Cult DVDs

A New Release for Fans of Cult DVDs

Does anybody remember the great old 1990s? One of my fond memories of that decade is a late night TV show on Comedy Central and later Sci Fi called Mystery Science Theater 3000. Some of the former members of the MST3K cast have reformed to create a company called RiffTrax, which has done a reportedly good commentary soundtrack for the 1936 clunker Reefer Madness.

If you don't know, MST3K was a show in which a human, first played by Joel Hodgson, and two robots watched and made fun of, or "riffed," on a bad, low budget film. Many of these films were cult classics of the so-bad-it's-good variety, such as Roger Corman films. It ran from 1988 to 1999 and created a cult following of its own.

The show's head writer and 1993 replacement for Hodgson, Mike Nelson, has gone on to form a company with two other MST3K alum called RiffTrax. They comment, or "riff," on movies and make the soundtrack available for download as an .mp3 file on the internet or are packaged as part of a DVD. One such DVD is San Diego-based Legend Films' release of a Reefer Madness DVD with an accompanying RiffTrax soundtrack.

The soundtrack is reportedly hilarious and full of laugh-out-loud punchlines, just like the old MST3K. Jason Bailey gives it very high marks in his article RiffTrax: Reefer Madness. The RiffTrax team has been riffing on more recent and comparatively good films such as the Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Lion King, and The Dark Knight lately, but there is a greater number of laughs to be found from an old bad movie like Reefer Madness. It is indisputably bad and has the moralizing quality that many of the films did on MST3K.

Reefer Madness was produced by a church group to warn youth of the evils of marijuana and does so with extreme heavy-handedness and not much cinematic skill. The teenagers are played by middle-aged amateur actors, the writing is terrible, and the portrayed effects of marijuana are over the top. It is prime material for the old MST3K writers.

If you're nostalgic for MST3K or just want to find out what all the fuss was about, RiffTrax: Reefer Madness may be a good DVD to check out. Why not bring back fond memories of lazy late night TV laughs from a decade ago?