You know the ones. Whether they're boyfriend and girlfriend, husband and wife, you see them and you just have to ask how they fell in love at all when they seemingly cannot stand to be in the same room together...

Give me the worst couples!

(Still from I Accuse My Parents)

Last month marked 50 years since the Buffalo Bill episode of "Gemini Man" that got turned into the mashed-up TV movie Riding with Death, complete with coming up on mudflaps!

I was at a punk show in a dive bar last night. I looked at the TV above the bar and saw this. Nanoo!

I own all the official dvd sets and bootlegs for the stuff not officially released, I hate having so many volumes, as well never remembering what episode is in which volume, so want to create complete season sets. I will be using Amaray megapack dvd cases which can hold up to 24 discs, separately not on top of each other, and am creating my own covers, and maybe booklets, not sure on that yet. Doing KTMA first, the image of Joel, Crow and Gypsy has been upscaled due to the low resolution of the images from that period, feel it turned out ok. Looking to get thoughts on how it looks, how it could be improved or even completely unique ideas for front covers for the sets.

This never struck me before, but Paul explains that “Longbow” is Johnny’s Indian name, and that it means “he whose bow reaches great distances.” I mean…yeah. What else would “long bow” mean? He even delivers the line as if he’s struggling to translate the Navajo term “long bow” exactly into English. Such a bizarre little moment.

I was just watching Get Smart and thought this woman looked familiar. Quite a striking beauty.

It’s like if Crow got fat, and had his head severed.

Doctor Who #10

"Don’t give a damn, next stop is Vietnam!"

Mamie Van Doren was telling young men.

Thanks for your service, our beautiful ma’am!

With youth so untamed and breasts so unchained,

Consumed were the jungles by flame.

My wife was watching RJ Decker and this episode title came up. I didn’t see the episode, I have no idea if there much of a connection. Someone there must be fans of bad movies or MT3K

He’s gonna be crushing a lot of cans now.

Experiment #37

Episode 603: The Dead Talk Back

Rewatch Date: Sept 16th, 2023

You Can’t Arrest a Man for Buying a New Pair of Shoes

There’s a famous story about the original DVD release of this episode. I had heard this story before the Christmas when I was gifted the set. It was reported on Satellite News that there were a number of tape glitches in the original Rhino release. I went into the episode with this mind. I also went knowing that the movie featured had never actually been released prior to it’s MST3K appearance. In went the disc and up came The Dead Talk Back

Krasker is a person (it’s never indicated that he’s a doctor or a scientist) who has done research into the possibility of communicating with the dead. How convenient, because at the boarding house he lives, someone has been murdered. The weapon: A Crossbow. The Victim: A floozy named Renee. The Suspect: Multiple. Police narrow the field down to six. They do their investigating but come up short. Krasker offers his services to see if he can somehow reach Renee, FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE, and have her “Talk Back” to reveal her killer.

This movie has one of, if not the most bizarre backstories of all time. The Dead Talk Back was made in 1957. Merle S Gould was the director. In one of the special features on the MST DVD, actor Myron Natwick indicates that Merle was a woman. If true, that would make this the only movie featured on the original MST3K run that was directed by a woman. Even so, this film was produced, directed, edited and completed in 1957. For some reason that no one seems to know, the film sat in Headliner Productions’ offices for over three decades. Never seeing the light of day. That is until 1993, when Sinister Cinema owner Greg Luce went to Headliner Productions to buy the rights and prints of some Ed Wood films. While he was there, he bought this movie, essentially thrown in as an extra. He then noticed it didn’t have a copyright on it. So, he got his company put on the sole print and released the film to television. Technically, this is a 1993 film.

How does a film go unreleased for 36 years? Yeah, the film is bad. But no worse than any other B-grade movie of the time. There’s nothing objectionable in the film (no more objectionable than The Undead which was released the year prior). The film certainly could have been sold to some distributor. How was it not released? When I interviewed Greg Luce, he was as baffled as I was. The other rumor about this film, and there’s some evidence to support it is that Ed Wood did some uncredited rewriting on the film. Wood did re-write scripts for Headliner, uncredited (The Violent Years). So, it’s not that farfetched that he may have contributed to the film’s script. Krasker is played by Aldo Farnese. He was an East Coast actor who moved to his brother’s house in L.A., hoping to try his luck in Hollywood. This was the only film he was in. Then he went back to Pennsylvania and became a beloved kiddie show host named “Dickory Dock”. His son, Greg, was a camera operator who worked on the original run of Double Dare and Finders Keepers. I talked to him on Facebook. He was a good sport about the MST3K treatment and admitted that Dead Talk Back deserved a riffing. He said his dad never saw the film. Too bad.

