RiffTrax Christmas Review: Santa's Village of Madness

It’s finally Christmas, and here’s my last review of the year for a RiffTrax Christmas movie. Or rather, a bundle of short movies. This, like the previous reviews, can be found on the RiffTrax website.

Full explanation of my ranking system is here. Summary: C is average, A/B is recommended, D is badly made, F is something to avoid.

Christmas with RiffTrax: Santa’s Village of Madness

Rating: B+

This is not one of RiffTrax’s newer releases, but it is a fitting follow-up to Santa Claus. After K. Gordon Murray purchased and redubbed Santa Claus, he decided “Why not get more use out of that film?” He took clips of that and combined it with other footage he shot in some holiday theme parks to create short films about a wolf, a skunk, and Puss in Boots, all of whom work for Santa. And there’s also a giant who attacks Santa’s village. And other crazy things that make no sense.

Village of Madness is a bundle of three of those films (not sure if they are the only three, or if there were more…) The first film actually uses very little footage from Santa Claus, but you’ll recognize more in the other two films. But there’s still a lot of new footage, all the better to tell an incoherent story!

Favorite Lines:

“The Christmas Wolf with an Ulcer trope is so overdone!”
“So, to recap: Santa’s toys are manufactured at offices that are overseen by a ferocious wolf, and he delivers them all over the universe using a fifth dimension that Merlin discovered.”
“So, this situation couldn’t be handled with a phone call, hunh? Santa had to sniff the moon flower and come to Earth?”
“The Forced Child Labor Factory Song. One of my favorite Christmas hymns!”
“Trademark K. Gordon: Show, don’t tell. And also don’t show.”

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone! I may or may not be posting next week, so I’ll wish everyone Happy New Year as well. Let’s hope for a better 2021!

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RiffTrax Christmas Review: Santa Claus

One more day until Christmas, and here’s another RiffTrax Christmas movie. And I think I hear sleigh bells, kids! All of these can be found on the RiffTrax website.

Full explanation of my ranking system is here. Summary: C is average, A/B is recommended, D is badly made, F is something to avoid.

RiffTrax Live: Santa Claus

Rating: B+

When I was a kid, I saw Santa Claus in a theater, for reals. Some of you may have seen it, too, either under that name or as Santa Claus vs. The Devil. It’s a Mexican movie that an American producer bought the rights to and then dubbed into English. And yes, The Devil, or rather a devil named Scratch, is sent to Earth on Christmas Eve to stir up trouble for Santa.

Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Trace Beaulieu riffed this back when they were on Mystery Science Theater 3000. Then, as RiffTrax, Mike, Kevin, and Bill Corbett riffed it during a live performance, along with an ACI short, “At Your Fingertips: Sugar and Spice”. Those of you who have seen other shorts in the At Your Fingertips series, riffed or unriffed, know the cheap lunacy you can expect.

The riffing on the main feature, at least at first, is not as good as on the MST3k version, but it’s still pretty funny, plus it’s a much better looking and more complete print. More Merlin! More Keymaker! More dancing!

Favorite Lines:

“Line your garbage with more garbage to make future garbage. It’s the circle of trash!”
“The puppet lovin’ in Act Three makes Team America look like Howdy Doody.”
“Devils in tights breathing nightmares on children. Merry Christmas, everyone!”
“Well, Santa may have to get bizz-zay!”
“Bow down before Blitzen! BOW DOWN!”

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RiffTrax Christmas Review: Christmas Circus with Whizzo the Clown!

Two more days until Christmas, and here’s another RiffTrax Christmas movie. All of these can be found on the RiffTrax website.

Full explanation of my ranking system is here. Summary: C is average, A/B is recommended, D is badly made, F is something to avoid.

RiffTrax Christmas Circus with Whizzo the Clown!

Rating: A+

How to explain this? Whizzo the Clown was apparently a clown who hosted cartoons on a TV station somewhere in the Midwest. He was popular enough that they either edited clips from a Christmas episode or filmed new material to make a weird movie for regional distribution. And then Mike, Bill, and Kevin found out about it.

But it’s not just that. They start with a short about Christmas trees made by mimes, maybe. It takes a really bizarre turn. I’m not sure, but I think this short is my favorite live-action Christmas short.

The main feature is just … nutso. As the RiffTrax guys describe it, it’s like watching a middle-aged clown having a mid-life crisis on film. Just a constant stream of gibberish while a bunch of kids try to look entertained.

I hope the little girl with tuberculosis got medical attention afterwards.

