Before the main event, we only have one short, the mystical What is Nothing?, where two boys mumble and ponder the meaning of nothing while looking high as a kite. Or two kites. Or NO kites….. This ponderous film strip (when would this EVER be shown in classrooms???) is beyond weird, among the strangest things I’ve seen riffed. Those creepy 1970s shorts they got a hold of after getting to RiffTrax have been non-stop gold.

There were also two shorts from Richard Kyanka (Lowtax), narrated by his daughter and animated by the SomethingAwful team, which were entertaining (about Doorknob Man and Monster House) in an Axe Cob vibe.

There were a few technical glitches, namely some visual dropouts during the second Lowtax short, and the camera lingering on a sweaty Bill for some reason while Kevin talked for 30 seconds. But all was well as we moved on to the main event…

Jack the Giant Killer

A treasury of awesome awfulness, Jack the Giant Killer features many stop-motion monsters, dubious special effects, and many actors in “witches” costumes that make them look like folks out of the Star Wars cantina. All of which is awesome to folks like me. Jack himself is pushing 40, but sold to us as a young hero who lucks into slaying the giant sent to kidnap the Princess Elaine. But the evil Pendragon won’t stop scheming, and ends up kidnapping Elaine at a later date, causing Jack to go on a rescue mission. Goofy things happen along the way, a kid tags along, a viking is there, and also a leprechaun in a bottle. Sadly, the non-murderous kind. But we did learn that when a leprechaun tells you to “seize the bone”, you don’t say no!

Several golden moments include the chimp in a thong and Phil being happy. The climactic conclusion involves a sea monster, another giant, and a huge bird dragon thing. There were so many targets on the screen each moment, the Riffers must have felt like kids in a candy store. But Mike, Bill, and Kevin pulled it off marvelously, and in the end, the $12.50 was worth it. I enjoyed the film well enough it has been added to the review queue, at which time I’ll get more than the random screenshots I ganked from another site.

Before the film were the usual RiffTrax gag movie facts slides, which were funny (except the dig at Cool Dog! Cool Dog is the greatest movie featuring a cool dog, EVER!) I would be remiss if I did not mention I went to see this with Todd at FourDK, because that’s what awesome movie bloggers do: go to movies!

Be right there!

The show consisted of 6 shorts, most of which have been made available previously as digital downloads on RiffTrax.com. I had seen three of them previously, but seeing things in a crowded theater done live is far superior to watching them on a laptop at 1:30 am because insomnia is striking again.

We started off with a RiffTrax Highlight Reel that was awesome but also made me wish they had done a feature film. Oh, well, there is always next year!

How to Buy Food - Do you know how to buy food? Well, now you will! Just remember not to by impulse items like 3 packs of fresh oysters, or lima beans, lima beans, lima beans. Someone likes lima beans.

Mr. Bungle – You might remember the Mr. Bungle short on Pee-Wee’s Playhouse. Basically, an awful-looking puppet teaches young children what not to do, then a very blonde young boy obsesses on not being a Mr. Bungle for the next 15 minutes. Almost every character has blonde hair, which is sort of disturbing. Bill and Kevin were joined by special guest Maria Bamford, who I had never heard of. She’s a comedienne and popular from the audience applause, but I could barely hear anything she said and she left no impression on me.

Drugs are Like That – This awful 1970′s anti-drug short (narrated by Anita Bryant, vocal anti-gay rights crusader whose career was destroyed by backlash to her hate-filled views) features two kids who must have been on drugs putting together a fucked up Lego creation while explaining all the things that drugs are like. They include: babies, the don’t-step-on-a-crack game, swinging on a rope, a lake, playing baseball, and getting into the cookie jar. Kevin and Bill were joined by Cole Stratton and Janet Varney – 2/3rd of the SFSketchfest co-founders (the other guy was the host), who also are featured RiffTrax Presents performers.

Drawing for Beginners: The Rectangle - Kevin and Bill did another solo joint for this film that teaches you how to draw a rectangle. I guess this was before Kennedy told the schools to shape up so we can get people on the moon. Amazingly, you can use rectangles to draw rectangle-like objects. Who knew?

Shake Hands With Danger – Mythbuster’s Adam Savage joined Kevin and Bill for this industrial safety short that was rather gruesome at times. If you see one industrial short where people lose arms, get fingers grinded off, and fall to their deaths this year, then it may be this one.

At Your Fingertips: Grass – The final short was the fabled Grass short that was used on the Reefer Madness theater special. The always funny Paul F. Tompkins was there to help learn all sorts of wonderful, creepy, horrid things you can make with grass.

And we never find out if corn is grass!

Overall, it was fun times, and it is good to see people live again. Cinematic Titanic is coming back in May for a double show, so I’ll be there as well since I won’t be broke like I was the last time they came to town.

Most of these shorts are on RiffTrax.com already, so see them if you want, don’t if you don’t, yada yada yada.

The RiffTrax is out today, I cannot wait, it will be among the greatest RiffTrax ever

I was a little wary of the Reefer Madness film, as I already own the Legend colorized DVD version with Mike Nelson commentary, and the Three-Riffers version that has commentary by Mike, Kevin, and Bill. So I was hoping for some new content.

Getting there early paid off, as instead of the normal lame “movie trivia” cards there were special RiffTrax movie trivia cards. Those were awesome. The soundtrack playing was also songs done by Mike, Kevin, and Bill (available as the RiffTones album on RiffTrax.com)

Before the flick there was
3 shorts:
More Dangerous Than Dynamite – a 1930s join that educated me that women used to use GASOLINE to wash clothes and do dry cleaning! Luckily, this awful short educated those women as to how they should have their clothes professionally washed in gasoline so they aren’t horribly burned by badly animated fire.

