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Weekend Discussion Thread: “Personal Riffs”Emailer “Dyne” offered this great idea for a thread, and I’m going with it:
I occasionally manage the latter. One I can remember was in “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.” The character in the movie said “Crush him!” and, sitting on the couch, I said “You were adopted!” just as Servo (I think) did. 63 Replies to “Weekend Discussion Thread: “Personal Riffs””Commenting at Satellite News
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All content posted on Satellite News is copyright © 2024 by Chris Cornell and Brian Henry, except where otherwise noted. This Date in MSTory is written and compiled by Steve Finley, Chris Cornell and Brian Henry. Copyright © 2024 All rights reserved. Please do not reproduce This Date in MSTory items in any form without express written permission from the authors. Items of MST3K news may be duplicated or reposted, as long as Satellite News is cited as the source. The views and opinions expressed herein are not necessarily those of Satellite of Love, LLC. No warranty is expressed or implied that the information given herein is completely accurate, and in fact this information can and will change at any time. So there. Mystery Science Theater 3000, its characters and situations are copyrights and trademarks of Satellite of Love, LLC. Banner image created by Larry Lee Moniz. |
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After the intro to The Screaming Skull, when the narrator says that, if the viewer dies of fright from watching the movie, a free coffin will be provided, there’s a shot of the house from a distance, and frogs are heard: “Oops, somebody already croaked!”
And in The Horror of Party Beach, we all started calling the heroine the “Dubutante” (you know, since every single line of her dialog was dubbed, so…yeah, well…).
My “personal riff”:
While watching #408 “Hercules Unchained” there came a scene with a soldier standing under the morning sky and I said “Breakfast of Centurions.”
And i probably,if i hadnt read the comments on here,i probly would have done the same thing to design for dreaming
“Its a slute to mr B natural”
And whever anybody does anything gross or wear anything gross i think ah OMG
same thing goes for the ..the hell?
Not quite on topic, but the two that popped into my head when I read the question are:
The scene in Stars Wars where the stormtrooper picks up the ring in the desert–“Look sir, onion rings”.
And when I went to see The Saint (with Val Kilmer)–Elisabeth Shue to Val: “Who ARE you?” Me: “I’m Batman”. My date thought it was pretty funny. Not funny enough for a goodnight kiss, apparently, but still funny.
During the Gateway 2000 convention in St. Louis, there was a showing of the unedited version of “Mitchell” where the audience was permitted to riff away. Midway through the movie (in a scene that BBI cut from the episode), a couple of John Saxon’s goons try to kill our hero by running him over with dune buggies. I got a laugh from the audience when I reasonably suggested, “Why don’t they just shoot him?”
More recently, I was watching “Once Upon a Honeymoon” (the short that went with “Night of the Blood Beast”). During a scene where Mrs. Broadway Composer is dancing & singing about her dream kitchen, I said, “She must be Nuveena’s sister or something.”
Okay, not as good as the Brains’ handiwork, but they seem to fit.
Quest of the Delta Knights, when the castle first appears, I thought to myself the first time I saw the episode, “It’s Castle Forrester!” And then Servo says, “Later, in Castle Forrester.”
Here’s one I copped and one I came up with on my own.
During the movie “The Grudge” when they’re doing the panoramic view of Tokyo during the first couple of scenes I leaned to my friend and said, “Ah, the rare Godzilla-free Japanese Day”.
During the movie “House Of 1000 Corpses” I leaned over to my friend during the final scene where the girl is running through the catacombs under the house past all the dead bodies and started going, “one…two…three…”
TERROR FROM THE YEAR 5000. There was all this stuff about the pervie old caretaker Angelo being a peeper.
Later, the whiny fiance character (I forget his name) falls ill. They say “Someone should watch him while we’re gone.” I said “Someone get Angelo!”
Seemed obvious to me . . .
