Movie: (1959) When a doctor’s fiancee is decapitated, he keeps her head alive in his laboratory and tries to find her a new body.

First shown: 10/30/93
Opening: Mike’s been in training for his first movie
Invention exchange: Mike presents the gutter-bumber-shoot, The Mads demonstrate the dream buster
Host segment 1: Mike tries to get control of the SOL, but nothing doing (that’s not cheese!)
Host segment 2: M&tB first project together: designing hats for Jan in the pan
Host segment 3: Mike, Crow and Tom discuss the movie’s hateful message; Mike shares an embarrassing moment from his past
End: A visit from Jan on the Hexfield; Dr. F. is inspired!
Stinger: “Who’s to tell me to blow if I don’t want to?”
(205 votes, average: 4.48 out of 5)
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• A fair-to-good first show for Mike. Horrible movie, great riffing, but many many changes to the forumla.
• This was one of the two episodes that was first released as singles by Rhino, in April of 2000, their first two MST3K titles.
• References.
• I spent most of October 30, 1993, in Edina, Minn., at the home of a very nice lady named Debbie Tobin, with a lot of oddly dressed people I’d never met before. Thereby hangs a tale.
For the previous two Thanksgivings, Comedy Central had paid Best Brains to create short film segments — called “bumpers” in showbiz lingo — that would link one episode to another in its annual “turkey day” marathon. But in 1993, for reasons that will never be understood, I guess, Comedy Central asked BBI to make the bumpers for free. BBI told CC to pound sand. So, CC was forced to look elsewhere for its bumpers.
Now, at the same time, Debbie, who was a regular poster at MST3K bulletin board on the Prodigy online service, had announced she was throwing a Halloween costume party on the day of Mike’s first episode. Somebody at CC saw her posting and asked her if they could send a video crew to film it and make bumpers out of the footage. Debbie agreed, and was (wisely) told to keep it a secret, and most of the people who showed up had no idea the camera crew was going to be there.
Thus on the appointed day I, and about 35 jolly people from all over the country, were in Debbie’s house, in costume. It was the first time Erhardt and I had met, and there were a couple of other people there who I’m still good friends with all these years later.
(And let me just take time out from this story to say that if you were there at MSTieween, please drop me a line and let me know how your life is going.)
We managed to finish up filming just before 5 p.m. local time, when this episode was to debut. Shouting “movie sign!!” we rushed to the basement and the den, where TVs were set up so we could watch. And that’s where I was when the Mike era began.
• There is a LOT to take in here, right off the bat. New theme song lyrics, a new theme song singer, a new robot roll call and a new door sequence, all in about two minutes. It was breathtaking at the time.
• One of the new doors in the door sequence looks vaguely like a pizza. This was a cute reference to the fact that many fans claimed that one of the Joel-era doors made a sound that sounded like somebody saying “pizza!”
• According to BBI, Gypsy says “I’m not ready!” It sounds to me like “Hi from me!”
• Crow and Tom have been “training” Mike using “The Beast of Yucca Flat” [sic]. I think this is only the second time they mention a movie that they would later riff — the other one being “Marooned.” There’s also a mention of “Night of the Lepus,” a movie they SHOULD have riffed.
• Is Tom wearing a Temple University cap? Sure looks like their “T.”
• Right out of the box, Mike is intentionally different from Joel. In an interview that I did with Jim at about this time, he said (I’m paraphrasing from memory here) “I never quite understood why Joel’s character is so polite and deferential to the Mads. They trapped him in space! Why is he being nice to them?” Thus we have an immediately rebellious Mike, who scoffs at being expected to “hop to.” Radical!
• I love the use of the “Flint phone” sound effect with Dr. F’s invention. The world would later hear it in the Austin Powers movies too.
• Another great “Mike as newbie” moment comes when moviesign arrives — and Mike has no idea what to do. He then fails to carry a humiliated Tom into the theater. Crow explicitly mentions the air grate.
• Segment 1 is our first real taste of interaction between Mike and bots. They seem to be getting along okay, but it’s clear the bots have abandonment issues. Can bots have “issues”?
• I gotta say that this movie is pretty harsh for Mike’s first experiment. It is easily the most misogynist movie they ever did (and that’s saying something). The scene where our “hero” goes trolling for bodies is particularly dark.
• Callback: “Back to the ‘Unearthly’ set.” “Mitchell!!”
• At one point, Tom says: “Not with RADAR!” Huh? We won’t get “Radar Secret Service” for seven episodes. Is it a reference to that? Had the Brains already seen it as part of the selection process? Maybe that was a riff that came from Frank, the previewer.
• Segment 2 is fun, a bit a throwback to season 3, when Joel was forever giving the bots assignments and projects.
• Mike is still wearing the lazy susan hat when when they re-enter the theater.
• Tom does a little Flash Bazbo.
• Segment 3 seizes another opportunity have fun at the new guy’s expense, but also has some wonderful assessments of the movie.
• Great running gag in this one: AHH! I’M IN ANOTHER DIMENSION!!
• Cast and crew roundup: Just one item this time: Makeup man George Fiala also worked on “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.”
• CreditsWatch: Joel’s name comes off the “art direction” credit, leaving Trace and Jef. Skyline Displays Inc. (the company that offered them the space that would become their studio) comes out of the “Special Thanks” credit, as does the credit for Mark Gilbertson. The “Executive Producers: Jim Mallon, Joel Hodgson” credit comes out completely. David Sussman is added to the list of writers for the rest of the season. Host segments directed by Trace Beaulieu. For the rest of the season, the theme song credit says: lyrics: “The Brains.” Jim Mallon is back in the list of contributing writers (his name was removed in last week’s credits) and will be for the rest of the season. And of course that’s Mary Jo, hilariously depicting Jan in the pan.
• Fave riff: “Hahahaha…have you seen Frankenhooker?” Honorable mentions: “…with a Milwaukee Sawzall.” “If Jack Ruby owned a Denny’s.”