The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!?
Guilty Pleasures / Anamorphic Widescreen (1.66:1) / Color / 80 minutes

Check your sanity at the door and prepare yourself for “Hallucinogenic Hypnovision” before viewing Ray Dennis Steckler’s masterwork, THE INCREDIBLY STRANGE CREATURES WHO STOPPED LIVING AND BECAME MIXED-UP ZOMBIES!!?

SEE: Fabulously gammed B-movie uber-girl Carolyn Brandt in her first major role!

WITNESS: Men turned into mindless freaks of nature after deadly acid is flung in their face!

ENJOY: Colorful dance and vocal numbers, including one with “20 beautiful girls and only 10 beautiful costumes”!

WATCH: As a young man is seduced by evil, turns into a killer and struggles to quell his deadly impulses!

GASP: As the body count rises!

… and maybe breath a sigh of relief when it’s all over.

CREATURES is from the director who also brought us THRILL KILLERS, RAT PFINK AND BOO BOO, LEMON GROVE KIDS, tons of pornography, and the violent HOLLYWOOD STRANGLER MEETS THE SKID ROW SLASHER. Steckler’s methods would probably raise a lot of eyebrows in Hollywood — he is known for rarely working with a script, using “free extras” (unknowing bystanders), little if no rehearsal and a guerilla camera style. Steckler makes movies that are brilliantly cheap, yet have some airy, freeform quality that makes them satisfying and strangely amusing.

You can’t have a discussion on Steckler without mentioning INCREDIBLY STRANGE CREATURES. It’s generally thought of as his defining film, and the one that put him high on the short list of great directors of low-budget independent B-movies.

Steckler himself occasionally references CREATURES in his later films. Take 1971’s BLOOD SHACK for instance, a slasher film set in a wind-blasted desert, with an antagonist named “The Chooper” who disguises himself with a black hoodie. Hrm. Looks an awful lot like the murderous characters in CREATURES. And was that a “chooping” noise I just heard in the background on the CREATURES soundtrack? I believe it was! Was that a poster for CREATURES on the wall in Steckler’s 1969 “last original B-movie” BODY FEVER? You know it. Welcome to Ray’s world.

CREATURES is obviously a source of pride for Steckler. And why wouldn’t it be. It’s his best-looking film, and with a budget of around $40,000, was also his most expensive. It features the vibrant colors of nightlife, costumes and carnivals. It bends genres, alternating between horror, musical and comedy. It’s a nugget of mid-1960s California weirdness, a prime example being the oddly low-brow nightclub with its dry stand-up comic and bizarre drunken burlesque-meets-classical dance routine featuring Brandt. The film’s score is a collage of doo-wop era rock tidbits, strange vocal productions, such as the jazz/scat routine “Choo Choo” and Steckler’s own take on the Twist dance, “Shook Out of Shape”.

So what of the plot? Well, it doesn’t exactly live up to its fantastic title, but its an entertaining romp nonetheless. Steckler, under his Cash Flagg moniker, plays ne’er do well smart-ass Jerry, who arrogantly claims “The world’s my college” and work “makes you feel depressed.” Amen brother.

One evening at the carnival with goodie-goodie girlfriend Angela and his buddy Harold, the trio decide to get their fortunes read by one Madame Estrella. (Just an aside here, the Madame’s massive facial wart may very well be the MOST horrific aspect of this picture. My god that thing should live in its own subdivision.) Naturally, they dismiss and jeer at her grim predictions.

What Jerry and his gang don’t know is that Estrella turns men into caged monsters by throwing caustic acid in their faces and employing some form of suggestive hypnosis using a spinning wheel.

Jerry, under what might be a spell, falls for carnival strip girl, Carmelita, who just so happens to be Estrella’s (much more attractive) sister. Carmelita lures Jerry backstage, where he begins the transformation into a mixed-up zombie killer via hypnosis (But minus the acid facial). Across town, alcoholic dancer Marge (Brandt) is trying to fight off the shakes and entertain a horny Hollywood crowd as a semi-erotic interpretive dancer. The compounded effects of the drink and a phoned-in performance from her lank partner result in enough missed steps to get her fired.

