There's more sawdust than beef in the mixture but it's the filler that gives this particular meat pie its distinctive flavor. Conceived and executed with extreme prejudice by Hollywood gaffer-turned-cameraman-turned-director Ray Dennis Steckler, The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!? (1964) is junk drawer cinema at its most impossible to close. However cobbled together the thing seems to be from half-remembered elements of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), The Raven (1935), The Mad Ghoul (1943), The Mask of Diijon (1946), Zombies of Mora Tau (1957), Psycho (1960), The Manchurian Candidate (1962) and countless "Inner Sanctum" mysteries and film noir thrillers, it still manages to be its own animal. Often short-listed among the worst films ever made, The Incredibly Strange Creatures... is considerably better than its reputation. Although the screenplay (on which Robert Silliphant, brother of veteran screenwriter Stirling Silliphant, receives credit) broaches the subject of alienation in post-Camelot America, overdetermination cannot be numbered among its sins.

Unlike contemporary schlock films bucking for Psychotronica, The Incredibly Strange Creatures... is loose-knit to the point of unraveling but it's precisely this threadbare, developed-in-the-bathroom-sink aesthetic that explains the film's confounding charm. Has any other horror movie ever been so connected to the imagined smells of corndogs, cigar smoke, and cheap rubber monster masks? Cast with friends (Steckler's leading lady was plucked from the ranks of the background dancers on the first day of shooting when the original actress bailed unexpectedly) and shot in and around the seedier sections of Los Angeles (including the long-defunct funicular railway, Angels Flight), The Incredibly Strange Creatures... also makes atmospheric use of the one-time Long Beach amusement park, The Pike, which makes this film a precursor to another grade Z classic and erstwhile late, late show staple, Al Adamson's Dracula vs. Frankenstein (1971). But the film's merits aren't limited to accidental grace notes. Steckler and his scenarists have the juevos to pull not one Psycho style kill-the-heroine trick but two! One also wonders whether the zombie attack on the tiki floor show could have influenced the zombie attack on the disco TV program in Umberto Lenzi's crap classic Nightmare City (1980).

The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!? has proved influential in other ways, even if that influence extends no farther than its long-winded title. The 1988 British television program The Incredibly Strange Film Show focused on the works of such international freak show pioneers as Ted V. Mikels, John Waters, George Romero, Russ Meyer, Tsui Hark and Sam Raimi while the 1993 telefilm The Positively True Adventure of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom (1993) and the 1995 indie pic The Incredibly True Story of Two Girls in Love (1995) seem to tip their hats to the Steckler film. The 1986 book RE/Search: Incredibly Strange Films not only borrowed its title from Steckler's magnum opus but also included a lengthy career interview with the DIY filmmaker, who long ago quit Hollywood for the creative freedom of the Nevada desert. Among his pet projects-in-progress is a belated sequel to The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!?.

Producers: George J. Morgan, Ray Dennis Steckler
Director: Ray Dennis Steckler
Screenplay: E. M. Kevke, Robert Silliphant, Gene Pollock
Cinematography: Joseph V. Mascelli, László Kovács, Lee Strosnider, Vilmos Zsigmond
Film Editing: Don Schneider
Music: Libby Quinn, André Brummer
Cast: Ray Dennis Steckler (Jerry), Carolyn Brandt (Marge), Sharon Walsh (Angela), Atlas King (Harold), Brett O'Hara (Estrella), Erina Enyo (Carmelita), Joan Howard (Angela's mother), Pat Kirkwood (Madison), Toni Camel (Stella), Neil Stillman (Barker), Don Russell (Ortega), Gene Pollock (Nightclub Manager), Bill Ward (Marge's Partner).
C-82m. Letterboxed.

by Richard Harland Smith