Movies that Need to be Riffed by the MST3K Gang

I firmly believe that any Meryl Streep film can be made better by substituting Cynthia Rothrock and a few minor script changes involving her quest for vengeance for the murder of her husband. image

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Sorry I don’t have the attention span to read all these replies, so if someone’s already said this my bad but….I think Waterworld would be a prime mst3k choice. I’m watching it right now and genuinely enjoying it despite it’s flaws, which is why I think it’d make a great candidate for riffing

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Featuring Fabio in his first film role

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Goke, the Body Snatcher from Hell is a great bad movie I watched the other night and couldn’t be more perfect for riffing.


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Part II

Invisible Agent (1942) - A WWII actioner where the grandson of the Invisible Man gets caught up in the war and must go behind enemy lines. Peter Lorre, Cedric Hardwicke, fantasy and espionage hit head-on in an odd interesting mix of genre.

House of Frankenstein (1944) - Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney Jr, John Carradine, Lionel Atwill. The last of the Universal Horror cycle and prime to be teased and kidded by MST. Dracula, The Wolfman, Frankenstein, a mad scientist, and a hunchback squeezed into 70 minutes. Too many threads and subplots igniting then imploding one after the next. A tired close to a classic tradition readymade to “taste the rainbow.”

Bela Lugosi Meets the Brooklyn Gorilla (1952) - Dracula wages war against Martin & Lewis wannabes. Envision Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) on the other end of the spectrum. Dated crooning, insufferable slapstick, and an autopilot Bela stuck right in the middle. This needs a short to be a 90 minute episode but the horror is ripe for MST3K.

Glen or Glenda (1953) - Ed Wood’s cinematic christening. Docudrama, Bela Lugosi ("PULL THE STRINGS!!!), overwrought narration, bad acting. A legend of Z-Grade schlock richly deserving the Riff Treatment. Ed Wood’s (1994) recreation of it adds further fuel to the fire.

Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957) - “Worst film of all-time” till Manos (1966) came along. Lugosi, Bela’s death, his wife’s Chiropractor replacing him, Criswell, Vampira, Tor Johnson, Paper Plate UFOs, fake cemetary, bare bones sets, “grave robbing”, the Wood Touch, and Ed Woods’ (1994) place in popular culture leaves Plan 9 a contender.

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Personally I’d pay good money to see them riff Rocky Horror. It would be the ultimate union of comedy genius and camp!

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I hadn’t heard of The VelociPastor until MJ watched it last week on her Twitch channel. It is AMAZING. It has more WTF moments than any 10 regular bad movies.

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The movie crosses into legendary status. Everyone is aware of it. Rocky’s (1975) too known and iconic to grace MST3K. Joel opts on unknown gems or forgotten staples needing rediscovery. Rocky commands its own following and draws its own spotlight. Likewise as a self-aware schlockfest, the wink wink nudge nudge of Horror is hard to riff since it riffs itself.

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House 2.

I decided this long ago, but just remembered.




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Personally I’d like to see any film by the legend Godfrey Ho get the mst3k treatment. For those who don’t know him, he managed to pump out so many schlock karate/martial arts movies, making almost 80 movies in the span of 10 years. His films are almost borderline incomprehensible, mainly due to the fact that he would edit in scenes from other movies into them. The expressions are over the top, the action is silly, the dubbing horrendous and overall they’re a joy to watch. My personal favorite is 1981’s “Shaolin Drunk Monkey” where to the best of my recollection, a chef named Mo, (Sadly Larry and Curly don’t appear) has to be trained by an old master through the techniques of lifting chairs to defeat “The Silver Eagle”, who is running around killing martial arts masters. Mo teams up with the granddaughter of one of the deceased masters, and they go fight Silver Eagle together, but not before Mo hides under her dress to evade some goons. You can find the whole thing on youtube, i’d highly recommend it, though don’t go in expecting to understand any of it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVC8KvjSqJs

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371 posts as of now, and not a single mention of VelociPastor?? I’m shocked, I tell you, shocked!

HE’S A MAN OF THE CLAW!

After losing his parents, a priest travels to China, where he inherits a mysterious ability that allows him to turn into a dinosaur. At first horrified by this new power, a prostitute convinces him to use it to fight crime… and ninjas.

