Help Bring Back MST3K, Thanks to Kickstarter!

Well, if it worked for Veronica Mars and Reading Rainbow...

Earlier today, Joel Hodgson announced that he's now got all the t's crossed and such and can start a Kickstarter campaign to revive the first great cable TV show that didn't include sports highlights or Pat Buchanan complaining, Mystery Science Theater 3000!!!

In his Kickstarter page, he explains why now is the time to revive this classic show. The obvious reason is we miss the show, and so does Joel. That's why we had Cinematic Titanic and Incognito Cinema Warriors XP, and have Rifftrax (now with selected MST3K episodes). The legal tangles have been straightened out, and the project lives.

The plan is to raise at least two million dollars for three episodes, but if five and a half million dollars are raised, we'll have 12 episodes, or the same length of the first season.
There's lots of rewards, of course, named after classic phrases from the show, like "We've Got Movie Sign", "Poster-a-Go-Go", "Mr. Blu-Natural", and "The Big McLargeHuge". Specifically, people can get a free download of the first episode or the whole season, shirts, coffee cups, a producer's credit (for those in the one percent, and not necessarily in income) and even seeing the show in a theater,

So, if you think you can take over the world through bad movies, despite the fact Sharknado didn't make humanity burn itself down (and neither did Jem and the Holograms aka Two and Out), just give cash to the return of MST3K. You can always claim you're responsible.
The real hope is that a cable outlet or Netflix/Amazon Prime picks up the show. A lot has changed in 15 years, and it just might happen.

For more info, head to https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mst3k/bringbackmst3k

UPDATE: Joel Hodgson had an "Ask Me Anything" event on Reddit, and revealed some interesting things:

The new episodes will likely center on movies made in the 1970's and 80's but later releases are possible

They've already chosen a new host, who will be revealed soon

The new show will be "quaint", compared to, say, Guardians of the Galaxy

His choice for a "Desert Isle Flick" would be A Hard's Day Night

The show will be filmed in Los Angeles, although the talent and staff will be from several places around the country.

The new targets, er, movies will be excellent prints. Too bad the script and acting won't be.

He compares the show to Doctor Who, in that it has a chance to reboot and reinvent itself. That's why the new episodes will include (we're not sure how) Dr. Forrester's offspring. Maybe cloned or something, but that's what he'll be. The old MST continuity will be part of the new show, just like Doctor Who, actually,. Oh, and Joel's favorite Doctor is Tom Baker.

It's also possible the old crew, from Joel to Trace and Mike, could make cameos in the new episodes. Again, nothing is certain.

He also compares the show to going to a haunted house on the edge of town with your funny friends. It works best if you don't know what's in there."

The next DVD set is coming December first.

Rifftrax: Death Promise or The Guy With the Lousy Kung Fu

This may be a few days late, but I wanted to give my two cents on how the Rifftrax gang completed its martial arts trilogy (the others being Miami Connection and Fists of Fury) with what could be the worst kung fu movie ever made in America...or Earth for that matter,

It's about a Brooklyn guy named Charley who lives with his dad, an ex-boxer, at a run down apartment in Brooklyn. Every once in a while, the power and water get turned off, or someone sets fire to the building, by idiots who have no idea who sent them to do that.
Actually, it's thanks to a cabal of slum lords that include a judge, a Tony Soprano-wannabe, some guy with a beard and an African-American businessman . They're led by an evil guy named Alden  who has a cane to show how evil he is. They want to tear down Charley's building so they can get rich building something else. They may be behind the sudden death of his dad.

This starts him on his "death promise", where he is trained by a martial arts teacher in Japan or just outside New York City. The lessons are odd, to say the least. Afterwards, he comes up with some pretty severe ways to knock off the slum lords that he probably didn't learn from the teacher.

The final confrontation would upset any kung fu fan. Not only do Alden's henchmen show their limited kung fu skills (mainly posing and screeching), but the real villain's reveal makes no damn sense--and the final battle is even worse.
But that's to be expected from a kung fu movie born to be Rifftrax fodder.

On to the riffs:

"Directed by Robert Warmflash"
Bill:  C'mon, just make it "Bob Completely-Fake-Name"

The slum lords plan to bribe Roman into moving
Mike:  So, step one, offer old boxer money, step two, profit?

Charlie screams "Oh my God" in the distance
Bill:  He either discovered his dead dad, or got a Nintendo 64

The slum lords discuss what they'll do with the money they'll get by knocking down slums
Bill:  Let's run over a hobo for fun.