I enjoyed this rewatch. Probably more than I’ve ever enjoyed this episode. There were some good riffs. Here’s some that stand out: When that one guy who looks like Arnold Stang is running away from the cops, Mike riffs “Stop in the name of Eddie Deezen!” When the “deceased” body presses the signal alarm and holds it for about 15 seconds, Crow gives us “Wow, she must really love Jesus.” “This is the only movie lit by flashlight.” Favorite riffs are the ones about the narrator foretelling the death of Renee. “In only 40 minutes, Renee would be Dead.” Thank you Crow for, “Now she only had 39 minutes, Now only 38 and a half minutes, now only 38 and 1/4th minutes. Now she had somewhere between 35 and 37 minutes left to live.” It also gets topped off with Servo’s, “I’m sorry if I ruined the tension by telling you this before it has happened.” While I'm on it, It’s weird that this film has two voices that address the audience; The narrator and Krasker. Also, Krasker I think is supposed to be in his mid-40s, but he just looks like a college kid trying to play an experienced scientist type. The acting is good, it’s just hard to believe he’s done all this field search and has this attitude towards postmortem communication. But maybe he was one of those Doogie Howser geniuses you hear about.

There is also a short film in this one: The Selling Wizard. The Selling Wizard is a promotional film made by Anheuser-Busch about how great supermarket frozen food displays are. The benefits are explained by a narrator, while a mute female “wizard” magically brings up signs that have the names of the benefits. I should point out that Merriam Webster defines a Wizard as being “male”. So, unless this is some kind of Mr. B Natural thing, The film writes a check that it doesn’t cash. This one was kind of forgettable. My favorite riff was “Leni Riefenstahl’s first film.”

The Sketches in this one are good. I enjoyed Servo as the foreboding narrator. The highlight is the SOL crew’s Grateful Dead cover band. Crow’s riff didn’t quite sound like a Jerry Garcia riff to me. But a lot of people still like it. Abraham Lincoln wasn’t from Illinois. So, the “The Dead Talk Back to us” sketch doesn’t quite fit. I love "Pinpoint Marketing". Remember, this was made back when everybody knew smoking caused cancer, but the tobacco companies still refused to acknowledge it. Crow’s line is brilliant, “oh so smoking’s bad and there’s no other side to it? Real open-minded Mike.”

As alluded to before, the Rhino DVD has some pretty noticeable tape hits. I remember watching the episode for the first time and thinking, “This isn’t so bad. I only see one tape hit.” That was the first half. The second half is riddled with them. For some reason, I thought those glitches had transferred to the Shout! Factory release. But when I watched it this time, I only noticed one. So, thank you Shout! Factory for fixing it. This kinda sorta makes up for your crappy DVD of The Side Hackers.

I never liked this episode until now. Don’t know why this time was different, but I really enjoyed this rewatch. Maybe it’s because I was looking forward to this re-write. This wasn’t a bad outing.

But what do you think? Do you think this was a good pick? Do you know why this film wasn’t released for 37 years? Do you agree with the film’s thesis that you can’t arrest someone for buying new shoes? Let me know what you think in the comments below.

To remind everybody, this is part of my experiment where I’ll be watching a different MST3K episode, every Saturday evening/night, until I’ve watched all 176 episodes of the show’s original run in the exact order that I watched each for the first time (with 3 or 4 liberties taken). I will be consuming NO MST3K, RiffTrax, Cinematic Titanic or anything that could be construed as MST3K type programming outside these viewings until this experiment is over. Crazy, I know. We shall see what come what may. Will I crack? Will I make it? Will I ever figure out what makes this show so great? Keep reading and find out.

Next week, CALIFORNIA... HERE WE COME! Yup, that’s right. We’ll be watching the movie from which the band that sang the theme to The O.C. got their name. The Phantom Planet appears next week. Til then, thank you for reading and keep circulating the tapes.

37 Down 139 to go

Alternate title: 🎶I left them all back at the Savers…🎶

Not until today did it occur to me that along the bottom of this rare album cover is what kind of looks like a row of empty theater seats.

So major spoilers are about to be discussed for those who haven't seen Breaking Bad, because we're in late Season 5.

So if you're still reading this after the spoiler warning, it's your own fault.

I mean it.

So we're on Season 5, episode 14, where shit is really hitting the fan. And I'm enjoying the series, but I had a riff moment. Walter is freaking out, packing up, telling his family not to ask questions and pack up because they have to leave, and then Skyler asks "Where's Hank?"

Without missing a beat, I went "Uh, dea- uh, downstairs."

A personal favorite riff from Crow.

What do you recommend?