I posted some suggestions on their Facebook timeline:
There are still plenty of Russo-Finnish fairy tales they haven’t tackled yet, dubbed into English–many of them are available from the site Ruscico.com. The Best Brains crew were the first to admit that these movies were among the better ones they’d done–for all their cheesiness, they had a good deal of charm. Likewise, Mexico has done some fairy-tale movies–MFT3K, a fan-made continuation, did a version of Little Red Riding Hood where the Big Bad Wolf had an irritating skunk sidekick. (And from what I hear, there were sequels). Germany also did several live-action fairy tales in the fifties or thereabouts that got dubbed into English–Snow White and Sleeping Beauty among them.
Since they’ll be doing a Christmas episode, I’d love to see them tackle the VERY cheesy live-action musical The Christmas That Almost Wasn’t, directed by and starring Rosanno Brazzi. Ditto with Laurel and Hardy’s March of the Wooden Soldiers/Babes in Toyland.
Then there’s Alakazam the Great, an early anime by Osamu Tezuka. In its original Japanese, it was a retelling of the Asian myth of the Journey to the West. (Even in this version, however, it had some deliberate anachronisms.) The American dub junked this angle, renamed the characters, removed all reference to Buddhism in favor of a dime-a-dozen “hero must go on a quest and learn humility” plot, and filled it with cutesy “hip” jokes. The main character’s singing voice was Frankie Avalon’s, but his speaking voice was Peter Fernandez, who voiced Speed Racer. Think of the mileage they could get out of that!
There are some suggestions I made on the Rifftrax ideas site. There’s the 1925 silent version of The Wizard of Oz, which, though it featured Oliver Hardy and introduced the idea of Kansas characters doubling as Oz characters, couldn’t even get the main thrust of the story right. Dorothy was the rightful princess of Oz, so the goal was for her to STAY in Oz rather then get back to Kansas. Plus, one of the main characters was an African-American farmhand called “Snowball”, whose actor was billed as “G. Howe Black,” was lazy and cowardly (he ended up disguising himself as the Cowardly Lion), and was first seen eating watermelon. This would be nothing but a riffer’s field day from the get-go!
Then there’s the 1933 version of Alice in Wonderland, which did display some visual and storytelling inventiveness, but featured costumes that Sid and Marty Krofft would have scorned. In their infinite wisdom, the makers of this cast Cary Grant, the single handsomest man in Hollywood, as the Mock Turtle–in a costume that COMPLETELY COVERS HIS FACE. This bombed so hard that it left studios reluctant to touch future live-action fantasy films–it might have torpedoed The Wizard of Oz if saner heads hadn’t prevailed!
to Battleship (2012), the real disaster (of a) movie of that year.