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Weekend Discussion Thread: Two Favorite Movies (one bad one good)Our pal MSTie suggests:
First question: St. Elmo’s Fire. What’s your pick? 67 Replies to “Weekend Discussion Thread: Two Favorite Movies (one bad one good)”Commenting at Satellite News
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first question: Bridge on the River Kwai
second question: Scrooged
A personal cult favorite of mine is Crack in the World (1965). Cheesy sci-fi film perfect for riffing. I wish it had been riffed. The film is owned by Paramount, so it is unlikely it will ever be riffed in the future by MST3K or Rifftrax.
Two films that I hold in high esteem are Citizen Kane and 2001: A Space Odyssey. I understand that some might be offended if such classics are riffed, but I would not mind at all – just to see what the riffers could do with the material. Life is too short not to laugh.
Be sure to click my name to see my ongoing project: MST3K Filming Locations Then and Now.
First Question- Willow. Crow: “But, I like Willow.”
Second Question- Psycho.(1960)
Please Riff – WAR OF THE WORLDS, 1953. There is just enough fifties silliness built into this movie to make it great material and there are all those MST3K connections like Dr. Clayton Forester.
Leave It Alone – THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, 1952. Beautifully filmed. A masterpiece of subtlety where it counted. This is my desert island movie.
First question: Night of the Comet. It’s cheesy, campy, 80’s fun. Would be perfect for Mst.
Second question: Fargo. I could imagine all the Midwestern riffs here, but this is one of my all time favorites. Just to dear to me to be riffed.
First movie: Jaws. It’s a great B-movie with great riff-fodder.
For the hands-off movie: Groundhog Day. It’s well-balanced and lots of fun, and any riffing would be a distraction.
For the first, I’ll say It’s a Wonderful Life. I used to think it was “too sacred” to riff but now that I’ve seen it literally dozens of times — it’s my family’s standard Christmas Eve fare — I could go for some gentle ribbing at its expense.
There are lots of classics I wouldn’t want riffers to touch, but number one would be The Maltese Falcon. Bogart is a movie god to me, and TMF is the epitome of noir, so hands off “the stuff that dreams are made of.”
Hmmm…
First movie: “Gone with the Wind”. One of the greatest movies ever made. But, there’s a fair amount of good-natured riff fodder. For example, the way the movie is now perceived a quite non-PC would provide some good material.
Second movie: “How Green was My Valley”. That movie strikes a big emotional chord with me, so I’d prefer that it be non-riffed.
First question: Hamlet (1948)
Second question: Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie
Question one: The Intruder
Question two: The Time Machine (1960)
Q1: ‘Frankenstein Meets The Space Monster’. Features the lamest excuse for a Frankenstein monster. Martians invade to take Earth women. Robot named Frank goes nutso. Fights a monster right at the end. Gives ‘Wild World Of Batwoman’ a run for it’s money.
Q2: ‘Nosferatu’ Werner Herzog’s version.
1: Billy the Kid vs Dracula. I mean come on now!
2: Time Bandits.
Q1: Army of Darkness
Q2: Bugsy Malone
Hell yes to St. Elmo’s Fire. God, that movie is loathsome.
Question One: I know this doesn’t count as a movie, but my wife and I have been working through old episodes of Unsolved Mysteries on Amazon which could definitely stand some riffing (There’s one particular segment about pets that travel long distances to return to their owners that had us howling.) If Rifftrax could do the National Geographic specials, they could definitely sink their teeth into this (rights issue nonwithstanding, of course.)
Question Two: Citizen Kane. I know they’ve had some fun with classic stuff (Casablanca, Jaws), but I just find Kane too engrossing. Any thing else would just get in the way.
I unabashedly love cheese, so there’s a lot to choose from.
My original choice would have been Starcrash, but I recently got that wish :)
So runner-up would be War of the Planets (1966). It’s got that Agent From H.A.R.M./Diabolik quality to it that made me start writing my own riffs when I watched it.
