The Dead Talk Back

While watching this movie I felt like a rabbit sitting on the middle of the road about to be hit by a car, glazing senseless into the headlights of the approaching vehicle. I kept watching and watching until the thing was over and I felt like taking a shower. Even the droids couldn't make anything of it. Strange pointless characters, a crossbow murder and some freak with a dreadful haircut... Nasty voice-over counting down the minutes left in the life of the girl... yuck. All in all, not the best ninety minutes of my life

I saw this film as an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 as I am sure most people did. What is interesting is that this film may have been made in the 50's, it was never officially released until 1993 by one of those video companies that released more obscure stuff back in the day. This film caught the eye of crew of MST3K for obvious reasons and this film probably became more well known and famous than anyone who worked on it ever thought it would be. It is bad, do not get me wrong, but I did find it very amusing and at times even interesting. As far as fodder for MST3K this is more watchable than more of few films they have done in the past. The movie contains horrid acting for the most part as the police officers were the best actors and that is not saying a lot. The scientist, Henry Krasker, put in an over the top performance that made him very amusing and the film was more awesome when he was in it! What is more interesting is the ways they try to illicit confessions in some of the scenes, the ones that did not just kind of stop suddenly.

The story, Renee, a woman who lives in a boarding house is going to be murdered. This is in no way a spoiler as a voice over is going to literally keep informing you of her diminishing time to live. He nearly calls it down to the second! Afterwards, the police try to figure out who could have killed this young lady with a crossbow and they suspect nearly every male in the boarding house, except Henry Krasker who is working on a way to talk to the dead. He will assist the police as they try and track down the killer and hold a wacky seance or two while they're at it. Who could the killer be and will Krasker's radio to communicate with the dead be used by Renee to identify her killer?

This made for an excellent episode of MST3K. The only weak part to this episode is the short that precedes the film about ice cream freezers. Never a really big fan of the shorts they did, though there were a couple of good ones. The jokes for the film itself were great as every time Krasker was on the screen they had plenty of fodder to riff on. Not only him, nearly every character was done in such a cartoon like way that there was not shortage of jokes they could make as you had the very suspicious German man with a dark past, the self proclaimed preacher man, the cool cat who wanted to work as a radio DJ and several more!

So this was not a good film by any means; however, they had an interesting enough story so that the thing made for a great MST3K episode throughout. The film also featured crossbow killings, models with secrets, record store clerks with secrets, everyone with secrets and did I mention the bongo players? In the film for maybe two minutes max and they get in the opening credits! So, if you want to see this film, watch the MST3K version and you will not be disappointed and remember, you too may only have 37 minutes left to live!

I LOVE the character of Henry Krasker and after countless viewings of this odd little film I find my curiosity about the actor Aldo Farnese just keeps hanging on. He created and performed some well-loved kiddie shows in Philadelphia years after this forgotten film, and also worked as a cameraman around Philadelphia, particularly at the Spectrum (whatever that is/was!). I corresponded briefly with his son a few years back and was saddened to hear that he'd passed away in the 90s.

I also was contacted by the son of the actress who played the murdered Renee in the film. That was many years ago and all he could tell me was that neither his mom nor anyone else was paid for their work on the film (the old, "You get a share of the profits" thing) and that his mom was alive and well and living in Manhattan and that she still had the producer's business card! As her son was a diamond broker as I recall, I like to think of her living in luxury somewhere in a Manhattan skyscraper.

Anyone who has any other info about Aldo Farnese or this film, please contact me! Thanks!

No film was ever more aptly titled then "The Dead Talk Back". This shoestring stinker was completed by people, most all of whom were never associated with another film, then stuck on a shelf to rot; sometime around 1956. Unearthed by Siester Cinema Video and then shown to great effect on MST3K, if ever a film was called back from the great beyond, surely it was this one. And how lucky we are that it is so. "The Dead Talk Back" is an amazing, funny, arresting piece of garbage that has to be seen to be believed. It stands proudly with the films of Ed Wood, "The Brain That Wouldn't Die" and other such things. The story is about a murder at a boarding house, solved by the police with the help of a weirdo researcher with a smug, self important attitude. The plot weaves in and out of seemingly (and perhaps authenticly) irrelevant details. The murderer dumps his shoes to hide the shoe prints, but leaves the murder weapon close to the body hidden under some newspapers. The whole thing has a weird stiltedness that really does recall Diane Arbus. There is an excellent chase down Hollywood Blvd. that really lets you see what it looked like at the time. I would recommend this movie to any bad film fan or person with a taste for the mindbending.

The field of meta-physics or "ghost studying" if you prefer is actually one of the more interesting fields out there. While unproven and with a very high chance of "hauntings" being explained, the occasional event that defies any explanation is quite thrilling. So it doesn't surprise me that the director or whoever was in charge of the the story was fascinated by this field.

It doesn't change the fact that it's a piece of crap.

Frankly the only reason this film didn't haunt the participants was due to the mercy of film obscurity that lasted for 30 years. The only person who truly suffered was the unlucky person who found it and watched it in it's uncut glory. By "uncut" I mean without the MST3K commentary. Definitely one of the funnier episodes of the late Comedy Central era. The funniest part has to be the scream uttered by the woman who finds the body. Definitely one of the funniest screams that I have heard.

If you want to learn more about meta-physics, I suggest the series "Ghost Hunters".