Post by posturepal on Jan 5, 2016 9:16:34 GMT -5
Rattlers
Another made-to-order riff-friendly flick and the now-former Titans deliver with mostly flying colors. Some great unforgettable characters in this one and none of them were the snakes. I place this one in the middle of the CT releases for a couple reasons: Some jokes are a bit too rapid-fire and lack cohesion (much like Alien Factor) and there were far too many innuendo-based snake jokes. But there was a Mitchell! in there, a fun surprise after I complained about the missed opportunity in the above post. Maybe I'm sentimental, but I wish more MST jokes could have flowed into CT. I love callback humor. All that being said, the positives far outweigh the negatives in every CT release. The few years they were together made me feel like a teenager/young adult again. Thank goodness I was able to catch one of their last live shows to meet them and experience their work first-hand. Bravo.
Agreed that the characters were a salient feature of Rattlers. What do you mean about the jokes being rapid-fire and lacking cohesion though?
I thought Alien Factor was one of the strongest riffs CT did and Rattlers doesn't compare as well but is not as nasty as say, Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks or Doll Squad or Legacy of Blood. I'm a totally blind fangirl and loved them all, but I'll cop to liking much less the ones with more gratuitous T&A and sandy background scenes behind greasy and sleazy characters in dim to dark lighting.
It's practically a 70s formula for movies that taint my soul: greasy faces + sand in the background + sand on the lens + one scene you can't see at all and it's not even the sex scene unfortunately because I hate all these people = sad, adulterated Euphoriafish The snake innuendo jokes bothered me not for being there at all but for their numbers. Kind of fun during the bathtub scene, not elsewhere.
I never really liked the callback jokes in CT. One per movie is fun and gets a huge rise out of the audience, but when there's a running callback to Eegah as here, I'm kinda over it and get cynical about the pandering. I LOVED to hear them when I was the crowd at the live shows though, and this was a live-centric show so I can see how there's a place for them. Callbacks let a full house know they have solidarity with each other because they all remember the same great incredibly weird moment and funny joke that came of it.
My own ranking of the CTs is:
1. War of the Insects
2. The Wasp Woman
3. Doomsday Machine
4. Blood of the Vampires
5. Danger on Tiki Island
6. The Alien Factor
7. East Meets Watts
8. Santa Claus Conquers the Martians
9. Rattlers
10. The Astral Factor (not on DVD)
11. Legacy of Blood
12. The Oozing Skull
13. The Doll Squad
14. Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks
And I can't rank Samson because I didn't see it. My ranking criteria are that I like a good colorful spectacle with bright lighting, characters that are weird but not particularly immoral, and less sex even as innuendo unless it's honest and psychologically healthy. Teen smoochers in Attack of the Eye Creatures A-OK, Mitchell having casual drunk intercourse and cheating the prostitute out of money not so much.
I do have to agree with you on the types of movies that make higher quality riffing material. There are still some parts of MST3Ks I can't stomach to this day, such as some from Girl in Gold Boots and Incredibly Strange etc. Yuck. I'm hoping the reboot doesn't go CT's direction with fare like Frankenstein and Oozing Skull. I prefer MST3K you can watch with your kids, with goofy monsters and ridiculous characters and dialogue. Anything with Peter Graves, really.