After decades of Mystery
Science Theater 3000 fandom, TD and I have ventured into the RiffTrax world. For those of you who
aren't familiar with RiffTrax, MST3K's Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy (Tom
Servo), and Bill Corbett (Crow) do what they did best in MST3K, riffing on movies with their rapier wit, but without the
iconic visuals of our puppet friends in the theater. We actually popped our RiffTrax cherry last week with a movie
called Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny.
Yeah, don't ask. I don't have much to say about it, except
it was single handedly the weirdest movie I have ever seen. Pretty sure the
entire crew was taking regular doses of acid during the making of that movie.
This week, however, we watched the boys riff a Bela Lugosi
movie called Voodoo Man. Really,
there is not much to say about this movie, either, but it was just a smidgeon
more coherent than Santa. Lugosi plays Dr. Richard Marlowe, our Voodoo man, and
kidnaps lots of young females, hypnotizes them, and...well, just hypnotizes
them, I guess. The movie never really makes it clear what exactly Marlowe wants
from his victims. Thank the gods for IMDB! He is apparently combining voodoo
and hypnotism to "transfer life essence" from the victims to
"revivify" his dead wife. (For the record, revivify is actually a
real word!)
Lugosi was never famed for making wise choices in movie
roles, and this one was certainly not one of his finest. He spends the majority
of the time in a choir robe with cheap sew-on patches, very reminiscent of the
Master in Manos: The Hands of Fate. Maybe
if I had some actual sense of plot, I could say if Lugosi was doing a competent
job or not, but truthfully, I just couldn't get past trying to figure out what the
fuck was going on! But really, Lugosi is Lugosi regardless of the movie. Kind
of a one trick pony, but it's a trick that never gets old for me.
Also in this movie is John Carradine, the late David
Carradine's father. But don't get your hopes up. Carradine delivers by far the
goofiest performance of the movie, making Lugosi's poorly patched choir robes
look downright dignified. There was weird facial expressions, gawky body
movements. I get that we wanted this character to be a bumbling fool, but was
it really necessary to push him darn near "full retard"? TD is
convinced Crispin Glover channeled this Carradine character for his Back to the Future's George McFly
performance, because their physical presence and facial expressions are so
similar. Only Glover exemplifies an ability to use restraint, keeping it mildly
goofy and wholly entertaining.
The movie's incompetence aside, Mike, Kevin, and Bill are
strong as ever in their riffs. And now that they are not under the constraints
of network television, they can take their riffing as far as they see fit. They
don't abuse their power, though, and still rely on subtle insinuations, which
are often funnier than a the brash or in your face riffs that could be used
instead, which after all, is the trademark of the MST3K legacy.
If you're a Mystery
Science Theater 3000 fan, you must check out RiffTrax. If you're not a Mystery
Science Theater 3000 fan, you still must check out RiffTrax. Just don't start with Santa
and the Ice Cream Bunny, because that's ivy league stuff, and might leave
you feeling mentally violated. We don't want you to be afraid to return to the RiffTrax pool, after all!
No comments:
Post a Comment