Yes. It was unfunny, poorly animated, and he sunk a lot into merchandising for it. I think I only chuckled at one of them.
I wouldn’t mind seeing an animated MST3K done right, though.
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Paul was the head Observer in At the Earth’s Core. It’s not clear whether or not this was the same character he portrayed during the Sci Fi years.
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If animated movies were done on MST3K, here is my wishlist:
Foodfight!
Gandahar
Fantastic Planet
Lord of the Rings (Ralph Bakshi’s version)
Race For Your Life, Charlie Brown
Alakazam the Great
Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night
The Adventures of Manxmouse
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardobe (1979 animated version)
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That rapping dog scene…
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The only thing of theirs that I’ve seen was Animal Soccer World, which was an ordeal. One of the worst things I’ve ever had pass through my optic nerves.
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I’ve watched multiple Dingo Pictures movies and I’m pretty sure something is deeply wrong with me.
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I guess those old Russian Captain Pronin shorts count. But to give them credit, they did pull a lot off with limited budget and equipment!
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There was a TV show in the 60s called Super President. He was the president of the U.S. but he was also a superhero. And his superhero name was Super President. No one could guess his secret identity.
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It’s only a 30-minute special that was meant to launch a TV series and not a feature-length movie, but I’d like to see MST3K take on Ralph Bakshi’s Christmas in Tattertown.
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Here’s a few animated films I’d love to see Riffed. The Disney Channel used to run a lot of animated movies in the early-to-mid 90s but were notoriously stingy about actually airing stuff from Disney’s own vaults (gotta keep people buying those “limited release” VHS tapes) so they would pad the station with a LOT of cheap crap. So over time I developed a real appreciation for cheesy animation. So here’s some animated films that I think would make prime riffing material.
Jack And The Beanstalk (1974)
A Japanese adaptation of the classic children’s fairy tale that is notable for making a large number of flat-out bizarre additions to the story including a kidnapped princess, an evil witch, and creepy living paper dolls. This one was very awkwardly dubbed by Columbia pictures who added some very incongruous songs which only ads to the surrealist nature of it all. Oh and for some reason the giant’s name is Tulip.
Rainbow Brite And the Star Stealer (1985)
Just how crazy was toy-to-cartoon pipeline of the 80s? The folks at DIC and Warner Brothers hastily slapped together a “big epic” movie version of the famous doll’s animated adventures before her television series debuted. More importantly rather than this was presented as a “big world shaking adventure” before viewers even had a chance to understand how her world was supposed to function. Our colorful heroine teams up with a rather obnoxious boy named Krys (who needs to learn a lesson about open misogyny) to stop an evil princess who wants to steal a giant diamond planet which is also causing the sun to go out and… It’s strange. Oh and the soon-to-be launched Rainbow Brite television series ended up being canceled after 13 episodes.
The Elm-Chanted Forrest (1986)
An American/Yugoslavian co-production that tells a fairly nonsensical story of painter who is granted the ability to talk to animals and has to stop the evil Cactus King. Featuring some dream-like sequences including a surprisingly catchy song with a few REALLY unfortunate racial caricatures.
"The Elmchanted Forest" English trailer - YouTube
Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night (1987)
Here’s another crazy story of 80s hubris. So at the peak of their Master of the Universe power Filmation decided to make a sequel to Pinocchio you know the popular public domain story and certainly NOT the Disney version which coincidentally had recently been theatrically re-released and had just made it’s debut on home video. The mouse was not amused and took Filmation to court and actually lost. What makes this film interesting is that it goes from being boring and saccharine to genuinely nightmare inducing at the drop of a hat, thanks in no small part to the villain voiced by James Earl Jones. Also slumming it in this film are Ed Asner, Tom Bosley, Fran Welker, and Don Knotts as the Dollar General version of Jiminy Cricket.
Once Upon A Forrest (1993)
So Hanna-Barbara decided they wanted to do big-budget Disney/Bluth style animation and presented us a story of a mouse, a hedgehog, and a mole who have to go into the world of man and have significantly less exciting adventures than your typical episode of Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers. Historically infamous because 20th Century Fox had the gall to open this on the same day as Jurrasic Park… Anyway this film has some fairly jarring changes in tone from saccharine to maudlin and lays on an environmentalist message so hard that the Planeteers would tell them to lighten up a bit.
Is this thread still active? I just had to respond to this as an animation fan.
It’s kinda funny that Joel said he wasn’t inclined to use animated films due to a lack of weird spontaneous reactions and everything being planned or whatever, because that certainly hasn’t stopped the guys at Rifftrax from riffing on animated shorts and even branching out to features a couple of times with Gumby: The Movie and, as of recently, the 70s anime version of The Little Mermaid.
Personally, I can think of quite a few films that would be worthy of riffing if they ever did branch out to animation. One example is Freddie as F.R.0.7., which has Ben Kingsley voicing a human sized frog with magic powers who becomes a secret agent in modern day London, with a bizarre backstory about him being a medieval prince that was turned into a frog by his evil aunt. And there’s a villain song sung by Grace Jones which has marching Nazis and Klansmen. I kid you not.
It was one of the biggest animated flops until Delgo came along, which itself would also be another good choice.
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No thread ever really dies, as long as someone has the passion to post in it. And to spark a response.
Here’s something I was looking into recently; the work of Yuri Norstein. One of his notable techniques is painting every frame onto glass, for a layered effect. He and his wife, Francheska Yarbusova, have been at it for decades and some of their work is enchanting. Here’s his best-known work, Hedgehog in the Fog. It’s gentle, good-natured and beautifully made.
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Now that this thread is active again, I would like to say that I’m still hoping that Martin Gates’ version of The Ugly Duckling (1997) gets riffed. That is one of the worst animated movies that I’ve ever seen. Ugh. Do I need to say more?
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