Favorite Lines:

“I didn’t think our little holiday short would have quite so much sexual weirdness.”
“The closed captions for this movie just say ‘Lucky you’.”
“There’s a rodent controlling him, like Ratatouille, that’s the only explanation.”
“It’s just not Christmas until Mom gets drunk and tries to surf on the cat!”
“Screaming, laughter… at this point, what’s the difference?”

If you like insane obscure crap like this, also try Christmas with RiffTrax featuring Magic Christmas Tree or (around Thanksgiving time) Fun in Balloon Land.

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RiffTrax Christmas Review: Christmas Shorts

Three more days until Christmas, and here’s another RiffTrax Christmas movie. This time, I’m doing some Christmas shorts: the newest ones, and a sprinkling of older ones. All of these can be found on the RiffTrax website.

Full explanation of my ranking system is here. Summary: C is average, A/B is recommended, D is badly made, F is something to avoid.

The Snowman

Rating: B+

When RiffTrax does an old-timey cartoon, it’s worth a watch. The underlying cartoon is always a weird experience, even without the added mockery.

In this case, the cartoon is about denizens of a polar region who build a snowman, bring it to life with ceremonial magic, and then have to deal with its sudden rampage.

Favorite Lines:

“I’m starting to get a Wicker Man vibe from this!”
“I think this guy was a boss in Cuphead.”

December Holidays

Rating: B

One of those school educational films you saw in grade school for social studies, or whatever they call it now. This teaches you about three December holidays from different parts of the world and how they are exactly the same because people all over the world celebrate December holidays to take their minds off the cold and darkness outside, even in places where it’s not that cold or dark in December!

Favorite Lines:

“The serving tool symbolizes the … the great spatula that is God’s love!”
“Cosplaying Jughead is a treasured family tradition!”

Alias St. Nick

Rating: B+

Another old-timey cartoon, this time about a hungry cat pretending to be Santa so he can eat any mice who don’t believe in Santa.

Word of warning: like evil Mr. Potter in “It’s a Wonderful Life”, the little mouse who doesn’t believe in Santa doesn’t get his come-uppance at the end. How is this even a Christmas cartoon?

Favorite Lines:

(after a skeptic mouse doubts Santa is real) “Merlin does it all with the help of a tongue computer and a skunk!”
“AGH! Santa’s butthole!”

Spunky the Snowman

Rating: B+

Another old-timey cartoon. One could argue that the title would not have meant back then the same thing it means now, but the guys at RiffTrax don’t. The story is similar to Frosty the Snowman, except Spunky is created to deliver mail. Everything that follows is just crazy.

Favorite Lines:

“Wild animals LOVE letters!”
“A snowman sledding is like a human riding through flesh.”
“That’s what Santa’s known for, right? Killing animals with his breath?”

Santa Claus’ Workshop

Rating: B

A live-action short. I think it was a theatrical short, back in the days when movie theaters ran a bunch of shorts and cartoons in addition to the main feature. I mean, it can’t possibly be an educational short, can it? It teaches nothing. Unless it’s meant to explain why most kids don’t get toys: Santa only delivers to one house a year!

Favorite Lines:

“Can’t tell if he’s proud of the toy, or mocking it savagely.”
“And they’ve made enough toys for … two houses.”
“Wait, Mothra sings Christmas carols.”

There are plenty of other Christmas-themed shorts, both animated and not. But if you like shorts, you need to consider:

RiffTrax Live: Christmas Shorts-stravaganza!

Rating: A+

This is a collection of shorts available on DVD or as a digital download, recorded at a live performance. You could get each of the individual shorts separately, but these aren’t the live versions and won’t include a special appearance by Weird Al Yankovic. (The short Al does really has nothing to do with Christmas, but it’s damned funny.)

The other shorts are funny, too, but one cartoon alone makes the whole live performance worth it: a very weird version of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

Favorite Line:

“WOAH!”

(Sorry, you’ll just have to get it to find out why this is the funniest riff ever, and why it makes you forget all the other quite decent riffs.)

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RiffTrax Christmas Review: It's a Wonderful Life

It’s almost Christmas, and for me lately, that means watching a lot of RiffTrax Christmas movies and short films! All of these can be found on the RiffTrax website.

Full explanation of my ranking system is here. Summary: C is average, A/B is recommended, D is badly made, F is something to avoid.

It’s a Wonderful Life

Rating: B+

Yes, it’s the Frank Capra film everyone’s seen. Sort of. Because of the weird situation with the copyright on this film, they couldn’t get the rights to stream a riffed version of the entire film. The whole “I wish I had never been born!” moment and the resulting trip to an evil parallel universe is technically a derived work based on a short story that is still under copyright, as are a couple songs used in the original film.