Free on Amazon Prime. Why are you still staring at this post? Go!

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That one has crossed my mind solely off of concept. I haven’t seen it though, so I can’t speak from experience. How do I know it isn’t Oscar-worthy? If “Return of the King” can win a bunch, surely VelociPastor…

I’ve seen it twice, on purpose. It’s an intentionally bad movie, almost riffing itself. It’s quite entertaining.

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Yeah, I mentioned in one of these Riffing Wish List threads that some pals and I from Club MST3K did our own Ninja Terminator riff. Though we didn’t post it. SO much perfect fodder in there. <3

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I feel like intentionally bad movies, or the tongue-in-cheek kind of movies, should really be off limits for riffing. If a movie is intentionally bad, or is clearly being played for laughs, then there’s not really much fun in riffing it. Sort of like how Rifftrax stopped riffing any of the Sharknado movies past the first two; once you got past those, the movies were being deliberately made to play off of jokes rather than trying to be at least somewhat serious, and the further along you got the more ludicrous the plots were, up until they (literally) threw the kitchen sink at it and finally were done.

Some of the so-called “mockbusters” would probably fall into this category, with a couple of exceptions (Atlantic Rim, the first one, was riffable because it was, despite being a mockbuster, played at least somewhat seriously; the second one though, yeah, leave that alone please). I also think a lot of the terrible shark movies and Sy-Fy original movies should be left out of the running, simply because they’re deliberately made to be terrible or made to poke fun at tropes in movies. It’s when a movie is UNINTENTIONALLY bad in a way that makes it funny that it become riffable.

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I know this is probably never gonna happen, but a personal favorite of mine I’d love to see riffed would be Derek Savage’s 2015 classic, “Cool Cat Saves The Kids”. If you don’t know who Derek Savage is, you can search him up on youtube and find plenty of videos discussing all the drama and shenanigans he’s been up to. In summary, Derek is an amateur filmmaker in his 60’s from Nevada, who’s claim to fame is his kids character “Cool Cat”, a big annoying orange cat who loves “ALLLL KIIDSS” and teaches them the importance of not spraying painting on people’s walls and what to do if they find a gun. In the film, Derek Savage plays Cool Cat’s father, who is always referred to as “Daddy Derek”, and is married to “Mama Cat”. While Derek is a human, Mama Cat is another anthropomorphic animal, bringing some things to question. In the film, Cool Cat has one rival, the epitome of evil, Butch The Bully, who makes it his goal to “punk” the other kids with his nefarious bullying tactics. The film is three short films stitched together, making the little plot there is hard to follow. And the acting talents of Erik Estrada and Vivica A. Fox come together to sit on a beach chair and do pretty much nothing. The music is original, but sounds stock, and he uses comic sans and stock cg graphics constantly. And one important thing to note is unlike some other directors who do these things, Derek is 100% serious. He is not trying to be funny or bad on purpose, he is trying to make something good. And of course this led to some drama when people started making fun of his movie, but that’s not really important for this particular discussion (though I would highly recommend looking into the man, he’s truly an enigma). I would go into more, but it’s something that has to be seen to be understood. I’d highly recommend watching it if you can find a copy. Unfortunately, do not rent the amazon version, or purchase the film “Cool Cat Kids Superhero”. These are re-shoots and re-edits of the original that ruin some of the best bits. If you’re gonna watch it, the only way to legally get the original cut that I know of is to purchase the Cool Cat 3 DVD boxset off Derek Savage’s website, Cool Cat® ; A Derek Savage Children's Series .You can get it for 25 bucks, which I think is a fair price for what you get. Now do I think MST3K could get the rights to do a riff? Probably not due to how notorious Daddy Derek is when it comes to criticism, but I still have some hope that it could happen some day, who knows. All I know is that cool cat loves you

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Rocky Horror was MST3K before MST3K ever existed!

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Yes and as such isn’t requiring of the MST3K massage. Rocky Horror (1975) is prebaked and infused by so much camp silhouettes and a satellite are not required.

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I agree that it’s so packed with camp that no satellite is required, but I think the gang would have a field day with it and the result would be fantastic. Just imagine Servo during a host segment with that Frank N’Furter wig and those latex gloves …

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