At the end of August, I wrote a piece about an amazing event that I had the pleasure of seeing at my local movie theatre: Rifftrax Live: Plan 9 From Outer Space. (Did you miss what I wrote?  Check out my description of this phenomenal event here.)

Apparently the event was so popular they have scheduled an encore re-broadcast of the entire evening in 285 movie theatres around the country on Thursday, October 8th at 7:30 PM EST.

This is a fantastic opportunity to enjoy former Mystery Science Theatre 3000 members Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Bill Corbett as they have their way with what is often referred to as the worst movie ever made: Ed Wood’s infamous Plan 9 From Outer Space.

You can find out more information about the event, and purchase tickets, by clicking here.  What are you waiting for?  I almost want to go see the show again!

I just got back from a spectacular evening — seeing the Rifftrax gang live (just not exactly in-person) riffing on what they described as “the Citizen Kane of bad movies,” Plan 9 From Outer Space!

I was overjoyed when I discovered Rifftrax a few years back.  Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett, and Kevin Murphy, three of the masterminds behind the later years of Mystery Science Theatre 3000, had again teamed up to make fun of terrible movies.  At Rifftrax.com one can download feature-length commentary tracks to play along with movies you own or rent on DVD, in which Mike and the gang make glorious sport of the film being played.  I’ve downloaded quite a few Rifftrax over the past few years, and they are every bit as entertaining as the best MST3K episodes.

Tonight, the Rifftrax gang performed a live riff in Nashville Tennessee to one of the most well-known awful movies of all-time: Plan 9 From Outer Space.  The performance was broadcast live to movie theatres across the US, and I was lucky enough to take in the show at a theatre here in Boston.  It was fantastic!

The event started promptly at 8 PM (and bonus points for that, by the way).  After introducing themselves, the Rifftrax crew kicked the evening off by riffing on an old short from the 1950’s called (as I recall) Flying Stewardesses.  It’s not, as the gang is quick to point out, a documentary about stewardesses gifted with the ability of flight — rather, it’s a pretty quaint little piece about the training that women must go through to become what we’d now call flight attendants.  The guys were in top form, and their riffs on this short were hilarious.

This was followed by a little time-filling.  Jonathan Coulton (you can find out more about him here) came on and played two amusing songs, which were funny, but not nearly as hilarious as when the cameras broadcasting the event would capture Nashville audience members rapturously mouthing the lyrics along with Mr. Coulton.  There were also some amusing fake ads (created by Richard “Lowtax” Kyanka — I don’t know what that “Lowtax” nickname means, but he created the Something Awful humor site).  All of this stuff was cute, but I started to get a bit antsy for the main event to begin.

But once it did — yowza!  Plan 9 From Outer Space is every bit as catastrophically terrible as you might expect.  (I hadn’t watched the whole film through, start-to-finish, since college.)  It’s so bad that it’s quite unintentionally hilarious to watch all on its own, without any sort of Rifftrax commentary.  Going in, I was a little worried, in fact, that the movie was too easy a target for the gang, and that their jokes might be too obvious.  

I needn’t have fretted.  Mike, Bill, and Kevin were absolutely grab-your-sides hysterical riffing along with the film.  They avoided the easy jokes (well, for the most part — but sometimes an easy joke can still be pretty damn funny!!), and the show was filled with all sorts of the bizarre references that I loved from MST3K.  (There were also some very amusing connections drawn to the short we’d seen at the beginning of the night!)

While not quite as cool as actually getting to see Joel Hodgman and HIS group of MST3K alumni (called Cinematic Titanic) perform live at the Somerville Theatre in Boston last winter (you can read my write-up of that amazing evening here), this was quite a phenomenal event, and I’m thrilled that I was able to be there.  Hopefully Mike and the gang will do this again, soon!!

As I prepare for this weekend’s series finale of Battlestar Galactica (and contemplate life without that brilliant show, one of the greatest of the last two decades), I’ve been thinking about some of the great series finales of the recent past.  Here are some of my favorites, counting down from ten!

