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Weekend Discussion Thread: The Perfect Riff at the Perfect TimeTodd suggests:
I’ve noted this one before but it still stands, from “Catalina Caper”: “It’s Gloria Estefan and the Catalina Deus Ex Sound Machina.” Amazing. What’s your pick? 143 Replies to “Weekend Discussion Thread: The Perfect Riff at the Perfect Time”Commenting at Satellite News
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“The good ones always die first.”
“Most people being morally ambiguous tends to account for the largely random pattern of death.”
From Gunslinger.
from “A Lycanthrope? A —- Werewolf!”:
Rent-A-Center Andy Garcia informs Natalie the spunky lycanthropohiliac that he’s working on a book.
She: Oh? What’s the subject matter?
MST3K: You’re right – the subject doesn’t matter at all.
“It was locked for a reason!”
From Godzilla vs the Sea Monster when the protagonists realize they have broken into a nuclear reactor.
“There’s someone 50 ft below me”
“My guess is that’s the guy you’re looking for.”
From Space Travelers when the second astronaut goes looking for the first astronaut to leave the capsule. Also from the same episode:
“Honey, I’ve got to go.”
“Where?”
Warrior of the Lost World
Gonna screw it up, but, the one about “who would ever believe someone rose from the dead?”
Deathstalker and the Warriors from Hell.
Unded guys are around a campfire eating, something, and a close up shot of one of them, some white goopy stuff on his beard.
Servo says, “Guess what I’ve been doing!?” The riff instantly becomes naughty, possibly the naughtiest riff in the series.
from Alien From LA
when the 3 screens are show, Tom says:
oh i know, is Abel Gance’s Napoleon.
That’s from Indestructible Man. Narrator: Who would believe that a man died and came back to life?” Joel: Only millions of Christians.
“Progress Island USA” is full of them, but the sudden flames and Crow yelling “THEN KISS CAME TO TOWN!” gets me every time. “So drink rum CONSTANTLY” is another great one.
From “Racket Girls”…
“Strut, pout, put it out, that’s what you want from Grandma.”
“Hey boss, I killed that horse again.”
“That’s the spirit we want in our hookers!”
“It’s the annual runnin’ of the breasts.”
I’ve always loved one from Hobgoblins:
Bouncer “I’m sorry, the donkey mud wrestlers are supposed to use the REAR entrance!”
Crow: “Well, you’re the expert on that…”
From Soultaker
When the Jim McMahon look-alike buddy of Zach says…
“You were the dude standing in the middle of the road who made me wreck my car!”
And then Mike riffs: “That tightens my pants!”
Classic!
how about the dancing at “Hobgoblins” which inspires Mike to sing, “It’s the 80s. Do a lot of coke and vote for Ronald Reagan.”
My favorites come from “Circus On Ice”. There are just too many good riffs in that one like these….
“The fawn plays happily in the dim forest, without a care.”
“…prelude to the afternoon of a murder!”
“Frantically, the fawn tries to escape.”
“Suddenly, she darts across the highway! *insert imitation of road accident here*”
It’s almost a shame that this short comes before a movie I can’t handle, though.
I also loved the follow-up line: “Come on, I teleported! It’s impressive!”
From the short Out Of This World:
Driver (standing in front of a neon sign): You know…
Mike: Sausage.
I didn’t much care for the rest of the episode, but one line from Blood Waters of Dr. Z caught me so off guard that I had to roll back the movie to catch everything I missed while laughing my ass off: There’s a part where Dr. Leopold is thinking back to some bureaucrat dismissing his evil man-to-fish experiment. As though he’d been waiting his entire life to do so, Crow chimes in at the end of the bureaucrat’s harangue with the line “Now, pull up your pants and get out of my office!“
Someone beat me to it, but the “Hi I’m Tom Servo” riff met with a look and scream of horror from The Crawling Hand is the first thing I thought of when I read about this weeks discussion thread. Sadly that exchange reminds me of a lady I had the misfortune of meeting.
“The cutting room floor was amazingly clean.”
-The Starfighters
Pretty much sums up MST3k.
Pound for pound Circus on Ice is one of their best. When Crow explains mitosis followed by him/Joel with;
Joel: Hi Prophase
Crow: Hi Anaphase.
About 7:20 into the short. Still gets me…
“How do you take your scotch Mitchell?”
Joel: “By the quart”
I forget the name of the short but that bizarre one about the appliances and cars of the future. The guy and the gal are driving off in the future car on the future highway …
Mike: “Look, the dead racoon of tomorrow”
Perfect.
Ok, here’s another good one. I’m watching Attack of the Eye Creatures now. After the briefing, the commander tells the lieutenant:
Take off
and we can all predict the immediate riff:
To the Great White North!
very fun :)
That was Design for Dreaming :)
Hamlet.
As the ghost slowly turns and Crow yells, “Ladies and gentlemen, Patti LaBelle!”
I kept misinterpreting one of the riffs that came after that, for years:
After the artistic slaughter of the deer (“And now a clown will deliver her eulogy”), and the cute slaughter of the dragon (“He was grazing!”), the announcer says, “And now the spotlight falls on a world of delicate loveliness…”
Crow: “….And kills them!”
(Oh, duh: “Spotlight falls.” Took me long enough.
