Filler Link: Mike Nelson Can’t Control His Laughter During MST3K Episode

Since today is Mike Nelson’s birthday, I can’t resist the urge to share one of my all-time favourite Mystery Science Theater 3000 moments involving him. By the time the MST3K crew tapes one of their episodes, they have probably already seen the movie they’re riffing dozens of times and rehearsed their material over and over again, so you’d think they’d be well past the point where a scene would cause uncontrollable laughter. However, in the episode where Mike Nelson and the Bots riffed an old horror movie called The Brute Man, there was one scene that Mike just could not get through without cracking up. It’s all due to the character of Mr. Haskins, a crotchety storekeeper who may be the most grumpy old man you’ve ever seen in a movie. Every time Mr. Haskins gets angry, you can hear Mike struggling to suppress his laughter and it just makes the whole scene twice as funny.