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

The film was directed by Ray Dennis Steckler, who also plays Jerry in this film. Ray must have been the 1960's answer to Nicholas Cage.A fortune teller at a fairground hypnotizes a young man to commit murders. Wait a minute, doesn't that sound a little bit like the plot of "The Cabinet of Dr Caligari"? The Caligari character in this film is a female and the Cesare character is a visitor at the fairground. This film is what Dr Caligari would have looked like if a sound version was made by an amateur. Compared to Ray Dennis Steckler, Ed Wood was William Wyler.I guess that most of the money was spent on the color film stock, which at that time was more expensive than the black and white stock. The story, the acting, the dance numbers are inferior, but the cinematography and the songs are enjoyable.

This movie begins with a young man named "Jerry" (Ray Dennis Steckler), his girlfriend "Angela" (Sharon Walsh) and his roommate "Harold" (Atlas King), deciding to go to the local carnival to have some fun. One thing leads to another and before long all of them decide to have their fortunes told by a Gypsy fortune-teller by the name of "Madame Estrella" (Brett O'Hara). Immediately after that Jerry decides to check out an exotic dancer named "Carmelita" (Erino Enyo) who just happens to be the sister of Madame Estrella. Needless to say, this doesn't please Angela very much and as a result Harold ends up driving her home. While all of this is going on a young dancer named "Marge Neilson" (Carolyn Brandt) who works at a nearby nightclub decides to visit Madame Estrella to have her future told. However, upon entering the tent she sees something that Madame Estrella doesn't want anybody to know about and in a complete state of panic drops her purse as she runs out as fast as she can. Needing to silence her, Madame Estrella has Carmelita bring Jerry back into the tent where the fortune teller then hypnotizes him and subsequently orders him to kill Marge. Unfortunately, it doesn't end there as all too soon Jerry becomes nothing more than a mind-numbed zombie forced to do whatever bidding Madame Estrella commands of him. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this film had a decent enough plot but there were simply too many scenes involving dancing and singing thrown in to apparently fill space and kill time. Naturally, if this film was a musical then I could understand it. But since that was not the case these scenes only caused the film to lose focus and seem incoherent. Likewise, the weak acting and extremely poor ending didn't help matters either. That being said, I have to give this film a below average rating.

There are so many terrible things about this movie that I might not get to them all but I will try.First of all, the title doesn't make any sense.They were normal humans who never stopped living, they just had acid thrown in their faces.But I've come to expect these old movies to lie in the title so I shouldn't be surprised.So it's about some "teens" and some dancers.Of course the teens are all well over forty.The main teen even sports a comb over that would embarrass a seventy year old.Even though he looks elderly, they try hard to make us believe he's a bad boy.He refuses to work or go to school but has no problem having a house and car.His best friend, and several others, have weird eastern European accents even though the movie clearly takes place in southern California.So old man teen becomes one of these zombies and stabs a bunch of dancers in the face while they were performing on stage.Then he just goes home and goes to bed and the cops have no leads.Weak.The worst part is that more than half of the movie is footage of empty carnival rides and people singing and dancing.They literally perform a dozen full songs that have absolutely nothing to do with the story.Did I mention they have some fool introducing all the acts and even when he holds his microphone at waist height, his voice is always the same volume?This could have been an OK thirty minute short but instead it's a terrible reminder of why people shouldn't try to make movies when they have no clue.Never see this.

Seeing as there are several ways to rate this movie, I'll try each point of view...The movie itself: It is sporadically paced, the plot is strange enough to cause interest, the acting is indescribably bad, the musicals are a pain to sit through, etc... Kind of like Ed Wood but minus the sincere effort. 2/10.The genre: Specifically, B-movies that came out of nowhere right about when the Film Noir genre ended it's run. Among others (Monster a Go Go, Manos, and Plan 9), this one was laughable at least, so if the quality sucks, you can argue that it was intentional. For the sake of pity, 5/10.The cult following: Basically the same with other B-movies, you will have that unknown group of people take a real liking to this movie because of what it may have been trying to do. 7/10.The experience: Boring, confusing, annoyed, and yet I could still find myself chuckling, even though nothing was funny. It's so bad that I physically could not react normally. 1/10.Overall, I think the most appropriate rating would be a 3 or 4 out of 10, but due my personal opinion, I'll go with the 3.