I recall a sitting around with some college buddies once watching one of the Hellraiser movies on cable. For some reason, the station lost their audio feed, so we started making up our own soundtrack for the film. Best riff: during a scene where one of the female caracters is supposed to be a sort of skin-less zombie or something “I like strippers, but that’s a little too far.”
I also recall seeing an advanced screening of the remake of The Getaway (with Alec Baldwin and Kim Bassinger). During the scene where Alec and Kim are making up after the big fight came the following.
Alec: “I forgive you” (or something to that effect
Kim: “You’d have done the same for me.”
My friend: “What? Sleep with James Woods? I don’t think so.”
the movie jason X, i say it in the theater, if youve seen it you’ll know the part im talking about. the womans in the the space shuttle trying to strand everybody on the ship with jason. the escape shuttle is still attached to the ship she guns it while crying and smashes into the mothership *explosion* out of the back of the theater I remark loudly “and thats why you dont let a woman drive your spaceship”
laughter ensues and my female friend to my left nails me in the arm, well worth it, one of my better riffs with that movie.
theres another movie called 72 desperate rebles I msted with my old friend jared, clasic poorly dubbed kung fu movie, it had a sword eating kung fu zombie with gold teeth. mike/jole and friends would have a feild day with that film.
heres hopeing cinimatic titanic gets ahold of it.
oh and I forgot the movie Army of Darkness, ash gets himself sucked into the necronomicon when he gets out his chin is streched, he shakes his head 3 times to return to normal, the secound time he shakes it he looks like a certin home improvement star, I remak surprisedly “Tim Allen!”
priceless he lloks just like him.
Well, I’d hope everyone who saw “Outlaw (of Gor)” came up with the “Hey Cabot” riff before M&TB — they took forever to come out with it! Of course, that scene took forever anyway.
But the best personal riff I can remember came from my wife back when we were in college. We went to see Batman Forever at the theater. Well, one of the low-angle heroic profile shots seemed to focus on a specific feature of the Batman costume, leading Katie to quip:
“Holy codpiece, Batman!” :shock:
It was also a quiet spot in the movie, and I think she said it louder than she meant to, because we could hear chuckles coming from the rest of the audience.
This isn’t exactly a riff, but when I was watching my bootleg copy of Episode 818, “Devil Doll”, I was amazed that the Brains made no reference to the fact that Hugo the Evil Ventriloquist Dummy had a remarkably similar appearance to then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair. (Maybe it’s just me, but I thought they really looked like one another.) And it was a British movie! Talk about missed opportunities…
I was at a dollar theater where I live now(Kingsport, Tn) When Friday the 13th part (?) Jason Rides a Boat aka(Jason Takes Manhattan) came out. My friends and I were watching and when the first person got killed I yelled out 1. when the second person goes my friends and I all yell 2. By the third body the whole theater yells 3 and everyone in the place is now laughing and enjoying themselves. If you’ve seen the movie you realize what a major accomplishment that is.
My other which I recounted on here at some other time was when I was at “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” with some friends.There’s a scene when a guy falls from a great height and fence post or something goes right through his entire body he’s clearly toast. I lean to my friends and say “I’m not dead yet I’m getting better” and they laugh and a guy in front of us laughs and tells his friends and it ripples through the seats with laughter ensuing. :mrgreen:
I sang “I Will Follow Him” along with Servo in “Santa Claus”.
ah how could i forget.
Im in middle school so we have to watch those crappy science and social studies movies.So i basicaly sit there and mst3k the whole movie
there was aprt where a lady said something to the likes of
“All these people around,me.I’ve already gotten marriage proposals by three differnet men.The golden rule of the ball is never dance with your back turned”Or soemthing.And in my mind,a servo voice came up and said”Geez someone is a bit full of themselves.Its not realy the lines that are funny its the way i hear them or say them.
But im gonna see if ican do that later.
Oh wait i was watching a program on tv that was about the dresses of princess di,and it was showing dirt and i said”EEEEeeeWW”Like they have in oh so many occasions
“The Skydivers” Watched it the first time with my friend, John. He gets off the line, “Why are they wearing helmets, in case they land on their heads?” about 10 seconds before Crow says approximately the same thing. That was such a great moment.
I might be remembering this wrong, but there was one episode (maybe it was “Quest of the Delta Knights”?) where there was a weird sound effect that sounded just like the introduction to Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer.”
As soon as I started to hum the tune to “Sledgehammer,” the MST3K characters did the same thing. Needless to say, I laughed like hell when that happened.
As for the other kind of personal riff, when the title came up for “Gorgo,” I said “I tAkE cArE oF tHe PlAcE wHiLe ThE mAsTeR iS aWaY” in my best Torgo voice. Seemed pretty obvious at the time.
While riffing Star Wars (Episode IV) at Dragon*Con one year, I managed to get in a decent one when Threepio is trying to leave Artoo behind, and he walks away from the camera: “Threepio, I hate to see you go, but I love to watch you leave.”
During the movie “Satan’s Children” there is a scrawny white kid forced to mow his verbally abusive step-father’s lawn while his step sister picks on him relentlessly about being scrawny. Later in the film as the kid is trying to escape from a band of hippie satanists, he climbs a fence clad only in his white underwear, rib cage nowhere to be seen, and kicks the two hippie satanists trying to catch him. It’s a weak looking kick, but the 2 bad guys go flying backwards with ferocious velocity. My husband riffed “Wow, I guess all that lawn-mowing really paid off!” I laughed so hard I cried.
I really recommend this film as one of the greatest bad movies of all time. It’s on a double feature DVD with Asylum of Satan which features a cross dressing psychologist and a hero with a plaid suit. Available at Amazon. Thank you, won’t you?
I don’t really many riffs on movies because i prefer to stay quiet during those but in every day life, i enjoy riffing on people’s conversations. It’s easiest at a party with at least three or four semi-drunk people in a big discussion. My proudest moment was when i was finally able to use, “Can’t we just get beyond Thunderdome?”
At a midnight movie of Gladiator a few years back (local theater ran random midnight movies on weekends), I had the joy of making the entire theater crack up. Sure, most the people were stoned, but still…
In the scene where the brother is trying to ‘seduce’ his sister, he sits on the bed and props a leg up, at which point a blurted out “Do I make you horny baby? Yeah!” in my best Austin Powers voice.
Other than that, I usually tend to make jokes just a few minutes before the guys on Rifftrax do. Any syncing of jokes with normal MST3k, I chock up to just having watched them all way too many times. :mrgreen:
Overdrawn at the Memory Bank, credits show the following:
Original Music by
John Tucker
I said to myself “aah, this is why John Tucker Must Die”
I thought it was pretty funny. :lol:
One for each season:
1012: Spring Fever – “Before we go on, prove you’re a spring and not a coil.”
908: The Touch of Satan – “Is Satan going to give them another fig leaf?”
822: Overdrawn at the Memory Bank – “The 80s come to Casablanca!”
706: Laserblast – “The movie’s credits are colored in ‘bad movie green'”.
503: Swamp Diamonds: “Those shadows might be the only extras from here on!”
424: Hired! Part 2: “Let me put on my thinking sheet.”
320: Posture Pals: “These four kids are the straightest ones of all.”
212: Godzilla vs. Megalon: “Now that I’ve got my glasses, I can defeat you.”
106: The Crawling Hand: “The hand was made out of catfood?”
K19: Hangar 18: “NASA: John Tyler’s forgotten accomplishment as president (along with annexing Texas).”
611: “More like ‘Last of the nifty horses.”
My fovorite riff requires a little explanation. Back in the late 70s/early 80s the were a series of adds for a kind of margerine that had a taste that said “butter”. In the adds whenever someone referred to the product as margerine a little voice emanating from the container would quickly say, “butter”. These adds were famous and parodied at the time.
One time when a friend of mine and I were watching one of the middle Friday the 13th movies. In each movie there is a period of time where people start to go missing, but the rest don’t know they’ve been killed. So people start wandering through the woods looking for their missing friend(s) and calling out their names.