Grass – a 1970s educational short about how grass is totally neat. Grass grass, not marijuana grass. But being on marijuana might help you get through this mess. Did you know you can weave grass together and make headdresses? Because you can. And they’ll spend many many minutes making headdresses. And also horrific clay creatures that are the embodiment of Satan.

Some Cartoon – a 1930s cartoon about two dog-things (father and son) going to the north pole, complete with lots of side “jokes” of various arctic animals doing things. Eventually, the child dies and the father dog-thing robs his son, but quickly puts the money back when the child comes back to life, only to be murdered by what I think is a bear. The father abandoned his son again to hump the north pole or something, then the bear thing kills him. The end!

There was also two quick shorts done by Lowtax from SomethingAwful and his five year old daughter, which were pretty cute.

Finally, Reefer Madness begins. The story of an old creepy dude who lectures the audience. He tells a story that is the real story that is about some innocent kids who get drug into the world of Reefer and Madness. Smoking reefer will cause you to hit and run, uncontrollably laugh, have sex, get away with murder, go insane, get stds, be a forty-year-old high school student, fall in a fountain, get your girlfriend almost raped and then murdered, be framed for murder, and have an old judge yell at you. Then the old creepy dude returns to yell at the audience again.

As for the Riffs, sadly, some of the jokes I remembered from the other versions I saw. There were new jokes, including some related to a contest sponsored at RiffTrax.com. I was hoping for more newer jokes, but at least seeing them with an audience helped me enjoy the reruns better. RiffTrax also announced the next show will be a Halloween show on October 28 – House on Haunted Hill (Vincent Price Version) As this is another film that I have both the Mike only and Three-Riffers edition, I am not sure if I’ll go to this one. But possibly as I am seeing less films in the theater and it’s easier to justify special events like this than some random film that will be on DVD in a few months. I do hope they do some more original content for the special events in the futures.

So I already have the Legend DVD with the colorized version of Reefer Madness and Mike Nelson commentary. And I have the Three-Riffers edition of Reefer Madness that has Mike, Kevin, and Bill giving commentary. And now I’m seeing it in the theaters. But at least many of the jokes will be new! And there is also some contest about entering your own jokes, but I usually shy away from that as user-generated jokes can be a problem at times (see the RiffTrax of Batman and Robin which is almost entirely user-generated – it’s not that good.)

But this will be cool and I will be watching it and maybe I’ll even enter that contest for the iPad if I stop being lazy.

Here is some email the RiffTrax press dude sent me, but since I was going anyway it doesn’t matter and I’m just including it to bulk up the text of the article for more Google search term matching goodness. It’s called efficient laziness.

The sarcastic wits behind cult favorite Mystery Science Theater 3000 are returning to theaters across the country this August with RiffTrax Live: Reefer Madness!

On August 19th (encore August 24th) Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy (Tom Servo) and Bill Corbett (Crow) will bring audiences to a higher state of consciousness with their signature brand of rapid-fire comedy at the expense of the 1936 exploitation film, Reefer Madness, in which California’s favorite demon weed leads children to murder, suicide and occasional fits of promiscuous dance.

Reefer Madness will be bookended by the performance of three new shorts from the RiffTrax crew, a special presentation from humor website SomethingAwful and the surprise announcement of the winners of the Reefer Madness writing contest.

Anyone who’s ever wanted to write their own RiffTrax now has the opportunity to become a writer for the live performance of Reefer Madness! Entrants should visit www.rifftrax.com/contest before August 18th, watch the ten clips of Reefer Madness and submit the best possible quip for each. Winners will be selected by Mike, Kevin and Bill, have their line included in the show and receive a writing credit.

www.fathomevents.com/comedy/event/rifftraxreeferlive.aspx
www.rifftrax.com

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

(More RiffTrax Trip Reports coming soon, I swear! Just too lazy to write them up!)

Since you like to report on the goings-on at RiffTrax, I thought that you might like to hear about an upcoming event we\’re hosting..

The talent behind TV’s Mystery Science Theater 3000 and RiffTrax.com is about to boldly go where no bot has gone before: the Planet of Dinosaurs! Join RiffTrax’s Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett as they suffer through an evening of truly “special” effects in the inaugural feature-length RiffTrax Live webcast.
From the RiffTrax website:

“Tune in Friday May 15th at 6:00 PM Pacific (9:00 Eastern) for a free live riff of the hilarious, mayhem-packed short Shake Hands with Danger and then step through the velvet ropes for our pay-per-view feature presentation, a live riff of Planet of Dinosaurs, a stop-motion dinosaur movie that makes Gumby look fluid and life-like in comparison.”

The event will occur via: http://www.rifftrax.com/live/planet-dinosaurs-live-ticket

Planet of the Dinosaurs is a very 1970′s space dinosaur flick I remember fondly from tv as a child, especially the triceratops goring a guy and dropping him off a cliff. Learn to aim better, jerk! During one of the other live RiffTrax, they had technical difficulties, but this time I bet they are much more ready. If I were not broke, I would be going for one of the DVD deals:

Only $6.99 gets you two hours of non-stop laughs (plus a live Q&A with Mike, Kevin and Bill immediately following the movie), or choose the deluxe package at $14.99 that gets you the full live show, the Q&A, plus you get both of the live versions of the short and the feature as downloadable videos to watch again and again (well over $10 of value on their own)! You will also get a bonus MP3 song download by the RiffTones (comprised, completely coincidentally, by Kevin, Bill and Mike), and we’ll also throw in a surprise digital souvenir goodie added to your RiffTrax account. So belly up to RiffTrax LIVE ONLINE on the 15th for one heck of an entertainment value.

Hopefully the “inaugural” means they will do many more feature length films with DVDs to match, preferably still available after I get some money. I don’t mind being a shill for them since they bring me so much joy.