MST3K (805)

805 - The Thing That Couldn't Die - Another day, another Universal horror movie from the 1950s. More scientists -- this time archaeologists -- releasing more terror upon the world. Yeah, yeah. I will give the movie this: at least it was accurate with the decapitated noggin. In other movies with bodiless heads, the creators tend to forget that a lack of lungs mean a lack of the ability to speak. In this movie, the dried-up head is forced to mouth words at his hypnotized victims in some vague hope that they're all lip readers. They all were.

I like the Observers much better than the planet full of monkeys. This is a bit strange, since the three monkeys and the three Observers are played by the same actors, spewing lines written by themselves. The arrogant, omnipotent Observers have much fresher comedic potential than some monkeys doing monkey things. My favorite bit from this episode was the Observer-spawned Adrienne Barbeau punching out Mike.

The riffing wasn't able to get me to laugh that much this time out. Do the writers need some movie variety as badly as I do? They seem to be running just a little bit out of steam since their strong start on the new network. The earliest season 8 episodes I've seen were 810 and 811. Both I remember being quite funny. Both also happen to be the first movies that aren't horror films from the 1950s. Hopefully, this is meaningless and at least a few of the next four movies improve a bit.

"No, really... if I hadn't left my truss in the room, I'd be down there with you fellers." (6/10)

film d. Will Cowan (1958)
mst d. Jim Mallon (1Mar 1997)