Rifftrax: Night of the Living Dead - from the stars of Mystery Science Theater 3000!

Zombie Shocker gets Riffed for Fun
This old black and white movie was cheaply made but became a Cult Hit shock horror film that started the Flesh-Eating Zombie movie craze. The old MST3K crew of Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett take it on with quite a few funny riffs. Some don't quite hit the spot, and the guys miss some choice moments to riff, but that's always the case with Rifftrax. One of the better ones was, "A Zombie's Worst enemy, a Clothesline." The clueless young couple who try to escape the zombies and the ultra-Angry family man get lots of attention. Rifftrax does not include old MST3K things like skits, sets, or the Bots. You never See the guys in any form. You simply HEAR them from the beginning to the end of the movie. Not even an Intro!

I also recommend Rifftrax "House on Haunted Hill." It's terrific.

Enjoyable as expected, but...
I somehow stumbled across this at my local Best Buy on May 11, 2009. To the best of my knowledge, it wasn't supposed to be released outside of rifftrax.com for another month. Naturally, I grabbed it quickly.

The comedy of Mike, Kevin, and Bill is solid as expected. Some of the jokes are the word-for-word exact same as in the earlier version from Legend Films, featuring only Mike Nelson's comedy track. In this version, however, the delivery of those lines is shared by Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett. Luckily, there is some new material mixed in that offsets the repeats. If you've never seen the previous version, you won't even notice.

I only had two real technical issues with this DVD. Firstly, the menu screen ran once and then stopped instead of looping back to the start. This meant that I had to start the entire DVD all over again. Secondly, the video was choppy in parts. The audio ran without issue, but some parts of the film seemed to be skipping video frames. I...

Downright Hilarious
The premise is simple--find a movie and make fun of it with a commentary track. It's harder than it sounds, I'm sure, but Mike Nelson and company do an outstanding job of taking down one of my personal favorite cult films, "Night of the Living Dead."

The fun starts early, with jibes not only aimed at the actors onscreen, but 'technical' aspects of a shot (which serves the dual purpose of making fun of commentary tracks in general). It continues throughout the film, at various levels of inspiration, from silly sex jokes to esoteric references to wry, shrewd observations. And since the film was shot around Pittsburgh, there are several references to the Pittsburgh Steelers, just to keep us on our toes.

I'm sure my neighbors must think I'm crazy, because I sat on the sofa laughing hysterically for at least half of the 96 minute runtime. Hilarious. I mean that.

Also, as a 'bonus,' you can watch the film without the RiffTrax commentary. For someone as...

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