I don’t think super well-known competently made blockbuster movies or well-regarded classics work quite as well for riffing, but it doesn’t offend me when they try, even if they chose one of my favorites. Even Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible.
But when you mentioned “offended”, I thought of Schindler’s List :) It’d pretty tacky to try and layer riffs over a movie like that. But I don’t know if I can say it’s a favorite, since I’ve only seen it once, with no plans to ever see it again (nightmares and low-grade depression for days and days).
You should use another site for hosting your images. The Yahoo popup for every photo is atrocious. I hit the “X” to close it, it returns in the very next photo. I just refuse to register for anything from Yahoo. :(
Don’t take it personally, it’s not a reflection on yourself, just Yahoo seems to never tire of ways to anger users. :P
To be riffed – BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN. It’s great! It’s ridiculous! It was totally created to be … Bride Of Rifftrax!
To not be riffed – CASABLANCA, VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED, CARNIVAL OF SOULS.
Q1: Heaven’s Gate
Q2: Debbie Does Dallas
Q1: What, even RT hasn’t done insane mindbending B-Italian rubric “The Visitor” yet on reputation, now that it’s been rediscovered by the arthouse crowd?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0vBRdplSps
If not, they mustn’t dare touch it–This calls for trained experts, once Jonah & the Bots learn to riff together. Imagine “Jodorowsky’s ‘The Omen’.”
Q2: When Cole & Janet decided to riff “Dreamscape”, “Dirty Dancing” and “Lost Boys” just because they were available and “so 80’s”, and a couple of amateur kids did Tron: Classic, I knew that no available 80’s classic would be free from RT’s Adam Sandler-like urges for “80’s kitsch” jokes. Which would mean almost anything from the 80’s Sci-Fantasy Summer of Love that was a decade-identifying title icon, like Krull, Last Starfighter, or Neverending Story would be piled onto the Millennial bonfire. (And never mind Krull, if they dare do Dragonslayer or Clash of the Titans, things could get real ugly, real fast.) And if RT could see nothing sacred about Psycho II, what Great Iconic Mainstream 80’s Fun-Horror would be next, Fright Night? I do, however, agree that Night of the Comet richly has it coming, but there’s just nothing funny about Willow even if you tried.
There’s an ambiguous love/hate relationship the age group has with Big 80’s Movies, where they want to make fun of their parents’ childhoods, but also wonder what it must have been like to see Princess Bride in a theater on opening night. Face it, kiddie-winkies, you ENVY us…And a lot more so after the last two movie summers we’ve had. ;)
The recent Internet flap on a survey about What Old Films Millennials Haven’t Seen (http://nypost.com/2017/08/16/millennials-dont-really-care-about-classic-movies/ ) brought up the discussion point that if you tell a Millennial he should see more of the great AFI 100 films, he IMMEDIATELY thinks you’re going to “force” him to watch Citizen Kane, and that’s it’s going to be a pretentious Bergman-esque snore where Orson Welles shows how many weird shots he can make with the camera, and how many Simpsons jokes had breaking snowglobes in them…And then any who actually sit down find out just how sardonic and nasty Welles and the script can be, toward the Donald Trump of the 30’s.
Sometimes they fear you’re going to make them watch Death playing chess in Bergman movies, but 9 times out of 10, it’s usually Kane as the straw-man, since it’s been so much Praised By Old People for so long with no clear explanation why. Oh, and then get them to watch Vertigo, Casablanca or Seven Samurai, because some Snooty Old-Person Film Expert told them to….Heheh. :)
(Seriously, only 12% of kids have seen Rear Window? I knew the plot from a Flintstones cartoon!)
Agreed: You do NOT riff G-rated musicals with Paul Williams songs, any more than you would riff “Muppet Christmas Carol”.
Besides, what riffs you could make about 12-yo. Jodie Foster playing a nightclub chanteuse would get into some seriously squicky gray areas.
