who aren't either sexy or Asian travel to Germany to kill Hitler, who also isn't... wait a minute. *checks notes*  Okay, so this doesn't have anything to do with a video game.  A group of mobsters travel to Germany to kill Hitler in order to claim a million-dollar reward, and things go screwy.

This is Scott Zee's show, so I knew going in it was gonna be hilarious.  That proved true, of course--the riffs here were killer, and the performance top notch.  The only sad thing is that I'm now out of Turkey Shoot riffs to see for the first time.

[ https://www.rifftrax.com/iriff/hitlerdead-or-alive-the-turkey-shoot-with-scott-zee-vod ]

Ralph and Rick Resent -- "Prehistoric Women" (1967) -- A foppish white hunter in Darkest Africa(tm) gets transported to the set of One Million Years BC by a giant white rhino horn, which isn't at all like it sounds, except in the ways that it is.  There he flops into the middle of the struggle of some blonde white female slaves against their brunette white female overlords.  A fake white rhino shows up there, too.

This was a pretty good movie for a riff choice, though not one of the easiest to track down (you'll need to, since this is a commentary-only riff).  Ralph and Rick are entertaining as always in picking apart this quick-n-cheap Hammer film, with lots of good lines and repartee.  And now I'm out of Ralph and Rick riffs, too... hmph.

[ https://www.rifftrax.com/iriff/ralph-and-rick-resent-prehistoric-women-1967 ]

[Darth Geek]

The only sad thing is that I'm now out of Turkey Shoot riffs to see for the first time.

Have you seen his riffs on Dailymotion?
https://www.dailymotion.com/Scott_Zee

Nothing too recent, but he's got a bunch he put up there  when he couldn't use the iRiff section anymore. I know that's the only place to see Assignment Terror, The Night The World Exploded, Death Rage, and couple of shorts.

[WhyDontTheyLook]

The only sad thing is that I'm now out of Turkey Shoot riffs to see for the first time.

Have you seen his riffs on Dailymotion?
https://www.dailymotion.com/Scott_Zee

Nothing too recent, but he's got a bunch he put up there  when he couldn't use the iRiff section anymore. I know that's the only place to see Assignment Terror, The Night The World Exploded, Death Rage, and couple of shorts.

Yep, I've seen all those.  Lot of good stuff there.

I think the only one of his I haven't seen, since it's not available anywhere anymore, is his take on the OG Star Trek "Wolf in the Fold".

[Darth Geek]

The only sad thing is that I'm now out of Turkey Shoot riffs to see for the first time.

Have you seen his riffs on Dailymotion?
https://www.dailymotion.com/Scott_Zee

Nothing too recent, but he's got a bunch he put up there  when he couldn't use the iRiff section anymore. I know that's the only place to see Assignment Terror, The Night The World Exploded, Death Rage, and couple of shorts.

Yep, I've seen all those.  Lot of good stuff there.

I think the only one of his I haven't seen, since it's not available anywhere anymore, is his take on the OG Star Trek "Wolf in the Fold".

I think I have that one. I will check after work.

[WhyDontTheyLook]

Quiptracks -- "The Lost World: Jurassic Park" -- Super-rich layabout-in-bed John Hammond has lost control of his corporation, which has sent thick-muscled guys in tight shirts to his Other Dinosaur Island to box up some T-Rexes and raptors and such for either the worst or the best Youtube Unboxing Video ever.  So he sends Action Hero Jeff Goldblum to the island to ramble at everyone until they see sense.  Everyone ends up running from dinosaurs a lot.

It's been a long time since I saw this movie, so I'd mostly forgotten how oddly forced it felt.  Dumbly enjoyable for the most part, but with a lot of contrivances just to get the characters into dino-teeth range.  Watching it again with the Quiptracks commentary was great -- bloated cash-grab sequels deserve much mocking, and the guys delivered in spades here.  I'd love to hear them take it to JP3 someday.