As one character was interminably calling out a name I started correcting the character by saying “Jason” in the same quick voice as the “butter” voice in the old commercial. The character in the film apparantly didn’t hear me because they kept calling out, “Eddie” or whatever their missing friends name was. Every time someone yelled the name of a missing friend I would reply by saying, “Jason”, in the same quick voice.
This became a great running joke as the characters in the movie just kept wandering around looking for their missing friends calling out names, and every time my friend and I would correct them by saying, “Jason”, and adding a tone of exasperation, similar to the way Tom Servo kept correcting the Japanese kid in Gamera vs. Guiron who kept refering to planets as stars.
This can be especially funny if the missing person has the name of a killer in a similar movie like Freddy or Michel. Correcting them by saying, “Jason” makes it sound like the character on screen was incorrectly guessing who the killer is.
My first public riff that turned out well was at anime club in college. It was the english dub of the second episode of ‘3X3 Eyes’, in which the protaganist’s high school buddies are horrified to learn he’s been turned into an unkillable monster called an uu (that’s not a typo). Something about his girlfriend’s voice just reminded me so much of ’50s paranoia-sploitation movies when she told him, “I don’t know you anymore – Get away!” that I responded, “My boyfriend was a teenage communist!”
Now, despite feeling the need to say it, I didn’t think it was THAT funny, but the whole room just blew up laughing so loud we couldn’t hear the next 3 lines of dialogue. It was just a small classroom with about 20 people, but that was still enough to convince me that I might actually be good at riffing, even outside of my own head.
I have yet to see the Rifftrax version of Batman & Robin but I had several jokes for that one as I was watching it, plus in The Craft when the girls hold up the knife in their ritual, I thought “By the power of Grayskull”. Then in The Ninth Gate there was the fact that every time Johnny Depp looked at one the books he was smoking. “Oh look, he’s putting cigerette burns in that copy too.” It later became a callback when some friends were watching Unfaithful and the French guy shows her the books he has. “that book has cigerette burns in it, not sure why”
In my senior year of college, there was a stretch where I’d watch a recent video release with some other guys I didn’t really know, and I’d get in one really good riff per film. The one I remember best was John Carpenter’s Vampires. In the beginning there’s a huge battle between vampires and hunters that leaves an entire motel demolished, with dozens of bodies everywhere. The next morning, one of the only survivors observes the carnage, then gets ready to torch the evidence by splashing gasoline all over the place, causing me to comment, “Now, the amazing part is, even after all this, he still manages to get the cleaning deposit back.”
Another one:
Last weekend, I was watching the KTMA ep “Superdome” when at one point Ken Howard, who plays an aging football player, says, “Sometimes, I don’t know who I am anymore.”
I answered, “Sometimes I think I’m Thomas Jefferson, sometimes I think my daughter is a coroner…”
Actually, the KTMAs are good avenues for self-riffing, since Joel & the ‘bots tended to leave empty spots in those days.
My friend Brian claims to have said “A giant statue of George Washington? The hell?” during the Magic Voyage of Sindbad the first time it was seen. He then laughed hysterically when Joel said exactly the same thing the second time the statue came around.
I was trying really hard to like The Happening, but then we got to the porch scene–you know the one–and the kid kept insisting everyone get inside the house to get at the food. When the kid explained it was safe because the house has been boarded up for years, I had to yell out, “Then there must obviously be a lot of food inside!” Then the kid got shotgunned, and the movie thumbed its nose at me.
At the Smithee Awards this year (anyone else go to that?) we saw a clip from a movie called Metallica (not about the band) and there was a cute little robot that was obviously fashioned to look like the famous one from Star Wars. Except in this movie the robot had an antenna on his dome that was shaped like a Star of David. I named him R2Hebrew. Only my friend Bob sitting next to me heard though. He laughed.
