Mystery Science Theater 3000: THE DEAD TALK BACK
October 26, 2016 3:25 PM - Season 6, Episode 3 - Subscribe

Meet Krasker! He's a lunatic who lives in the basement of a boarding house with his occult toy collection. For some reason the police admire and respect him, and want him help in their murder investigation. They enlist his radio that supposedly can speak with the dead to finger the killer. Even with the TWIST ENDING!!, no judge would allow this evidence. With short The Selling Wizard: Being a few minutes of footage of a pizza dominatrix pretty girl to affix the gaze of a presumably male audience while a narrator tries to sell them Anheuser-Busch grocery freezers. This is a remarkably bad film, maybe even in Manos territory. The movie was made in the 50s but not released until the advent of home video decades later. Krasker's a self-important weirdo who thinks the world revolves around him and his ridiculous collection of occult "artifacts," and in this movie that world is stupidly eager to oblige him. Fans are split about the worth of the episode, but I like it. YouTube (1h32m) Premiered July 30, 1994.

Episode 603 THE DEAD TALK BACK
Satellite News - MST3K Wikia - Mighty Jack's MST3K Review - War of the Colossal Fan Guide

Movie:
Daddy-O's Drive-In Dirt - Wikipedia (Not of much use this time!) - Rotten Tomatoes (Critics N/A, Viewers 0%)
IMDB (1993 [but see below], 1.7 stars)
"A psychic researcher attempts to solve a murder by using a radio that enables him to speak with the dead."
Directed and written by Merle S. Gould. Starring Aldo Farnese, Scott Douglas and Laura Brock.
For once the IMDB fails us! It states its date was 1993, but apparently it was actually made in 1957 and just wasn't released until the advent of VCRs. Its MST3K broadcast may have been the first time the movie saw the light of day.

Short:
IMDB (1954, 1.7 stars)
"Large, modern freezers make it easier for grocers to sell their goods and make high profits."

Notes:
For some reason, I always think of this as a Sci-Fi Channel episode.

Very little is known about this movie. Its Wikipedia page is little more than a stub. It's as obscure as Manos was before being featured on the show catapulted it into bad movie ubiquity.

The short was produced by The Jam Handy Organization (named after its founder Jamison Handy). It is an "industrial," not made for general audiences but for limited release for commercial purposes.

This is the episode with Crow's cheesy guitar solo, which goes on and on and over the credits too.
posted by JHarris (6 comments total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
Hey look, hate on this movie all you like, but it is solely responsible for introducing the fascinating and enduring concept of tele-keenis into our shared cultural heritage.
posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 3:42 AM on October 27, 2016 [1 favorite]


Younger - than spring time - are you, sir.

I'll be at Rifftrax tonight, so I will miss this one. It's another one of my favorites.
posted by wittgenstein at 9:52 AM on October 27, 2016


The Satellite News recap doesn't like the short on this one, but I love the industrial shorts like this, there's no end to the riffspace possibilities it opens up. Plus it leads to Mike continuing to use these types of shorts in RiffTrax.
posted by hobgadling at 11:22 AM on October 27, 2016 [1 favorite]


They don't like the short? IT'S THE PIZZA DOMINATRIX!!!
posted by wittgenstein at 11:53 AM on October 27, 2016 [1 favorite]


Is it 9:00 yet? No? Okay, I'll wait.
posted by valkane at 1:08 PM on October 27, 2016


Usual spiel! Tonight at https://cytu.be/r/Metafilter_MST3KClub, at 9PM ET/6 PM PT! Regrettably those not present will become rectangular!
posted by JHarris at 3:22 PM on October 27, 2016


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