Is Rifftrax slipping?

[Krankor]

O.K. let me start this by saying that I love Rifftrax. Come on Mutant, Ghosthouse, Night of the living Dead and so many more are classics!!!
They get me laughing almost as much as a Rowsdower or a Mitchell or even a Krankor. Lately though I've noticed a disturbing trend. Those movies are not only bad they are God-awful bad and therefor are hilarious on there own. Add the guys riffin' and they are golden. But, my problem is that some of the flix lately have just been bad and not in a funny way. Even the Riffers themselves can't save them. I bought Mario and The Last Airbender and The Star Trek movies and they just aren't "bad" enough to be too funny. I'm looking for the grade Z stuff not The Wizard of Oz! I love you guys but please gimme drunken Lon Chaney or Outer space Frankenstein's or (dare I say) more John Carradine Vampire Hookers or The Mad Butcher starring Victor Bono or The House in Skull Mountain starring Victor French not movies directed by Victor Fleming or based on a story by Victor Hugo !!!! These are what I'm lookin for to join classics like Birdemic and Galaxy Invader and stay as far away from The Apple as you can!!! I know you can do it!!!!

[Diet Kolos]

They've always done good, or rather "not bad" films. Mostly because they're readily available on DVD. They're not slipping, its always been like this...

[Krankor]

You make a good point Mr. Kolos but some of the movies are just bad not funny bad. I guess that's just my opinion. The way they do it the DVD does need to be available.I just love the public domain stinkers. Now Sharknado sounds perfect!!! I've never seen it and never heard of it and I can't wait!!!

[mrmeadows]

I agree that this has been my problem with Rifftrax from the beginning, but I actually see them trending a different way. They have released quite a few Z-grade offerings lately on VOD (e.g. Sisters of Death, Terror at Tenkiller) that are more up my alley. Now, I haven't yet downloaded and watched these, so I can't speak to the quality of the riffs, but there's a better chance of me purchasing these titles than, say, Super Mario Bros. or Wizard of Oz. Frankly, I'm not even that interested in Sharknado, since it seems like the point of that movie was to be "bad/funny" and the idea of riffing it seems redundant to me.

In fact, I'm REALLY excited to see their latest installment: Attack of the Puppet People. This could almost play like a "lost" MST3K episode, I think...it's an b&w, Bert I. Gordon-directed horror flick that I know was in the running to be used in an episode during the MST3K days. (They reference it a few times in a couple of episodes). Pretty sure this will be my next download. The sample clip looked pretty solid.

[TheNewMads]

Yeah, i think Rifftrax has been more mainstream-movie friendly from the beginning. They said in an interview I think that the only reason MST3k didn't do mainstream movies is that getting the rights was so difficult. They sorta wanted to do them, and when the opportunity presented itself (when they did Armageddon, Deep Impact, Titanic, etc. for those Oscar specials, for instance) they really seemed to relish it. I don't think they were just doing old Z-grade bizarroworld movies out of some single-minded focus.

That said, I've enjoyed a lot of their mainstream stuff: Wicker Man was hilarious, both the movie and the riffing. I'm a luddite and don't really do the online downloads, so i've watched a TON of the DVDs instead, which are also pretty heavy into the old ephemeral Z-grade stuff, for the same reason that the rights to newer or higher-budget stuff are hard to get.

On a related note, CT mostly does exactly the Z-grade movie thing that's right in my wheelhouse, those ZaAt-style 70s flicks that are obviously drug-inspired and made for like 7000 dollars. i love(-hate) those movies. and yet to me, CT is not nearly as entertaining as rifftrax for some reason.

ALSO! rifftrax did some old z-grade low-budget movies and it made me a bit mad. Night of the Living Dead and Carnival of Souls are both these really cheap old movies. But to me they're also exquisite classics, and it rankled me a bit to see RT knock them around.

So, yeah. Complicated issue for me, i guess.

[TheNewMads]

Also, Attack of the Puppet People: YES. I didn't know they were doing that one. I'm totally going to check that out. Believe it or not, that movie (along with The Crawling Eye) scared the crap out of me when i was a kid. I'd love to check it out again, and see what they do with it.

[TheNewMads]

Except, no, I'm thinking of Attack of the Mushroom People. I did like Puppet People as well, though.