#21 The Professor:
Congratulations!! :grin:
A while back i was going to do a parady of MST3K. I had done up a cheesy set and everything and i riffed a whole movie….It was A*P*E, a 1976 rip off of king kong….any way the female lead is scooped up by the giant ape hand and says “be gentle with me big fellow” to which i reply “that’s not the first she said that line”
I don’t think it counts as a riff, but me and the bots had exactly the same reaction to the Hitler building.
506 Eegah-
EVERY time William Watters’ credit comes up at the beginning I wait for them to sing Smoke on the Watter.
See ’cause it’s his name and there’s smoke all over the whole credit sequence…
Just thought of another one – some friends of mine and I went to go see Armageddon when it came out. During the the romantic scene between Ben Affleck and Liv Tyler, Liv says, “Do you think anyone else is doing this same thing right now?” I just had to blurt out, “What? Shoving animal crackers down their pants?”
During Prince of Space, when the city officials are telling the townspeople to evacuate over the car’s loudspeaker, I exclaimed, “Paging Mr. Herman.” right before Mike said it.
“Personal” riffs are always cool.
Whenever I watch a film where a policeman finds a body and then continues to investigate without alerting dispatch I say something like, “well there’s no point in calling for backup”.
Whenever I see a movie where the hero escapes from a cell in an enemy fortress, get’s a weapon, gets in a fight with a single guard, and then casually discards his weapon like there’s no chance he might need it later, I say something like, “well, I can’t see myself needing this again”
One childish riff of mine is that when a character in a movie says something like, “there’s only one thing to do now”, I say “f**k”.
At the end of Eyes Wide Shut Nicole Kidman’s character says something like “there’s one thing we have to do now”.
I said “f**k”, and right after Nicole Kidman’s character said “f**k”.
It cracked me up. That’s the only time a riff of mine turned out to be the actual upcoming line in the film. It felt a bit like the movie was riffing me (like in Soviet Russia).
Here are a few of mine. :grin:
Every Universal movie featuring the Wolf Man: At the end of the opening credits sequence, they always announce Lon Chaney as the Wolf Man. I can never help saying, “And Lon Chaney as ‘The Beaver’.”
The Thing That Couldn’t Die: I had a dirty riff for when the two heroines crawl into the same bed. “Okay, ladies. Time to strip down, dim the lights and make America happy.”
Film Crew, Hollywood After Dark: At the first close-up of Rue McClanahan, I said “Eww…She looks like a post-op Ronald McDonald.”
Hope I gave you guys some laughs. Cheers and happy riffing!
The first time I saw Manos was with my ex and her 13-year-old son. During one of the many makeout scenes with the couple in the car, I piped up and said “Keep an eye out for that cop, honey!” about 1 second before the cop showed up (again).
We all laughed so hard we had tears in our eyes.
The first time I watched ep.#1010 ‘It Lives by Night’, when the bat-doctor was in the hospital, I thought to myself “His wife’s wearing a Charlie Brown sweater” a minute or two before Crow pointed it out. That was pretty cool.
I know I’m getting old when someone has to “explain” the Parkay commercial!
Eeesh!
Once while watching the Two Towers during the scene where Eomer asks Aragorn what an “Elf, a man and a Dwarf were doing in the Riddermark”, my friend Becky said, “they walked into a bar”. It was very gratifing to here the same joke in the Rifftrax.
I’m surprised in the movie FINAL SACRIFICE when the “plate spinning music” was playing that nobody actually started singing the actual notes to “Sabre Dance” which is the name of the piece that usually accompanies plate spinning. I sure did.
