Are you a fan of making fun of bad movies? If so you have hopefully heard of Rifftrax , a group which doesn’t make movies but instead provides hilarious commentary tracks to play over them.
In their recent live presentation, the crew of Michael J. Nelson, Bill Corbett, and Kevin Murphy decided to pull out one of the movies from their days on the TV show Mystery Science Theater 3000 but with a new script. The film, Time Chasers is what happens when you try to tell a time travel story on a budget and have to rely on period reenactors to showcase you are in the past. Nick Miller (Matthew Bruch) is a professor at Castleton (you know this because he wears a T-shirt from it for most of the film) who has turned his plane into a time machine, or as the film is quick to point out a time transport. He showcases it to a reporter (Bonnie Pritchard) and an executive (Peter Harrington) for Gencorp in hopes of getting the money he needs to continue his work. Of course the corporation is evil (because all corporations are evil in film for the most part) and it’s up to Nick to stop them from using his invention to destroy the world.
The team also brought another long forgotten short with them. This time it was Chimp the Fireman, which showcased a monkey trying to be a fireman. It also showed how putting a monkey in a film doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll have a hit on your hands. With all the jokes they are able to make it’s surprising anyone would have been able to take the concept seriously.
The trio is in top form with their recent presentation. Jokes about how the CEO’s office looks like a desk at the top of a flight of stairs and how cheesy the future looks in either the prosperous or post apocalyptic timelines will have you laughing like crazy. Sadly, despite how enjoyable it is to make fun of a man with an extremely pointy chin who uses a Commodore 64 to travel in time with a plane, the jokes aren’t nearly as intense as in previous specials such as Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny or Miami Connection. Still, if you attend the show you are guaranteed to laugh at some time over the jabs made at some of the terrible effects and cheap production which went into the short and the film.
Rifftrax is presented through Fathom events. An encore screening of the movie will take place on May 17th.