For years, I cracked up over the perfect timing of that riff thinking it was supposed to be, “And now who ELSE is the happy ice show going to kill for our entertainment?”)
“Hey! Set your dwarf to oscillate!’
“YEAH! Champagne!”
There are way too many to list, and it’s part of the reason I love MST3K, but another one that immediately comes to mind is from Racket Girls:
Joe (in sleazy faux-Italian accent): “Whoa, you look like a swell dish to me!”
Crow: “Chaplin speaks!”
“The Incredible Melting Man” is one of my favorites because it has so many of these moments. Here’s a few off the top of my head:
“Why don’t we get a nice bottle of wine” – “And drink it in the CAR!”
“Burger King Command Center”
“Now, to strip down to my underwear, some porn, and I’m all set.”
“Ressurection in T-minus-fifteen…”
“This is our third try, ya know…” – If she messes it up this time, she’s GONE!”
“So when do you think the people who work here are coming back?”
“Marshmallos. I HATE MARSHMALLOWS!”
Good stuff.
In “Boggy Creek 2”, after Doc and the gang head out on the open road in the jeep with camper in tow, Mike riffs “We’re goin’ campin’ and you’re gonna watch”. The timing is perfect because since it happens so early in the movie, you’re actually left with this feeling that it wasn’t really a riff, but more a statement of fact. Turns out, that’s exactly what it is.
The infamous Progress Island USA before “The Beast of Yucca Flats” (“I get the ‘Yucca’ part,” sez Crow):
Narrator: Bilingual schools!
Mike: …bisexual students!
Narrator: Modern hospitals!
Servo: …are not here.
Narrator: Luxury hotels!
Crow: …are desperately needed.
From Racket Girls…
“Strut, pout, put it out, that’s what you want from grandma.”
The drugging scene from The Brain that Wouldn’t Die…
“I love this place!”
Trace could always be counted on to break in suddenly and usually cracked up the other two riffs as well as us.
Interesting you mention that short. I would actually nominate those type of negation jokes as some of the weakest ones they do. (I always thought that would make an interesting Weekend Discussion Thread, btw) To me it’s on the same level as a state park joke. A SP joke just comments on what is on the screen. A negation joke just says nay-says something the movie says. It’s simple and childish. Not very clever in my book.
I know you are but what am I!
Racket girls. Mob guy caught making out. “Sorry Peaches got a little clingy.”
I never understood that one. Is it a reference to a song or something?
In Werewolf, when the skeleton is referred to as Carly Simon.
It’s like throwing a dart in the triple 20. Perfect hit.
In the short “Snow Thrills”, the voice-over announcer tries to convince the audience that the word “skiing” is pronounced “shee-ing.”
Joel then says “Yeah, well you’re full of skit…”
I also love “Giant Spider Invasion”, when Ev is anxiously calling someone on the phone to bring over more booze.
To which Crow goes (as the voice on the other end of the phone), “This is not the purpose of 911, ma’am…!”
That’s two good lines; in truth, there’s about 1,000,006 others…!
The line is paraphrased from Neil Young’s “Old Man”. It doesn’t seem to have any special relevance besides name-dropping a song.
From the short “out of this world”
Bread truck guy: Y’know…
Mike: Sausage!
Red Zone Cuba:
“This is gonna sound strange…”
Crow: “But would you choke me again?”
Also, “The extension-of-my-manhood car!” and Crow’s angry, growling impression of the car that looks like an electric razor. That whole short’s a gem.
All-time fave would be from MST3K: The Movie, when Cal and buddy are “Inserting the toaster pastry…” Mike’s grandiose “Yum…!” kills me.
IIRC, one of my favorite ‘state park jokes’ (is that the right term?) also falls under this. During the opening credits for ‘Lost Continent’:
‘COPYRIGHT MCMLI BY TOM PRODUCTIONS’
Servo (in an quiet, vaguely-offended voice): “Tom Productions?”
Right after that:
“Produced by Sigmund Neufeld….. and directed by his brother, Samuel Newfield.”
The fact that Servo’s right really helps, though.
I stand corrected. Thank you!
From Santa Claus Conquers the Martians:
Voldar: What is a Christmas?
Joel: It’s a Christian holiday ruined by commercialism.
From “Eegah!” when Roxy is meeting Eegah’s mummified relatives:
Roxy: Does he know they’re dead?
Crow: He suspects.
Two words:
‘Bad touch.’
How about Packers win the Superbowl during the crowd scenes of Giant Spider Invasion?
This is a moment where a riff preceded a line from the short and made the riff retroactively funnier:
In the short “A Date with Your Family”, Daughter goes to Mother, and Mike riffs “Mom, I’m pregnant.” That’s when Hugh Beaumont Narrator goes “Hmm, is it that late?” Mike & the Bots don’t seem to react to the wordplay, so I always wondered if it was intentional or not. But it always made it hilarious to me that the narrator was pre-riffed.
From The Dead Talk Back:
“It was at this point that the case took an unusual turn.”
“All the suspects moved into my house.”
You could go anywhere you want with a setup like that, but they hit exactly the right note.
As far as perfect timing, I think it’s in Escape 2000 when the Nosferatu lady spins to look at Toblerone and Tom (I’m almost sure it’s Tom) makes that hissing sound. Perfect!
The best timing is when Tom does his “can’t get a word in edgewise” type riffs when a character is talking and won’t shut up.