The best real life riff I ever heard was made by some stranger I never saw and never met. OK, so May 2002, me and and a friend saw Star Wars Ep. 2 Attack of the Clones in the historic Mann’s Chinese theater while visiting LA. Talk about a way to see a movie: beautifully iconic theater with giant columns next to where we sat, the movie was shown using one of Lucas’s own digital projectors and the floor vibrated a bit every time something exploded. Anyways, this was our second time seeing the movie, so we knew the ropes on the awful “romance.” Cut to the after dinner scene where Anakin is declaring his love for Padme in a very whiny, creepy, stalkerish way. At one point he talks about how she’s tormenting his soul or something (whatta sweet talker) and then asks “Are you suffering as much as me?” Right then, someone in the theater yells “YES WE ARE!!!!” LOL Seeing the movie on a giant digital screen was sweet but that moment itself was worth the price of admission alone. I watched TPM rifftrax but still have yet to hear RT for AoTC. I can imagine Kevin’s voice uttering the very same words on that line of dialogue.
When Torgo leers through the window in the tender peeping scene I can’t help but say “Avon calling!”
While sitting outside of a cafe, a young woman was talking in a very loud, nasally Southern California voice that just clawed at the eardrums. I turned to my companion and quoted Mike’s “You could shave with that woman’s voice.” My friend just smiled but a few other people overheard and laughed.
In quite a few episodes, during a particularly extended or dull monologue from a character, I yelled “Shut up!” at the same time as Joel/Mike and the ‘bots did. Gives one a nice warm feeling when that happens!
When a friend and I watched Revenge of the Sith, during the scene where Palpatine “turns” into the Emperor, I whispered “Can he still get his Jedi Pension payments now?”
OH MY GOSH I meant ANAKIN not Palpatine! Anakin into Vader– so sorry, all!
I was watching The Matrix Revolutions when it premiered. There’s that scene in the very beginning where Neo is in the subway station and can’t get out.
When the camera zoomed out so you could see the whole station, Neo ran out of the frame on the right and back into the frame on the left.
I obviously hadn’t seen the movie yet, and I don’t know how I did this, but I did.
When Neo started running to the right, I said the first bit of the Super Mario Bros. theme – “Da da da, dada DA!”
And when he reappeared on the left, I went “BUM!”
Everyone around me cracked up. I still have no idea how I knew what was about to happen on the screen (I would have felt pretty stupid if it hadn’t worked out). Something about the framing of the shot just telegraphed it.
I felt awesome.
I also do the Yosemite Sam voice whenever someone who sounds like Mike Pipper from Final Sacrifice shows up in a movie. I cracked up so hard when I saw that episode.
Near the beginning of Matrix Revolutions a gunfight broke out and one guy bent gravity and walked up a wall and onto the ceiling. I couldn’t help singing, “Oh what a feeling, when we’re fighting on the ceiling”, a la Lionel Ritchie.
This part also stuck in my mind because the ceiling was so low that when the guy got on the ceiling he was pretty much in the same place as when he started. Making it look like a very pointless, “let’s stick in a Matrix effect for no good reason” moment that served no tactical advantage.
Well, this is a nice surprise. Thanks, Sampo.
My first (and favorite) called riff was when I first saw Space Mutiny when Ryder and Lea are talking to the expository old guy and I said, “I’m getting ready to do the Monster Mash,” right before Mike said essentially the same.
Personal riffs from various episodes/other movies:
Cave Dwellers: Crow asks what Ator is writing and Servo responds that it’s the script. I said it was the first dictionary and had Zor ask Ator to look up “repugnant” during the later scene.
Teenagers from Outer Space – *Humming the CanCan every time a giant “gargan” is on screen.*
Escape 2000 – “The hero really knows how to ‘Trash’ talk people.”
Diabolik – “You know the rubber ninja suit really never took off outside of Italy.”
Batman & Robin: Freeze saying, “I’ll kill you next time!” – “Why doesn’t he just kill him now and save us 2 more hours of movie?”
Star Wars Episode III: Anakin is holding a hand-held device. “Wow, they have Gameboy Advances in Coruscant too!” and when Palpatine gives his overacting “No! NO!” line when Mace Windu is about to kill him – “Gollum! GOLLUM!”
Years of being an MST3K fan has gotten me into the habit of riffing anything I see, be it TV or a movie. It’s gotten such that my fiance refuses to see a movie in the theater with me, most especially when seeing a movie on the human body at the planetarium.