Just when you thought the holiday season couldn't get any better, those snarky guys from RiffTrax swoop in to brighten your holidays with tales of Santa stranded in Florida — and the Ice Cream Bunny who rescues him. Who doesn't remember this classic children's tale?
For Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K) fans, it's Christmas come early — 10 days early — with an encore showing of RiffTrax Live!'s pithy narration of Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny, a 1972 cult classic known for poor production values, bad acting and a Florida setting.
RiffTrax is the latest iteration of the currently-defunct MST3K, minus the snappy costumes but with all the bad movies fans expect. If you haven't seen it, picture you and your friends watching a truly horrible movie and making fun of it. It's like that, only these guys are funnier — and sober (I think).
For 11 years, MST3K brought the worst of the big screen to the small screen. The series started on Comedy Central in 1988, when big hair was big, and ended on the Sci-Fi Channel in 1999, when cell phones only made phone calls. MST3K brought B-movies like SoulTaker (starring Joe Estevez, Martin Sheen's scrappy younger brother) from the obscurity of "direct to VHS" to the glamor of Sunday-night cable programming. Its ludicrous premise — mad scientists force a human to watch bad movies with only robot companions as they hurtle through space — struck a chord with fans of shitty movies and absurd comedy. Every week, a trio of robots (Tom Servo, Crow T. Robot and Gypsy) joined one human in a running commentary mocking each film.
After the show's cancellation, Michael J. Nelson (Mike Nelson, seasons 5-9), Kevin Murphy (Tom Servo, pictured, sort of) and Bill Corbett (Crow T. Robot) continued their relentless mocking and smart-assery with RiffTrax and RiffTrax Live!, the latter of which are live shows simulcast to theaters across the country.
MST3K creator Joel Hodgson has a Kickstarter for reprising the original show, with nearly 30,000 fans already funding six of 12 new episodes. Until then, fans can get RiffTrax commentaries at the show's website.
Need more? Rifftrax Live! has two showings of Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny on December 15: one at the Muvico Sundial 19/IMAX and the other at Park Place Stadium theaters. Tickets cost just under $15 per person.
This article appears in Oct 22-28, 2015.
