“You guys watch Joe Don Baker movies?”
That was the line from Mystery Science Theater 3000‘s episode which featured Baker’s 1975 movie Mitchell. The movie seemed like a low-budget Dirty Harry flick in which Baker plays the titular character along with an impressive cast that includes Martin Balsam, Linda Evans, John Saxon and Merlin Olsen as well as a theme song by Hoyt Axton.
Yet, its plot makes no sense and just seems to follow the tropes of police procedural movies. It’s a movie that was ripe for criticism by the MST3K gang. And the episode is notable for being the final episode in which series creator Joel Hodgson appeared as Joel Robinson. Michael J. Nelson would take over as a character named Mike Nelson in subsequent episodes. Mike is the one who also utters that line above as he’s a temp unaware of what Dr. Clayton Forrester (Trace Beaulieu) and TV’s Frank (Frank Conniff) are doing.
The show is famous for its mockery of mostly bad movies and in earlier seasons, those that had fallen into public domain and were easier to show on air. The Mitchell episode or “experiment” aired on Oct. 23, 1993 when the show was on Comedy Central and some would argue was in its prime.
The experiment itself is pretty terrible. Set in the Los Angeles area, Mitchell is the haggard police detective who plays by his own rules and constantly chewed out by his superiors. When a trade union lawyer Walter Deaney (Saxon) shoots a burglar in his house, Mitchell feels it wasn’t done in self-defense as Deaney claims. Mitchell’s superiors put him on a stake-out of James Arthur Cummings (Balsam) who is in business with the mob to get him away from Deaney who is under investigation by the mob. Yet he discovers that Cummings is just as dirty.
The episode is actually one of the best in the show’s history and a perfect swan song for Hodgson. Gypsy (voiced and operated by Jim Mallon) accidentally hears Forrester and Frank discussing what to do with Mike and thinks they’re going to kill Joel. So, she works to make it able for Joel to be expulsed through an escape pod hidden in with the hamdingers.
Much of the criticism Joel, along with Tom Servo (voiced and operated by Kevin Murphy) and Crow T. Robot (voiced by Beaulieu), have for the movie is how Mitchell is portrayed as an unkempt and uncouth character. When he’s first introduced in the movie, he’s half asleep in the back of a police patrol vehicle as Crow comments, “Our hero, ladies and gentleman!”
Baker, himself, was unhappy when the episode aired and reportedly threatened violence against those on the show. Baker had famously played Sheriff Buford Pusser in Walking Tall, a somewhat fictional retelling of the Pusser’s fight against corruption and illegal activities. The movie had been a box-office success and propelled Baker to stardom.
Because of his tall, husky and stout physique, he had played sports (basketball and football as a linebacker) in high school and attended North Texas on a sports scholarship. He served also in the U.S. Army before he turned his attentions to acting, playing mostly tough guys. Baker decided not to reprise his role as Pusser in the sequels as he continued to appear in action and crime movies that couldn’t match the success.
In 1984, he played The Whammer, a character based on George “Babe” Ruth alongside Robert Redford in The Natural. The next year he would play a corrupt police chief alongside Chevy Chase and Tim Matheson in Fletch. Both movie were modest successes at the box office but Baker was in supporting roles.
At this same time, he filmed Final Justice as a Texas lawman named Thomas Jefferson Geronimo III who seeks vengeance against an Italian mobster for killing his friend/partner. The movie was filmed mostly in Malta and received negative reviews. It would’ve remained mostly forgotten if it wasn’t used as another “experiment” on MST3K during the 10th season when they had moved to the Sci-Fi Channel, now just SyFy. There’s also a RiffTraxx version which isn’t as good but shows more scenes.
Once again, Nelson, Tom and Crow voiced most of their criticisms toward Baker’s style and demeanor. The episode ends with Mike thinking he gets to go home because Joel got to go home. But Tom and Crow tell him that’s not the case as they would have to watch a “good Joe Don Baker movie.” Then they ponder if there are any good movies which they realize they’re not.
But I beg to differ. Mitchell and Final Justice aren’t good but Walking Tall had a great exploitation feel to it back in the 1970s when filmmakers weren’t trying to make stockholders richer. Both The Natural and Fletch are great movies.
Baker would go on to appear in the underrated The Living Daylights as one of the main James Bond villains, Brad Whitaker, an arms dealer. Whitaker has life-size models of real people such as Genghis Khan but with his face on it. Then he would play Jack Wade, a veteran of the CIA who is an ally for Bond in GoldenEye. He would reprise the role in the next Bond movie Tomorrow Never Dies.
Around this same time, Baker would appear in the star-studded ensemble sci-fi parody Mars Attacks! He plays a Kansas trailer park redneck. In his two-star dismissal of the movie, Roger Ebert would note how Baker gave a good performance in his small role because he knew he was in on the joke while other actors took it too seriously.
In 1991’s Cape Fear, he played a private investigator Claude Kersek who enjoys a cocktail of Jim Beam whiskey and Pepto-Bismol. The Martin Scorsese-directed movie cast Baker alongside Nick Nolte, Robert DeNiro, Jessica Lange and Juliette Lewis. Even though he didn’t appear on screen with him, Baker cited Robert Mitchum as one of the actors he had admire. Mitchum played a police detective in the movie. He had played the role of Max Cady in the 1962 original. His Mitchell costar Balsam was also in both the 1991 movie as a judge and in the 1962 original.
Baker had retired from acting in 2012 after working sporadically in the 2000s on TVs and in movies. On May 7, he died of lung cancer at an assisted living facility in the Los Angeles area. He was 89. But an actor is really never dead as long as their movies and shows are still enjoyed by many.
What is your favorite role? Please comment.
Zane Says 