Mystery Science Theater 3000: THE CORPSE VANISHES, with RADAR MEN FROM THE MOON part 3

June 11, 2014 7:42 PM - Season 1, Episode 5

(1942, B&W, Horror) -- Young brides are spontaneously dying at the altar, deaths engineered by the mad scientist Dr. Lorenz, who then steals the bodies to extract youth juice to inject into his aged wife. YouTube A Bela Lugosi "classic," and one of the oldest movies MST ever did. Riffing quality level isn't as high as 104, but is improved over 103.

Amazon DVD (volume 16)

Satellite News episode guide - Annotated MST3K - MST3K Wikia

IMDB [4.2 stars]
THE CORPSE VANISHES
"A scientist, aided by an old hag & her two sons - a malicious dward and a brutish moron, kills virgin brides, steals their bodies, & extracts gland fluid to keep his ancient wife alive and young."
Directed by Wallace Fox
Written by Sam Robins, Gerald Schnitzer and Harvey Gates.
Starring Bela Lugosi as Dr. Lorenz, Luana Walters as Patricia Hunter, and Tristram Coffin as Dr. Foster.

posted by JHarris (5 comments total)

Original airdate: probably December 9, 1989.

From The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film:

"Horror to make your hair stand on end!" the ads enticed. Bela Lugosi is Dr. Lorenz, a botanist who sends orchids to young brides and then kidnaps them to provide glandular injections for his young-looking 80-year-old wife (Luana Walters). Bela is aided by an old lady (Minerva Urecal), her idiot son (Frank Moran), and a dwarf (Angelo Rossitto). Bela and wife sleep in matching coffins. Like all of Bela's Monogram quickies, a must.

Kevin Murphy writes about the episode in The Amazing Colossal Episode Guide:

Crow's cutting-of-the-hair bit in this show made me laugh and laugh. I think I thought it was funnier than anyone else did, and they'd look at me all strange when I'd laugh and laugh at this, especially the bit about the clown car crashin' and there bein' clown white smeared all over the highway and all. I dunno, maybe Crow reminds me of Floyd the Barber, whom I never actually saw cutting hair, come to think of it....
The truth is that none of us liked Commando Cody in the least. The episodes were turgid and boring and full of fighting and car chases, and everyone yelled at each other and sounded like they were from Long Island. Give me Buster Crabbe as "Flash Gordon" and day, with the sputtering rockets, beautiful sets, great costumes, the consummately evil and refreshingly well-dressed Ming, the whole planet Mongol, the Eagle Men, the Clay People, Thun and his Lion Men, and numptious Dale, the exotic Aurora, Vargas-style women everywhere, men unashamedly in miniskirts; now, this fires a kid's imagination!

Host Segments:
Pre: Open in Deep 13, Issac Asimov body splash. Larry, trying to imitate Dr. F's nicknames for Joel, calls him a "free-rotating skanky boy." Invention exchange. Joel's invention is a classic, the "Chiro-Gyro," which I think came from his stand-up act. Mads: The "Flame Flower." Joel responds: "I cannot believe you guys. That is so hateful!" Mads: "THAANK YOOU!"
1: Tiger-Bot Magazine, idolizing (somewhat) Data, ragging on Twikki.
2: Hide & Seek with Gypsy. A silly bit, except for one thing: Joel runs down the tunnel to the theater for a couple of seconds before returning to the theater!
3: Crow cuts Joel's hair, everyone shoots the breeze about terrible accidents down on the farm.
Post: Good and bad things for RAM chips. When Servo tries to think of a good thing about the movie, his head explodes.

Note, in this episode, the "shadowrama" of the characters is green. This is one of the early episodes where, on Comedy Central's behest, they experimented with coloring the silhouettes to make them more visible. It looks weird.

A few notes and funny riffs:

A common theme to the jokes in these earlier episodes is something that, once you boil it down and cancel out fractions, resolves into "this is a bad movie." Just generic jokes about how bad the film is, that could be used for any movie. These became much rarer in later episodes as the badness of the film becomes more of a foregone conclusion, except in special circumstances when the film becomes overwhelmingly awful.

Crow: "Hey Joel, what's that he's crankin'?"
Joel: "I think it's some kind of radio...."
Servo: "It's his crotch-mounted cordless phone."

There's a good bit in Cody where Servo, then Crow, riff on the fashions spacemen are wearing these days.

Servo: "Nipple, nipple, tweak, tweak, fly, fly, fly!"

Crow: "Why does the Earth have a shadow"
Servo: "Why are there clouds in space?"
Crow: "Why are we watching this?"
Servo: "Daddy, what's Vietnam?"

"When a hunchback comes along, you must whip him! When he won't leave your corpse alone, you must whip him!"

(Lady reporter wearing something sheer in her bedroom.)
Crow: "Joel, why don't you wear nice things like that?"
Joel: "When I got shot into space I didn't have time to pack."

Dr. Lorenz: "I find a coffin much more comfortable than a bed. Many people do so my dear. Is it so strange?" [...]
(Reporter) Patricia Hunter: "I guess not."
Servo: "Wait, it IS strange."

One point in favor of this movie is the female protagonist who drives most of the plot, Luana Walters as Patricia Hunter. Unfortunately, at the end she still has to faint at the sight of the doctor's wife stabbing him with a dagger while Little Rascals music plays.

Editor: "All right, break it up, we've got headlines to write!"
Patricia Hunter: "Do I get a by-line?"
Editor: "After this, you can have a clothesline! With my shirt on it!"
JUST UGH. And she quits her career to marry clean-cut, whiter-than-Wonder-Bread Dr. Foster.
posted by JHarris at 7:48 PM on June 11, 2014 [2 favorites]

extracts gland fluid to keep his ancient wife alive and young

A la season eight's The Leech Woman.
posted by Chrysostom at 10:02 PM on June 11, 2014

So, let's talk about this week's showing.

Unfortunately, Dominos has decided that it's more important for me to deliver pizzas for less than minimum wage and do bullshit menial labor Friday night than spend it supervising you guys watching robots make fun of bad movies. I will get off some time Friday, but it could be anywhere from 9 PM to 11 PM Eastern, and could be even later. As with previous times this has happened, I will leave the show running through a pre-roll from some time (usually starting around 5 PM) until it "officially" starts, and the pre-roll actually contains the entire movie along with a number of entertaining shorts and MST rarities. And I will post the URL to the sync-video room here and announce it in Chat so you'll know where to go.
posted by JHarris at 11:32 PM on June 11, 2014

Here is the sync-video page:

http://sync-video.com/r/r1pWyPxk

I really don't know when I'm off tonight. You guys might not get me for very long tonight. I've filled the list with more shorts than usual just in case, and some RiffTrax best-of compilations.
posted by JHarris at 1:24 PM on June 13, 2014

Well, I didn't get off work until 10:30, which put a damper on the whole "group viewing" thing, but a couple of folks hung around at least. Next week it's more ambulatory body parts in the form of THE CRAWLING HAND.
posted by JHarris at 3:25 AM on June 14, 2014