I just finished watching..........................

[losingmydignity]

Velvet Smooth


The first riff I rate a classic in a while. The blaxploitation genre hasn't been mined sufficiently yet, so this felt as fresh as the Man from Harlem (though I'm not so sure if Velvet herself was fresh). Some really great riffs from the genre and culture of that time in particular. Plus the amateurishness really gave them a lot to riff.
Plus there was a great Replacements riff that worked on two levels, referencing a video and a different song than in the video.
Great callbacks too. Brute Man was in there and plenty of Rifftrax refs.
My God what a stinger it would be that guy kicking  into the box or whatever
10

The Shape of Things to Come

A strong riff. Some really good stuff but the movie wore thin after a while and that slowed down the last 20 minutes. I mean how much fighting in an office can you take?
Jack Palance's spinning hologram was a laugh in itself and worth the price of admission.
8

[Pak-Man]

Watched Wonder Women for the first time. It took me WAY longer than it should have to figure out that the "hero" of the movie was not one or all of the titular Wonder Women, but the guy trying to stop them.

[Johnny Unusual]

Attack of the Super Monsters

I wish that first monster was the hero of the movie.  That dude and Tyrannus seem to love what they are doing and are not a chore to watch.  The riff is top notch and the idea of the show is interesting in mixing live action and animation, even if the show itself is a chore.  Like, its lively and out there but the repetitive nature of its formula gets increasingly not fun, compounded by watching four in a row.  But I like the concept of mixing mediums.  It actually, more than any other tokusatsu (the genre that Power Rangers belongs to) show, this one feels the MOST like a Sid and Marty Krofft production.

[Pak-Man]

Caught Deadly Prey the other night on Twitch. We were just going to watch while we ate dinner and then get ready for bed, but we watched, transfixed, as one cliché after another was loosely threaded together into something kind of like a narrative. It's something to behold, and I feel like it should get brought up a lot more often.

[dbsommer]

Caught Deadly Prey the other night on Twitch. We were just going to watch while we ate dinner and then get ready for bed, but we watched, transfixed, as one cliché after another was loosely threaded together into something kind of like a narrative. It's something to behold,

As opposed to Robovampire. Which had no cliches, and has nothing like a narrative to thread it together. Yet it is still something to behold. 

Since we're on this topic, I watched. The Dark Power As someone mentioned, this is kind of just 'What it's like having terrible housemates' until the final 15 minutes or so when the Tolteks show up. And I had thought that one girl looked like discount Sean Young when I first saw her. So glad the guys commented on it as well. While Alien Outlaw is a better film (technically the pacing is better and I'd say the female lead is more compelling as a lead.) this is still a real solid effort I enjoyed immensely. Especially because it's mostly just poorly done and lacks absurd elements until later. Less material to work with typically, but the guys did great with what was happening and made it entertaining.

Oh yes, I still enjoy Lash in these. He's like a Discount Stuart Whitman but with a whip. He does have some presence on screen even at this point in his career. Also to give the director credit, he seemed to be trying to give the Tolteks some kind of weird personality to each despite them being cheesy and having no dialogue. How many times can you twirl a tomahawk for no reason? When you're undead, an infinite number I guess.

[Pak-Man]

When they went up in sale a little bit back, I picked up Blu-rays for Octaman and Star Raiders. I missed both of those live shows last year because of their proximity to other things we decided to get a sitter for instead.

Octaman is kind of a slog. The first third of the movie has some OK pacing, but then suddenly it's about 40 combined minutes of rowboats in the dark and crawling through a cave, with only a brief action sequence to break the two up. Deeeeep hurting. I think the riffing does an admirable job of saving it, and the goofy Octaman suit and the way people get ambiguously injured during the monster attacks is never not-funny.

Star Raiders had the opposite problem. There was almost always something happening, but it never slowed down to build up characterization or really explain why anyone was doing anything. Seriously, I don't think I've ever failed to comprehend a plot more than I did with Star Raiders. I know my sci-fi movie tropes, so I know these are the good guys and those are the bad guys, and this bad guy has the deep rumbly voice, so he must be stopped at all costs, but I couldn't tell you for the life of me what any of them were trying to accomplish. I think I need to watch this one a few times before I decide whether I like it.

