Musical Nightmares Double Feature - The Incredibly Strange Creatures... and Horror of Party Beach

We're going to dig very deep into the vaults - with a little help from the wisecracking robots and their human pal at Mystery Science Theater 3000 - for tonight's entries. These two horror semi-musicals are examples of the typical "B movie" fare of the 60's, the kind of thing the real-life teen audiences would have watched while making out in their car at the drive-in. Are these small-scale scare fests worth their weight in pop culture jokes, or should they be tossed into the endless reaches of space? Let's find out....

The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies
Fairway-International Pictures, 1964
Starring Ray Dennis Steckler (Cash Flagg), Sharon Walsh, Atlas King, Brett O'Hara
Directed by Ray Dennis Steckler
Music by Andre Brummer and Libby Quinn

The Story: California teens Jerry (Steckler), Angela (Walsh), and Harold (King) take off for the local amusement park for the day, despite the disapproval of Angela's mother. After enjoying most of the day, Angela insists on checking out the fortune teller Madame Estrella (Brett O'Hara). She tells the girl that someone close to her will die near water. Jerry waves this off, but Angela is disturbed. She's understandably even less happy when he insists on going to the girlie show and stomps off in a huff. He stays for the show and catches the eye of Estrella's sister Carmelita (Erina Enyo), who lures him back to the fortune teller. Estrella hypnotizes him into murdering a dancer (Carolyn Brandt) who had discovered her secret - Estrella is poisoning and disfiguring customers who have discovered her zombie "pets" in the back room of her booth. Jerry can't seem to shake the conditioning, leading to even more death...and some seriously strange musical numbers

The Song and Dance: Well...you can't say the title's a cheat. This is one seriously strange movie. O'Hara's my favorite thing here. Even with the bad accent, she's clearly having a great time slathering on the cheese spread as the fortune teller who's got more on her mind than telling kids they're going to have long lives. Walsh isn't bad for someone who was yanked from the chorus line and dumped in front of the camera. The film has an odd but unique style, especially the swirling colors of the fair contrasting with the more natural tones in the suburban street and on the beach.

Favorite Number: "Shook Out of Shape" is the best of a bad lot. The number has mildly decent choreography and attractive showgirl costumes. Nothing else is even remotely memorable. The Leslie Gore-esque blues solos towards the end are especially bland. The duets between the two dancers who are later killed are terrible, but that does tie into the plot - she's been drinking, and it's effecting her performance. (Not to mention, these are all supposed to be low-level carnival acts. You can almost kind of forgive the bad routines.)

What I Don't Like: This is about as low-budget as low-budget can get. Steckler was so low on money, that was his family's station wagon he was driving in some scenes. The decent cinematography can only do so much to redeem a bizarre story, bad writing, and weird or dull performances from everyone else. Steckler acts like he was hypnotized before he was hypnotized. While the costumes are passable, the hair and make-up is mid-60's insane. Every single woman has hair that defies gravity in ways they wouldn't even manage in the height of the 80's perm craze.

Despite it being billed as a horror film and a musical, we don't see any numbers until nearly a half-hour in, and we don't see the zombies until the last 10 minutes...and when we do, they're just people in Halloween masks you could get off the rack at Party Fair.

The Big Finale: If you love B movie schlock, you can't get much cheesier than this. It's so bad-it's-one-of-a-kind. For true bad-movie aficionados and lovers of Steckler's other soft-core work.

Home Media: Along with the MST3K episode, this is available in a 41st anniversary edition DVD on Amazon.

DVD
Mystery Science Theater 3000 DVD
Mystery Science Theater 3000 Amazon Prime

Horror of Party Beach
20th Century Fox, 1964
Starring John Scott, Alice Lyon, Eulabelle Moore, and Allan Laurel
Directed by Del Tenney
Music by Edward Earle Marsh and others

The Story: We head across the country to Connecticut for our next fright-fest. A group of teenagers are dancin' and groovin' on the title beach when one girl who went out for a swim (Marilyn Clarke) is found dead, murdered by terrifying fish creatures who walk like men and drink blood. Her boyfriend Hank (Scott), who just defended her honor from a motorcycle gang, is distraught. Elaine (Lyon) is worried about him. She has a huge crush on him, but hasn't been able to say so with Tina in the picture.

Meanwhile, the monsters have gone on a rampage, killing everyone from drunks to stranded women to girls at a slumber party. Elaine's dad Dr. Gavin (Laurel) is at a loss on how to destroy them, even after they manage to find the arm of one creature. His maid Eulabelle (Moore) inadvertantly discovers the answer when she drops salt on the arm, and it dissolves. These are creatures of the sea, who were turned into mutants when radioactive waste was thrown into the water. Salt will get rid of them. Elaine is determined to find them herself, but she may not be able to deal with these creeps from beneath the deep when her leg is caught in a rock...

The Song and Dance: Part of a series of "Beach Party" movies made to fill double-bills at drive-in movies in the early and mid-60's. Oddly, unlike those movies or Incredibly Strange Creatures, this one was filmed in black and white. Between the ridiculously clean-cut "teens" and the shadowy cinematography, I thought this was from the mid-late 50's until I looked the movie up on Wikipedia. While the editing isn't as shaky or wild as in Creatures, it's still really good, with some nice shots of the monsters in the shadows and at the beach. I especially like Marsh's haunting background score.

Favorite Number: Unlike Creatures, this one doesn't stint on the music, putting most of it's songs right in the beginning. However, the music doesn't really bring much more to the table than it did in the previous movie. The songs - and the performances of them by the Del-Airs - sound all alike. The choreography is mostly a matter of filming women's rear ends wriggling in skimpy bikinis.

What I Don't Like: The teens in Creatures may not have been the best actors in the universe, but at least they somewhat looked their ages. All of the so-called "teens" here appear to be middle-aged. As the robots in MST3K joked, Elaine looks at least 40. And what was with the motorcycle gang who suddenly showed up at the beach in the opening? They came. One fought with Hank over Tina. Then, they left and were never heard from or spoken of again. Moore's character is a dated example of the kind of black stereotype that many movies of this time period were just starting to challenge.

The worst part is the monsters themselves. I've seen kids at Halloween who had better mutant costumes. They were supposedly created at a sculpting studio in Stamford, but they look more like they were pulled off the rack at Wal Mart. Their lumbering around looks more like men in fish costumes with dysentria than anything scary. The build-up to them is more frightening than the actual thing.

The Big Finale: Scarier than Creatures and better-made, but not as unique...or, frankly, as much fun. If you want some actual scares with your B-schlock, you'll want to give this one a look once.

Home Media: Along with the MST3K episode, this one has made it to Blu-Ray, along with a 2-pack that includes the movie it was originally doubled-billed with in theaters, The Curse of the Living Corpse.

DVD
Blu-Ray
2-Pack with The Curse of the Living Corpse DVD
Mystery Science Theater 3000 Amazon Prime