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“Honey, I’m ho-o-o-o-o-o-oh, yeah, you’re dead.”


The Movie[]

Main article: Tormented (film)

Synopsis[]

Tom Stewart, a jazz musician who is about to marry into a wealthy family, watches as his former lover falls to her death from a lighthouse. Knowing that he could have saved her but chose not to, he is then haunted by supernatural occurrences. As these experiences become more intense, others are drawn into Tom's web of deception and fear as the wedding day approaches.

The Episode[]

Host Segments[]

Tormented3

Dr. F's Drinking Jacket

  • Prologue: Tom Servo and Crow set up a new home in the ventilation duct over the bridge. When Gypsy tries to join them, chaos erupts.
  • Segment One (Invention Exchange): Gypsy has entangled the bridge. Joel shows off the Aunt Catherine Wheel to help people remember all their relatives. The Mads show off the drinking jacket, perfect for the fashionable lush going through the DTs.
  • Segment Two: Joel tries to clean out the Crunchberries the Bots left in the vents and gets stuck; the Bots flat-out refuse to help him, trying to blackmail him for their assistance.
  • Segment Three: Joel and the Bots push figurines of their least favorite pop singers out of the top of a toy lighthouse, in the same manner the man in the movie pushed his singing girlfriend off. In the end, they feel a bit guilty. Well, not really.
    Tormented2

    Pushing Musicians from the Lighthouse

  • Segment Four: Tom and Crow pretend to be disembodied heads to scare Joel and Gypsy. Gypsy screams in terror while Joel outwits them by taking their bodies and leaving them in the dark.
  • Segment Five: Joel and the Bots are traumatized by the film, but cure their blues by singing a song about happy thoughts. Frank joins in with his own morbid version, but Dr. Forrester leaves a live grenade beside him just before the button is pushed.
  • Stinger: "Tom Stewart killed me! Tom Stewart killed me!"

MST3K Cast[]

Trivia[]

  • Unusual credits: The hand grenade Dr. Forrester drops on Frank explodes as Joel Hodgson's credit appears, causing the screen to shake briefly.
  • Joel's maroon jumpsuit is revealed in this episode to have been permanently altered, with the legs cut off below the knee.
  • This episode was ranked #91 among backers of the Bring Back MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000 campaign in the Top 100 Poll.
  • This experiment was used during the Mindless Summer series of livestream events. It was shown on August 13, 2021.

Callbacks[]

Goofs[]

  • During the song, Tom Servo’s head falls off. They keep going.
  • The snack bar chef is not Merritt Stone. It’s Gene Roth. But Merritt Stone is in the movie as the clergyman who marries Tom and Meg. For more information, see Experiment #419.

Obscure References[]

  • "Uh-oh, Crook and Chase are calling!"

Crook & Chase is a TV talk show that focuses on country music.

  • "...from the mixed-up files of one Bert I. Gordon."

A reference to the children's book From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.

  • "And watch for me in the Blaine Community Theater production of Butterflies Are Free."

Butterflies Are Free is a 1969 stage play by Leonard Gershe. It depicts the growing romance between a young blind man and free-spirited woman, and was adapted into a film in 1972.

  • "Boy, boy, crazy boy..."

Lyrics from the fugal song "Cool" from the musical West Side Story.

  • "It's over Ivana!"

Referencing the divorce of Donald Trump and his first wife Ivana which was settled in 1992.

  • "Let's dig into those 'Super Mario' fruit chunks, okay?"

A reference to the Super Mario Bros franchise.

  • "The Secret Storm!"

The Secret Storm was a TV soap opera that aired from 1954 until 1974.

  • "Forever in Lugenes!"

Tom is parodying the Neil Diamond song "Forever in Blue Jeans".

  • "Meg..." "It will come back to you!"

A parody of the Steely Dan song "Peg".

  • "They lived in that last house on the beach." "On the left?"

A reference to the 1972 horror movie The Last House on the Left.

  • "Believe it... or not!"

Crow is imitating Jack Palance on the 1980s Ripley's Believe It or Not! TV series.

  • "This belonged to V. I. Warshawski!"

V. I. Warshawski is a female Chicago private eye featured in a series of novels and a 1991 movie.

  • "Vi ask Vi?"

A parody of "Why ask why?", the advertising slogan for Bud Dry beer.

  • "Chuck Norris in The Octagon."

The 1980 kung-fu movie The Octagon (co-starring Lee Van Cleef!) frequently had a voice-over (with lots of reverb) in which the audience heard the thoughts of Chuck Norris' character.

  • "Like a bit of undigested beef or an underdone potato..."

A passage from the Dickens classic A Christmas Carol spoken by Ebenezer Scrooge trying to deny being in the presence of his deceased partner Jacob Marley.

  • "This is like Barton Fink now!"

Barton Fink is a 1991 film directed by the Coen brothers. One of the plotlines involved a severed head in a box.

  • "Now I'm in The Seven Year Itch!'"

The Seven Year Itch is a 1955 romantic comedy known for its iconic scene of Marilyn Monroe's dress being blown up around her by the air from a subway grate.

  • "Lolita..."

A reference to the novel by Vladimir Nabokov (later adapted into a film) in which Humbert Humbert, a European professor in his 50s, becomes sexually obsessed with Delores Haze (Lolita), a 12 year-old girl.

  • "An aging Kim Novak re-enacts this scene from Vertigo..."

The Alfred Hitchcock film Vertigo ends with a scene in which Kim Novak's character plunges to her death from a bell tower.

  • "The original Dead Milkman."

The Dead Milkmen are a satirical punk band.

  • "I got a wife and kids in Baltimore, Jack!"

A quote from the Bruce Springsteen song "Hungry Heart".

  • "Sammy Cahn is the doctor!"

Sammy Cahn was a songwriter for Tin Pan Alley and Broadway.

  • "Savoir-Faire is everywhere!"

The catchphrase of Savoir-Faire, a French-Canadian mouse (who was also a master thief) that appeared in the cartoon Klondike Kat.

  • "Left! Left, Mr. Muckle!"

Mr. Muckle is a character from the 1934 W.C. Fields movie It's a Gift, a blind man whose destructive clumsiness is played for comedy.

  • "It's only a movie...it's only a movie...it's only a movie..."

Repeated line from the trailer for Last House on the Left

Memorable Quotes[]

[Tom Stewart looks angrily at ex-girlfriend Vi, who threatens to show his love letters to his new fiancée Meg.]
Vi: Darling, you look as though you were ready to kill me!
Crow: Bingo!
. . .
[At the top of the abandoned lighthouse, Vi falls through a broken railing and hangs by one hand above the cliff.]
Vi: Help me! Please, Tom, help me!
Servo [as Tom Stewart]: What? Huh? BRRING! BRRING! Oh, honey, telephone's ringing! I gotta go! Bye.
Vi: Save me, Tom, please!
Joel: Well, that's what she gets for railing against him.
[Sometime after a fight with Meg, Tom lifts up her 8-year-old sister Sandy for a face-to-face talk.]
Tom: Meg's mad at me.
Sandy: She'll get over it. 'Sides, if she doesn't, you'll be free to marry me!
Tom: O-kay! From now on, you're the other woman in my life.
Joel: Put her down, Jerry Lee!

Video Release[]

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