THE INCREDIBLY STRANGE CREATURES WHO STOPPED LIVING AND BECAME MIXED-UP ZOMBIES

In the early 1960s, Ray Dennis Steckler was making his face familiar around Hollywood as a journeyman cinematographer and director for low budget independent exploitation features. But Ray had greater ambitions he wanted to make his own pictures, the kind of movies he's seen as a youngster at Saturday matinees. For his first feature as producer, writer, director and star, he certainly did things in a big way well, at least things that didn't cost much money starting with the title: THE INCREDIBLY STRANGE CREATURES WHO STOPPED LIVING AND BECAME MIXED-UP ZOMBIES (onscreen title: THE INCREDIBLY STRANGE CREATURES WHO STOPPED LIVING AND BECAME MIXED-UP ZOMBIES!!?). Say what you want, that title makes an impression!

To save space, from here on we'll call it THE INCREDIBLY STRANGE CREATURES WHO STOPPED LIVING AND BECAME MIXED-UP. Just kidding. We'll call it ISCWSLABMUZ. It's the incredibly strange story of an evil gypsy witch named Madam Estrella (Brett O'Hara), who uses her hypnotic powers to overcome the will of those she works with at a Long Beach carnival. When anyone defies her will, she gets rid of them in various ways, her favorite method being to disfigure them with acid and throw them into her basement dungeon.

Her latest foe in the show is superstitious alcoholic dancer Marge Neilson (Carolyn Brandt, Mrs. Steckler at the time), whose loose footing on stage and defiant booze-drenched attitude backstage is giving her niteclub manager fits. While visiting Estrella to try to straighten out her life, Marge gets a peek at the backstage cage full of zombies, and escapes before Estrella's mutant stooge Ortega (Jack Brady) can stop her. Lazy Jerry Wagner (Cash Flagg, Steckler's nom de thesp), a directionless young man, is visiting the carnival girlie show when he's lured backstage via a note from Estrella's stripper sister Carmelita (Erina Enyo). The witch may have encountered difficulties controlling a drunk dancer, but she has no such trouble overcoming Jerry's weak mind and making her a special zombie enforcer. Before long, Jerry is leading a Jekyll & Hyde existence mumbling slacker by day and knife-wielding psycho by night. Marge becomes his first victim.

Jerry is understandably upset to find that he's suddenly acquired psychopathic impulses, and does plenty of hand wringing between disturbing nightmare sequences. Steckler's colorful visuals have been impressive already, despite the low budget, but really take off during these weird dream sequences. This isn't surprising in retrospect, since Steckler happened to have hired a couple of young immigrants named Vilmos Zsigmond and Laszlo Kovacs as cinematographers, two men who would go on to win Academy Awards. Eventually, Jerry returns to Estrella's tent for a showdown. Of course, Estrella plans to take advantage of the situation and get rid of Jerry for good, but things go awry and the zombies escape to go on a rampage.

As if sideshow atmosphere, mesmerized psychos, mixed-up zombies, juvenile delinquents, and views of long-vanished Los Angeles area attractions aren't enough to rock your mind, Steckler makes the whole thing a musical of sorts. Frequently, incredibly amateurish song and dance numbers from the stages of the carnival pier, and even a bit of horrible stand up comedy, are dropped into the mixed-up milieu. Some scenes combine all these elements, lifting ISCWSLABMUZ into the stratosphere of psychotronic cinema classics. But for Steckler, that still wasn't sensational enough. While ISCWSLABMUZ was playing in theaters (both under its original title or as the equally meaningless DIABOLICAL DR. VOODOO and TEENAGE PSYCHO MEETS BLOODY MARY) accompanied by screaming radio ads on top 40 stations, Cash Flagg and a variety of faux Jerrys and other promotional stooges dressed in monster costumes and charged into the audience to cause additional mayhem during the film's climax.

Media Blasters treats ISCWSLABMUZ with as much care as all other titles in their Ray Dennis Steckler Collection, lavishing as much care on it as they would BATTLESHIP POTEMPKIN or RAT PFINK A BOO BOO. Though ISCWSLABMUZ wasn't a scope picture ("Filmed in Terrorama"), MB gives it an acceptable widescreen presentation. As he has on his other DVDs, Steckler provides a commentrak, rambling into play-by-play just a bit, but more often inspired by the material to give us some inside information. Continuing his new career as a the go-to cult flick DVD commentator for several labels, Joe Bob Briggs also contributes an amusing track. He goes into play-by-play himself, but it's for our amusement. The film can also be viewed with a 7-minute introduction by Briggs, but since this option appears at the bottom of the extras menu, it's probably too late to use it. Several times, information given by Ray and Joe Bob is contradictory. Joe Bob is still drive-in movie critic numero uno, but when in doubt, I'd say go with Ray's memory over Joe Bob's research.

The disc also contains brief video interviews about the film with the still charming Brandt, who has a great attitude toward the experience, and the still charming Steckler, who reveals why Stanley Kubrick threatened to sue him, and his secret to shooting dance numbers. And don't dare miss out on the incredible original trailer (not to mention eight trailers for other MB titles), which is a masterpiece of ballyhoo promotion.