[Pak-Man]

Just discovered Death Promise. Apparently I missed a LOT of great Rifftrax while I was learning the ropes of parenthood.

[Pak-Man]

Suburban Sasquatch was last night and Robo Vampire was tonight. I think I may have given myself brain damage.

[Johnny Unusual]

The Woman in Green

By FAR the most useless Watson in the Sherlock canon.  And I've seen some useless Watsons.

[Pak-Man]

My wife has decided that Warriors of the Wasteland is a stealth-sequel to The Apple, chronicling the lives of those who were left behind. It explains a lot, actually.

[dbsommer]

8 out of the 10 shorts for the kickstarter. I owned two, and I actually had some of the others on the shorts DVDs they used to release back in the day. But it's been so long since I've seen them I only vaguely remembered them. And here we go from worst to best.

Corky the Crow , Carnivorous Plants , Wing Claw Fang . If you've seen them do an animal one, they all have pretty much the same feel, unless the monkey is trying to be a fireman. Basic and while not bad, there's nothing ridiculous to grab on to.

Building Better Paragraphs Yeah, it's one of those. Mindnumbing educational short, but it's not like the maps one. Definitely amusing.

It Must be the Neighbors It's a litter one about cleaning up. Again pretty tame, and solid but not steller.

And now we get to the really good ones. Tooth Truth With Harv and Marv That's not Jim Carrey in drag on the cover. No, seriously, it's not. It's the disco version of the Tooth Fairy with two animated idiots who explain cavities. Excellent one worth owning as there is some ridiculousness that is great to latch on to. Buy it if you don't have it.

Down and Out basically you can trip over anything and everything. The guys from Shake Hands With Danger were positively obsessive compulsive about safety compared to this clown, who, as the guys said, should never be upright for fear of falling. Great work and memorably good. Again, buy it if you don't already have it. Who knew chalk could be so dangerous, and commonplace?

and for my favorite, If Mirrors Could Speak I did remember this. A classic that's right behind monkey masked bike riders getting picked off one by one. Surreal and out there as a parable for self-assessment. There is so much for the guys to latch onto, and it's just so... whacked. The best of this lot, IMO. If you only get one, grab it.

[George-2.0]

Velvet Smooth
The first riff I rate a classic in a while. The blaxploitation genre hasn't been mined sufficiently yet, so this felt as fresh as the Man from Harlem (though I'm not so sure if Velvet herself was fresh). Some really great riffs from the genre and culture of that time in particular. Plus the amateurishness really gave them a lot to riff.
Plus there was a great Replacements riff that worked on two levels, referencing a video and a different song than in the video.
Great callbacks too. Brute Man was in there and plenty of Rifftrax refs.
My God what a stinger it would be that guy kicking  into the box or whatever
10

You sold me! I was pondering what to buy this weekend, and that's now shot to the top.

along with Attack of the Super Monsters and the latest Holmes riff (Secret Weapon) from B&MJ. speaking of which...

Sherlock Holmes: Terror By Night
Another fun one from the ladies, with Matthew J. Elliott contributing as head writer.

[Pastshelfdate]

Within the last week, I think on the RiffTrax Twitch.tv channel, I saw a movie that was plenty funny with riffs, but was one of the scariest thing I've ever seen.  It wasn't the intended horror, which was pretty laughable.  It was the occasional interruptions with what were supposed to be educational asides about mental illness.

The narrator would trot out another particular named mental illness, and always seemed to say that only weak people would develop it.  All I could think of was how a generation of 1950s movie-goers were effectively told "Never admit, even to yourself, that you're mentally ill; it's a sign of weakness."

The story centered around a lab assistant who demonstrated significant ability at mimicry.  His mad scientist boss had a lot of facial hair, and the air on top was pretty wild, too.  I don't recall if the assistant kills the scientist, but the assistant hides the body, and disguises himself as the scientist.

I want to show this film to some people who need to understand what societal messages were, back in the 1950s.  Please, if anyone knows the title, reply.  I can't recall it.

[The Lurker]

Maniac?

[Pastshelfdate]

And someone in the chat for the Twitch.tv Rifftrax channel was able to tell me that "Maniac" is the title of the movie with one actor doing a weak impression of another's mad scientist, intended horror that's laughable, and interrupting narration about mental illness that is truly horrific (saying that only weak people get sick).