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krpalmerSatellite News fills out its Mystery Science Theater 3000 news reports with announcements of the latest releases from Rifftrax. It’s been years since that “post-MST3K project” from Mike Nelson and some of his fellow “Best Brains” seemed to shift its main focus from “sync these audio files to your own copies of Hollywood blockbusters; surely, you want to hear them put down” to “strange and obscure B-to-Z-movies downloadable with the ‘riffs’ mixed in.” In that time, some of the obscurities turned up have looked bizarre enough to pique my attention, and yet the constant thought cheap shots at targets now in the sights of far too many might be thrown in at any moment have always left me in a sort of “there might be a coconut centre” apprehension.
Just short of the new year, though, there was a release that really caught my attention, not just “Japanese rubber-suit monsters” but anime segments mixed in. (The discussion revealed this mixture had been there from the beginning in 1970s Japan.) With no cartoons in the MST3K canon and “riffing of animation” usually a matter of “fan efforts at conventions” so far as I know, it was at once a strange new realm and a reminder of the “anime MSTings” that helped get me interested in a show that wasn’t on TV in my country back on the far side of the millennium. Then, Rifftrax offered a new-year’s sale. The thought of taking a chance at last swam through my head, and there might have been a bit of “if there are gratuitous putdowns, they might be of anime; maybe that wouldn’t irk me too much.” I went ahead and signed up for the site to buy a discounted digital copy of “Attack of the Super Monsters.”
To cut to the point, the video was funny enough to make me laugh, and there didn’t seem much in the way of mean-spirited digs at anything. As for the first and more important point, I decided back when I was first working my way through the MST3K canon the “cheesy movies” themselves were an important part of the series’ humour. The strangeness of this particular video (seemingly regardless of whether you approach it from the live-action or animated side, too) did seem to add to the fun, with fire-breathing dinosaurs attacking model cities, cyborg siblings merging to transform their model vehicle into a more aggressive form, and odd-looking comedy relief assistants. So far as “some effort was made” goes, the animation could get “photographed backgrounds” every so often.
Whether Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Bill Corbett “sound more familiar” than Jonah Ray, Baron Vaughn, and Hampton Yount is a question at least some have dwelt on, but one other thing that sounded familiar to me from the start was the English dubbing, with quite a few voices recognizable from Robotech. I don’t know whether the video was dubbed by Harmony Gold itself, as it has no credits attached. At the same time, it was obviously put together from four half-hour episodes of a TV series, which might have been one episode too many for me, even if that was also managed to remind me of the first two UHF episodes.
That I made it through one Rifftrax release in good spirits is something, but I did happen to use the sale to buy a few more videos of some almost as strange movies. I might be back in the same “I don’t know what might be tossed in” mood, even if I’ve noticed a comment or two the unusualness of this particular outing seemed to add to the experience for others.
Just short of the new year, though, there was a release that really caught my attention, not just “Japanese rubber-suit monsters” but anime segments mixed in. (The discussion revealed this mixture had been there from the beginning in 1970s Japan.) With no cartoons in the MST3K canon and “riffing of animation” usually a matter of “fan efforts at conventions” so far as I know, it was at once a strange new realm and a reminder of the “anime MSTings” that helped get me interested in a show that wasn’t on TV in my country back on the far side of the millennium. Then, Rifftrax offered a new-year’s sale. The thought of taking a chance at last swam through my head, and there might have been a bit of “if there are gratuitous putdowns, they might be of anime; maybe that wouldn’t irk me too much.” I went ahead and signed up for the site to buy a discounted digital copy of “Attack of the Super Monsters.”
To cut to the point, the video was funny enough to make me laugh, and there didn’t seem much in the way of mean-spirited digs at anything. As for the first and more important point, I decided back when I was first working my way through the MST3K canon the “cheesy movies” themselves were an important part of the series’ humour. The strangeness of this particular video (seemingly regardless of whether you approach it from the live-action or animated side, too) did seem to add to the fun, with fire-breathing dinosaurs attacking model cities, cyborg siblings merging to transform their model vehicle into a more aggressive form, and odd-looking comedy relief assistants. So far as “some effort was made” goes, the animation could get “photographed backgrounds” every so often.
Whether Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Bill Corbett “sound more familiar” than Jonah Ray, Baron Vaughn, and Hampton Yount is a question at least some have dwelt on, but one other thing that sounded familiar to me from the start was the English dubbing, with quite a few voices recognizable from Robotech. I don’t know whether the video was dubbed by Harmony Gold itself, as it has no credits attached. At the same time, it was obviously put together from four half-hour episodes of a TV series, which might have been one episode too many for me, even if that was also managed to remind me of the first two UHF episodes.
That I made it through one Rifftrax release in good spirits is something, but I did happen to use the sale to buy a few more videos of some almost as strange movies. I might be back in the same “I don’t know what might be tossed in” mood, even if I’ve noticed a comment or two the unusualness of this particular outing seemed to add to the experience for others.