MST3K #604: Zombie Nightmare

Mystery Science Theater 3000 experiment #604: Zombie Nightmare.
Original Comedy Central airdate: November 24, 1994.
Available on the fifteenth MST3K collection.

Back in the olden days before South Park and Jon Stewart, Comedy Central used to have MST3K marathons on the Thanksgiving holiday, and this episode debuted during 1994's marathon.

Canadian bodybuilder and heavy metal musician Jon Mikl Thor starred in (and contributed music to) this 1986 film about a muscular, long-haired teenage baseball player named Tony, who one night, falls victim to a hit-and-run by a car full of teenagers. Those teenagers also include Tia Carrere (as Amy) in her first film role, and are led by a practicing sociopath named Jim (Shawn Levy).

After the death of Tony, his mother seeks out the neighborhood voodoo priestess (Hey! Every neighborhood has one!), who revives Tony as a zombie. Tony the Black Lanternzombie goes on a killing spree, hunting down and murdering the teenagers who ran him down late one night. As the body count goes up, the local police captain, Tom Churchman (Adam West) begins taking a particular interest in the case, especially after learning that aforementioned voodoo priestess is somehow linked to the deaths. We also learn that Churchman and Jim's father killed Tony's dad long ago after he foiled their attack on the girl who grew up into a life of voodoo.

We open on the SOL with Crow and Tom as Secret Service agents relentlessly protecting Mike (and predictably causing him more harm than good), until they learn that they too could fall victim to an assassin's bullet. The Mads have embraced voodoo, and send up a voodoo kit to the satellite, which Mike and the bots use to do nice things for people like Jimmy Carter and Cokie Roberts. We won't even mention the naughty things they do to Dr. Forrester, though. Later, Crow falls victim to a hit-and-run courtesy of Tom Servo, but they do make up enough for the next scene, where they go hot tubbing. No one told them that Mike was also in the tub, fishing! Crow's Batman play is next for rehearsal, with Mike as a gigantic Robin and Servo as a dimunitive Batman, but Crow neglected to tell them he had scrapped the project. After the movie, the 'bots read letters to Adam West, and TV's Frank accidentally turns Dr. F. undead. Oh no!

Recommended episode, especially if you're a big fan of Hank Peters, Italian grocer, not to mention endless jokes about Canada.