JUST IN TIME FOR LIFE DAY
December 21, 2012 12:49 PM   Subscribe

Last Year Rifftrax, the MST3K spin-off movie riffing series, completed a "best of five years" compilation video. Why not get into the festive seasonal mood with three more "best of" clips from such beloved holiday classics as SANTA CLAUS AND THE ICE CREAM BUNNY - MAGIC CHRISTMAS TREE - and of course, THE STAR WARS HOLIDAY SPECIAL.
posted by The Whelk (28 comments total) 30 users marked this as a favorite
 
Warning: Santa Claus and the Ice Cream Bunny will break your brain. Just...completely break it. I don't even.
posted by Lyn Never at 12:54 PM on December 21, 2012 [2 favorites]


I saw a single still image from Santa Claus and the Ice Cream Bunny and NOW I CANNOT GO TO SLEEP AGAIN EVER.
posted by joelhunt at 12:59 PM on December 21, 2012


I saw a single still image from Santa Claus and the Ice Cream Bunny and NOW I CANNOT GO TO SLEEP AGAIN EVER.
posted by joelhunt


I plugged the title into a Google image search and the results look like a Flaming Lips show that happened in the daylight.
posted by COBRA! at 1:04 PM on December 21, 2012 [4 favorites]


OH, this is awesome. :D
posted by zarq at 1:05 PM on December 21, 2012


I watched Santa Clause and the Ice Cream bunny years ago, with a group that would regularly get together on a group voice chat room and riff bad movies via webstream. The movie is up there with "Eraserhead"
posted by hellojed at 1:07 PM on December 21, 2012 [2 favorites]


The Star Wars holiday special was the Star Wars Clusterfuck.
posted by stormpooper at 1:21 PM on December 21, 2012


I've set up a holiday video playlist with the two MST3K Christmas episodes, the Rifftrax of Santa Meets The Ice Cream Bunny and the Star Wars Holiday Special, and all the RiffTrax Christmas shorts. It's a good seven hours of yuletide hilarity. I'm thinking about ripping my DVD of the Cinematic Titanic return to Santa Claus vs. The Martians and adding another hour and a half to it.

It's leaving me with a desire to have this thing somehow stream on the internet, to inflict bestow upon others.
posted by JHarris at 1:24 PM on December 21, 2012 [1 favorite]


"I have a two part question! One, will I ever feel joy again? Two, what did I ever do to deserve this?" is a line I keep wanting to use at some company meeting or other.

Probably right before I start uttering the just tremendous Ice Cream Bunny laugh, and am then escorted out of the building by very nervous security guards.
posted by Drastic at 1:25 PM on December 21, 2012 [1 favorite]


I am a writer for RiffTrax and would just like to point out our NEW Christmas Special we released a few hours ago. If the insanity of the ice cream Bunny speaks to you, you'll enjoy this

http://bit.ly/THhpcT
posted by JoeGoblin at 1:26 PM on December 21, 2012 [16 favorites]


I'll be ordering some of this stuff... it definitely beats another iteration of A Christmas Story.
posted by crapmatic at 1:31 PM on December 21, 2012


Thanks JoeGoblin!

BTW, it has recently come to my attention that there are a few Gamera movies that MST3K never did. I'm surprised no one's tackled them yet....
posted by JHarris at 1:32 PM on December 21, 2012


I think we'll hopefully tackle a Japanese monster movie sometime next year! It's definitely a big hole in our catalog. Any suggestions for an ideal one?
posted by JoeGoblin at 1:35 PM on December 21, 2012


No mention of the Ice Cream Bunny would be complete without the magic of Bill Corbett. (A supercut of every "Hurr hurr hurr" sound effect for the aforementioned rabbit, which makes me laugh every time.)
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 1:37 PM on December 21, 2012 [6 favorites]


Also, K. Gordon Murray, who brought us the shorts mentioned in JoeGoblin's comment and the movie done in MST3K episode 521: Santa Claus, is mentioned in The Psychotronic Film Guide* as, at one time, having been thought of along the same lines as Walt Disney, except he got most of his stuff from Mexico.

* Don't think I've forgotten about my threat to exhaustively write that book up from the High Weirdness By Mail post. I've had to put it on hold with all my other projects lately, but I still have my work file....
posted by JHarris at 1:38 PM on December 21, 2012 [1 favorite]


Yes, three! We've seen these in the past week and I personally vouch they're comedy gold:

Gamera vs. Jiger (in which a couple of school kids board a yellow submarine and go into Gamera's lungs to evict a baby monster growing there)
Gamera vs. Viras (in which aliens attack and a smiling happy Gamera playfully breaks the roof of their ship and roasts them with his fire breath -- all before the opening title)
Gamera: Defender of the Universe (made in 1980 as a reboot of the series, makes our hero turtle into a kind of a god with a teenage girl priestess who gets scratched up when Gamera is hurt, really nuts in that video-gamey Japanese way)

Both Jiger and Viras feature the Gamera theme song all MSTies know by heart, and Jiger throws in The Bike Song as a bonus! Viras contains substantial, as in several minute long, reuses of footage from the first three Gamera movies.
posted by JHarris at 1:46 PM on December 21, 2012 [3 favorites]


If the insanity of the ice cream Bunny speaks to you,

It actually does. It says "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Thumblina Pirates World wgah'nagl fhtagn."
posted by JHarris at 1:48 PM on December 21, 2012 [2 favorites]


I was wrong it seems about the year of Defender of the Universe; it was made in 1995. In the 1980 one Gamera footage was almost entirely from older movies.
posted by JHarris at 4:15 PM on December 21, 2012


Recently I found an old audiobook set for the blind for Vonnegut's Deadeye Dick, narrated by the same person that was the narrator of the Santa Claus movie from MST3k episode 521.

Made for a weird listen. At any moment I was expecting him to break from the book and plead with Lupita that stealing is wrong or give me updates about what Pitch is doing. Actually, with a Vonnegut book, I shouldn't be so surprised.
posted by chambers at 4:53 PM on December 21, 2012 [3 favorites]


Oh, The Whelk, I don't know how you get anything done in a day, always finding nifty stuff for us, as you do.
posted by LD Feral at 4:56 PM on December 21, 2012 [1 favorite]


I keep trying to watch the Star Wars Holiday special and can never manage it. Even RiffTrax'ed, I find myself stinking drunk before I'm halfway through. Must be some kind of self defense.
posted by subbes at 4:58 PM on December 21, 2012


fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit, I am crying (with laughter?) after watching that video.

I can't wait to inflict Santa Claus and the Ice Cream Bunny on my family.
posted by sheprime at 6:35 PM on December 21, 2012 [2 favorites]


A warning, sheprime, before you get to the Ice Cream Bunny you have to survive Thumbelina, which is mostly characters in animal costumes bumbling around with dubbed dialogue. It weeds out the weak-minded.
posted by JHarris at 10:04 PM on December 21, 2012


The actual animated released in theatres Thumbilina isn't much better.
posted by The Whelk at 7:27 AM on December 22, 2012


Yikes. But have you seen the Ice Cream Bunny Thumbelina?

Bluth Thumbelina at least had basic production values, and the massive outlay of effort it takes to make even a bad animated film. Whereas ICB Thubelina's framing scenes in Pirates World, the place this movie was presumably was made as a promotion for, look skeevier than the county fair. It had waist-high overgrown grass through the rail rides and big pools of muddy standing water everywhere. It was a theme park for mosquito larvae more than anything else.

That doesn't even get into whatever the hell those black winged creatures were that make Kevin Murphy scream. I brought out this very episode last night at a party, and we think they're supposed to be flies.

You probably have seen ICB Thumbelina, and have good reasons for saying what you did. I can't imagine what they might be though.
posted by JHarris at 8:54 AM on December 22, 2012


(Ah, and you said "isn't much better," not "is worse than," which for some reason I misread your comment as saying.)
posted by JHarris at 9:00 AM on December 22, 2012


This was not the only WTF movie to be shot at Pirate's World - Musical Mutiny was also shot there, whereing Iron butterfly refues to perform for free, and then they do, because a pirate ghost went to the manager and... actually, the only thing i am certain of is that it contains a pirate ghost, Iron Butterfly, and Pirate's World.
posted by chambers at 5:23 PM on December 23, 2012 [1 favorite]


Hey, JoeGoblin, you still around? Read chambers' comment then get cracking on that one. Sounds like a winner.
posted by JHarris at 5:57 PM on December 23, 2012


JHarris: "I'm thinking about ripping my DVD of the Cinematic Titanic return to Santa Claus vs. The Martians and adding another hour and a half to it."

I think the CT version is actually better than the MST3K (though missing Patrick Swayze Christmas, of course).
posted by Chrysostom at 5:12 PM on January 5, 2013


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