The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies

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Audience Member Top 10 worst films ever. Nothing - nothing - notable about this piece of crap. Rated 0.5/5 Stars •  Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars 01/16/23 Full Review Audience Member Layabout crazy cat Jerry (played by the director Ray Dennis Steckler under the hilarious pseudonym Cash Flagg), his girlfriend Angela and his friend Harold go to the seaside to visit a carnival there. After getting their fortunes told they see the fortune tellers sister Carmelita who is a stripper. Jerry is seen by Angela to be staring a bit too intently at Carmelita and so leaves in a huff with Harold. With them gone Jerry decides to go and watch Carmelita's strip show (the carnival has it's own nightclub that holds such entertainment. The name of this establishment is, wait for it, The Hungry Mouth which rivals only The Flaming Cave Lounge from John Waters' Female Trouble in terms of brilliant name for an establishment of that kind).  Jerry is then lured to Carmelita's dressing room where he is hypnotised. This then turns Jerry into a ruthless killer of which afterwards he has no memory of. He had in fact killed two characters whilst he was in his murderous trance-like state. He also tries to throttle Angela to death the next day. Carmelita's plot is then revealed. She has been throwing acid into people's faces which turns them into zombies (!) and then keeping them captive.  But Jerry then decides to confront Carmelita as he keeps having flashbacks and knows that something isn't quite right ever since he visited Carmelita at the carnival. This all builds to a very eventful climax.  This is pure Drive-In B movie goodness. Theres so much to like here. The hypnosis scene, the hallucinatory dream sequence Jerry has, the zombies, the song and dance sequences at the nightclub (one of the girls can be seen chewing gum as she performs her dance moves. Now that's attention to detail!).  The film also has a colour palate which can make your eyes water. I had several acid flashbacks whilst watching this gem. I first found out about this film from reading the cult film bible Incredibly Strange films from Re:Search publishing. This book treats Steckler as some kind of god in much the same way more pedestrian film fans look up to John Ford. And they're right. Steckler is an Orson Welles for the perverse. And John Waters is a huge fan. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 02/19/23 Full Review Audience Member How do you rate something like this? While it shows up on many "Worst Ever" lists, this "musical" horror flick from the 25-year-old Steckler is fun to watch in a "WTF is this" kind of way. Bonus trivia: Celebrated cinematographers László Kovács and (future Oscar winner) Vilmos Zsigmond were camera operators on the film. Also, Stanely Kubrick worked with Ray Dennis Steckler to come up with the name when the original title was a bit too close to Kubrick's then-upcoming "Dr Strangelove: or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb". Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 02/24/23 Full Review Audience Member First saw this film on MST3K, This film (not going to type out the entire title, it'll take too long) is BAD. Its just BAD. Unlikable characters, poor plot, ineptly made, and has no point of existing almost. Just watch it, preferably with MST3K though. Its an experience. Rated 1/5 Stars •  Rated 1 out of 5 stars 01/31/23 Full Review Audience Member Terrible TERRIBLE film!! But great MST3K Episode!! Plus ORTEGA!! Rated 1/5 Stars •  Rated 1 out of 5 stars 01/29/23 Full Review Audience Member The unwieldy title aside, Strange Creatures (for brevity's sake) is another example of a "bad" movie that pulls together so many disparate elements that it ends up being kind of fascinating to watch. If you're looking for suspense, passable acting skills, graphic violence, nudity, intentional humor, pathos, dramatic tension, or any other reason why 99% of people see films, then Strange Creatures is most definitely not for you. However if you count yourself amongst the 1% of ardent film fans that can be happy just experiencing something truly weird, then dig in. Billed as a horror movie, Strange Creatures inexplicably features full-length musical numbers ranging from torch songs to dance hall shows to lounge acts; and almost none of them showcase any of the top-billed actors. It has a well, let's say non-traditional looking leading man, a best friend whose look apes both Bobby Darin and James Dean with a vaguely European accent thrown in for good measure, and a fortune teller with an unusually prominent mole. The director also has some inconsistent (but original) perspectives on character development, the effects of acid on the face, and plot structure. At times oddly mesmerizing, Strange Creatures shows the unexpected pleasures than can only only arise from a director willing to embrace the absurd working on a shoestring budget. Rated 3/5 Stars •  Rated 3 out of 5 stars 02/01/23 Full Review Read all reviews

The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies

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