Last Thursday the creative folks behind Mystery Science 3000 joined forces to provide a live Rifftrax for the cult classic "Reefer Madness." If you missed this hilarious event you'll have a second chance on August 24.
Fathom Events will host an encore of the Rifftrax "Reefer Madness" on Tuesday at select San Diego Theaters. Click on the Fathom site for specific details and tickets.
If you are not familiar with Rifftrax it is an audio commentary created by MST3K stars Kevin Murphy, Mike Nelson, and Bill Corbett. They have created hundreds of Rifftrax for films as diverse as "Avatar," "Twilight," "The Room," and "Reefer Madness." These running commentaries poke fun at the films, supply alternate dialogue, and generally just "riff" on the film. Most of the films they have created Rifftrax for deserve this comic abuse. "Reefer Madness" is so ripe for parody that it's almost redundant for them to create the comic audio commentary. But I went to the August 19th screening and it was a blast.
First of all, those dopey slides with movie trivia that usually play before the film have been replaced with Rifftrax trivia. So one fact states: "IMDb mistake: 'Transformers 2 listed a a movie." Or "Did you know that the line 'We're not in Kansas anymore," was used in a movie before 'Avatar?'" So arrive early to get a chance to enjoy the pre-movie show.
Then, before teh feature film, the Rifftrax crew has selected a few shorts that are gut-bustingly funny. One was an educational film instructing women not to wash clothes with gasoline while another offered 15 minutes of fun crafts you can do with grass (not pot but regular grass but still an oddly fitting warm up to the main event). These shorts were funnier than the feature and probably harder to find with or without Rifftrax.
So if you like irreverent comedy and don't mind watching a film getting verbally dissected, then this Rifftrax event is the perfect thing. And they will be having a Halloween edition on October 28 with "The House on Haunted Hill."
(FYI: The version of "Reefer Madness" shown is the colorized one with purple and pink smoke used for the reefers.)
