Dr. Clayton Forrester figures he can rule the world if he deadens his subjects' brains by making them endure terrible movies. Exploiting his access to nearby satellite-dwellers Mike Nelson and his robot pals, Crow T. Robot and Tom Servo, Forrester makes them watch "This Island Earth", a cheesy 1950s spaceship film. But when Mike and friends make funny comments throughout the movie and others that follow, Forrester's plan looks increasingly flimsy.
For our fifteenth year of RiffTrax Live, we've selected the 1990's cult classic about bank robbing, presidential masks, and surfing: Point Break! It was directed by Academy Award Winner Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty) and stars Keanu Reeves (The Matrix, John Wick, Keanu), Patrick Swayze (Road House), and one of our all-time favorite character actors, Gary Busey (A Star Is Born, Predator 2). Mike, Kevin, and Bill will riff Point Break LIVE at the State Theatre in Minneapolis on July 27th, and the resulting hilarity will be broadcast to over 700 movie theaters across America on Thursday, August 8th with an encore on Tuesday, August 13th thanks to our partners at Fathom Events.
Starship Troopers is the tale of young trooper Johnny Rico, played by Casper Van Dien, star of this and...well, some direct to video sequels of this, mostly. He’s joined in the war by Denise Richards, impossible to believe as a gifted starship pilot long before she was impossible to believe as a gifted nuclear scientist in that Bond movie. He’s also joined by the great Neil Patrick Harris, who is somehow much easier to believe as an intelligence officer with psychic abilities that help him communicate with the giant bug aliens. Throw in Michael Ironside, because duh, it’s a war movie, you’re gonna need Michael Ironside, and Jake Busey, because duh, he just showed up on set and wouldn’t leave, add a love triangle, heaps of alien splatter, and you’ve got the sprawling, great, goofy mess that is Starship Troopers! Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for this gorilla-gram free version of the blockbuster live show!
Deep in the Mexican jungle, a legendary creature lurks in a radioactive swamp. Is it a man? Is it an octopus? No, it’s OCTAMAN! Okay, it’s a man in an octopus suit, but he’s really angry and decides to go on a light killing spree.
From the strange and ridiculously colorful world of K. Gordon Murray comes the 1959 Holiday classic Santa Claus. Made in Mexico and dubbed into glorious English, Santa Claus tells the story of, well, Santa Claus, who lives in a big white castle above us in Geosynchronous Orbit and watches over us all in a way that would make the NSA jealous. It’s Christmas Eve, and on Earth poor little Lupita wishes for a doll. Santa hears her wish and prepares for his yearly visit, helped by the heavily medicated Merlin the Wizard and Santa’s unintentionally creepy mechanical reindeer.
Crow gets unfrozen just in time for yet another Gamera film, and we meet the Mads for the first time.
The bugs shall inherit the earth! Or so says Annabelle, the hottest, the sexiest, and by far the craziest psycho blonde chick to hit Japan since WWII. Deeply embittered about the whole man's-inhumanity-to-man thing, she enacts a diabolical plot to unleash a swarm of mutant insects on the world that will destroy all living creatures except creepy crawlers. Ensnared in all this madness is a philandering island-hopping bug collector and his compliant and slightly pregnant wife, a humorless doctor from the mainland, and a United States airman named Charlie, whose way of starting a conversation is to hysterically scream "Genocide!" and then go off his rocker like the dedicated military professional he is. If you want to watch a story where everybody gets their nuclear holocaust on in the grand tradition of radioactive Japanese monster movies, this is the film for you!
American spies discover the Chinese have built a weapon capable of destroying planet Earth, a "doomsday machine" if you will, and that they plan to use it within a matter of days. Will the human race survive?
Warning: Baltimore is no longer safe. Meet Leemoid, Zagatile and Interbyce. They're the three aliens whose spaceship has crashed in a small town outside of Baltimore. Soon the town folk are turning up mutilated and dead - and even in polyester pants. Then a stranger arrives to save the day. But is he who he says he is? And what about all the polyester pants? See this film they way it was meant to be seen - on the big screen live with Cinematic Titanic.
For the first time ever, we’ve assembled five shorts about death, loneliness, and dismemberment into one big, old-fashioned yukfest. On their own, they would have been too depressing to put out into the world. But together, they form into a Voltron of hilarity, if Voltron was eventually going to die facedown in the snow, sad and alone.
For the Invention Exchange, Joel presents a safety device for motorcyclists. The Mads, anticipating the Mad Scientists' Convention, show off their device for getting rid of unwanted guests. For the day's experiment, Joel and the bots are forced to watch the first tedious chapter of "Radar Men from the Moon" (1952), with Commander Cody, as Joel explains to Tom Servo what a serial is. Their feature film is the cheesy Mexican horror flick, "The Robot vs the Aztec Mummy" (1958). Meanwhile, the threesome do their best to fend off an attack on the Satellite of Love by demon dogs, who are attracted to the spaceship's bone-like shape.
The Dean family patriarch has died and left a fortune to his children and servants. The occasion soon turns grim when they discover they must all must spend an entire week at the family estate - together. It's all the same old family routine: backbiting, billiards, rumors and innuendo, canings, pantsuits and ham - until one by one, they start turning up dead.
Have a Happy Life Day! And nothing kicks off a memorable Life Day quite so much as watching the legendary Star Wars Holiday Special receive a fully deserved Rifftrax parody treatment! Yes, all your favorite Wookies are here: there's Chewbacca, Malla, Itchy, Lumpy and Art Carney. Tony Award Winner and Oscar nominated Diahann Carroll as a singing holographic prostitute who services Grandpa Itchy. And Bea Arthur stretches her talent by playing a woman. Not only that, there are commercials from 1978 that will come close to convincing you that "1978" is fairly synonymous with "Hell". Because we taped ours off of the television set, and our NV-9300 doesn't have an "edit" function printed on one of its dozens of plastic piano key-style switches, we just left the commercials in there. Bill, Mike, and Kevin make this the itchiest, lumpiest Life Day of them all!
Tom Servo gets his new "Mighty Voice" and a chance to use it during another Gamera film. Crow is still frozen.
In RiffTrax Live: Reefer Madness, Mike, Kevin and Bill deliver their trademark form of rapid fire comedy in front of a live audience! Lines could be flubbed! Tomatoes could be thrown! Mountain lion attacks are entirely possible!
In the show's first-ever Halloween special and first-ever 3D episode, Jonah and the 'Bots watch The Mask (1961).
Crow is a frozen Christmas tree and Tom is busy, so Joel has to watch the original Gamera film all by himself.
Teens! Bikes! Feathered Hair! Love and revenge! Leotards and acid-washed denim! It’s all here in the legendary Eighties BMX-racing action-drama-romance RAD! Join Mike, Bill and Kevin as they spin, flip and slow-bike-dance their way into your hearts, LIVE in theaters nationwide on August 17th! Don’t miss it, if you want to be RAD!
Joel, Crow, and Servo sit through a star-studded TV movie about a doomed SST flight while Gypsy goes through some interesting changes.
Things get a bit randy in this version of Mary Shelley's immortal classic about... immortality. Just as our resident mad scientist is about to bring his creature back to life, he is forced to use a sub-standard brain. The Cinematic Titanic crew offer more hilarious commentary as they set their sights on a Frankenstein's castle chock full of angry villagers, grave robbers, and skinny dippers.