Hosted by Fathom Events, Rifftrax Live: 2019 will feature three classic B-movies for your cinematic viewing pleasure. On the docket this time around is Octaman, Star Raiders, and The Giant Spider Invasion. Continue reading for a breakdown of each movie and showtimes. Also in today's Horror Highlights: The Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies - London's African Horror: Shades of Superstition and Ghost Town podcast episode details.
Three Rifftrax Live: 2019 Fathom Events Details: "RiffTrax’s Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Bill Corbett (of Mystery Science Theater 3000 fame) are back in cinemas to celebrate the 10th anniversary of RiffTrax Live with three all-new riffs on what are sure to be fan favorites with “RiffTrax Live: 2019.” Join Mike, Kevin and Bill as they take on B-movie classics: the guy-in-a-rubber-suit creature feature “Octaman,” the Casper Van Dien space odyssey “Star Raiders,” and new HD transfer of the MST3K favorite “Giant Spider Invasion.”
Since first partnering in 2009 with “RiffTrax Live: Plan 9 from Outer Space” the RiffTrax and Fathom Events partnership has resulted in the screening of 29 unique titles, over 49 play dates, in an average of 616 movie theaters per title, with more than 1 million tickets sold for a total gross box revenue of $13.8 million (not including the 2019 events).
Tickets for the three “RiffTrax Live: 2019” titles can be purchased at www.FathomEvents.com and participating theater box offices. For a complete list of theater locations, visit the Fathom Events website (theaters and participants are subject to change).
“RiffTrax Live: Octaman”
Thursday, April 18, 2019, at 8 p.m. EST/ 7 p.m. CST/ 7 p.m. MST/8 p.m. PST (live)
Wednesday, April 24, 2019, at 7:30 p.m. local time (rebroadcast)
Deep in the Mexican jungle, a legendary creature lurks in a radioactive swamp. Is it a man? Is it an octopus? No, it’s OCTAMAN! Okay, it’s a man in an octopus suit, but he’s really angry and decides to go on a light killing spree.
A scientific expedition sets out to study this atomic mutant and stop it before it kills again. They’re not very good at it since Octaman kills quite a lot — probably because THE DUMB SCIENTISTS KEEP STEALING ITS BABIES! It seems there’s no stopping the monster until it develops a crush on the plucky lady scientist Susan Lowry (Pier Angeli) and does what all mutant sea creatures like to do - it knocks her out and carries her away. Will the rest of the team be able to rescue Susan before Octaman picks them all off one by one? Looks pretty doubtful!
Directed by the writer of “Creature From the Black Lagoon,” and featuring costumes and effects by a young Rick Baker, Octaman is a wonderfully awful rubber monster B-movie. Join Bill, Mike and Kevin live as they risk life and limb to deliver the laughs from the clutches of Octaman!
“RiffTrax Live: Star Raiders”
Thursday, June 6, 2019, at 8 p.m. EST/ 7 p.m. CST/ 7 p.m. MST/8 p.m. PST (live)
Tuesday, June 11, 2019, at 7:30 p.m. local time (rebroadcast)
It’s the year 2762. The galaxy is plagued with warring factions using hokey special effects to destroy each other. Out of this chaos, a hero rises: the dashing exquisitely bearded Captain Saber Raine (Casper Van Dien). Saber and his elite squad of commandos (other actors) embark on a dangerous quest to save the Prince and Princess of an unnamed planet from the clutches of the Evil Overlord Sinjin - an overlord so evil HIS VERY SKULL IS FILLED WITH CHERRY JELL-O.
Can our heroes fend off Sinjin’s army of mutant androids and rescue the Prince and Princess? Probably! After all, it’s a Space Opera, but you never know! Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for an unforgettable Sword-And-Laser Swashbuckling-ly fun time, beamed to theaters nationwide!
“RiffTrax Live: Giant Spider Invasion”
Thursday, August 15, 2019, at 8 p.m. ET/ 7 p.m. CT/ 7 p.m. MT/8 p.m. PT (live)
Tuesday, August 20, 2019, at 7:30 p.m. local time (rebroadcast)
The “Giant Spider Invasion,” one of the most popular MST3K movies ever, is coming to a theater near you along with the mighty men of RiffTrax!
