Total Riff-Off 3: Monster Beats Man Again

Behold the famous jungle master, Richard Terry, finding what he thinks is the legendary Brazilian bigfoot, the mapinguari.
Or he gives us a story about how he thinks he'll find a monstrous beast, but finds something a whole lot less.
This is the third annual Total Riff-Off, where Rifftrax mocks nature shows from the National Geographic Channel. Considering the channel was recently bought by Rupert Murdoch, Man V. Monster is now Fox's perfect idea of a nature show, promising some big monster and delivering something not so threatening. It's just like its news channels.
But enough of the political humor....

This time, Terry's in Brazil, looking for the mapinguari, who reportedly attacked people at a local village. What he winds up finding are a wild pig, a poisonous snake, a big anteater, and finally this hairy sloth. The show naturally exaggerates how much danger the guy is, but the Rifftrax crew see right through it. It's too bad this wasn't part of NatGeo Wild, along with a second hour mocking some of the other shows.

Anyway, it's not quite as weird as the previous two MvM shows that Rifftrax has shown, but still very funny.
So here's some of the riffs:

Terry tries to climb down a gorge to cross a raging river
Mike:  Meanwhile, there's a family of chupacabras ten feel away just shaking their heads

Terry says the locals captured a wild pig
Bill:  he's quoting the border guards who detained Randy Quaid.

After mistaking howler monkeys for the mapinguari, he says "It's another dead end"
Bill:  Man v. Monster summed up in four words

One of the locals describe how smelly and violent the monster was
Kevin:  It was Wolverine sculpted out of limburger cheese

Terry heads into a forest looking for a tree to climb.
Kevin:  He travels to exotic places to get great footage of himself.

There's also riffs on Burt Reynolds, Nick Nolte (again), Guns and Roses, the Property Brothers and a pizza mascot.

The latest Total Riff-Off is available at the Rifftrax website.

Total Riff Off 2: Steam-Powered Boogaloo

It's been quite the holiday season for Rifftrax.
It started with a trip to Balloonland that was really a warehouse filled with really ugly balloons, followed by footage of a holiday parade with an odd-sounding narrator. Then, thousands of people saw  the re-riffing of the 1959 Mexican movie Santa Claus in theaters.

Last night, it premiered its second Total Riff Off on Nat Geo Wild, where the crew mocks nature programming and one host in particular. The first half was another episode of Man V Monster with Richard Terry, where he searches for legendary monsters that usually aren't. This was the "Mekong Man-Eater" episode where something is biting people in shallow water in Thailand. At first, he thinks it's a cobra that's responsible. However, it's really another animal that he winds up respecting. The show plays up how much danger he seems to be, but isn't. Unlike the "Demon Bat" episode, this one seemed like an animal version of Law and Order, where the culprit at the start of the episode changed twice before the end.

Some of the riffs:

"I, Richard Terry"...
finder of non-existing bats

Terry is crawling in some underground caves
He really puts the "lunk" into "spelunking"

Terry mistakes a log for a snake as he tries to get to a submerged pagoda.
"That's a log, but for a split second, it got my heart going"
Richard Terry summed up in five seconds. 

Terry meets the suspected monster, a King Cobra, which is the longest venemous snake around
A veritable Manute Bol of death

Terry finds a catfish who could be the real culprit
"Some of these species of catfish can have really sharp barbs."
Some other catfish just trick you into dating them online.

There's also riffs on Batman, Chris DeBergh, Keith Richards, Andy Griffith and Rob Ford.

The second half was a parade of animals behaving badly and strangely. There's a cub climbing in a garage at Lake Tahoe, chimps attacking racoons, a turtle having sex with a shoe, a deer and a dolphin getting too frisky, a woman from India nursing a calf, sheep stampeding inside a cycling store, an orangutan who smokes way too much, and a sea lion snacking on someone's head.

The highlight, however, was seeing a pregnant elephant give birth, then kicking her newborn to wake it up. It's pretty graphic, as are the riffs.

Something's not right at the chimpanzee enclosure at the local zoo
Nick Nolte keeps stealing their food.

A horny buck gets too close to a blonde woman
He has Warren Beatty Syndrome

A leopard takes a dump into a Jeep
Still not as gross as any one minute of Real Housewives

A water moccasin is on the hood of a moving car
He's a teenager. Friends dared him to ghost-ride the whip. 

A turtle has a passion for a show that looks like a female turtle
Yeah, call me Dr. Scholl, baby

An elephant gives birth then kicks her baby to revive it,
I was wondering when you were going to squeeze my trunk and kind of whip my head around

An orangutan goes nuts at a zoo in Taiwan
He's mad about his bitter break-up with Clint Eastwood. 

There's other riffs on The Godfather, Paula Abdul, Guardians of the Galaxy, Seal, Wallace and Grommit, and Johnathan Lipnicki.

It was another very funny Total Riff-Off, and some fans think it should be a weekly show. That may not be likely because Rifftrax doesn't have the time and Nat Geo not enough shows. Having this more often than twice a year would be a good idea. Imagine a holiday Total Riff-Off with reindeer behaving badly.

The two new Total Riff Off episodes are now available, along with last April's episodes, at Rifftrax.com/tv.