Season Eight Episode Five: The Thing That Couldn't Die
Network: Sci-Fi Channel
Riffers: Tom Servo, Mike Nelson, and Crow T. Robot
Mads: Pearl Forrester, Professor Bobo, and The Observers
Plot Synopsis: A young woman plays with a divining rod and ends up finding much more than water in this horror movie. Instead of the desired liquid, the woman finds a 400-year-old human head, and it's still alive. The horrific creature, seeing that the woman is properly innocent, hypnotizes her into looking for the rest of his body.
Host Segments:
Prologue: Tom Servo unveils his newest art show, "Crow: A Thousand Years of Tyranny". As the name indicates, it's less than flattering. Crow is ironically paying for the whole thing and is a bit concerned about the negativity...until clowns on velvet are mentioned.
Segment One: Servo ignores the clowns in his new painting; kittens in a meat grinder is more suitable for Crow. Then, Gypsy alerts them that the SoL is caught in a tractor beam that drags them to a new planet and creates a temporary Tom Twin. They are now in orbit around the planet of The Observers, which is now also the abode of Pearl and Bobo. The Observers want to observe her experiment and have set their guests up with nice accommodations. The Observers then secretly discuss their plans to dissect and display Pearl and Bobo in their museum.
Segment Two: One of the Observers is now on the SOL to observe in person. He annoys and insults the hell out of them, so they eject him from the ship, sans brain.
Segment Three: The gang plays Risk until they are interrupted by Finnegan, teleported from Mike's memory via the Observers. Except Mike doesn't know the utterly annoying Irish geek, who beats him up. Crow wants Mike to think of Adrienne Barbeau; Mike mishears him and thinks of Roman Emperor Hadrian, who beats him up. He finally thinks of Ms. Barbeau, who, um, beats him up.
Segment Four: Crow debuts his new documentary, Crow T. Robot's Bram Stoker's The Civil War. Per most of Crow's reports and documentaries, his facts are far from straight and the credits are longer than the documentary.
Ending Segment: Servo and Mike plot to scare Crow out of his mind by using Servo's disembodied head. The wig gives way as Mike thrusts the head forward; repairs ensue. Pearl goes to bed, haranguing the Observers and Bobo the whole time.
Stinger: The Observers offer you their brains.
Review:
Sometimes, I wonder if the 50's directors and writers ever did challenges about who could write the best story, much like fanfiction sites do now. I can see the people involved in this and The Brain That Wouldn't Die being part of the same challenge about a disembodied head that could control things and had to find a new body. TBTWD became a sci-fi movie about a man wanting to bring his future wife back from the dead, this is about a 400 year old evil head that wants to be back on it's own body. Both movies though are pretty dull as hell, though this does have a scene with two relatively hot women sleeping in the same bed.
The riffing was really good, very enjoyable. It was funny how Mike and the Bots immediately believed the movie was awesome because of the above scene, though there are other funny lines thrown in here and there. The host segments are pretty funny, and I did enjoy Crow's documentary on the Civil War. Great episode. Probably the best of the first eight episodes. 9/10
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http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/8-gamefaqs-contests/61035294 - My MST3K Watchthrough topic.