There’s a monster in Wisconsin, and it’s going to slowly, VERY slowly, strike TERROR INTO YOUR HEART! Sure, your grandma could outrun it, but TERROR is more fun! When a fiery meteor lands in the woods, strange things begin to happen in this small Wisconsin town — even weirder than usual, and that’s a pretty high bar!
While the townspeople are picked off by spiders of varying sizes, two esteemed scientists ramble around the countryside in a late model sedan, where they find friendship, romance and a big mechanical spider built on a Volkswagen Beetle chassis!
Starring Alan Hale Jr, the (Skipper from Gilligan’s Island), Barbara Hale (Perry Mason, and no relation to the Skipper) and Robert Easton, who’s been in more movies than a No Smoking disclaimer, Bill Rebane’s “The Giant Spider Invasion” explodes across the screen in a pristine new digital transfer. Join Bill, Mike, and Kevin as they serve up the cheesiest cheese America’s Dairyland has to offer, LIVE in movie theaters nationwide.
RiffTrax Live, a theatrical comedy experience, is best enjoyed with friends, and so RiffTraxians, MSTies, and comedy fans will meet up in theaters to enjoy the show, live on the big screen. Mike, Kevin, and Bill perform their ultra-funny commentary ("riffing") in front of a live audience, with the resulting hilarity beamed via satellite to cinemas across the nation.
“Fathom is proud to be celebrating a funny and fruitful decade with the RiffTrax crew,” Fathom Events CEO Ray Nutt said. “We look forward to continuing our partnership and bringing their unique and hilarious events to fans across the nation.”
---------
The Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies - London's African Horror: Shades of Superstition Details: "This lecture aims to introduce students to the African Horror literary genre. While African Horror films have made great strides in recent years, thanks to the Nollywood film industry and the South African Horror Film Festival, African horror literary fiction is still to take its rightful place in the commercial horror market. We shall examine the term “African Horror”, and how it is portrayed by the popular media before discussing its place as a bonafide literary genre, similar to other regional horror genres and its classification by distributors. We shall also discuss what constitutes African horror, and what makes it different from horror fiction written by people of African descent.
With over 4000 African tribes and counting, it would be impossible to study African Horror under one uniform blanket as each tribe has its own unique culture and lore. Therefore, I shall focus on the West African (specifically, Nigerian) region in discussing the evolution of African Horror from folk tales under the moonlight to early written works such as Amos Tutuolas’s The Palmwine Drinkard (1952), Vusamazulu Credo Mutwa’s Indaba, My Children: African Folktale (1964), to later African Horror works such as Ben Okri’s The Famished Road (1993) and Nuzo Onoh’s The Sleepless (2016). We shall also examine the mythos of African Horror, the lore, the superstitions that surround death, burial rites and the afterlife in African communities and the role colonialism, Christianity, politics, poverty, and globalization have played in creating situations that give rise to evils such as the harvesting of Albino body parts, the killing of child witches and the kidnapping of humans for witchcraft or political motives. These true-life horrors have all been bred by superstition and these superstitions form the ethos behind most African Horror literature.
We shall discuss the relevance of African horror to the Genre pool, especially as relates issues of negative stereotyping of the continent and the prevalence of poverty and other true-life horror situations in the continent which has led some critics to question the relevance of African Horror genre amidst these real-life problems. I shall illustrate with video clips, images and press articles in an interactive session with the students. It is my hope that the students will accompany me on this unique journey into the deep mysteries of African culture and understand this emerging horror genre and the various shades of superstition that drive the African Horror narrative.
About the instructor:
Nuzo Onoh is a British writer of African-Igbo heritage. Popularly known as, “The Queen of African Horror”, Nuzo holds a Law Degree and a Masters Degree in Writing, both from The University of Warwick, Warwickshire.
