This can’t be emphasized enough. The Dead Talk Back is an underrated episode for a lot of reasons but this assessment covers a lot of its appeal. Everyone in the movie is TRYING (much like in Manos) despite the fact that the movie is a bad movie. Whenever that happens, it seems to be a vital ingredient that goes into making a great platform for MST3K to have a field day with the material.
Now that’s not always true. Everyone was trying in The Bubble, but that episode is hard to stomach. But in the case of The Dead Talk Back there is a lot of charm to the ensemble who are giving it their all. Renee is trying hard as the lovely but mean vixen-victim. Kruger, the cops, the killer, Matley, the nerdy photographer, and heck even the old lady complaining about her pictures is trying. But none of them are particularly good, and so it gives lots of targets for riffing while at the same time making the movie itself kind of tolerable despite its flaws.
But Krasker… Yeah. Whenever he shows up it goes to 11.
I was thinking more a pointless board meeting helmed by Dr. St. Phibes and he keeps chiming in from the back with non sequiturs about his own thing and finally the host and the bots just pelt him with sandwich remains and empty chip bags.
Lol I’ll be the lunatic supreme and say that I’d rather watch Krasker ramble on 'til half past forever than see the same from the colorless, witless, blander-than-bland Peter Graves in The Beginning Of The End. (Or his wannabe in The Deadly Mantis.)
There are bland patches in experiments. I just go with it. Like the Urkel Sketch, the solo has its admirers. It failed to torture me. I get how the joke could outstay its welcome. Duration is highly subjective and what slays and annoys.
Sure. If one has particularly fond memories of the Dead (live or bootlegs or whatever)…then it probably wouldn’t rankle many. Never had a bad trip at a Dead concert, and I’ve admired the keyboard playing of many they’ve had in their lineup…
I dunno…it’s no doubt my oddity or taste (or lack of).
TBH it reminds me of the guitar soundtrack to Alligator (not the good movie, with Robert Forster, but the one Rifftrax did…maybe I have the title wrong, [/* ROLLERGATOR! that’s got to be it…kind of sure */] because good lord, I’m not stepping in that Joe Estevez pile of scat again! Actually, that’s one movie that would have been much improved by a lot more Joe Estevez…and less of everything else).
Oh yeah.
A snippet or so would have been funny…but it seems like hours of endless noodling…and I think they kept doing it over the ending credits, IIRC!
Oh well, à chacun son goût!
I just mute the volume…it is an otherwise exceptional experiment and episode. No harm done!
Again, nothing at all against the musician: that is the sound and feel they wanted, and he nailed it!
That’s how I feel about the “Man is a feeling creature” speech repetitions in Attack Of The Legless Pickle. I’d have liked them much better had they had hippie guitar accompaniment, probably.
But none of them are particularly good, and so it gives lots of targets for riffing while at the same time making the movie itself kind of tolerable despite its flaws.
for me. Just the next level of pretentiousness.
(I hope that’s a deep enough cut for everyone.)
Could be.