The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!? (1964)

User Rating:

1.9/10   

Director:

Ray Dennis Steckler

Writers:

Gene Pollock (screenplay) &
Robert Silliphant (screenplay) ...
(more)

Genre:

Horror

Tagline:

She Keeps Monsters in Cages for Pets! He Preys on Wild Go-Go Girls!

Plot:

Jerry falls in love with a stripper he meets at a carnival. Little does he know that she is the sister of a gypsy fortune teller whose predictions he had scoffed at earlier. The gypsy turns him into a zombie and he goes on a killing spree.

Plot Keywords:

Fortune Teller | Gypsy | Carnival | Dancer | Zombie

Cast

Ray Dennis Steckler	...	Jerry (as Cash Flagg)
Carolyn Brandt	...	Marge Neilson
Brett O'Hara	...	Madame Estrella
Atlas King	...	Harold
Sharon Walsh	...	Angela
Pat Kirkwood	...	Madison (as Madison Clarke)
Erina Enyo	...	Carmelita
Don Russell	...	Ortega (as Jack Brady)
Toni Camel	...	Stella
Joan Howard	...	Angela's Mother
Neil Stillman	...	Barker
Bill Ward	...	Himself
Gene Pollock	...	Night Club Manager
James Bowie	...	Night Club Comedian
Whitey Robinson	...	Drunk
Son Hooker	...	1st Policeman
Steve Clark	...	2nd Policeman (as Steve Clarke)
Jill Carson	...	Girl in Dressing Room
Titus Moede	...	Hobo
Don Snyder	...	The Entertainer
Carol Kay	...	The Entertainer
Teri Randal	...	The Entertainer
Patrice Michaels	...	Dancing Girl
Pat Lynn	...	Dancing Girl
Betty Downing	...	Dancing Girl
Denise Lynn	...	Dancing Girl
Cindy Shea	...	Dancing Girl
Patti Crandall	...	Dancing Girl
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Bonnie Berkeley	...	(uncredited)
Jeanette Briggs	...	Woman in Audience (uncredited)
Anita Jaye	...	(uncredited)
László Kovács	...	Man at Carnival (uncredited)
Robert Silliphant	...	2nd Barker (uncredited)

Directed by
Ray Dennis Steckler

Writing credits
Gene Pollock		(screenplay) &
Robert Silliphant		(screenplay)
E.M. Kevke		(story)

Produced by
George J. Morgan	....	executive producer
Ray Dennis Steckler	....	producer

Original Music by
André Brummer		(as Henri Price)
Libby Quinn

Cinematography by
Joseph V. Mascelli		(director of photography)

Film Editing by
Don Schneider

Art Direction by
Mike Harrington

Makeup Department
Lilly	....	makeup artist
Tom Scherman	....	special makeup

Production Management
Austin McKinney	....	production manager (as A. McKinney)

Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Don Russell	....	assistant director

Sound Department
Ken Carlson	....	sound
Lee Strosnider	....	sound

Camera and Electrical Department
Pat Kirkwood	....	electrician
László Kovács	....	assistant camera (as Leslie Kovac)
Jimmy Park	....	gaffer
Greg von Berblinger	....	grip (as G. Berblinger)
Vilmos Zsigmond	....	camera operator (as William Zsigmond)

Music Department
Rod Moss	....	music editor
Alan Smith	....	stager: musical numbers
Bill Turner	....	stager: musical numbers

Other crew
John McKenna	....	script supervisor
Roy Youngman	....	president: Rel Records

Production Companies

• Morgan-Steckler Productions

Distributors

• Fairway International Pictures (1964) (USA) (theatrical)
• Sinister Cinema (1993) (USA) (VHS)
• Guilty Pleasures (2004) (USA) (DVD)
• Rhino Home Video (2005) (USA) (DVD)
• Peter Rodgers Organization (2007) (worldwide) (TV)
• BijouFlix Releasing (????) (USA) (VHS)
• Camp Video (????) (USA) (VHS)
• Mascot Video (????) (USA) (VHS)

Other Companies

• Rel Records  music released by

Also Known As:

Diabolical Dr. Voodoo
The Incredibly Mixed Up Zombie
The Incredibly Strange Creature: Or Why I Stopped Living and Became a Mixed-up Zombie (USA) (alternative title)
The Teenage Psycho Meets Bloody Mary

Runtime:

82 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Eastmancolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

UK:15 | USA:Not Rated

Filming Locations:

Angel's Flight Railway, Bunker Hill, Downtown, Los Angeles, California, USA

Company:

Morgan-Steckler Productions

Trivia:

The ending on the beach was supposed to be shot day-for-night. Steckler disliked the results, so the ending was left as it was, shot in daylight.

Goofs:

Continuity: The climax begins at night, then immediately switches to broad daylight.

Quotes:

Madame Estrella: You dirty, filthy pig! So, I belong with the freaks, huh? I'll fix you so even the freaks won't look at you.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in The Thrill Killers (1964)

Mike Nelson: "He WON'T go to sleep if you keep slamming the Steadicam against his forehead!"

This is a fascinating artifact from another era of pop culture; From the convoluted title (complete with "!!?" at the end) to the open mike "Amateur Night" numbers to the horribly muddled sound recording to the goofy throwaway dialog to the discombobulated ending to the paper-thin plot, this one has to be seen to be believed.

You know the old saw about a movie being 'like a train wreck - you can't look away'?? Well, imagine if a school bus ran into the train wreck and a 727 crashed on top of it and then a herd of lemmings swarmed over the smoking remains on their way to go over a cliff. And then the Jolly Green Giant picked up everything and threw it over the mountain range and into the next state.

The movie piles one jarring, disorienting choice after another in rapid succession. First 'Jerry' rubs boogers out of his eyes on camera, then 'Harold' is jamming our ears with his Lithuanian/Chicano accent, and then 'Angela' throws off the composition of an entire scene with her Mile High Beehive of Hair, following which a bunch of 'dancers' perform bad choreography with all the precision of a dance recital for kindergarten girls, and then some dick-weed who can't carry a tune in a bucket sings the most insipid love song in the history of music while strumming a guitar that sounds like a ukulele. Then Elizabeth Taylor spins a pinwheel to make Jerry commit badly staged murder to cover up the fact that she threw acid in the face of a lumpy alcoholic, following which Jerry dreams that he got his face painted at a Renaissance festival and leaps about like a Thompson's Gazelle while a montage of women point and laugh at him. Then a mechanical wind-up monkey shrieks that we should "GET YOUR TICKETS HERE!! GET YOUR TICKETS HERE!!!" and a bunch of people who previously got acid thrown in their face and were drawn by the Rat Fink Hod Rod guy and have apparently been living on Angel Dust and Pop Tarts break loose and rampage through an Inuit/Swedish/African dance revue until the police come and shoot everyone, including Jerry who also had acid thrown in his face just before the titular 'zombies' got loose. Oh, and there's no moral, THE END.

I'm making the movie sound more coherent than it really is.

And yet, the whole mess is somehow entertaining and amusing, and I ended up being glad I saw it. If I were to meet Steckler (unlikely), I'd shake his hand and comment on how weird the movie was and ask him "WHAT THE HELL WAS HE THINKING?" when he made it.

MST's riffs on the movie are inspired and their version is worth getting hold of. But the movie stand on its own as a lunatic pinball of weirdness, careening randomly off the walls of our expectations of pop culture.

See it if you have a fondness for silly stuff. Otherwise, stay far, far away.