RiffTrax

Back in the day (also known as the ’90s to a certain generation), Mystery Science Theater 3000 was a late-night television stand-by, where a star-trippin’ castaway and his robot co-workers were trapped on a space station with nothing better to do than bide their time heckling crappy (and occasionally not-so-crappy) Z-grade flicks. In some circles, the series is regarded with animosity not only because it bagged on defenseless public-domain movies, but also because it was felt to have given approval to mouth-breathing knobs to emulate the practice in the multiplexes. C’est la vie. The show died with the birth of the new millennium, but the conceit has been resurrected via the intertubes as RiffTrax, a downloadable accompaniment to films that deserve the bagging, but without the complication of actually obtaining the rights to unreel the flick. The MP3 file is set to a cue (aided by your guide DisembAudio) at the start of movies as diverse as the cult wincer Road House and on up to such seeming sacrilege as Star Wars, and given the MST3K 2.0 treatment by former cast members Mike Hodges, Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy.