MST3K: Episode 806 - The Undead

I'm watching all of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes in order. More about that here and here.

Episode 806: The Undead

First aired: Sci-Fi Channel on 8 March 1997
Availability: MST3KVideos.com fan copy

That's Hellfire, apparently.

I didn't hate The Undead as much as some other films, but it's still not a very good film.

Of course, this is MST3K we're talking about, so it's a given that it's a bad film. And, it's a Roger Corman film, which means that it's quick and dirty.

Not quick enough, though. Often, when MST3K would take on a Corman film, they'd need to pad it with a short. Not so, this one.

The Undead is 75 minutes long, which means that, without enough cuts in the film, there's not spare time to throw in a short.

Billy Barty has a small role. And, yes, those are the boobies of a 50-foot woman.

However, they did need to pad it a little. To get 92 minutes -- the average time of an episode sans commercials -- they need around 14 minutes of Host Segments (the opening is 1:24 and the closing theme is 1:02). The closing Host Segment of this episode was nearly 6 minutes (5:51, to be exact), which is longer than normal. Kevin milked it for everything he could.

Let's talk about the movie first.

A psychic researcher hires a whore to be an experimental subject involving hypnotism, time travel, reincarnation, and religion, as it turns out, because Little Miss Harlot used to be a woman in medieval France who was beheaded for being a witch, even though she wasn't a witch, because the real witch, who would later grow to be a 50-Foot Woman but was normal size here and still kinda hot, especially when standing next to imp Billy Barty, had Miss Innocent/Whore falsely accused, but the psychic researcher deduces that if she isn't beheaded, she'll change history and never be born, so she has to die so she can live because if she lives she'll die, or something, so he gets all wired up and regresses to the middle ages with her, talking her into letting herself be executed, which somehow traps the psychic researcher back in time, which causes Satan no end of pleasure. The end.

Trapped in the past.

Satan thinks that's funny.

Still not the worst film MST3K has done, but not a good one.

Bridget Jones as Allyson Hayes as Lydia.

The riffing is rich, though. That makes it. Oh, and the Host Segments are funny.

We get a glimpse into Mike's life before he ended up on the Satellite of Love. It wasn't pretty, but it was pretty funny.

Bridget Jones makes an appearance as the hot shape-shifting witch from the film. She can't stop shape-shifting and winds up as a bottle of bleach.

Bill Corbett develops his Observer character a little more. Turns out he's not at the top of his class.

And there's the long, drawn-out final Host Segment where Professor Bobo makes a sandwich. Only that's not a fridge where he finds the sandwich meat. And that's not sandwich meat.

A lot of work for a little joke, but it's how the MST3K crew did things. You saw it coming early on, but they went the whole distance on the joke. It wasn't so much the joke that was funny, but the telling of the joke, as it happens.

This episode is a winner.

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