So they cut it out to restore it to a public domain version.

It sounds crazy, but they actually made this work. It’s a solid B riff, but I gave it the B+ because of the audacity of this move. It’s no Star Wars Holiday Special, but it’s definitely worth watching.

Some of my Favorite Lines:

“Their eyes are in their WINGS?!”
“Try not to sound so excited about the abuse, Clarence!”
“You were always best at getting Uncle Billy’s head out when he got it stuck in the pickle barrel!”
“Can’t wait until I escape from this giant house full of servants and REALLY make it big!”
“Hey, remember when Harry smacked the maid on the ass and chased her around?”
“Grab a complimentary office crow!”

Side Note: One thing that strikes me odd about the (unriffed) movie is what a miserable, horrible person George Bailey is. Also, I still find it enraging that Harry Potter, the evil banker, gets away with stealing $8,000, which would be more than $112,000 in today’s money. I know people today steal much higher sums of money, but for several decades around the time that movie was made, there was a big deal about movies showing villains not getting their come-uppance in the end. I’m shocked people accepted this.

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Marvel RiffTrax Reviews

I started my Marvel Cinematic Universe reviews with Phase 1. But here’s a surprise! I also bought three RiffTrax “Just the Jokes” commentary tracks for Phase 1 movies!

RiffTrax, for those who don’t know, is the company founded by Mike Nelson, one of the former “human” hosts of Mystery Science Theater 3000. He is joined by other MST3k colleagues, Bill Corbett (the second Crow) and Kevin Murphy (the second Tom Servo) as they make jokes about what’s happening in various movies. For big-name Hollywood movies that they would never be allowed to release modified copies of, they record just an audio track, called “Just the Jokes”, which you sync with the movie by hand or with the aid of their mobile app.

In my personal experience with these commentary tracks, I found that I have to adjust them a tiny bit one way or the other a couple times in the first 20 or 30 minutes to get them right, but afterwards they stay in sync. For manual sync, I do this by keeping one hand on the video remote and one near the computer so that I can pause and unpause whichever one is too far ahead.

This is a review of three of those “Just the Joke” tracks. Full explanation of my ranking system is here. Summary: C is average, A/B is recommended, D is badly made, F is something to avoid.

Iron Man

Rating: B

Like the movie it’s paired with, the Iron Man “Just the Jokes” riff track starts off a bit shaky, and a couple of the jokes seem in poor taste. But starts getting funnier fast, around the time they start making fun of Keanu Reeves. (No, really. Keanu Reeves.) The fake character names they come up with (like “Cheesely”) make me snort every time. I could have done without the decision midway through the movie to make jokes about Gwyneth Paltrow’s character being stupid, though. Despite that, it’s a pretty decent riff track.

Favorite lines:

“That would be handy on the set of ‘The View’.”
“Hardly seems like the time, Whiplash One, but have tried upping your fiber intake?”
“Boy, she’s got a shrill voice.”

Thor

Rating: C+

Since the movie doesn’t have much to work with for a while, the jokes take a while to get good. It’s mostly just jokes about the lighting and some pop culture references for a while. The jokes start getting funnier when we get to the horse jokes. After that point, it’s stretches of jokes worth a chuckle or two sprinkled with some funnier bits. Enjoyable, but not necessarily something I’d say people need to hear.

One thing to remember about Marvel RiffTrax tracks: just as MCU movies have scenes after the credits, RiffTrax has jokes to match. Don’t quit early even if the track is silent or, as in this one, a robot is screeching a song (which turns out to be one of the funniest bits about this track.)

Favorite lines:

“Ah yes, the traditional Asgardian ‘stop and get off your horse 100 yards before you’re there’.”
“TV’s ‘My Two Dads’ soars across the big screen!”

Captain America: The First Avenger

Rating: B+

Starts off much better than the previous two, with more laugh-out-loud lines early on that keep coming faster and faster as the movie continues. If you want to try a RiffTrax track for an MCU movie, but can only afford one, this is the one you should get. (Well, of the first three. Haven’t bought others.)

Favorite lines:

“Thank you! Who’s ready for some… Puppetry of the Penis?”
“Thanks to the serum, any excrement inside him will be far greater than any before!”
“Blu-Ray technology was deadly back in the early days!”
“Years later, the villagers below would talk of the day a delicious meat sauce rained from the sky.”

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