[ Ordinarily, I'd link to the riff here, but it doesn't appear to be up on the OrderoftheLeague.com site at the moment. ]

Rabbit Ears -- "Warning from Space" -- Starfish-shaped aliens drop down from the skies to visit Tokyo, ostensibly to warn them that they're meddling with scientifical explosive formulas they can't control, but also to party and attend can-can shows.  Eventually, one of them is transformed into a human so she can go down and rip up the explosive formula notes.  Then a rogue planet comes along to threaten Earth, and the aliens reveal they're here to help avert disaster, which is why they were trying to keep them from using the super-explosive formula that could save them.  For some reason, everyone thinks this makes sense.

The previous Rabbit Ears riff I watched was for "...And Then There Were None," their first riff, so I decided to go the other way and take in their most recent offering.  They do much better with this one, not only because they're more seasoned at this point, but because this movie is just all over the place with plot and characters who don't seem to have anything to do with it.  Some of the line reads still sound line-readish, but for the most part, they're good.  And the host segments are pretty amusing.

[ https://store.payloadz.com/details/2529660-movies-and-videos-comedy-rabbit-ears-warning-from-space.html ]

[Darth Geek]

to box up some T-Rexes and raptors and such for either the worst or the best Youtube Unboxing Video ever. 

[Darth Geek]

I watched Cinester Theater's riff of Pretty Woman with my friends last night. Still fantastic! We laughed hardest at the "Erectile Dysfunction Ad" riff.

[WhyDontTheyLook]

TreacheRiffs - "Shorts" -- TreacheRiffs is one of those groups, like Team Swizzlebeef, where they don't have a lot of output, but what they have done is great.  For this go-round, I watched the three shorts they've riffed thus far - "Speech: Stage Fright and What to Do About It," "Why Study Home Economics?" and "Seagram's Nightmare."

"Seagram's Nightmare" was a short produced in order to shame bar owners who haven't positioned bottles of Seagram's within easy reach and viewing of every square inch of their bar.  The interplay between Josh of TreacheRiffs and Michael T. Bradley of Ice on Mars was very good, and by the end I was wishing I'd had a good start on a bottle myself.  "Speech: Stage Fright and What to Do About it" was about exactly what it sounds like, featuring someone in upper management reduced to snarling helplessness by big words -- and lord do I wish that was implausible.  TreacheRiffs was massively funny with this one, start to finish.  "Why Study Home Economics?" made it clear that if you don't study home ec, you're doomed to a life of drab walls, poor nutrition, and probably head lice.  TreacheRiffs was good here, though I thought they went to the 'hey, she looks like a man' joke well a bit too often.

[ https://orderoftheleague.com/products/seagrams-nightmare ]
[ https://orderoftheleague.com/products/speech-stage-fright-and-what-to-do-about-it ]
[ https://orderoftheleague.com/products/why-study-home-economics ]

Hor-Riff-Ic - "Sleepaway Camp" -- Sent away to summer camp by their preening caricature of a Stepford suburban aunt, Ricky and Angela deal with all the usual trials of living in the great outdoors -- drooling perverts, errant water balloons, camp owners who don't see the big deal about a few dead bodies here and there -- until one of them snaps.  After that, it's some games, some crying, and lots of murder.

This is one of the classics of 80s horror trash, and I thoroughly enjoyed Hor-Riff-Ic's skewering of its bizarre and meandering storyline.  The 'shower theme' now haunts my dreams, thanks to them.  This was an early riff of theirs, so the character of Satan only sees limited use, but to great effect.

[ https://www.rifftrax.com/iriff/hor-riff-ic-sleepaway-camp ]

[WhyDontTheyLook]

FireRiffs - "Supergirl" (1984) -- Kara, a Kryptonian from the spacegoing city of Argo, goes to Earth to retrieve a metal golf ball her uncle lost, as it's super powerful and isn't the sort of thing one should just be farting around with to make trees or whatever.  It's found by a witch who uses it to dominate a small town and a kinda-skeevy (but charmingly so, the movie insists) landscaper.  What follows is undeniably... something that was filmed.  I'm not convinced it was written, or directed, but it was clearly filmed.

