KEVIN MURPHY ON RIFF TRAX & FILM CREW - NEWSARAMA
Filed under: Movie Reviews, In case you missed it, Pop Culture
MST3K Lives!!!
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KEVIN MURPHY ON RIFF TRAX & FILM CREW - NEWSARAMA
KEVIN MURPHY ON RIFF TRAX & FILM CREW
by Steve Fritz
Admit it. Hadn’t there been a time, whether munching on popcorn in a
theater or bathed in the cool blue light of your home system, when you
just cut a comment on what you’re watching? Even better, you end up
causing more laughter than the film itself? Best yet, the film is
trying to be serious?Admit it. You know you have. If not, you know someone who did. It’s a
common movie experience. It’s as ingrained into the cinematic
experience as rooting for the hero, throwing something at the screen or
just making out. It happens in old grindhouses, movie palaces, cookie
cutter complexes and now even IMAX theaters.Bill Corbett, Kevin Murphy
and Mike Nelson, now known as The Film Crew, have made such commentary
part of their collective life work. We first met them on TV, when they
were Mystery Science Theatre 3000, where their commentary literally took films like Plan 9, Bloody Mama or some rubber suit monster hoot and gave them entirely new meaning with their side comments.Now, thanks in part to Shout Factory! they’re doing it again under the
name of The Film Crew. So far they’ve skewered an incredibly awful
sci-fi chiller starring a young Peter Graves called Killers From Space, a not-quite ancient noir featuring not-really-that young Rue McClanahan in her skivvies, and The Wild Women of Wongo which stars a very buxom Adrienne Bourbeau (no, not THAT Adrienne Barbeau). A fourth film, a sword-and-sandals effort entitled Giant of Marathon, starring a heavily greased Steve Reeves, is slated for October.Yet to paraphrase a certain fave animated porcine pal, that ain’t all
folks. Mssrs. Corbett, Murphy and Nelson have also set up an online
facility where they take on any film they want to, including those not
in the public domain, under the name of RiffTrax. Their renting and
rendering of comic book classics such as The Batman, any of the Superman films and now Frank Miller’s 300
compelled us at Newsarama to suss them out and pop a few cherry cokes
and Ju Ju Bes with them. Fortunately, the Crew’s eldest member, Kevin
Murphy, complied.For those who don’t know. Murphy is the veteran member of the team, having done MST3K
for nine years (he was the voice of Tom Servo). From there he went on
to author an absolutely fabulous book about going to a different movie
theater every day for a year. Naturally, he’s done a lot, lot more, but
we’ll let you find that out on your own.In the meantime, here’s what he had to say. So turn down the lights, make yourself comfortable, and get the projector rolling.
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