Rifftrax Live!: Plan 9 from Outer Space

[Ator the Invincible]

Originally Posted by EricJ

Kind of ironic that the real MST3K maintained they'd never riff Plan 9, it was too corny and overexposed.
(The series was originally afraid of doing Robot Monster from cheap cult overexposure either, but that one just had its own riches to find.)

While true, there's a reason that Rifftrax took on Plan 9 that traces back to the start of the project. Mike Nelson landed a job with Legend Films, who were taking popular public domain movies, remastering them, and colorizing them for DVD release. As an added incentive to buy their versions of these public domain films, they had Nelson record humorous commentary tracks for a few of their releases. Plan 9 was one of them, along with Night of the Living Dead, Reefer Madness, Carnival of Souls, and a few others. These commentary tracks eventually developed into Rifftrax.

When they started doing the Rifftrax Live shows, they could only use public domain movies. So they've been using the remastered Legend Films catalog. Hence, this release, Plan 9 from Outer Space. And it's hilarious.

Another thing to keep in mind is that, when they were on cable, the channels were giving them access to their libraries of movies. But when working for Legend Films, they only had access to public domain films (until they came up with the downloadable "podcast"-style Rifftrax idea).

And I'm not sure why you stressed "real" when referring to MST3K. Bill Corbet didn't join the cast till years into its run, but Mike Nelson and Kevin Murphy were there from the beginning. Hell, Murphy worked on the original local access version of the show before the Comedy Channel picked them up. Damn, I miss MST3K. But at least Rifftrax and Cinematic Titanic are both around and hilarious!