Nuzo has been championing African Horror and has featured on multiple media platforms promoting this unique horror genre. She is the first African Horror writer to have featured on Starburst Magazine, the world’s longest-running magazine of cult entertainment and science fiction. She has also made the front-cover of Paranormal Underground Magazine and features in the reference book, “80 Black Women in Horror” (2014). Her writing has also featured in multiple anthologies, including her recent contest-winning and Lovecraft-inspired African Cosmic horror story, Guardians, featured in the Asterisk Anthology Volume 2 (2018). Nuzo has written several blogs for Female First Magazine about African Horror and has been mentioned as one of the new voices in British horror writing making a positive impact on how black and minority races are portrayed in mainstream horror fiction. A keen musician, Nuzo plays both the piano and guitar and has her own self-publishing company, Canaan-Star publishing. Her book, The Reluctant Dead (2014), introduced modern African Horror into the mainstream Horror genre. Her other books include Unhallowed Graves (2015) The Sleepless (2016) and Dead Corpse (2017). Nuzo lives in Coventry and is a member of the Coventry Writing Group."
---------
Ghost Town Podcast Episode Details: Press Release: "Comedians Rebecca Leib and Jason Horton discuss abandoned places, true crime, mysteries, the paranormal, etc.
The latest episode covers L.A.'s Sowden House and the Black Dahlia murder. You can check out all of the episodes here."
"Ghost Town, hosted and produced by Jason Horton and Rebecca Leib, is a comedy podcast about mysterious, abandoned and esoteric places all over the world. Each week Rebecca and Jason explore new unsolved mysteries, abandoned places, haunted houses, and the paranormal. If you love true crime, ghost stories, urban archeology, the unexplained, or just want to see the world around you a little differently - Ghost Town has something for you.
Through comedic investigation of a location, Ghost Town explores history, story and a shared curiosity/commentary of forgotten spots, large and small (and often haunted)! Ghost Town has been #2 on the Apple Podcast comedy charts, top 15 on the Apple Podcast top charts, a featured podcast on Apple Podcast's Scary Stories, a favorite on Castbox's Editor's Picks and has been reviewed by Brit & Co, Geek Girl Authority and the AV Club. The AV Club said that paranormal enthusiasts looking for podcast additions should "look no further than Ghost Town."
Ghost Town Live: The Ghost Town podcast will be taking the action to the stage beginning April 25 with Ghost Town Live: Hollywood Forever at the Dynasty Typewriter in Los Angeles (tickets here). This event will feature a live recording of a Ghost Town episode exploring two of the grimmest, macabre and iconic sites in Los Angeles: HOLLYWOOD FOREVER and The PARAMOUNT LOT. Additional Ghost Town Live engagements with new locations and subjects to follow.
Jason Horton is a writer and comedian whose work has received over one billion online views. He has performed stand up in Europe and performs regularly around Los Angeles. He has been featured on Huffington Post, MTV.com, Bustle, Hello Giggles, Forbes, Yahoo, and more. Jason has been seen on Tosh.0, ABC's This Isn't Working, Comedy Centrals MiniMocks, YouTube Originals film The Thinning: New World Order and TruTV's Late Night Snack with Rachel Dratch.
Rebecca Leib is a stand-up comedian and writer who is currently a producer on National Geographic's Brain Games. Most recently, you can see her writing on Hollywood Game Night, Investigation Discovery's James Patterson's Murder Is Forever, VICE, LAist, KPCC, Reductress, Buzzfeed branded channels, DEFY, The Rumpus, LA Weekly, Los Angeles Times, CITY TV and LIVESTRONG.COM. She previously worked on VICE/Pulse TV's How To Disappear Completely, produced on Disney's Win, Lose or Draw and coordinated on the Disney FX pilot Right Hand Guy.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/ghost-town/id1407606863
www.ghosttowntravels.com
Instagram: @GhostTownPod
Twitter: @GhostTownPod
Facebook: @GhostTownPod"
Tamika hails from North Beach, Maryland, a tiny town inches from the Chesapeake Bay.She knew she wanted to be an actor after reciting a soliloquy by Sojourner Truth in front of her entire fifth grade class. Since then, she's appeared in over 20 film and television projects. In addition to acting, Tamika is the Indie Spotlight manager for Daily Dead, where she brings readers news on independent horror projects every weekend.
The first horror film Tamika watched was Child's Play. Being eight years old at the time, she remembers being so scared when Chucky came to life that she projectile vomited. It's tough for her to choose only one movie as her favorite horror film, so she picked two: Nosferatu and The Stepford Wives (1975).
Daily Dead's Official Podcast! Daily Dead's Official Podcast!
