105 – The Corpse Vanishes with Short:
Commando Cody and the Bridge of Death
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Things I liked about the movie:
Lugosi’s character is pretty clever about stealing the bodies and the pre-emptive abduction at the end.
The leering hunchback servant.
The Lorenzes sleep in coffins for no apparent reason. Sleep number beds haven’t been invented, yet, I guess.
Impressions
This Commando Cody episode is mildly more interesting than previous ones. The riffs are a little better. I’d estimate one quiet laugh per minute.
Movie
This movie is literally very dark (Crow: They saved a lot of money on the lighting in this.), but really not too bad. Bela Lugosi kills brides to keep his wife alive and beautiful. The acting is stiff and dorky. It’s like an Ed Wood movie, only reasonably good. The riffing is fair-to-middlin’. The host segments are pretty funny.
Synopsis
Short
This is the third Commando Cody episode. It picks up in the cave where Cody and Ted were about to be killed by lava. At the end of the last installment, it looked really dramatic, like death was imminent, but now then just side-step the lava and start on this episode as if it was no big deal. They escape and head back to Earth. The Moon Men call ahead and try to have them killed when they arrive back on Earth so that Earth doesn’t learn about the invasion the Moon Men are planning. Cody and company come out guns a-blazin’ and manage to survive the attack. Cody ends up chasing the bad guys around town in a car. The bad guys booby-trap a bridge and Cody is knocked off the bridge. Cliffhanger. Or bridgehanger, maybe.
Movie
Brides keep dropping dead at the altar. Their bodies keep disappearing on the way to the morgue. We learn that Professor Lorenz (Lugosi) is extracting something out of the girls’ heads and using it to keep his miserable, nagging wife alive and young-looking.
A reporter, Patricia Hunter, figures out the disappearances have something to do with the orchid corsage each bride was wearing. She traces the orchids back to Professor Lorenz, an orchid expert who is one of the few people known to grow such orchids. She hitches a ride with a Dr. Foster to Lorenz’s house (if this had been an Ed Wood movie, she would have walked the whole way and he would have filmed it). Foster is Mrs. Lorenz’s doctor, that’s why he was headed there. One thing leads to another and they have to stay the night at the Lorenzes’ creepy house. During the night, Patricia Hunter sneaks around the house and finds coffins, a lab, a semi-dead girl, finds out that the Lorenzes sleep in coffins, and sees Lorenz kill his hunchback servant (who, frankly, deserved it). This arouses her suspicions.
Hunter and Foster go back to the newspaper to report what happened. They set up a fake wedding, complete with fake bride, to lure Lorenz into trying to steal the bride’s body. All goes according to plan until Lorenz outsmarts them and kidnaps Hunter instead before the wedding starts! During the abduction, Lorenz’s midget servant is killed by the police.
It turns out the midget and the hunchback were both sons of another servant of Lorenz’s. She becomes unhappy with Lorenz for causing her son’s deaths, as one might expect. Back in Lorenz’s lab, he preps Hunter for the extraction procedure. The angry servant lady stabs Lorenz and Mrs. Lorenz. The police show up, just in time to do nothing.
Nice Hollywood cliché wrap-up: Hunter and Foster get married, the newspaper gets a story, the Lorenzes are dead, and just to cheer up the now depressed audience, a well-wisher at the Hunter-Foster wedding smells an orchid and passes out. Cue the Little Rascals music.
Host Segments
Prologue: Dr. F is giving Larry some Isaac Azimov bath splash from the Foundation trilogy gift set. Joel’s invention is the Chiro Gyro. You put it on and it rotates your head. It’s a cute optical illusion. Dr. F’s invention is a prank flame-throwing flower.
Second: Tom and Crow are reading Tiger Bot magazine. They’re really into the robot gossip. They admire Data with his positronic brain. Data’s turn-offs include Shatner hanging around telling old war stories. They’re disappointed that Data wants to be a human.
Third: Joel and the ‘Bots are playing tag.
Fourth: Scene: small town barber shop. Crow is giving Joel a haircut. They have a folksy conversation about the local haps, mostly severely disabling accidents involving their neighbors.
Final: Tom and Crow do good thing/bad thing. Crow’s good thing was they met a family of mutants. Crow complains that they tried to commit inconspicuous murder on the most conspicuous day of the women’s lives. Tom’s bad thing was all the bad things: lighting, editing, acting, etc. He can’t come up with a good thing and his head explodes.
Stinger: No stinger
Funny Riffs
Crow: How come Ted’s so big and Commando Cody is so small?
Joel: Oh, Crow, that’s a common movie device called “foreshortening.” They use it all the time.
Crow: Oh. Instead of butter.
Tom: That guy’s speaking into a cruller.
Crow: Maybe he’s Danish.
The Earth ship is trying to take off but after being shot, it’s not functioning properly. The visual is a tube-shaped balloon-like “ship” wobbling as it flies about 10 feet above the moon’s surface. The front looks a little like a face.
Tom: Looks like a Macy’s parade gone awry.
During a car chase
Crow: Hey, you almost lost them in that last edit.
Tom: Nothing’s worth driving like THAT.
Movie
During the opening credits
Joel sings to the tune of Mr. Ed:
A corpse is a horse, of corpse of corpse . . .
As a bride is preparing for the ceremony, there’s a knock at the door.
We, the viewers, expect the killer to come in.
Movie: Knock knock knock.
Joel: Candygram!
Bela Lugosi extracts something from the bride’s head. He carries the syringe across the lab.
Joel: Now we can have the rich taste of bride whenever we want it.
Dr. Foster: [I’m a] young doctor trying to establish a practice.
Crow: And a mustache.
The camera stays on the hunchback servant for a long time. He’s holding candle.
Crow: Well, no one can hold a candle to his performance.
Joel: I think they could, but no one would really want to.
Crow: Maybe they could douse him with something flammable and then hold a candle to him.
Hunter: I have a hunch you will
Tom: You have a
hunch, too? It’s contagious.