My experience with the 80s Superman films ended with the third one, so by the time this one came out, I skipped it.  I'd heard it was bad, but... wow.  FireRiffs does a great job of skewering this turkey, with Scott providing sharp jabs at the logic, the editing, the clearly-not-thought-through characters, and... just everything in this barmy film.  Good fun all the way through.

[ https://fireriffs.com/fireriffs-presents-supergirl/ ]
[ https://gumroad.com/fireyf ]

Josh Way - "Fun with Shorts, Vol. 3" -- In this Fun with Shorts collection, Josh riffs a nice mix of shorts--some I've seen riffed before, and some that were new to me.  "What Makes a Good Party," "Better Use of Leisure Time," "The Snob," "Dating Do's and Don'ts," and "Going Steady?" deliver a steady message, namely 'stop lazing around, throw a party, don't invite that shrill snobbish girl next door, invite some teeners who'll have to figure out how to get dates to come along with them, then go steady, only not really, because they've got some lazing around to do.'  Meanwhile, "The ABCs of Walking Wisely" and "Your Permit to Drive" are there to make you feel bad no matter if you're a pedestrian or driver, and "Taking the X Out of X-Rays" is there to have a famous scientist show why he's not a famous lecturer.

Josh delivers his well-honed jokes through all of these, neither overloading nor leaving too much dead air while mocking these over-earnest instructional shorts.  My favorites this time around, though, were a couple I haven't mentioned yet -- "A Visit to Santa" and "Time Out for Trouble."  "A Visit to Santa" because of how oddly unfocused the film is and how thoroughly unconvincing its Santa is.  "Time Out for Trouble" because the basic premise (a haunted clock that causes accidents for the woman who dislikes it as an excuse for lecturing on how to avoid accidents) is so way out there.  If you liked riffed shorts, check this one out.

[ https://shop.joshway.com/shop/product/fun-with-shorts-volume-3/ ]
[ Dating Do's and Don'ts: https://www.rifftrax.com/iriff/dating-dos-and-donts ]
[ https://www.youtube.com/user/romeorhino/featured ]

[WhyDontTheyLook]

Toast and Rice - "The Vampire Bat" -- There's a vampire afoot, or possibly awing, in the German soundstage town of Kleinschloss, and even the local bug-eater (Dwight Frye, the 1931 Dracula's Renfield) is freaking out about it.  Meanwhile, the town Burgermeister and the local police detective attempt to solve the crimes without having to go to the extraordinary lengths of making an effort to investigate at all.  If that wasn't enough, something is going around wiping all the corners.

This is one of those films where I think the 'badness' derives mainly from the tiny budget (and, admittedly, from a well-padded script), and the director and actors do some fair work that carries it along (albeit a few inches above the ground).  Toast and Rice's quips are spot-on here, as always, and that, combined with a deeply flawed but still intriguing film, makes this a good Halloween riff-pick.

[ https://www.rifftrax.com/iriff/the-vampire-bat-vod-movie-from-toast-and-rice ]
[ http://www.toastandrice.com/buy-riffs ]
[ https://gumroad.com/toastandrice ]

Cinester Theater - "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" -- It's Halloween night, and the Peanuts gang is getting ready to go trick-or-treating.  Charlie Brown neither walks cool and slow nor calls the English teacher 'Daddy-O'.  Meanwhile, Linus awaits the rise of the Great Pumpkin, Snoopy imagines being behind WWI enemy lines, and everyone pigs out on Dolly Madison cakes (except they don't, outside of my memories).

Cinester Theater goes dark early and often in riffing on this, which works better than I would've expected.  It had to be hard to riff this, both on account of it being a comedy and because it's still a lot of fun to watch (especially for this geezer), but they find the laughs anywhere they can.  A fun addition to one of my childhood favorites.

[ https://www.rifftrax.com/iriff/cinester-theater-presents-its-the-great-pumpkin-charlie-brown ]