Short Reviews of RiffTrax Shorts: At Your Fingertips Collection

It's Short Reviews of RiffTrax Shorts, our new series where the title is almost as long as the actual reviews!  We are going to take a look at every RiffTrax Short in the catalog, and write a very brief review on them all.  

ACI shorts are a staple in the RiffTrax Shorts catalog, and that is mostly because of the assemblage of the At Your Fingertips shorts.  The AYF series are themed crafting ideas, usually things that can be made with household items such as sugar, empty boxes, and yard clippings.

These are some of the most popular RiffTrax Shorts of all time, and there's a good reason for that.

RiffTrax Thanksgiving Day 2018 Playlist

Thanksgiving is almost here!  After watching the parade and gorging yourself on turkey with all the fixins, you generally have three options:  Football, napping, or riffing.

I know the new season of MST3K drops on Thanksgiving, but if you stayed up all night binging it, don't have Netflix, or don't care for the reboot (it's really okay, you don't have to like it), I humbly offer up an alternative serving of RiffTrax releases you could watch instead.

Halloween Movie Madness '17: THEM

October is finally here!  This year, it brings the long awaited return of Halloween Movie Madness!  I decided I needed to try and make this year special, so most of the movies on this year's list are films that I haven't seen before(and I will probably wish I never sat through half of them).

THEM

(1954)

This year's Halloween Movie Madness is full of a bunch of movies I have never seen before, and three of those movies are about ants.  The first of the three, THEM, came out just over 20 years before I was born..

THEM is a movie that stars Marshall Matt Dillon (James Arness), Mark Twain (James Whitmore), and Santa Claus (Edmund Gwenn) facing off against giant, mutated, radioactive ants in New Mexico and Los Angeles.

12 Drinks of Christmas: Bowl Full of Jelly

Welcome to Bottom Shelf Mixolog™!  Our staff of Mixologists have racked their brains (and livers) to come up with special "bottom shelf" versions of popular drinks, and some original creations that range from "oh, that might be interesting" to "that sounds absolutely disgusting".  

The year is almost over, and so is the holiday season!  Our 12 Drinks of Christmas is still stumbling along, but that is also just about finished.

Today's drink is themed around the jolly fat man himself: Santa!

Drink 11: Bowl Full of Jelly

• 1 pkg Store Brand Cherry Gelatin Mix
• 1 pkg Store Brand Lime Gelatin Mix
• 2 cups Crystal Palace Vodka
• 2 cups Water
• 1 Tangerine

Peel the tangerine, and cut it up in small chunks.  Set aside.

Put the vodka in the freezer.  The colder it is, the better!

Boil one cup of water, and then put it in a large bowl with the lime gelatin mix.  Stir until the mix is dissolved, then add in a cup of the vodka.  Stir well, and pop the bowl in the refrigerator for a few minutes.  Remove the bowl, and stir in about half of the tangerine pieces.  Place back in the fridge.

Wait about an hour, and then boil the other cup of water, and follow the same directions.  After you have added the tangerine chunks, pour the cherry mixture into the same large bowl as the lime mixture.

This mixture is extremely potent, and it probably won't solidify, but you want it to be a little bit loose.  It is easier to serve and drink.

After enough of this, your cheeks will also be like roses, and your nose like a cherry!

My New Top Ten RiffTrax B-Movie Releases

Last August, I compiled a top ten list of my favorite RiffTrax VoD releases.  I had a pretty solid list at that time, too.  Since making that list, however, they have released sixteen new movies and I knew I had to update my list.

This was not an easy venture.  You know those scenes in movies and TV shows where there is a group of people trying to come up with an idea or a verdict in a murder trial, and they are just arguing the whole time?  There is always one guy just sitting there, with his head resting on one or both of his hands, trying to make sense of it all.  I was that guy while working on this list.  I was also everyone else arguing with each other.  Honest to God, this list took me two and a half weeks to finalize.

I am glad I don't work under any sort of deadline.

In the end, only four of the releases from the first list have survived.  The rest are all from the last nine months.

Be sure to argue my list in the comments or on Twitter.

RiffTrax Live 2015: The Crappening Announced!

The time has finally arrived: The 2015 season of RiffTrax Live shows has been announced!  And this is an amazing lineup!

This season of live shows has been dubbed The Crappening, and for good reason.  The four shows this year are The Room (May 6), Sharknado 2 (July 9), Miami Connection (Oct. 1), and Santa and The Ice Cream Bunny (Dec 3).  They are also running a new Kickstarter campaign, but unlike previous years where they ran a Kickstarter campaign for one movie, the campaign for this year covers all four films!

