The Dead Talk Back

The producer of this movie must have been a big fan of Coleman Francis. His choice to put Aldo Farnese (who??) in the lead role of this horrible film was his first mistake. Making the movie at all was his second mistake. Its quite obvious why the film sat on the shelf for 30 years after its making. Whoever made the decision to dust it off and release it must have been insane. Thankfully the fine folks at Mystery Science Theater 3000 got a hold of it and gave it the treatment it deserved, and made this embarrassingly bad movie a fun thing to watch after all.

This movie is so bad, I'm not the least bit surprised it was never released. Horrible acting from the the enitre cast, no special effects (except for the floating chair) and lots of pointless voice-overs. And check out the reflector carelessly left in the shot! Not to mention the terrible jazz-lite band. It's only fitting that this movie had its premier on MST3K.

Oh, and don't be fooled by the title. The dead never do talk back. What a ripoff! Cool bongo players, though.

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".

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!

How useless is this movie? Think Ed Wood, without the manic silliness and conviction. Think Coleman Francis without the Americana and the airplanes, but with better sound sync. Think 60's exploitation movies and biker films without the tits, wah-wah guitar licks, and goofy clothes and hair. More competently made than any of these examples, but less energetic or entertaining than all of them...to call this movie 'dreary' is an insult to 'dreary'.

First of all,no one in this film can really 'act', and very few of the players are even able to "be themselves" on camera. The blond murder victim ("Renee") is especially bad in this respect - her line readings are so stiff and flat that you almost cheer when she gets a crossbow bolt in the neck 10 minutes into the film. And it's hard to say how bad Aldo Farnese really is because he plays such a self-important goof-ball in the film, and is given most of the really stupid lines.

Secondly, the people who put this stale jawbreaker of a film together decided to have TWO different narrators - Krassner(Aldo) and the detective - describing the events of the movie, filling in back-story and supplying exposition. So we start out with metaphysical inventor Krassner greeting us and going on at some length about various bizarre concepts, only to have ANOTHER off camera voice-over cut in and start another plot thread (a police procedural/murder mystery) describing the events leading up to the murder of the blond bimbo. After another endless pile of exposition, the 2nd voice-over stops long enough to actually introduce himself as a police detective in charge of the case, but the camera doesn't actually cuts to a closeup of the actor. So structurally and narratively, this movie starts out completely hosed, and pretty much goes downhill from there.

I shudder to think what kind of budget this movie had, or what kind of casting call they used to recruit the players. And I really hesitate to think what this poor bunch of saps were thinking while they were making this thing. The movie has the look of one of those projects where the minor actors never actually got paid. It also has the look of one of those homemade movies where the cast got together on weekends and holidays to shoot the group scenes, and the director settled for the first or second take he could get that had no actual goofs or botched lines. Bela Lugosi in the nadir of his life,in the worst throes of formaldehyde addiction, could have acted everyone here under the table.

Special mention goes to the soundtrack, which sounds as if someone put a gun to the composer's head and forced him to cough up a turgid, lifeless, badly muffled 5 minute loop of trilling flutes and off kilter violins. I am not kidding when I suggest that the movie would have been better off with dead air in most of the scenes in place of this miasma of a soundtrack - all by itself, the music saps any sense of momentum and forward drive from the plot and the action. It's quite a remarkable accomplishment, really.

Background info on this movie says that the producers and editors wisely decided that the original version of the film was better off never being released. This indicates at least SOME good judgment of someone involved with the movie. But one of the cult movie revival outfits got hold of TDTB some years ago, and decided to share it with us. Lucky us.

MST3K brought this movie some notoriety when they savaged it during season six, and it was fertile ground for their brand of pop culture mayhem. If you can't get the MST version, don't bother with it unless you are absolutely STARVED for low-quality pulp from this era, or unless you just plain like this sort of thing. 2.5 stars out of 10 - half a star added for the attempt at a clever ending and HItchcock like final shot of 'The End' spelled out in spilled pencils.