Just took advantage of the St. Pat’s day sale, picked up Troll 2 and Things!
I can’t believe Troll 2 became available again, no way I could pass that up. And Things, well, you can’t tease me with stuff like “worst movie we’ve ever done” and not expect me to watch it.
I haven’t seen either of these yet, bring on the pain!
Last night I rewatched their Aladdin. It is a Disney movie, but not the one most people think of. Apparently this mess was based on a “musical” theater production and was made for the Disney Channel back in 1990.
I first watched it back when I bought it three years ago and was kind of disappointed with it. I think my opinion may have been unduly influenced by how truly awful the movie itself was and I avoided rewatching it for a long time. But this time, since I now knew what to expect from the source material, I enjoyed it a lot more. The riffs are very funny even if everything else (music, sets, performances, special effects, etc.) about this movie is dreadful.
The one good point the movie has going for it is something I didn’t even notice the first time I watched it. The bad guy magician was played by Broadway legend Richard Kiley (the original Man of La Mancha)! His performance is the only bright spot in this piece of dreck. Barry Bostwick was the “star” I guess, but his performance is embarrassingly campy. It was directed by Micky Dolenz. Monkee go home!
If you’re in the mood for in, Aladdin is a lot of fun. Barry Bostwick also camped it up outrageously in Megaforce once he realised what a turkey it was going to be. The silhouette here was also deliberate shadow-puppetry by him.
I saw that stage production as a schoolkid, or at least a version which had the same songs.
That version of Aladdin is note-for-note the Prince Street Players production, which they still appear to be licensing.
Which one of the trolls in Troll 2 is your favorite? …Admittedly, a tough choice.
My apologies if I’m deflating your joke here. I’ve not yet seen the movie (riffed or unriffed), but I’m familiar with its legendary status, so I’m exicited to finally have it. I’ve seen a few minutes of it in tiny pieces, but I don’t recall any trolls(?) I’m fully prepared for there to not be any trolls in the movie.
You’re on the right track, but I promise you’re not “fully prepared” for the troll-freeness. Enjoy! 
Would have been so easy to just claim the monsters were Trolls. Wouldn’t have been super accurate to mythology, but I don’t think they were going for that anyway,
Isn’t this the same movie where the English-speaking actors offered to correct the terrible Italian-ated English in the script and the director told them to forget it?
Extra Troll 2 trivia: costume design by Black Emmanuelle herself, Laura Gemser. She also did costume work for Quest for the Mighty Sword; the only Ator movie not featuring Miles’n’Miles O’Keeffe.
Tonight’s viewing – Frankenstein’s Daughter, a very enjoyable Bridget & Mary Jo outing. I’m actually kind of surprised this movie never found it’s way into the original run of MST3K. It’s a lame monster movie that seems like it would have been prime fodder for Joel and the bots back then. Be that as it may, I’m glad to have B & MJ’s take on it. This is another one I hadn’t watched in a while so it felt like a nice change of pace for them after so many Mary Higgins Clark movies.
I wish Rifftrax would do more 1950’s b&w monster movies like this. There have got to be a truckload of them out there still waiting to be riffed.
Well, I’ve officially seen Things. I can see why they tout it as the worst movie they’ve riffed, but it’s not by much, maybe barely edging out Suburban Sasquatch, Fungicide, etc. It’s so incompetently made that it can’t even command the greasy/grimy/“I need a shower” quality of Godmonster or Trucker’s Woman (both of which are Best Picture winners by comparison).
Instead what I’m left with is awe at how it was made. About half the scenes have a little hair twitching at the edge of the screen, and it eventually dawned on me that this meant it was shot on film. The copyright is 1989, which means perfectly usable VHS camcorders were already available instead.
And the mystery deepens with the end credits – there must’ve been 200 people involved! First A.D., second A.D., audio engineers, costumers, effects, music … easily 10-20 times the crew of, say, a James Nguyen movie.
I’m gobsmacked. Surely the one guy actually responsible must have just pulled all those names out of thin air. One person shooting this with a camcorder with the lens cap on could not have done worse.
Ticket art is up at the Gizmoplex website!
So great to have something scheduled to look forward to once again!
A new short too! Looking forward to it.
Latest stretch goals - a JTJ riff of the pizza-scissoring Stallone movie Cobra and the return of the meat raffle!
Wow, that was an experience. I have high hopes for Rad, which appears to be another late-night ESPN2 sport propped up with a few vaguely plottish toothpicks.
I watch Spiker and all I can think is “Coach … dude … you’ll be in Kill Bill as TWO DIFFERENT CHARACTERS. Don’t do this.”
It’s just so much volleyball and so very, very little else. I spent the first half of the movie unclear on which guy was the protagonist. Every storyline from the Olympics on down wraps up with “Guess that worked out OK or whatever.”
The pivotal third-act scene when Steve is cut from the team after all his hard work was also the scene when I learned that 1) this guy 2) was a character in the movie 3) named Steve.
The real star of Spiker was Souplantation.
