Mystery Science Theater 3000 Project: Episode 105 The Corpse Vanishes

I haven't updated in a few days, and I wish I could say I was busy. That, however, is not the case. No, I think I was avoiding this film on a subconscious level. The movie this weeks is episode 105: The Corpse Vanishes.



This movie is hard to get through. It's a Bela Lugosi film. Not one of the few good ones he had, but rather the really "meh" films he had to do after everyone only offered him horror pictures after Dracula. And this one is one of the worst. But before we get into that we cover another chapter of Radar Men from the Moon, which is always fun.

The movie its self is about a man who is killing brides on their wedding day with poison flowers and then steals their bodies (Hence "The Corpse Vanishes") and uses them to keep his wife young and beautiful. Released in 1942 ,this was the oldest movie MST3K ever covered. It's slow. Real slow. Slow even for season 1, where almost every movie was slow. We have a heroine in the form of a local newspaper reporter. Just imagine Lois Lane from all those old Superman cartoons from the 30's and that's pretty much this woman.

The riffing is pretty lackluster here, but not really any worse then any other season 1 episode.There were also a few Dracula impersonations which lost any funny after the first one. One good thing that seems to have been added in this episode is an in show awareness of the commercial breaks. At one point a host segment ends with Tom saying "And speaking of selling out." which then cuts to commercial. Later on Joel also does this in the theater when he says "And speaking of selling" and then we cut to commercial.

I didn't really like this episode much. It's not something that anyone that isn't a hardcore fan of the show should really try to watch. I'm giving this one a 2 out of 5.

Next time we will be watching Episode 106: The Crawling Hand. I'm actually looking forward to this one, it's been a long time since I've seen it and I've forgot almost everything about it. So it'll be like watching it for the first time.

-Matt