Jake finds his boss Albano killed by being on the other side of an archery target--and Jake accidentally killed him
Mike: Shot through the heart, Jake, and you're to blame?

Jackson gets killed by a bag of rats that he usually uses to get the tenants out.
Kevin:  Got this idea for a book I read sophomore year.

Charley and his friends fight Alden's henchmen, who know nothing about kung fu but sure can scream.
Kevin:  He's fighting an Axl Rose vocal track

There's also riffs on Donald Trump, Bruce Lee, In Living Color, David Mamet, Abe Vigoda and Sugar Ray.
By the way, there was a topless scene, but it was cut out of this version, According to one website, it had featured some "very interesting"-looking breasts. Just as well, since the actress spends the rest of her role being pushed around by a jerk.

While we're on the horn, here's a clip from the really strange short that was part of October's Rifftrax Live show, "Measuring Man". It's about as weird as people say:



Of course, MM's costume is a little too similar to Superman, but back in the 70s you could get away with this. That doesn't mean you should, of course. It's available here at the Rifftrax website.

Mystery Rifftrax Theater 3000

Eat your heart out, Clayton Forrester.
You had dreams of taking over the world after driving all of mankind insane through showing horrible movies.
It was a plan doomed to fail, since mankind keeps making these crimes against cinema. Hello, Jem and the Holograms.
Still, you would never have guessed there would be something called Rifftrax, which went you one better when it came to mocking movies, or even this:

Mike Nelson, the Pope of Rifftrax, made the announcement Monday afternoon:



It plans to offer a new movie every Monday with new introductions by Mike, and call it MST3K Mondays.
What's interesting is that the first two selections, "Pumaman" and "Final Sacrifice" are from the Sci-Fi Channel days, However, Jeff Whitton, press guy for Rifftrax, says it'll also be showing Joel Hodgson episodes, with the first one on November 9th.

Also, fans can download MST3K episodes. Vimeo already offers that option for 80 episodes for a modest fee, but the two shows Rifftrax is offering are not in Vimeo. Amazon, Hulu and Shout Factory, meanwhile, also have MST3K shows but they are only streaming video. So, it should be interesting which episodes Rifftrax can get. It would be incredible if they get episodes not even on DVD, like "It Conquered the World."
Update: word from the Rifftrax comments board  confirm the offer is being done with the help of Shout Factory. They have ten titles confirmed, and more may be coming.

The point is, of course, is to introduce a new generation to the beauty that is insulting movies you wish weren't made. Again, hello, Hotel Transylvania 2 and Pan.
They might get confused by the silhouettes, but not for long.

Rifftrax's new MST3K page can be found here. Of course, fans can still get other mocked b-movies, and mp3 riffs elsewhere on the website.

Rifftrax Live: Fists of Fury, the Musical

Instead of a really bad movie about zombies, vampires or some creepy guy with a mask, Rifftrax Live's Halloween show takes on the ultimate horror combination...the 80s and cheesy martial arts movies!

The crew of Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy was in top form in Nashville Thursday night when they took on Miami Connection, an indie movie made by taekwondo expert YK Kim. He's not exactly Bruce Lee, but he has this move:

He helped produce a movie about a pop band called "Dragon Sounds", who sing about friendship and being against Ninjas. They have problems with the band that they replaced, and a group of ninjas who also traffic cocaine.

Two of the band members have concerns, too. Jane, the female singer, has a brother named Jeff who doesn't like her choice in boyfriends..

He's also involved with the drug-pushing ninja, though, So his opinion isn't too valuable.

Another member, Jim, is looking for his father who deserted his family. However, he does find Dad...just in time to be stabbed by the ninjas.

So, before we talk more about the movie some more, let's get to the riffs:

The leader of the ninjas has a meeting:

"Where's money"?

Kevin:  Cuba Gooding Jr. really wants to know.

Mark (YK Kim) notes that "we are all orhpans"

Mike:  My favorive orhpan is Olivor Twast

In another fight, one of the DS guys is challenged by a dorky version of Axl Rose

Bill:  He studied under Grandmaster Elaine Benes

The movie has a section where the DS guys show of their taekwondo skills. Mike is not impressed when he describes it as "take some acid and fight the invisible gorillas". Also, during the Dragon Sounds concert, the crew leads the audience in clapping along with the song but not to the beat.

There's also riffs on Power Rangers, The Goonies, John Oates, Lilith Fair, Crystal Pepsi, Human Centipede and Maria Sharapova. Oh, and they came up with a new slogan for Golden Corral, too. 