Marge eventually becomes Jerry’s first victim, dying in a bloody hack-down as the black-hooded sweatshirt clad Jerry knifes her into submission. The next day, Jerry confesses to his pal that he feels “mixed up” and can’t recall the previous night’s events.

The remainder of the film spirals into the bizarre territory of psychedelic dream sequences, song and dance routines that come and go seemingly at random, long periods of utter boredom, talking monkeys, shaky roller-coaster footage, the chaotic escape of the mixed-up zombies, and the ultimately nihilistic finale. It’s a hell of a ride, one best experienced late at night, under the influence of gin, thujone or Vicodin.

Legend has it, when CREATURES was shown in theaters, actors wearing zombie costumes would emerge during key scenes to frighten the audience. In some cases, it was Steckler himself in a costume! Supposedly the gag was so successful, film was renamed several times (”Diabolical Dr. Voodoo,” “The Teenage Psycho Meets Bloody Mary”) in hopes of further capitalizing on the experience.

Oddly enough, CREATURES helped launch a few careers, namely those of the talented cinematography team of László Kovács and Vilmos Zsigmond. Kovács, who has since photographed films such as EASY RIDER, GHOST BUSTERS and more recently, TORN FROM THE FLAG, won a lifetime achievement award from the American Society of Cinematographers in 2002. Zsigmond has had similar success, winning an Oscar for cinematography in CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND in 1978, and was nominated by the Academy for his work in THE DEER HUNTER and most recently, THE BLACK DAHLIA.

The CREATURES dream team seemed to hinge around actor Arch Hall Jr. in some weird way. Steckler worked with Hall in WILD GUITAR in 1962, the film that marked Steckler’s directorial debut. That same year, Steckler worked with Hall as an actor and assistant camera operator on EEGAH!. Zsigmond’s first credited cinematography work was with Hall the next year on the desert-drive-gone-awry masterpiece, THE SADIST. Arch Hall Jr. didn’t do jack after THE SADIST, but Steckler and both cinematographers went on to have prolific careers and are still active in the industry.

No one is going to get any acting awards from CREATURES. The wooden, stunted acting is par for the course in a Steckler picture, although I’m always amazed at how well Steckler himself performs. Brandt is her usual cool self – better seen than heard — and the allegedly unrehearsed dance sequences go off as well as one would expect. Maybe I’m a sucker, but I found them charming.

Media Blasters did an admirable job putting together the DVD for CREATURES. The video looks fine and contains rich, saturated colors, along with the usual atmospheric grain and scratches for a film of this vintage. The sound is miserable though — it’s horribly muffled and distorted from beginning to end and really detracts from the nifty musical numbers. The disc features generous bonus features including insightful commentary tracks from both Steckler and drive-in film critic Joe Bob Briggs, interviews with Steckler and Brandt, a Briggs introduction, and trailers for STRANGE CREATURES, HELL’S ANGELS ‘69, SAMURAI COP, HOLLYWOOD STRANGLER and RUN ANGEL RUN.

While CREATURES probably IS Steckler’s best film, I’m not going to agree that it’s my favorite. I have a soft spot for HOLLYWOOD STRANGLER and its dull-but-somehow-enjoyable sequel LAS VEGAS SERIAL KILLER. CREATURES is notches better than Steckler’s seedy detective film BODY FEVER though. I mention these only in comparison because I have seen them and reviewed them here on Shameful Cinema, but honestly, CREATURES has no comparison. It’s a unique experience that lives in the skewed middle ground somewhere between Ed Wood and David Lynch.

Enjoy the weirdness.

Related reviews:

• Blood Shack (1971)
• The Hollywood Strangler Meets the Skid Row Slasher (1979) / The Las Vegas Serial Killer (1987)
• Body Fever (1969)

Check out a trailer below: