The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living And Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!?

I have long been a fan of 50's low-budget director Ed Wood, attracted to his often tawdry flickers because of the commitment he seemed to have to making of them. He was a schlock director but he was an earnest one and that makes a enormous difference in the final analysis as a really good "bad movie" requires earnest and devoted filmmaking. You cannot make a really excellent "bad movie" on purpose. Those same feeling arise when I came across the filmography of 60's director Ray Dennis Steckler. He made some heroically awful movies, but he worked to make them good, or at least as good as he could at the time with the few dollars at hand. 

I'd like to take a look at some of Steckler's movies this month and I begin with the movie he's most famous for -- The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!? As the poster says this is the "first monster musical" but sadly it's a lame monster movie and miserable musical, but when you blend these two together you get an awfully entertaining flick which succeeds despites its manifest deficiencies. The plot is simple enough -- a no-account young man woos a lovely young woman in defiance of her Mother's desires and along with his best buddy takes her to the carnival where they encounter a fortune teller who hypnotizes him into becoming a brutal and deadly slasher. As this plot tumbles out with Steckler in the lead role, we are periodically entertained by full-blown, but poorly rehearsed musical production numbers that stop the story but not the unintentional entertainment. 

The particular dvd that I used to enjoy this classic bad movie featured both a commentary by Steckler himself as well as one by Joe Bob Briggs. The first gave lots of information and excuses about the production and the second mocked it openly quite a bit, but that's the risk a creator always runs. Steckler has long since passed away in 2009, but he seems to have been a man with many demons about his career and how it turned out. He is at once properly proud of the many low-budget movies he actually got made, no small feat, but at the same time he lashes out at more typical lavish productions while the same time claiming no "sour grapes" are involved. It rings hollow alas and I feel for his sense of having had a chance at a big career akin to Orson Welles (at least in his imagination) rather than the one he ended up with, which was reduced to making porn movies in Las Vegas while operating a video store or two. 

Also there's the matter of his wife, the fetching Carolyn Brandt who stars in many if not most of his movies and who he had two children with. Despite remarrying and having two more kids, it's all too clear from Steckler's endless admiration of Brandt that he always was in love with her. I feel rather sorry for his second wife as he tallies up the virtues of his first over and over again. As for Steckler himself, it was under the name "Cash Flagg" that he starred in his self-made flicks. His career as a cameraman seems to have stalled in Hollywood at about the time was making these films and one gets the sense from Steckler that he thinks it might be a result of his pushing for the inclusion of blacks into his union. That's never stated, but merely suggested a few times. 

Steckler was also a fan of William Castle apparently as he converted this movie into a travelling live show of sorts. At a point in the movie when the "zombies" attack, actual people in zombie outfits would rush into movie crowds including often Steckler himself. This gimmick made the movie viable for many years as an ongoing concern, especially since Steckler and company would change the title so that unwary moviegoers wouldn't realize they'd seen it before. One such title was Teenage Psycho Meets Bloody Mary. 

Whatever the case, this is a humdinger of a movie. It is full of indifferent musical numbers and singers with more vigor than talent, but that might well be said of the director himself. Steckler is a guy who could make a decent movie as we'll seen next time with his next movie title The Thrill Killers.

Rip Off