Q1 Tarzan, the Ape Man (1981)
Q2 Schindler’s List
To each his own as the saying goes. My version of hell would be tied to a chair with my eyes propped open and forced to watch ” Groundhog Day” for all of eternity.
PJ – I was unaware that was happening. It’s the first time I have heard about it. Clicking each thumbnail was supposed to take people directly to the full photo with description without any need for registration, popups, or any other junk. I will look into it.
First question–Deep Blue Sea
Second question—Superman (1978)
For film I like that I wished they had riffed, I’m going with the 1957 movie Night of the Demon (alternately known as Curse of the Demon), based on the story Casting the Runes by Montague James. Can’t think of any films offhand where I would object to them being riffed.
I would love to see some of the 70s disaster movies like Earthquake!, Towering Inferno or The Poseidon Adventure. Also, my favorite, Logan’s Run.
I don’t believe in sacred untouchable movies. However, some would be boring to riff.
To riff MST3k: the Movie would probably cause a rip in the space-time something or other.
First: “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” (overrated, boring mess of a Spielberg flick)
Second: “The Secret of NIMH”
If I remember correctly, at the Gateway convention in 1999, someone asked if the laserdisc release of MST3K-TM would include a commentary track. Mike answered that such a thing would cause the movie to collapse in upon itself and bring about the end of the Universe.
First: Night of the Comet, runner-up would be Monster on the Campus
Second: Millennium Actress, runner-up would be Spirited Away
One I wish they’d do: maybe Ice Pirates? I own 2 DVDs and the blu ray. That’s how much I love it. But I think they would enhance it even though they steer away from comedies.
One that is too sacred: If I told you I’d have to kill ya. haha! Actually, the rifftrax guys already did Lord of the Rings and Wizard of Oz and I have no interest in viewing them that way. The one I won’t mention is my #1 favorite movie, with those #2 and #3.
That’s something I’ve always wanted to mention. I absolutely think they should riff the MST3K episodes. I think that would a blast and a half! Combine commentary with riffing. Release 4 or 5 episodes as a set. We mysties have $$$ to part with! do it guys!!!!
Even better: find the s.0 or 1 episodes with the least riffing (excluding ones redone during season 3), a have new MST3K fill in the voids. “We make the movies even better than we already did!”
Citizens Kane would be fun to riff.
Except that J&tB have reffed almost every single actual line from the movie during the CC days, from “‘I think it might be FUN to run a newspaper’??” to the default “Xanadu, stately home of Charles Foster Kane…” every time there’s a sinister mansion shot, to even “Looking good, Aggie!” from Orson Welles’s trailer.
Despite what RT thinks, riffings don’t quite work when we already know the movie inside out. Well, when most of us do, anyway.
OTOH, for Q1, I remember our all-night festival audience once showing Forbidden Planet, and while it’s a fun movie and one of the great ones, a spontaneous riff broke out of the audience that was so perfect and so wrong, you can’t un-see it again after that. :)
It’s not This Island Earth, but the 50’s-design and the presence of Leslie Nielsen make it ripe for good-natured riffing on its more serious parts.
I adore Alfred Hitchcock, and the movie “The Birds”. Very dear to my heart as viewing it was some good bonding time with my mother, and we recently visited Bodega Bay and its filming locations for the movie on a vacation this summer. Is it a genuinely good movie? Yes. Is it riffable? Hell yes. Every time we out the movie in for another viewing, we find as many things in it to love as we do to make fun of. The gas station scene is iconic in a….an interesting way.
As for the second question, “It’s a Wonderful Life”. Not because it’s a veritable classic and a genuinely good movie [though it is], or because there’s nothing in it worth a joke. More to do with the fact that me and my family riff it so much ourselves every Christmas season [every year–some new jokes, some old] that I feel like if I watched a professional riff of it it would be treading on sacred, family Christmas bonds.
