Incredible!

THE INCREDIBLY STRANGE CREATURES WHO STOPPED LIVING AND BECAME MIXED UP ZOMBIES!!?-1964-Low budget but fun nonsense from Ray Dennis Steckler.

Madame Estrella (Brett O’Hara), a fortune teller with a wart on her face, throws acid into the faces of some male customers and keeps them locked in a cage. Her very strange chain smoking servant Ortega (Jack Brady) helps out. So does her sister. Marge. An alcoholic dancer (Carolyn Brandt; at the time the director’s wife) goes to visit Estrella and accidentally discovers her secret so Estrella hypnotizes deadbeat Jerry (Cash Flagg; the director himself using his famous pseudonym) to kill her. The sight of Jerry in hooded sweat shirt with budging eyes is very crazed. After the killing Jerry has a weird dream with dancing girls. He later imagines his girlfriend to be Marge and tries to kill her. Estrella has Jerry kill one more person then splashes him with acid and intends to put him with the rest of her “collection”. Unfortunately for her, the disfigured ones break out and kill her, Ortega and her sister. They then interrupt a big dance number and kill some dancers. The police intervene and kill the monster-zombie-victims. Jerry runs out to the ocean, climbs some rocks and his shot down by the police leaving his girlfriend and roommate (Atlas King in bee hive hairdo) to mourn him. Titus Moede (who later co-starred in Steckler’s BAT FINK A BOO-BOO) has a small role.

TISCWSLABMUZ is referred to as something like a good bad movie. It’s very silly and badly acted (Most of Atlas King’s dialogue is lost under his accent) but like all Ray Steckler’s movies it’s likable and fun despite it’s goofy flaws. And Steckler/Flagg makes a great psycho killer (though not as good as in his next film THE THRILL KILLERS). This was his second feature after WILD GUITAR in 1962.

The cinematography is by Joseph V. Mascelli who later directed THE ATOMIC BRAIN but 2 camera operators went on to bigger things: Laszlo Kovacs and Vilmos Zsigmund. Co-Screenwriter Robert Silliphant is credited with the story for a much worse film, THE CREEPING TERROR!



Mr. Flagg!


"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits"-Einstein

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