mario January 15th, 2008
After several weeks of feverishly rifling through all those pesky credit card offers and no-doubt meaningless “bills”, my copy of Cinematic Titanic‘s “The Oozing Skull” arrived in the mailbox today. I absolutely loved it, but I’d like to take a moment to reflect on the rather lackluster packaging, because minutiae is cool.
The disc came sealed in a paper CD sleeve covered in mailing information that I had to damage to open, and the media was all smudged up! A quick rub of the ol’ iPhone chamois made it good as new, but if EZTakes wants people to use their patented movie delivery system, they gotta work on the presentation. In their defense, they primarily appear to do video downloads with the ability to burn to DVD and print cover art from their nifty-looking client application (I thank whatever deity is listening that they had the wherewithal to make a Mac version of their app; I’m waiting, RiffTrax Player!), but this is of little consolation as I can’t figure out any way to access The Oozing Skull’s artwork. Frustrating, but I will try to keep it all in perspective, as Joel and Friends probably have little control over the distribution schema. Once they secure the rights to sell their movies as downloads, I’ll be a much happier little human (plus I’ll save $2.99, enough to buy a two-man RiffTrax!).
But yes, the movie! The Oozing Skull, originally titled “Brain of Blood” (I sure must seem precocious the way I repackage press releases so it looks like I know a lot about obscure 70s Z-movies; I’m probably just being an asshole or something), was a sight to behold. Stilted line delivery, midgetsploitation, and gobs and gobs of red paint blood. These are the elements of a great MST3K episode, so it stood to reason that it would make for equally great riffing fare for a bunch of the guys that were involved in that puppet show. And it did! Even if only in silhouette form (or perhaps because of it), I couldn’t have been happier to see Joel, Trace, Frank, J. “Elvis” (as I can only assume he is known to his friends) and Mary Jo again (though I at least got to hear her voice and read her amusing iWeb blog in recent memory), talking while the movie is playing. Don’t they realize they might miss the good stuff? (I kid, I kid) I loved the paused movie sketches, Trace’s visual gags, Josh’s theme song (which I simply must make into a fashionable ringtone soon), and Frank dropping references far over my uncultured simpleton of a head.
Though I’ve been quite happy with my RiffTraxes and my The Film Crewseses, there’s just something extra-special about seeing the folks doing the heckling. Unfortunately, Jim Mallon and Best Brains, Inc. own the trademark on people sitting down and watching a movie in a theater setting, so I was quite excited to see Joel’s clever workaround of people sitting down in office chairs and watching a movie in a non-theater setting! Obzoive!
“Come along with us, to the glorious, annual Ugly Mug Ball!” That… wasn’t from the movie, I made it up. The actual stuff is much funnier, I just love a good Summer Magic reference.
This has seriously been my one single complaint with Mike Nelson’s otherwise stellar riffing projects, so needless to say, I’m pumped about the prospect of seeing more outlines of people to go with all the talky-talking. I’m not gonna try to get in a Mike vs. Joel fight with anyone here, they’re like my Midwestern older-than-me children. I publicly claim to love them equally! And really, more making fun of movies we shouldn’t be dredging up in the first place can only be a good thing for us fans in the end.
So march onward, Cinematic Titanic guys and girl! Continue to deliver quality content, possibly with the downloads the kids are talking about these days! And maybe do more crossover work with Mike and Kevin and Bill, they’re nice guys!! We like it very much.
And yes, Josh Elvis, I do remember you.
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