10.  Cheers — “One For the Road” – Diane Chambers (Shelly Long) returns in an attempt to re-kindle her romance with Sam (Ted Danson) in this extra-long finale.  To be honest, it’s been years since I’ve seen this one, but my recollection is of really enjoying it.  Bringing back Shelly Long, who was pretty much the star of the show (along with Danson) for the first half of its run, was a brilliant idea.  And the final scene is perfect — Sam waving away a customer while saying “sorry, we’re closed.”  Sniff!

9.  Star Trek: Deep Space Nine — “What You Leave Behind” — I am giving props here to the entire 10-hour, 9-episode “final chapter” of this, the greatest of the Star Trek series.  The show finally becomes what it has always flirted with — a true serial, as seven seasons worth of storylines come to fruition over the course of this magnificent final epic run of episodes.  The Dominion War escalates, a secret section of Starfleet’s complicity in attempted genocide is revealed, and Captain Benjamin Sisko must finally fulfill his destiny as Emissary of the Prophets (a story thread begun in the series’ pilot episode). The show was notable for its enormous cast of recurring characters, and everyone gets his/her due here (with quite a number of popular characters meeting their demise!).  The show gets bumped down a bit on my list because the actual final two hours isn’t quite as great as the episodes leading up to it (it looks like they used up their special effects budget, as one of the major battle sequences is composed almost entirely of recycled footage, something that eagle-eyed fans like me noticed).  Still, the melancholy tone (so unusual for a Trek series) and the sad, final shot of Jake Sisko looking out the window for his lost father as the camera pulls back and the station slowly fades away into the blackness of space is just perfection.

8.  Justice League Unlimited – “Destroyer” — Classic DC Comics villain Darkseid launches a full-scale invasion of Earth, and even the combined might of practically every character (hero & villain) who ever appeared on this amazing animated show are powerless to stop him.  In an epic battle atop the ruins of the Daily Planet building, Superman ultimately falls before the might of Darkseid.  (That sequence, by the way, is a showcase for the stupendous character designs and action animation that made this show so great.)  Ultimately, it is Lex Luthor himself who offers Darkseid a deal in order to spare the Earth.  Has Lex actually done something heroic, or has he doomed the entire universe to save himself?  In a surprising move that I just love, the show does not answer this question.  

7.  Mystery Science Theatre 3000 — “Danger: Diabolik” – As the Satellite of Love hurtles back to earth, the gang takes the time to heckle one last movie.  And what a movie.  This 1968 Italian film follows the elaborate exploits of a supremely skilled thief who likes to dress in skin-tight black leather and lives in a gaudy underground lair.  However silly you think this film is, rest assured it is even sillier, particularly the ludicrous ending.  All in all, this is a classic MST3K installment, and having Mike and the robots finally escape the satellite, only to get an apartment and spend their days watching old movies, is brilliant.

6.  The Office Special — This conclusion to the original British version of The Office jumps ahead three years after the last episode of series two.  Many of the folks from Wernham-Hogg have moved on (although Tim and Gareth are still there), but pretty much everyone is re-united for a Christmas party by the original documentary crew.  This 90 minute special captures everything that was great about The Office — no show captured cringe-worthy moments of painful humiliation quite as well — while also providing a lovely, emotional ending for Tim and Dawn.  

Click here for numbers 5 through 1!

I saw a truly amazing performance last weekend at the Somerville Theatre in Somerville, MA.  Before I tell you about it, let me share a bit of history:

If any of the topics that I have written about on this site appeal to you, then I probably don’t have to tell you about Mystery Science Theatre 3000.  Created by Joel Hodgson, the TV series ran from 1988 through 1999 on a variety of stations.  The plot is irrelevant, and is quickly dispensed with during the catchy opening theme for every episode.  In short, a man is trapped in space and forced to watch terrible movies.  To maintain his sanity, he constructs a bunch of robot buddies, and the three of them wisecrack their way through each film as it unfolds.  In each hour-and-a-half episode, the gang would take on a different, awful old film.  It was a riot.  Like many fans, I was deeply disappointed when the show took its final bow (making fun with the truly abysmal Danger: Diabolik on August 8, 1999).