Back to the movie, it actually got a comeback thanks to a re-release thanks to Alamo Drafthouse Films and Turner Classic Movies. This lead to a reunion:

Not only that, Kim didn't really mind that Rifftrax was mocking the movie, Here's the story from the Orlando Sentinel, and the Rifftrax crew acknowledged him watching the show from Orlando. They just asked him not to rip their throats out.

Now there was some horror, though. It was a 1970 Coronet short on measuring things. They had a kid learn about inches, pints and such from a milkman who was, in reality, Measuring Man! We couldn't find a picture of him, but imagine a really geeky Ty Burrell with glasses, wearing a Superman costume and a utility belt with measuring cups, a sparking telescope (?) and a ruler. He'd be more disturbing than Mr. B Natural.

UPDATE:  Periscope has a clip from the short. Seeing Measuring Man is a sight to behold.
UPDATE 2:  It's now available at the Rifftrax site. 

Finally, they had a preview of the next movie, Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny II. It's just like the original, only this time the story in the middle is Jack and the Beanstalk. The production values are barely above "Fun In Balloonland" but at least the girl who played Thumbelina is back full-size. That'll be coming on December 3rd.

Miss America, The Spy

Agents of SHIELD will be back at the end of the month. That means we’ll see Skye, I mean Daisy Johnson in her new role, Bobbie Morse and Melinda May making decisions, and a scientist who’s changed after an alien rock grabbed her.

Over the weekend, I saw an old episode of The Man from UNCLE, whose ideas about female agents are much different than SHIELD. That’s too bad, considering there was a much better philosophy elsewhere on TV.

The episode was “The Moonglow Affair”, which was a backdoor pilot that introduced agents April Dancer and Mark Slade:

That’s right. They’re not Stephanie Powers and Noel Harrison in this picture.

They cast former Miss America Mary Ann Mobley as April and Norman Fell (yep, Mr. Roper) as Slade. It was his first mission to train the newly minted agent because his predecessor turned 40.

Well, 40 was ancient about 50 years ago, not like now (right, Miss May?).

Anyway, choosing Mobley as April wasn’t too far fetched. She was an IMF agent posing as a trapeze artist in “Odd Man Out” during the first season of Mission Impossible. Maybe that led to her role here.

In this episode, Solo is poisoned by radiation while Kuryakin was trapped by THRUSH agents, assisted by an evil cosmetics mogul named Carasse played by Kevin McCarthy.

Back to the story, after Proto-April packs her purse with cosmetics and a big handgun, she goes to the evil cosmetics HQ as a temp secretary to figure out if THRUSH is planning to ruin an upcoming space shot with one of its own. Good thing Caresse is too busy to notice she’s planted a bug, and is able to get a lot of info. She even finds Kuryakin in the lab below, and quickly fakes being a new assistant to keep from getting caught. That’s how she gets more info..and some flirting. In fact, she winds up as Miss Moonglow, which includes modeling glow-in-the-dark lipstick.  

Apparently, the idea of this show is that April Dancer’s greatest weapon isn’t her gun but her feminine wiles, which is how she keeps Evil Makeup Guy wrapped around her little finger. That’s also why Peggy Carter would rather watch The Avengers, along with many, many others.

What about Slade? He’s a bit old to be out on the field, but he does the dirty work trying to keep THRUSH from threatening the space shot. However, it also leads him getting arrested by a cop who’d never understand espionage and stuff.

April gets caught and is zapped by the radiation weapon. Then, Slade comes in to save the day. We never find out how the cop let him go. Too bad, since it would have been better for her to wind up wounding Caresse and a THRUSH henchman despite being zapped. Then again, NBC would never allow it—but ABC could.

So, when The Girl From UNCLE did have its only season, the pattern was clear: April infiltrates the bad guys, does some flirting, gets the info, and waits until a much younger Mark Slate to save her. That’s the American way, unlike those Brits who have female spies fight just like a guy.

Well, who do we remember more, huh?

Recently, they turned The Man From UNCLE into a movie. What struck me is that Alicia Vikander, who played the daughter of the nuclear scientist Solo and Kuryakin have to find (when they decide not to argue), she had to judo flip Solo at least once to keep him on task. Too bad she couldn't be a new April Dancer.
If there was a new April, she'd have to live up to Melinda May, Sydney Bristow and Bobbi Morse. She could have done that nearly 50 years ago, but NBC decided it didn't need its own version of Emma Peel. Its idea of a female spy is being the straight person to a dopey secret agent. 
That still works in an animated spy spoof, but not when you're playing it straight today. 

I'm just saying I wish The Girl From UNCLE was allowed to be a real secret agent rather than what That Girl would be if she was in espionage.