John Gaines 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.

dbborroughs I'm coming late to the game on this one,and I'm so disappointed. It was shown as part of the sixth season of Mystery Science 3000 which how most people have run across it. The story is that Sinister Cinema discovered the film at the Headliner offices and promptly snapped up the rights to this 1957 horror/crime drama. Bad movie lovers have been feeling the pain ever since.The plot concerns a woman living in a boarding house who is murdered. The subsequent police investigation includes a machine to talk to the dead. Everyone the woman lived and worked with are suspects.What can I say about this movie? Its hysterical. I could almost believe that the film was a joke except that there is too much evidence to suggest otherwise. It opens with a nonsensical silent sequence of a man following a woman at night., It moves on to the criminologist explaining about his invention to talk to the dead. From there we get misplaced voice over narration, dialog sequences that seem to have been randomly cut together, a woman who inexplicably disrobes as she speaks to the police, The murder victim clearly holding the arrow to her chest, differing murder weapons in different sequences, loopy dialog and some of the wildest hair on record. Its a bad movie lovers dream. I'm going to have to watch this again just to see all of the mistakes, miscues and oddball choices for myself.This is a movie to get your hands on and pick apart. I know MST3K did just that but this movie is so ripe for destruction that odds are you and your friends and loved ones will come up with infinitely better lines. This is a classic bad movie.If you want to have a good time with your friends find this movie and watch it, just go easy on the popcorn you might just choke to death when you're laughing.

Aaron1375 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!

Michael H No budget murder/mystery film at it's best. This film was dug up in 1993 after it was decided that it shouldn't be released to the theaters. Why I don't know since there were decisions to release Manos: The hands of fate and the whole directorial library of cinematic genius Coleman Francis. Granted The Dead Talk Back is a crappy film but nothing compared to the Coleman Francis trilogy of terror!! We never do find if the dead really do talk back or if they go fishing with Robert Culp. Aldo Farnese plays Henry Krasker, part loopy scientist, part assistant to the LAPD who's asked by a local detective to find out who killed one of Henry's neighbors. is it the German perv? The religious fanatic? Francis the talking mule? Naw just the smooth DJ who had a brief fling with Renee. In the end you don't care except how Krasker got those neat grey streaks in his hair!!