I know the question is for one movie, but it’s too hard to pick just one. Some of my favorite MST episodes were 1950s science fiction, so “Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers”, “The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms”, or “20,000,000 Miles To Earth” would be good. More recently: “Twister”; “Batman” (1989); “E.T.”; “Ordinary People”; “Kramer Vs. Kramer”; “Starship Troopers”; “Aliens”.
Movies I would not watch even if they riffed them, because of their quality and/or impact on me personally: “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest”; “Unforgiven” (for me, the best western ever); and “The Godfather”.
I haven’t really kept up with the Rifftrax output for several years, so if they have riffed any of these movies, my apologies.
RT riffed on “Starship Troopers”, and it is absolutely hilarious. There’s also a “Rifftrax Presents” track for “Alien” that doesn’t feature Mike, Kevin & Bill, but I haven’t heard it and can’t comment.
Not sure I’d call it a favorite, but I have memories of seeing “The Giant Claw” as a kid, and it it would make for some great riffage. Yeah, yeah, I KNOW its b&w and all that…
And I don’t think I’d be angry or offended by anything they’d riff, but I’d sure wouldn’t want to see anyone try and riff a film like “The Mission”, which is one of my favorites.
Aside: Riffing stuff has become a favorite pastime in my household, but it is difficult to make my boys realize that certain things are just not cool to riff. In fact, for certain movie nights — or books we ready aloud as a family — we have to declare a “no-riff zone”, but even then sometimes they just can’t resist. We have to work to instill an appropriate sense of gravity about the appropriate things.
IMO, an interesting WDT might be “the good, the bad, and the ugly” of riffing: MST3K I think was a big part of the genesis of a “culture” of riffing (folks have pointed out shows, YT channels, etc, that are heavily influenced by MST), and while it makes for some great entertainment, I’m not sure it’s always a good thing. It’s great to be able to laugh at stuff, but I wonder if it can sometimes lead to excessive cynicism, snarkiness, and/or just plain vulgarity, and not just with regard to movies? I may be overanalyzing and/or antiquated in my ideals — but think about it, won’t we? Thank you.
#1: Attack of the Supermonsters , The Last Dinosaur, or DragonBall: the legend begins
#2: Although I can say I could not see them doing it, King Kong (1933)
Why should that make a difference?
Oh, I see. You’re not entertained unless the phoneme combinations entering your ears are 100% unique.
Well, fortunately, it doesn’t work that way for most of us.
Wait, so now you’re calling for them to riff a movie you know inside and out? Make up your mind, man!
For me, I have no such hangups and sacred cows, so I’d be happy with all of the riffers riffing all of the video. But of special value to me would be the 80s Corman Sci-fi Cheese (like Star Crash) and their ilk. Top of the list would be Galaxy of Terror, followed by Battle Beyond the Stars.
Because–and it’s particularly a problem listening to the SciFi era, that didn’t know as many arcane pop-refs–it’s one of the primal rules of comedy that the comedian should not appear to know LESS than the audience.
It’s the comic’s job to play the role of the outspoken jerk, and if doing that means dopey cynical reducto-ad-absurdum reactions from someone “seeing it for the first time” and showing off how much he “doesn’t know” something everyone else in the room does, there’s going to be what comedians call the proverbial “Tough Crowd”.
I think we’ve all had that experience on the Internet ourselves, many times. :) And if the comic actually doesn’t know Citizen Kane, and laughs at how snooty and boring he thinks it is from afar, I can guarantee that’s nothing to brag about in a room full of movie fans who know what they’re talking about.
Also, the Brains seem to think it’s a rather good film–imagine their having to riff “Local Hero”–which means the riffing to give it what it “deserves” is going to be hollow and artificial, and pretty much the same narcissistic exercise in self-cleverness that “Look, we’re riffing Shakespeare!” was in S10’s Hamlet. I’m sure we can all do with less of that. Like Ro-Man says, when you literally don’t know the difference anymore in trying to be “hip”, it stops being funny and just starts being ignorant.
