2025’s “Top” Ten Losses: Joe Don Baker (#4)

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LIBERATION!!! Hello from a different restaurant than that sorry Hillbilly Home Cooking junk I’ve been eating for the last week and a half. It feels great to be out. I’m having lunch (at Mark’s, didn’t want to drive across town to Chuy’s believe it or not) and ready to make you scratch your head with another loss from 2025 that I’m highlighting. #4: Joe Don Baker And yet again you’re thinking, “You passed up Val Kilmer for this?!!?!” (By the way, have you noticed how subtly I have saluted Val Kilmer this month? ) If you’re a MSTie (a fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000) you understand. For most of the world, Joe Don Baker was a “tough guy” actor best known for playing Buford Pusser in the original Walking Tall. He started in a small role in Cool Hand Luke, and from there went to films as diverse as Bond movies (Golden Eye and Tomorrow Never Dies) and the comedies Mars Attacks! and Fletch. But if you’re a MSTie (“Hot car merging action!”), Joe Don Baker IS Mitchell (“Oh, Hoyt, how could you??”). And don’t you forget it! (“Wasn’t John Saxon in this movie?”) That’s one of the most classic episodes of MST3K ever. It’s brutal in its skewering of a pretty lame film that you’d probably never watch without the riffing. There’s a story that Baker was not amused by the episode, but you never know if those things are true or not. Even the best actors make bad movies (talk to me about the things I sat through because I watched all of Al Pacino’s movies in the early 80s). Baker is forever tied to a good-cop-gone-bad (it’s interesting that the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation announced there’s probable cause to charge Buford Pusser with the murder of his wife shortly after Baker died) and a bad-movie-about-a-bad-cop (Mitchell). He also made a lot of good movies in his time, too. Joe Don Baker Born February 12, 1936, Goosebeck, Texas Died May 7, 2025, Los Angeles, California (lung cancer) (age 89) A “highlight” reel of the Mitchell riffs on MST3K: