If Clinical Depression made a movie

Lord help me – I can’t believe what I did to my self last night – watched ‘The Incredibly Strange Creatures who Stopped Living and became Mixed up Zombies’

I mean Jesus I mean: AHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

And this was with Mike and the Bots quipping away, even with them I got a sense that permanent damage was being done. My will to live was being drained by the minute as the film wound on.

The story such as it is involves a Gypsy Fortune teller (who looks like an insane version of the dark haired woman on Three's Company) She hypnotizes this guy named Jerry to kill people - why we are never told. She also splashes people in the face with acid after they have been zombifed again why is not addressed. It’s confusing and not very interesting.

The real horror in this movie are the dance and musical numbers – at least half the film is taken up with singing and dancing, but not good singing and dancing. There is comedian who isn’t funny. Sample joke: ‘My parents work in an Iron and Steel company. She irons, he steals’. (Kill me, kill me now please). Then someone will dance – One couple features a woman who makes Rudy Giuliani in a dress look feminine and a guy who looks like the Nazi’s ideal of the Aryan race. It was very depressing to watch. Really.

Then there were the massed dance numbers – I made a note to myself that if I ever do a film that features dancers and singers I will at least try to get people who can dance and sing to do them. They to were depressing to watch - at the end of the film there is a jungle dance number that manages to be racist and dull at the same time.

There was a young man with a guitar that sang …something…I found I was happy I live on the first floor cause otherwise I would have jumped out the window to just end it.

And then there is the movie itself – the color looks washed out which fits perfectly with the look of the buildings and people. The people all look lost and despairing and yet too beaten down to do anything about it.

i think the film is a good a picture of what the world looks like to someone who is clinically depressed as you can get. Or more accurately had clinical depression became a sentient entity and made a film:

“No no no more lifeless please, this is for posterity. Not that posterity will give a damn you know but there it is, nothing to be done, the ships taking on water and we are all going to drown like rats. Oh sorry, action.”
“Oh help help.’
‘Well that’s a good take but not great take, just a little flatter, no emotion but overall sense of what's the damn use weariness yes? Not that it matters by the time anybody gets this part of the movie will be thinking about suicide not the film. Oh yes, Action.”

I’m not even going to go into how the star looks like Nicolas Cage like if he was the product of generations of inbreeding or that the star was also the director which made sense cause then a) he wouldn’t have to pay anyone else for the part and b) the main character is a jerk we don’t really care much about so he probably couldn’t get anybody to play the damn role.

Or the camera work or the stupid zombies (three of them) or how all the women looked vaguely mannish in this movie or how the music was bad. Or how the location itself a fair somewhere in California was as depressing as Coney Island in the winter. But it doesn’t matter; every frame reeked of depression and despair.

As I watched, getting horribly depressed (the Mets’ news didn’t help) I found myself profoundly grateful for the Beatles coming to America. Cause if they hadn’t the lifeless junk I was watching in this film (made circa 1964) would still be what people would be watching for entertainment (I think they still do in Branson). The Beatles with the songs, energy and above all their sense of humor changed all that.

Bless them for that.

Anyway in a couple of days I’m off to Florida and the wedding of the Enemy Below. And that gig. More later. When my soul heals a little more.