MST3K: Episode 701 - Night of the Blood Beast

I'm watching all of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes in order. More about that here and here.

Episode 701: Night of the Blood Beast

First aired: Comedy Central on 3 February 1996
Availability: iTunes, Amazon Instant Video, Amazon (Volume 16 standard edition / Collector's Edition), Shout Factory (Volume 16 standard edition / Collector's Edition), Best Brains (Volume 16 Collector's Edition)

A Roger Corman film. Kinda.

This movie is the same movie shown in the previous episode. The movie riffing is the same. The only difference between this episode and the previous episode is the Host Segments. Episode 701T: Night of the Blood Beast was part of the 1995 Thanksgiving Day Marathon (though they called it the Turkey Day Marathon), and the Host Segments were directly related to the marathon. This is the "official" version. The version you find on iTunes or on Amazon Instant Video is this version. On the Volume 16 DVD, this is the primary version, with the Turkey Day version listed as a "bonus feature."

This version of the episode featured standard Host Segments, most of which were directly related to the movie or the short.

Singing and dancing about phones.

The short, "Once Upon A Honeymoon," was about phones or refrigerators or something. Phones, I think. The angel carried one, and the woman kept singing about redecorating her house with red or yellow phones. I'm really not sure what it was about, but we'll say phones. Gypsy even sang a little song about decorating with phones, so, yeah, phones was the topic.

Crow got pregnant. Or said he did. That was inspired by the movie. Oh, and the movie seemed to inspire Alien. At least, the part about an alien impregnating an astronaut was in both films.

Let's look at this piece of Corman. Ready? Okay. Here's what Night of the Blood Beast is all about.

An astronaut (Steve, or maybe John) flies a rocket plane to space, but loses control and crashes, so a fellow scientist (Steve, or maybe Dave) rushes to the scene with a photographer chick (Donna, not Steve) and finds John dead, so Donna takes his picture, then they call the flatbed truck the space agency uses to come pick the crashed rocket and crashed astronaut up and take it all back to headquarters, but it turns out that Dead John is alive after all (or maybe again), but something is wandering around outside (it looks like a Space Parrot), then they find that Dead Alive Again John is carrying a school/clutch/whatever of shrimp (well, they look like shrimp) that the Space Parrot apparently laid inside him, causing him to come back to life, but the other scientists want to kill the Space Parrot, but Mama John says the Space Parrot is good, but then he discovers that the Space Parrot is actually the Horny Space Parrot because it wants to lay eggs in everybody and take over humanity to save it, so Depressed John becomes Dead John again when he kills himself, so Dave tosses gasoline on the rocks behind the Space Parrot and burns him up, saving humanity or something. The end.

It's a shrimp!

Space Parrot visits Mom/John.

I'm calling it a Roger Corman film. He was listed as Executive Producer, but it has his handprints all over it. Except no Beverly Garland. Could have used some Beverly Garland. Or a Hot Japanese She-Villain.

Mrs. Forrester torments her son.

The riffing in the movie is the same as in the Turkey Day episode. I watched them both to be sure. And, despite having just seen the movie -- really, I watched them back-to-back -- I still found it to be fun riffing, both for the short and the movie.

The Host Segments re-introduced Mrs. Forrester. Dr. Forrester told Mike & the Bots that his mother was visiting, and she corrected him to say that she was living there now.

We learn that she wanted a daughter, which explains why Dr. Forrester's full name is Clayton Deborah Susan Forrester. She is an overbearing old bat, and doesn't respect her son at all. Of course, he longs for her approval.

It's different seeing the evil Dr. Forrester, who was obviously the senior partner with Dr. Erhardt, and definitely the boss of TV's Frank, being shifted to a subservient role. This will take some getting used to.

Though I said it about the Turkey Day version, I'll reiterate that it's a fun episode. Of the two, I prefer the Turkey Day version. Whether it's because I've seen this version more, and that other version seems fresher, I don't know. I think it's simply that the Host Segments of the Turkey Day version are more fun. But still, this is a very, very good episode.

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