But that was not the end!  Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Bill Corbett (the lead players of MST3K during its later years) reunited a few years back to form Rifftrax!   The project involved the three recording feature-length “riffs,” making fun of movies exactly as they did back with MST3K.  Except, this time, the films they’re making fun of are modern, well-known movies (everything from Star Wars to Star Trek to The Lord of the Rings to Indiana Jones, etc etc etc.).  The way the site works is that for a few bucks you can download one of their podcasts, for a movie whose DVD you either already own, or go out and rent.  Pop the DVD into your player, start the podcast, and you’re off!  I’ve downloaded a bunch of their Rifftrax over the past two years, and their over-all quality is stellar.  It’s the same joke-a-second format of MST3K, and it’s a lot of fun to listen the gang take on some of the big films from the past decade.  (If you’re looking for a place to start, I’d suggest downloading their Rifftrax for Batman and Robin.  Sure, making fun of that movie is like hitting the broad side of a barn, but still — the track is genius.)

Entirely separate from the Rifftrax project, five members of the ORIGINAL MST3K team have re-formed to create their own MST3K-type project: Cinematic Titanic.  Creator Joel Hodgson has teamed up with Trace Beaulieu (the original voice for Crow; he also played Dr. Forrester), Josh Elvis Weinstein (the original voice for Tom Servo), TV’s Frank Conniff, and Mary Jo Pehl (Pearl Forrester).  Unlike Rifftrax, the Cinematic Titanic project continues the MST3K tradition of riffing on really old, really terrible movies that you’ve probably never heard of.  (Also unlike Rifftrax, these are available in DVDs with the original movie included.  That is convenient, but also makes each new installment a lot more expensive.)

At the Somerville Theatre this past weekend, my brother and I were lucky enough to see a live performance by the Cinematic Titanic team.  It was phenomenal.

The evening began with some warm-up entertainment by Dave “Gruber” Allen (who has a lengthy list of TV credits but who I recognized from his role as Guidance Counselor Jeff Rosso on Freaks and Geaks).  (As he came out to check the microphones, I kept thinking to myself “boy, that fellow sure looks a lot like the guy from Freaks and Geeks” — only to realize that he was, in fact, the guy from Freaks and Geeks!!)  One by one the Cinematic Titanic gang joined the stage, each one launching into a comedy routine of his/her own (working with whoever was on-stage already).  This was a blast and a great way to jazz up the audience.  Once Joel Hodgson came out, he and the gang took up positions to the left and right of the theatre’s large movie screen.  Each performer had a microphone and a lectern for their script.  (The riffs aren’t improvised.)  As the movie played out on the big screen, the gang barraged the audience with non-stop jokes and commentary.  

They chose a magnificent subject for their humor.  The film being mocked was called Blood of the Vampire.  It’s a Mexican Vampire story set in the 1920’s… that was made in the Philippines in the 1960’s.  It’s a film that is almost audacious in its bad taste (there are a bunch of characters who are supposed to be black, played by Philippinos covered with what looks like shoe polish), and the scary vampires are overwhelming in their silliness.  In short, the film is a perfect, ripe target, and the Cinematic Titanic gang did not drop the ball.

To say the performance was hysterical would be an understatement.  This was one of the funniest movie riffs I have ever seen.  The jokes came fast, and they came furious, and the hit-to-miss ratio was excellent.  Beyond that, it was a tremendous thrill to see in person all five of these talented performers, all of whom I have been watching on my TV screen for so many years.  

It was an amazing experience — and you can bet that when the Cinematic Titanic version of Blood of the Vampires becomes available (on-line information indicates that it is coming soon) I’ll be snapping up a copy.