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

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

Directed by: Ray Dennis Steckler

Produced by: Ray Dennis Steckler

Screenplay by: Gene Pollock, Robert Silliphant

Starring: Cash Flagg, Carolyn Brandt, Brett O’Hara, Atlas King, Sharon Walsh, Madison Clarke

Yes, the title is real, and this movie is real. It’s a monster musical of sorts called “The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!?”, sometimes shortened to “!!?” Like most movies I’m reviewing this month, it’s a low-budget, independent production with poor craft and features a ridiculous story. It’s essentially about three adult friends—Jerry (Cash Flagg), his girlfriend Angela (Sharon Walsh), and Harold (Atlas King)—who visit a seaside carnival and stumble onto a plot involving hypnosis and occultism with an evil fortune-teller named Estrella (Brett O’Hara) and her sister Carmelita (Erina Enyo). Jerry eventually falls victim to the scheme, becoming a mindless zombie as a pawn in their plan of…something, I don’t really know what. This movie is a hodgepodge of random editing, bizarre visuals and bad acting…but I’m not going to lie; I have a bit of a soft spot for it.

Make no mistake; it’s terrible as a supernatural monster movie and as a musical. There’s some good variety in the costume designs, and the actors are mostly photographed well; Erina Enyo is properly skilled at looking beautiful and sinister. But in the many song-and-dance numbers that occur at the carnival’s nightclub, the dancing is poor and there’s little to no energy in the cinematography. Let’s put it this way; you won’t find anything along the lines of Salma Hayek in “From Dusk Till Dawn.” I’m okay with the plot outline of wicked carnies, but there’s no sense of stakes or endgame; it’s like they just decided, “We’re going to hypnotize these men into becoming disfigured savage slaves, and whatever happens, happens.”

And like I said, the performances don’t help sell the material; Sharon Walsh is almost believable as Angela, while Cash Flagg—who’s actually director/producer Ray Dennis Steckler under a pseudonym—gives some really goofy facial expressions, and Atlas King is nearly unintelligible as Harold. There’s also a woman named Marge (Carolyn Brandt) who’s at least set up to be a halfway interesting character, but she ends up having almost nothing to do with the story. I like the overall look of the carnival’s interiors and exteriors; apparently, much of the movie was filmed in an old empty Masonic temple in California, owned by Rock Hudson: yes, one of the most popular movie stars of his era who had been nominated for an Oscar a decade earlier. Unfortunately, the way these locations are presented is pretty awful at times; so often, the film will cut away from the action to random shots of a park ride, sometimes with flashing effects that aren’t too easy on the eyes.

You know what else isn’t easy on the eyes, or the stomach for that matter? A jittering point-of-view shot of a roller coaster, and it’s done multiple times; it gives you all the nausea of a real coaster with none of the thrills. But some of the randomness is surprisingly enjoyable, like this fever dream sequence of dancing girls, a masked figure running around, over-the-top cackling, monsters surrounded by fire and more carnival shenanigans, all cut sporadically to Jerry writhing around in bed; he’s supposed to be having a nightmare, but it looks like something much lewder. Oh, and there’s a robotic monkey ticket taker; I can’t put it into words, but just watch it, and you’ll never forget its strangeness. The movie just gets more weird the further it goes, but the climax is kind of a letdown; you think it’s going to be this cheesy showdown between the heroes and villains, but Estrella and Carmelita are killed by the zombies, and the last 10 minutes is basically just Jerry staggering down the shoreline getting battered by waves near some rocks, and the music is one of the least fitting tracks to whatever tone they were going for.

“The Incredibly Strange Creatures…” is another one of those movies that’s gained a reputation as one of the worst ever made; but sue me, I kind of like it. It’s bad in so many peculiar ways, like in the sound design and chase scenes. It still feels like there was some creativity and passion put into it, but not much technique or wherewithal. Here’s a weird fact; the original title was actually “The Incredibly Strange Creature: Or Why I Stopped Living and Became a Mixed-up Zombie,” but Columbia Pictures threatened a lawsuit against Steckler, claiming it was too similar to their upcoming “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.” He was reportedly amazed they would do this for a $38,000 film, but simply offered Stanley Kubrick a title change, and that settled the matter. Just the fact that Kubrick was made aware of this movie is too interesting to ignore; it’s a mess, but a weirdly entertaining one.

My rating: 5/10