 624 - SAMSON VS. THE VAMPIRE WOMEN
Genre: Low Budget Horror / Mexican Wrestling (1962, B&W)
Synopsis: A low-budget horror film in which some vampire women and their minion wake up after 200 years to kidnap the great-granddaughter of a woman who has her picture hanging on the wall of their cobweb-covered castle.
The vampire women then go around and hypnotize everyone they look at while their thugs, I mean
minion, rough up everyone who tries to protect the great-granddaughter.
Luckily, Samson, a part-time superhero / part-time wrestler, shows up to throw the vampires around and protect the great-granddaughter.
Don’s Review: This movie was laughably bad – I can see why MST chose it.
(The first appearance by Samson alone
made me laugh so much, I fell out of my chair!)
Although the riffing is good, this episode is most remembered for the host segments, which have
TV’s Frank’s last appearance as a regular on the show as Torgo the White takes him to second banana heaven (these segments are more clever than
out-and-out funny, though).
Don’s Rating: 
Josh’s Review: Samson vs. The Vampire
Women. The name alone should be enough to make any fan of bad movies smile.
Indeed, this is a movie that has all the campy goodness one might expect from such a title.
Badly made up vampire women who can’t act, the goofiest looking hero in the history of cinema, and odd battle sequences that feature everything except excitement.
That said however, this isn’t a review of a bad movie, but rather an episode of MST3K that features this particular bad movie.
While the movie itself was certainly ideal for the show, I
couldn’t help but feel a little bit disappointed by the effort displayed in the theater segments.
Most of the time I was laughing during this ep, it was at the movie itself, and not at the comments Mike and the bots were dishing up.
The riffing wasn’t particularly bad, but it just wasn’t memorable, and would qualify as below average.
There were no truly on target riffs in this episode that made me proud to be a fan of the show.
A clever observation here, a sarcastic quip there, but nothing worth writing in length about.
Perhaps a greater knowledge of professional wrestling could have come in handy here.
In short, this episode was held together as much by the movie itself as it was by Mike and the bots.
A bad movie, certainly, but the kind of bad you can appreciate.
The plot was simple enough that it didn’t get confusing, and how could one not be entertained by a slightly pudgy shirtless masked man with a cape?
This may have been normal professional wrestling attire for the early
’60s, but Samson walks around like this everywhere he goes.
Samson vs. The Vampire Women is actually a very important episode of the show because we all have to say goodbye to
TV’s Frank. Every host segment of the episode deals with
Frank’s looming death, up until the very end when he pushes the button for the final time.
These segments and this occurrence may be important to the history of the show, but that alone
doesn’t make them very good. Dr. Forrester’s song about Frank was an excellent idea, and a good effort, but
wasn’t particularly funny. Obviously a lot of thought went into
Frank’s departure, but the segments, much like those in Mitchell were pretty lacking in humor.
Perhaps MST3K’s largest weakness is in its ability to write out characters.
In theory, Joel escaping the SOL was as good an idea as any, but all other write outs have been pretty disappointing, even in concept.
TV’s Frank died. Dr. Forrester died. Dr. Erhardt went missing.
The only reason I would really recommend this episode is because it is a pivotal one to the series.
Besides that, it’s a decent installment of the show because of a perfectly picked movie and almost nothing else.
Josh’s Rating: 
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