I am honestly having trouble getting all of this out in a coherent manner, because I am so excited about these movies!  Miami Connection is one of my favorite bad movies ever, and many fans have been eagerly awaiting a riff to happen.  Watch this and tell me this movie doesn't deserve to be riffed.


The Live show of Santa and The Ice Cream Bunny will be bringing with it a different print of the movie; the version that was riffed before had a movie about Thumbelina, whereas the Live show will have a movie about Jack and the Beanstalk.

The Room and Sharknado 2 should both speak for themselves.

This is going to be a great season!

RiffTrax: The Christmas Marathon Playlist

It's that time of year once again.  Christmas songs fill the airwaves, and Christmas specials show up on all of the TV stations.  The standards of each are still entertaining and enjoyable to watch with family and friends, but what do you turn on if you want something a little different?  What if you want to show them something with professional jokes by professional comedy professionals?  It sounds like you need a little RiffTrax Christmas marathon (if there can be a marathon for Turkey Day, then damn it, Christmas can have one too).

Coming to Town December 4 - RiffTrax Live: Santa Claus

Thanks to an early listing by a theater chain (and confirmed to me by RiffTrax), this year's Christmas RiffTrax Live show has been revealed!

This year, the guys will be bringing us Santa Claus. This is the 1959 Mexican production of the movie, and that makes me unreasonably excited!  They riffed this movie back on the MST3K days, and it is one of my favorite episodes.

It was also the movie I wanted them to do the most for this year's live Christmas show.

As soon as tickets for this one go on sale (which is likely to be October 30, when the Anaconda Live show comes out), you should buy them.   This one is guaranteed to be great!

HMM '13 Special: RiffTrax Live Night of the Living Dead

It's October! The doorway to not only the start of the greatest food season (early October to Christmas), but also to sexy nurses, zombies, and grown men dressing up like ponies. That also means it is time once again for Halloween Movie Madness! This year, I'll be taking a look back at the movies of my youth. Every movie this year was released before I turned eighteen. These are the Halloween movies that shaped me into the man I am today. Some of them are scary. Some are funny. Some are fantastical. Some are just weird. And not all of them are good. But to me, they are all Halloween movies. Now, stand back, for your own safety! 

Night of the Living Dead
1968

This was the zombie movie that started it all.  With this movie, George Romero set the rules in place about what a zombie should be: slow, shambling creatures who want nothing more to feast on your flesh.

Last night, I had the pleasure of watching this movie being torn apart by the crew from RiffTrax.  For those of you who are not familiar with RiffTrax, what the hell man?  RiffTrax is what three of the guys from MST3K(and if you don't know what that is, there might not be hope for you) are doing now.  Mike, Kevin, and Bill do a mixture of newer blockbuster movies(Twilight, Harry Potter, The Avengers, etc.), old feature length films (like they did on MST3K), and the most amazing shorts I have ever seen.  A handful of times throughout the year, they do special live broadcasts of movie riffing.  A few months ago, they did Starship Troopers, and on December 5 they will be doing a live riff of Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.

Five Must-Have RiffTrax Video on Demand Movies

Last week, I gave you a list of five RiffTrax Shorts that you absolutely need to purchase.  This time, I have another RiffTrax list: Five Must-Have RiffTrax Video on Demand Movies.

These are the videos that will really take you back to the glory of MST3K.  The only thing missing are commercial breaks and the skit segments.  And the weird editing decisions that were sometimes made.

The movies on this list are not just my own personal choices, but they are favorites of the RiffTrax faithful.

CSM '12: Ernest Saves Christmas

It's December, and almost Christmas! Therefore, I've decided to do a follow up to my surprisingly popular Halloween Movie Madness! Every night through Christmas Eve, I will be watching a different Christmas movie or special and then rambling on about them, sometimes even being coherent!

Ernest Saves Christmas
(1988)

The movies of Ernest are a dividing factor with my friends and I.  Most of that comes from them being stupid and thinking Ernest Goes to Jail is the best one.  It is top three, but not the best.  This movie is the best of the Ernest flicks, hands down.  One of the reasons being that he ends up being instrumental in saving the best holiday of them all: Christmas!  He doesn't do anything near as important in Ernest Goes to Jail, or my other top three movie, Ernest Scared Stupid.