The Dead Talk Back (1957)

Good concept, poorly executed.

Best movie ever!

Absolutely brilliant

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Don't you hate those durn millennials, always sitting in their basements and doing nothing? (at least that's what the Times says, and they're right about everything!) Well, this is a movie that shows the amazing power of a basement-dwelling loser with a can-do attitude! The amazing Dr. Krasker, played by Aldo Farnese, has a machine that can talk to the dead...he hopes...after he gets it out of beta status. Can he use it to find the murderer of a low-level clothing model, or will he have to resort to cheap parlor tricks? And will the annoying Bible thumper ever shut up? Who knows? Who cares? You probably don't, for one, and even MST has trouble finding material in a movie this barren (i.e. why they had to do the infamous "Guitar solo" sketch to kill time). As agonizingly slow as a tree sloth trying to run the Boston marathon, the only entertainment to be found is one actor's wretched "German" accent and the strange looking PIE A LA MODE sign in that one restaurant.

Henry Krasker is a scientist, who is dying to reveal his new invention....a way of talking to the dead! Sound intriguing? It's not. Instead of learning about this invention, which it seems the movie would be about, it flashes back to how a woman dies. This is not a spoiler, considering the narrator is constantly saying she will be dead in x amount of minutes. After the murder, it switches to a detective murder mystery where the detective goes around interrogating this woman's housemates and close friends. Actually, this was a pretty original film is some ways. It had an interesting plot (or one that could have been interesting if it was executed better) that had not yet been done. It used a strange formula of flashing back for the movie, and switching narrators. It could've been good. All it needed was a different cast, director, and writer.My rating: 1/2 out of ****. 84 mins.

In this hilariously idiotic horror flick, a droll, overacting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad-lookalike builds a machine to ask a murder victim who killed her. "The Dead Talk Back" is the sort of movie that even Ed Wood would have considered amateur...and I love it just for that. I should note that probably the easiest place to find this stinker is on "MST3K". On that episode, not only do Mike, Servo and Crow turn the movie into a mixture of Eddie Deezen, "Bewitched", and other things, they dress up like the other dead: the Grateful Dead.So, it's a delightfully pathetic piece of cinema history. You're sure to love it. Too bad that they didn't show more of Renee in that one scene; she was hot.

Dreadful, awful, terrible mishmash that sat on the shelf for almoost 30 years before the Best Brains guys(the loonies behind MST3K) decided to unleash its stench upon an unsuspecting world. A strange goober with weird facial hair invents, among udder things, coffin horns, and a device which transmits radio signals so that the "so-called dead" can cowmoonicate with the living. He's called on to investigate the pointless murder of a female border, killed by a curtain rod. Everyone in the film is an idiot or a caricature. We see the murder toss his shoes in the drink, but hide the murder weapon at the scene under some leaves and newspapers. Another idiot spouts out hilarious religious "testimonials". One character, "Fritz Kreuger", looks like child molestation personified. Several voice-overs, each sounding like the udder, cowtribute to the cowfusion. This is one of those rare bungles that not only looks as though they hired soup kitchen bums to act, but was probably filmed right there at the soup kitchen! The first ten minutes of this film are about as clear as a septic tank, and it goes downhill from there. One funny mooment occurs when one of the dippy children(director's kids!), who apparently live in a closet, remarks "Haaallelujiah!". It doesn't appear that anyone involved with this sorry mess ever worked in the biz again, moooch to our cowlective relief. This stilted, half-baked mess is the responsibility of Merle S. Gould, who wrote, produced, and directed this failure on less than a shoe string budget. No wonder it sat on a shelf unreleased for 30 years! Even for schlock fans, it's pretty heavy going, and not nearly as funny as the MST3K 'bots make it out to be. The MooCow says these "Dead" shoulda' stayed in the ground, where they belonged. Only schlock cowpleatists(such as the MooCow!) need bother with this flimsy flop. :=8P