Since 2009, RiffTrax has been broadcasting live shows across North American movie theaters with RiffTrax Live. Brought to us by Fathom Events, RiffTrax Live has featured everything from Plan 9 From Outer Space to The Room to Krull. As of now, there have been thirty installments, ending with last year’s mockery of The Giant Spider Invasion.
One annual tradition is the Kickstarter for RiffTrax Live, which they first started back in 2014 when they were trying to fund a box office riffing of Twilight (they still couldn’t get the rights, so they went with Anaconda and Godzilla ’98 instead). To fund the shows for a year, they ask fans for help over the course of 31 days. It ends up working out great for everyone involved. RiffTrax easily conquers their monetary goal with no issue. They end up doing so well that they start releasing stretch goals out the wazoo and any RiffTrax fan is practically obligated to get in on it just for how much bang for their buck they get.
Now we see what’s up for 2020 and within even a day, they made their goal. Clockwork.
The movies up to be laughed at this year are late-80s garbage fire Hobgoblins and Amityville 4: The Evil Escapes. You can find the Kickstarter right here.
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Hobgoblins will be broadcast on June 11. The movie was featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000 in season 9, episode 7. In a time when movie studios were trying to ripoff Gremlins, Hobgoblins was the bottom of the barrel. It tells the story of a group of teenagers who are vexed by some creatures with the ability to make their victims’ fantasies a reality…but then have it kill them. It’s meant to be a horror comedy, but it’s neither scary nor funny.
Actually, the scariest thing about it is seeing the sketchy nightclub MC and finding out that he’d have a successful career voicing Cosmo on Fairly Odd Parents.
Then on October 21, there’s Amityville 4: The End Escapes. For some reason, there are almost as many Amityville Horror movies as there are James Bond titles and this one is a doozy. Do you remember that Family Guy gag about a bored Stephen King pitching a story about a haunted lamp to his editor? That was supposed to be a joke, but this movie actually does that! It’s about a haunted lamp!
Not only that, but it’s a made-for-TV movie, so it’s that special kind of bad. At least It had Tim Curry to keep it watchable.
RiffTrax’s goal is $225,000, which should be no problem. Depending on how much you donate, you can get such rewards as RiffTrax shorts, exclusive t-shirts, digital and physical copies of the two shows, etc. and that’s just by default. Once they stretch goals show up (both for dollar amount and number of donors), they’ll toss in more shorts and riffs, especially for blockbusters that they’ve yet to cover. I mean, Rise of Skywalker is basically a gimme at this point.
The Kickstarter closes shop on March 21 at 8pm ET.
By the way, if waiting for June is too much for you, might I suggest RiffTrax’s take on Blood Theatre? It’s the same director as Hobgoblins and is even more incoherent!
Gavin Jasper writes for Den of Geek and will probably fly out to the Hobgoblins show for bucket list reasons. Check out his other articles and follow him on Twitter @Gavin4L