6.7 | / 10 |
Users | 4.5 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
On August 19, 2010 thousands witnessed what can only be described as one of the top two RiffTrax Live! events of 2010 (there were only two RiffTrax Live! events in 2010). The guys from MST3K perform live in front of an audience as 'Reefer Madness' and a number of short subjects play on the big screen in front of them.
Starring: Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy (II), Bill CorbettMusic | 100% |
Comedy | 12% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080i
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1, 1.33:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.78:1, 1.33:1
English: Dolby Digital 2.0
None
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 3.0 | |
Video | 3.5 | |
Audio | 3.0 | |
Extras | 0.0 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
It might seem like an unlikely source for easy entertainment, but the United States Copyright database has some real gems hidden inside its mammoth listings. Years ago I co-wrote a musical comedy adaptation of the cult film Reefer Madness, and though my collaborator and I knew that the film was in the public domain (no one ever bothered to copyright these low budget exploitation knockoffs back in the day), we still wanted to see if there were other Reefers out there. Boy, were we amazed. There were scores (no pun intended) of adaptations, and we discovered a new one which had just been copyrighted, the Los Angeles production which was later broadcast on Showtime (to not very good reviews, but I digress). But in all of the Reefer Madnesses we found, one in particular stuck out and struck me as particularly funny. It was an industrial film made to market refrigerators and it was entitled Refer Madness. Who said those guys at companies like Whirlpool or Maytag don’t have senses of humor? Of course the source film has provided generations of viewers ample opportunity to laugh at the patently ridiculous shenanigans that ensue when the naïve youth of “your town” (as Reefer Madness democratically identifies its locale) take one puff of the demon weed and go instantly insane. Reefer Madness might have disappeared in a veritable puff of smoke after its late 1930’s premiere (where even then it probably elicited guffaws of derision), had it not been for its reincarnation as a late night “smoke along” entertainment for Baby Boomers of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. This “next generation” was frankly more than likely stoned out of their minds as they watched Reefer Madness in its various midnight movie exhibitions, but the fact is you don’t need to take even one puff to enjoy the lunatic charms of this film.
RiffTrax Live! Reefer Madness is presented on Blu-ray with an AVC encoded 1080i transfer in both 1.33:1 and 1.78:1 (see the main body of the review above for details). There's nothing fantastic about this visual presentation, but I doubt few would be expecting great things from old public domain films. As mentioned above Reefer Madness is presented in one of its colorized editions, and a not very good colorized edition it is. The other shorts run the gamut from acceptable to very sharp (the contemporary animated ultra-shorts, in 1.78:1, being the best). The "live" footage of the RiffTrax team is a bit better, but due to some strange stage lighting the guys all look ghoulishly green and yellow some of the time, unless they were colorized by the same team who did Reefer Madness. Sharpness is okay, nothing more, but, really, are you coming to an offering like this expecting hi-def wonderment? Now that's funny.
RiffTrax Live! Reefer Madness features only a lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 mix, but as with the image quality, it's going to sound a little silly for anyone to go ballistic over this choice not to provide a lossless track, whether stereo or surround. The bulk of this outing is nothing other than three guys shouting smart-alecky comments at a screen with distorted, boxy and at times unintelligible soundtracks from days of yore, so what's to get that exercised over? This obviously is far from a state of the art soundtrack, but it gets the job done with a minimum of fuss and bother. The commentators' jokes are all easily discernable (at least when they're not talking over each other, which they have a tendency to do a few times), and you can make out most of what's being said in the shorts and Reefer Madness itself. The two things that seem to set off most lovers of high definition are DNR and the lack of lossless tracks, but in this case, I have to ask what more really would a lossless stereo track have offered here?
No supplements other than an "all new" intro by Mike, Kevin and Bill are offered.
Scoring a release like this is a little difficult. Let's face it: Reefer Madness and the shorts accompanying it are such Grade Z fare our scoring system would need to be able to reflect negative numbers to really be able to handle an accurate representation of the actual worth of these works. But along with that is the camp value and unintended hilarity these films provide, which can't be easily dismissed. Add to that the derisive, occasionally scabrous, humor of the three commentators, and about the only way to average the score out is to toe the line somewhere in the middle. These new RiffTrax Live! Blu-rays aren't going to set any videophile or audiophile hearts on fire, but for some good, hearty laughs, they're hard to beat. Recommended.
Nashville 2010
2010
1978
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Slipcover in Original Pressing
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