RiffTrax Shorts

When laconic high schooler Howard starts in with some garbage about how he should have got a better grade on blah-blah whatever whatever, the answer was "Hey, H-man! Snap out of it!" And Howard knew to slick back that hair, hitch up the dungarees and get down to the business of snapping out of it. Mike, Bill and Kevin snap out of their own funk, and into a Slim Jim, to take on Snap Out Of It.

Ground-breaking in its use of "toward" as the first word in its title, Toward Emotional Maturity also pioneered the techniques of throwing reptiles at people and locking puppies in boxes as a way to demonstrate the deep deficiencies in the human character. Mike, Bill and Kevin move toward, not near, or close to, or anywhere within several hundred miles of-but Toward Emotional Maturity.

Alcohol Trigger Films explores three different booze-related scenarios. The general theme seems to be that alcohol is the only way to explain the horrible 70s fashion choices that each character is sporting. Amazingly, for a film about the consequences of drinking, the issue of vulgar, slurred wedding toasts never arises.

Yes, Joan Miller, designer extraordinaire, creator of dresses and suits that span an extraordinary range from conservative, plaid two-piece suits, to conservative plaid two-piece suits complemented by a hat. BtSwJM offers a seemingly endless march of them, by the hundreds they come, modeled by strange-eyed shapeless women, driven relentlessly on by the sting of Joan Miller's whip.

Sometime between the invention of pyromania and the discovery of Beatlemania, the country suffered a frightening outbreak of Highway Mania. Accounts of the disorder are sketchy, but if the film Highway Mania is to be believed, it involved shaving your head, scarring your face with a good, strong liter or two of muriatic acid, and then climbing in your car and driving like Lizzy Grubman.

The Bill of Rights in Action proves far more exciting than The Bill of Rights Takes it Easy and is a veritable thrill ride compared to The Bill of Rights is Feeling Kind of Hungover, So Could You Put On the 'Saved By The Bell' Marathon and Pick Him Up a Zima and a Breakfast Burrito. Mike, Kevin and Bill exercise their freedom of speech by getting tattoos of the "Conjunction Junction" conductor.

Riff fans of all ages will enjoy this lighthearted time capsule of the 1970s, set to one of the catchiest Industrial Safety-based jingles we've ever heard. Mike, Kevin and Bill have never shaken hands with Danger, but they did give Danger that "fist bump then explosion" thing, and then Danger called them all "Bro-seph."

Yes, despite sounding like a sleazy Nevada law firm, a trendy seltzer drink that all the Arizona State girls are guzzling, or perhaps items from a LARPer's daily checklist, Wing, Claw and Fang is actually a cavalcade of Hollywood's animal stars. It proves once again that there's no better way to entertain humans than humiliating animals for our amusement.