RiffTrax Shorts

Let's Pretend: Magic Sneakers is a gleeful, brightly-colored, downright whimsical piece of insane evil. A young boy, grime-encrusted as a train hobo, has seemingly been left to fend for himself in a glum warehouse district. He plays with the garbage he can find, all the while smiling and laughing. Among the filth, he discovers the Magic Sneakers, which can dance and move all on their own!

Floating, as it turns out, is pretty complicated to figure out. After breaking new ground in determining that fishing sinkers do not float, we're taken to a humble underfunded science lab. Here, a motley collection of misfit equipment that looks like its sole purpose is to inflict injury upon young scientist's eye region, is used to determine "What Makes Things Float?"

Cosmetology is a profession traditionally filled with glamour, cutting-edge chic, and hip, attractive stylists--and this short manages to include none of those things! Even better, it presents a 1960s paradise of dead-eyed matrons squirting what appear to be bottles of diner BBQ sauce onto enormous beehive haircuts. It's garish, hideous, and dare we say, baffling.

Meet The Sentencesmith! Some say this wacky old gent has a way with words! Good thing, since he lives on the Island of Grammaria, where he runs a workshop teaching all the little boys and girls the rules of...Say, is that a monkey over there in the corner of the workshop? It is! Boy, this is going to be one heck of a short!

What Are Letters For? takes the miseducation of America's youth to a bold new level, by teaching the alphabet yet Leaving Out certain letters. Which letters? That arrogant but rare Z, or perhaps the co-dependent Q that refuses to work without its U? No, they've instead plucked out all the vowels, those pesky soft letters that you almost never see in any words ever.

Told through the eyes of a narrator who insists on inserting himself into the story of Rama's family life even though he never appears on screen, and there's no reason to think the people in the short know he exists, it is a sweet tale of physical labor, visibly moist living conditions, and heaps and heaps of elephant feces.

The Creeps Machine reassures kids that they can conquer their fears. It does this by springing a hideous clown named Old Bobo upon them, thereby guaranteeing that they never sleep for the rest of their childhood. The Creeps Machine features lurking old men, Rube Goldberg devices, a menacing gorilla's hand, zero coherence and of course, Old Bobo.

Do we join hands, or do we let go? Who are the children in this film? Where are they going, and why? Is the mustachioed man with the wacky outfits connected in any way? Is he a good man or a bad man? He seems like a bad man. Will I ever go to college if we keep watching films like this in school? The answer Join Hands, Let Go! provides to all these questions is a firm, definitive, "whatever."