TURKEY DAY TOURNMENT 2021: Battle 7! THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE vs THE TOUCH OF SATAN

The Brain That Wouldn’t Die (1962) presents itself as the ultimate rabbit hole of an experiment. Sucking you into the inner depths of desperation and perversity, Brain reeks of depravity and the riffs lighten it inexorably lending a Turkey of equally light and dark meat to piece on.

This episode runs the gamut from sunny to despair often without warning giving it a power of hitting you from all angles. Banality, violation, naivete, lunacy, the movie and the comments dance and change places then reversing themselves many times. One angel and the other demon for much of it.

As icing on the cake, the Comedy Central taste of when this was made gives this a timeless quality piling on to its replay and enjoyment. Brain is a no-brainer. Pun intended!

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If you people keep me from finding out where the fish lives, I’ll never forgive you. /s

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“Here’s to you, whiskey.”

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For me, the first half of The Touch of Satan is A+ material, among some of the best work done by the MST3K gang.

The second half is… rougher. It’s like the darkness of the movie overwhelms the riffing to a considerable degree for me and makes it something of a tough go.

The Brain That Wouldn’t Die, on the other hand, feels like a more consistently strong episode. I gotta give it up for Brain here.

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I voted for The Touch of Satan and now I’m suddenly thirsty for some hard apple cider.

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This seems to be a common sentiment and it’s growing on me. I like ToS very much, but I’m thinking now that you could swap the second half with the last half of Squirm and it might just work. Or just weave both movies together entirely. They’ve both got the isolated rural setting going on, and a sort of sickly 70’s patina.

Things getting too dark on the walnut farm? Let’s check in with Mr. Beardsley and the gang!

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Nooooo!!!

Now Lesley’s going to mess with us by having Squirm get in the ring with The Incredible Melting Man !

:scream_cat:

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Now THAT would be an interesting experiment to try out, especially since Squirm never seems to get so oppressively dreary that it smothers the riffs in darkness.

It’ll be an MST3K grudge match for the ages since both are exceptional episodes! (I would have both slated in my top 15 episode roundup, I would think.)

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I don’t think I’d be able to consume food while watching either one, to be honest. :nauseated_face: I’d probably just abstain from voting.

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Have to say, that doesn’t hold isn’t true for me, I find the last half as funny as the first. The flashback scene, for example, is as funny as anything in the first section.

And I’m fine with the darkness, fine with grossness, Melting Man, CTs Oozing Skull, bring it on!

Anyway, the poll got me in the mood to watch it again, just now… and I got a bigger than usual laugh from the, “With Mitchum, you can skip a day” riff, (when we see Luthor drenched in sweat). If only because SandyFrank recently used that tagline in another thread (that had nothing to do with ATOS). :laughing:

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In Melting Man (would that naturally follow Burning Man?) vs. Sq(worm), Squirm would get my vote - but that horrible sheriff makes me so angry it hurts the show viewing for me. I even skipped that one when I did my year-long in-movie-timeline marathon in 2016! However, I only watched Melting Man in full once when it was new, opting for host-segments-only viewing since, including that marathon and fairly recently. YouTube making that possible.

The above choice? Glad I pretended you asked. Voted Touch of Where The Fish Lives. The gross parts near the end of Brain are always tough viewing for me, vs. the adorableness of Beez the Babysitter making the other one great to watch.

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Then just pick…the opposite?

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And some walnuts!

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MST/RT trivia: Victoria here is played by Dedee Pfeiffer, female lead in Radical Jack. (And also Michelle Pfeiffer’s sister.)

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I don’t have an issue with either the structure or the riffing of Touch of Satan, but I’m also a longtime fan of cheesy satanic flicks to begin with. Having the alcoholic cracker from Giant Spider Invasion show up is pure icing.

Melting Man is far away my preference over Squirm, if voting comes to that. Squirm is very near the bottom of my MST3K list and I almost never rewatch it. Melting Man I queue up again and again.

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Not to take this too far off-topic, but since the question came up?

I’d go with Squirm just barely over The Incredible Melting Man. I’d have Squirm as a top ten episode while Melting Man would fall just outside the top ten.

I love them both, though, but Squirm has this feel and impeccable collection of riffs/running jokes that makes it irresistible. Having A Case of Spring Fever as the last short of the classic era makes it something of a draw, too!

To bring this back on topic, I will forever love The Brain That Wouldn’t Die for Crow’s goofy-as-hell Dan Cortese from BK TV riff near the end (“I LOOOOOOOOOOVE THIS PLACE!”) as the first-person camera angle goes all wonky.

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It’s hard to beat the actress in Squirm who was going with the worst Tennessee Williams sort of Southern. “Come on, nobody’s that Southern!” Virtually every time she opens her mouth it’s funny.

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YES :smiley:

The only actress who could possibly outdo her along those lines is the opening victim from The Sinister Urge. She says only one word (“Operator?!”), but holy mackerel, she sure does say it.

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We need to get Squirm girl and “Operator?!” girl in a movie with southern “Gary!” girl from Horrors of Spider Island for some real fun, and maybe add in Kyra Sedgwick’s absolutely face-peelingly awful attempt at a southern accent as well.

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Can we toss in Officer Hummer from Laserblast? Or really any paunchy, sweaty lawman with a drawl and whose neck has a greater diameter than his cranium.

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