The Best Of Rifftrax Shorts Volume One

“The Best Of Rifftrax Shorts Volume One” will cause fits of laughter.
In their first DVD release, “Mystery Science Theater 3000” alumni Michael J. Nelson, Bill Corbett, and Kevin Murphy (AKA the “Rifftrax” gang) mercilessly make fun of 9 shorts titled “Buying Food,” “Drugs Are Like That,” “Right Or Wrong,” “Skipper Learns A Lesson,” “The Trouble With Women,” “Down And Out,” “Patriotism,” “It Must Be The Neighbors,” and a new DVD exclusive short “Shake Hands With Danger.” The shorts include such topics as how to prevent falling, patriotism (obviously), not impulse spending, a dog learning to be nice, moral choices, drug addiction, job safety, sexism and public health issues.

Seeing as how the Sci-Fi channel era of “MST3K” was my favorite, it was a no-brainer that I would find “Rifftrax” funny. I did, however, underestimate how funny it would actually be. While a few shorts are too short and thin in the comedy department (“Patriotism” and “Right Or Wrong”) many of them had me laughing quite a bit. In fact, as I watched “Skipper Learns A Lesson” and “Down And Out,” I was laughing so hard I was crying. For some odd reason, the jokes about sidewalk chalk, a jumpsuit, talking dogs, a racist dog, and Buckwheat really got to me.





One of the other elements I really enjoy about “Rifftrax” is that that Mike and gang are constantly making observations that I myself was thinking. There’s simply no denying the fact that Mike, Kevin and especially Bill are quick witted and know exactly when to crack a joke. Plus, they do it so well!

Note: “Shake Hands With Danger” includes an animated Mike, Bill and Kevin riffing on the short. It’s an interesting experiment, but I can’t say it works entirely well.

The fullscreen video quality is worse than usual. The shorts are in really bad shape and are plagued with lines and severe scratches. Still, it doesn’t really matter as the riffing is what counts here.

As for the video quality, some of the audio tracks for the shorts (namely “Drugs Are Like That”) are in bad shape, but at least the riffing sounds clear as day.

No extras unless you count the odd “Rifftones” songs during the menu.

Summary: “The Best Of Rifftrax Shorts Volume One” is an absolute must buy DVD. I hope we will see many more short film collections in the near future.