I did, that’s why I told the story:
The Planet riff came out of the audience, even if they did know the movie already, because it was midnight, we were punchy, and you had an audience who loved being there. We liked watching movies, and even if they were bad (ahemgalaxina), we could still have fun with them, because we all knew there were two hundred of US, and only one of it.
That’s why I make the distinction of which favorite movies I’d rather see Jonah & the Bots riff, than RiffTrax: The “angry” humor of SciFi/RT doesn’t seem to like movies very much. They don’t like watching, they don’t like sitting in a theater, they think any movie or actor that became popular was a mass delusion of the Sheeple that must be punished, and they don’t like movies robbing them of two hours of their life, even if one scene happens to drag on for a few seconds longer than it should. The movies seem to offend them personally by even daring to suggest MK&B deign to watch them, and the distinction was lost more and more after the Mads got caught up with their apes and Romans and stopped having any visible reason to keep sending our guys the movies.
At our Planet screening, we had an audience that could riff a favorite, if lovably flawed, movie they already knew, because we had an audience that WASN’T shouting “C’mon, movie, shoot somebody, take off your clothes, do something!” every time their attention wandered in a scene.
To riff: any/all of the Sons of Hercules movies [I have about 5-6 of them, all make Steve Reeves Hercules movies look like Citizen Kane]
Don’t riff: Dark City [one of my favorite Kiefer Sutherland characters]
Hmmmm…for the first movie I would have to say Invasion USA. No, the other one. For some reason this flick is quintessential Golan Globus in my eyes and along with The Delta Force has been one admittedly guilty pleasure.
As far as the 2nd movie goes, I’d have to go with either The Quiet Man, Yankee Doodle Dandy, The Thing From Another World, or The Bishop’s Wife. All of these were some of my mother’s favorite movies. While I wouldn’t be angered beyond belief if they were riffed, I would assume all other movies on earth were already riffed so there weren’t any other choices.
Should be riffed immediately: King Kong (1933) The dialog from that era needs some serious deflating and judgement from another era. Especially the woman-hating first mate suddenly falling in love with Fay Wray. Where did that come from? And someone has to speak up for Mr. Kong.
Never EVER riff: The Princess Bride. It is as close to a perfect movie as possible. Funny, romantic, action-packed…nearly any age can watch it, and repeated watching of it can find new joy in seeing it.
Upon further reflection, movies that are intended to be comedies should never be riffed. I believe it was Bill who stated at the ComicCon 08 Reunion Panel that, all too often, the bulk of the riffs used in such movies end up being some variant of, “That’s not funny!”
One, and only one (as far as I’m concerned, there’s no movie too “sacred” to riff…..if someone puts it out there, it’s fair game):
Showgirls (1995)
While I COMPLETELY understand this one would never have worked on MST3K (well, the ‘original’….not so sure about the reboot, since I haven’t watched any of it), I’m STILL holding out hope that Rifftrax will eventually get around to it (and SHOCKED that nobody there has yet figured out how GREAT (and EASY!) it would be to do this one! Come On Guys (and/or GIRLS (Bridget and Mary Jo, You ‘Listening’???))) !!!
Should riff: Any of the Phantasm movies.
Shouldn’t riff: 12 Angry Men.
Q1, The Manster (man finds a gorilla head growing out of his collarbone; unintentional hilarity ensues).
Q2, Picnic at Hanging Rock. Don’t let the title throw you; it’s quite possibly the most unsettling film I’ve ever seen.
And Bill should know, being reduced to ref-free variants of “That’s not funny!” over and over is even more annoying than being reduced to ref-free variants of “Y’know, guys, this movie really sucks” over and over. ;)
But yes, when you look at the MST3K movies that were trying to be comedies, like Batwoman, Catalina or Hobgoblins, the riffs came out of the movies being that much more PAINFUL for it.
The Blob (1958)
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The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance