If you like cult movies, you'll love Alabama's Ghost. It's about a black man who discovers a cave full of old magician's equipment and uses it to become a national celebrity. It turns out that his magical equipment is more powerful than he thought. The movie then takes on several bizarre twists involving a cult of vampires and a take-over-the-world plot. There's even an elephant at the end that plays an important role. It's hard to tell what this film was intended to be as it covers so many targets. It may take a couple of viewings to really understand it but it is definitely one of the most unusual films of the early 70s and is far more intelligent than a cheap schlock horror flick.
9 Reviews
Weird and a little bit dull.
HumanoidOfFlesh6 June 2008
Christopher Brooks gives an energetic performance as the rising magician Alabama who is treated like a celebrity.He learned all his magic tricks from the dead Carter the Great whose ghost still haunts him.A big promoter turns out to be a megalomaniac vampire planning to enslave a viewing audience with zeta rays.There's also a Nazi femme scientist named Dr. Caligula who builds a robot version of Alabama!I'm not sure how to treat this surreal mix of horror,comedy,musical and sci-fi.One thing for sure:there were copious amounts of LSD involved.Director/producer/writer Fredric Hobbs of "Godmonster of Indian Flats" fame has crafted an utterly bizarre,multi-layered film which can only be described as one-of-a-kind.Still the action is dull in spots and the suspense is replaced by weirdness.Fans of surreal cinema should give this film a chance.
Who Is Frederic Hobbs and Who Kept Giving Him Money to Make Movies?
eminges5 September 2001
Race car drivers say that 100 mph seems fast till you've driven 150, and 150 mph seems fast till you've driven 250.
OK.
Andalusian Dog seems breathtakingly bizarre till you've seen Eraserhead, and Eraserhead seems breathtakingly bizarre till you've seen Begotten.
And Begotten seems breathtakingly bizarre till you've seen the works of C. Frederic Hobbs. Race fans, there is NOTHING in all the world of film like the works of C. Frederic Hobbs.
Alabama's Ghost comes as close as any of his films to having a coherent plot, and it only involves hippies, rock concerts, voodoo, ghosts, vampires, robots, magicians, corrupt multinational corporations, elephants and Mystery Gas. And the Fabulous Woodmobile, cruising the Sunset District in San Francisco, of course.
What's really startling is that somebody gave him a LOT of money to make Alabama's Ghost. There's sets, lighting, hundreds of extras, costumes, lots and lots of effects. Somehow that makes Alabama's Ghost SO WRONG. You watch some awful cheeseball like Night of Horror or Plutonium Baby, and at least some part of the weirdness is excusable on the basis that they were obviously making the film off the headroom on their Discover cards. But Alabama's Ghost was made with an actual budget, and that's EVIL. I mean, I've got a script about a tribe of cannibals living in Thunder Bay, Ontario, building a secret temple in the woods out of Twizzlers, and nobody's beating down MY door waving a checkbook - how did this guy get the funds for FOUR of the flakiest movies ever made?
OK.
Andalusian Dog seems breathtakingly bizarre till you've seen Eraserhead, and Eraserhead seems breathtakingly bizarre till you've seen Begotten.
And Begotten seems breathtakingly bizarre till you've seen the works of C. Frederic Hobbs. Race fans, there is NOTHING in all the world of film like the works of C. Frederic Hobbs.
Alabama's Ghost comes as close as any of his films to having a coherent plot, and it only involves hippies, rock concerts, voodoo, ghosts, vampires, robots, magicians, corrupt multinational corporations, elephants and Mystery Gas. And the Fabulous Woodmobile, cruising the Sunset District in San Francisco, of course.
What's really startling is that somebody gave him a LOT of money to make Alabama's Ghost. There's sets, lighting, hundreds of extras, costumes, lots and lots of effects. Somehow that makes Alabama's Ghost SO WRONG. You watch some awful cheeseball like Night of Horror or Plutonium Baby, and at least some part of the weirdness is excusable on the basis that they were obviously making the film off the headroom on their Discover cards. But Alabama's Ghost was made with an actual budget, and that's EVIL. I mean, I've got a script about a tribe of cannibals living in Thunder Bay, Ontario, building a secret temple in the woods out of Twizzlers, and nobody's beating down MY door waving a checkbook - how did this guy get the funds for FOUR of the flakiest movies ever made?
Frederic Hobbs...freaking freely.
EyeAskance16 December 2007
Frederic Hobbs, a famously reclusive indie cinema dissenter, upreared a brief but somewhat celebrated index of offbeat pictures during the 70s...movies so waywardly absonant and creatively impulsive that only a highly preferential entente is likely to apprize them. Case in point...ALABAMA'S GHOST.
The demented story(which is overdeveloped to Rube Golberg proportions) concerns Alabama, a San Francisco jazz club employee, who discovers by mere chance the hidden bounty of a legendary magician. Among the relics is an experimental Nazi drug confection which has been long sought-after by a groovy underbelly society of music industry vampires. These creatures of the night learn of Alabama's discovery, and devise a scheme to make him an unwitting gambit in their sinister world domination plot.
As is case with the director's other projects, ALABAMA'S GHOST exhibits more streamlined professionalism than the wackadoodle material really calls for. It presents well-defined characters, variably solid performances, and acceptable effects for the time. To think that genuine erudition and skill were applied to this kaleidoscopic hash-dream is mystifying...but maverick 'metteur en scene' Hobbs did it again with GODMONSTER OF Indian FLATS, an equally nonrepresentational but surprisingly well supervised celluloid freakshow.
An exotic truffle enjoyable to only the most...ehh...distinguished palates.
6/10.
The demented story(which is overdeveloped to Rube Golberg proportions) concerns Alabama, a San Francisco jazz club employee, who discovers by mere chance the hidden bounty of a legendary magician. Among the relics is an experimental Nazi drug confection which has been long sought-after by a groovy underbelly society of music industry vampires. These creatures of the night learn of Alabama's discovery, and devise a scheme to make him an unwitting gambit in their sinister world domination plot.
As is case with the director's other projects, ALABAMA'S GHOST exhibits more streamlined professionalism than the wackadoodle material really calls for. It presents well-defined characters, variably solid performances, and acceptable effects for the time. To think that genuine erudition and skill were applied to this kaleidoscopic hash-dream is mystifying...but maverick 'metteur en scene' Hobbs did it again with GODMONSTER OF Indian FLATS, an equally nonrepresentational but surprisingly well supervised celluloid freakshow.
An exotic truffle enjoyable to only the most...ehh...distinguished palates.
6/10.
Icky poo
Bernie444418 February 2024
Credit's role from the front of the movie. They do not have names matching the pictures of the actors. We get an introduction narrative as with many old-time sci-fi movies.
I will not go through the details because if you can stomach this so-called movie then you will need the surprises. Keep the fast forward button handy.
This movie has all the ingredients for a good-bad movie. This is a renegade ... oops, independent, local movie maker in the genre of Ed Wood. An attempt to make it look old but with contemporary (1973) puns. Grainy screen with fake reel change and ad brakes marks.
The problem is the jokes and puns are dated, the attempt to be campy flat out misses the mark. We get fake movies today that are filmed as old-time black and white horror or sci-fi movies but they at least try to look like a fake black and white movie; this one just looks like a high school attempt without looking at any how-to books.
Some movies are artsy-fartsy and are valued for their uniqueness. Not this one. Some films are valued by their producers or actors. Not this one. I could write a book on what this movie is not. It could be a comic book.
I will not go through the details because if you can stomach this so-called movie then you will need the surprises. Keep the fast forward button handy.
This movie has all the ingredients for a good-bad movie. This is a renegade ... oops, independent, local movie maker in the genre of Ed Wood. An attempt to make it look old but with contemporary (1973) puns. Grainy screen with fake reel change and ad brakes marks.
The problem is the jokes and puns are dated, the attempt to be campy flat out misses the mark. We get fake movies today that are filmed as old-time black and white horror or sci-fi movies but they at least try to look like a fake black and white movie; this one just looks like a high school attempt without looking at any how-to books.
Some movies are artsy-fartsy and are valued for their uniqueness. Not this one. Some films are valued by their producers or actors. Not this one. I could write a book on what this movie is not. It could be a comic book.
Holy elephant this is great!
BandSAboutMovies25 January 2020
Warning: Spoilers
In the early 1970s, Fredric Hobbs pioneered an art form that he called ART ECO, a combination of environmental technology, fine art, solar/nomadic architecture and interactive communications with an ecologically balanced lifestyle.
But more important to our studies, Hobbs also wrote and produced four films, the missing potentially forever Troika, Roseland, the incredibly strange Godmonster of Indian Flats and this movie. I am pleased to report that in the first minute of this movie, it somehow outweirds even the Godmonster. How is this even possible?
"Whilst storm clouds gathered over Europe in the years before the war, Hitler's most brilliant and renowned young scientist, Dr. Kirsten Caligula, vanished suddenly from her laboratory in Berlin.
World press received unconfirmed reports that Dr. Caligula - an expert in robot technology - had been dispatched to Calcutta, India, on a top secret mission for the Fuhrer himself.
Her orders: to interview the world-famed magician and spiritualist Carter the Great at his Mountain retreat near Calcutta. There to study his most recent discovery a rare super-substance known as Raw-Zeta.
It was rumored amongst scientists of the time that Carter's substance resembled a highly potent form of hashish known as Cartoon-Khaki. Other authoritative sources in the Far East reported that Raw-Zeta, when refined electronically, could result in the formation of Deadly-Zeta.
Carter - in ghost form - was introduced into a human body by Chinese acupuncture techniques. In his last public statement, Carter warned that any mortal wired to Deadly-Zeta could be used as a broadcasting catalyst to enslave all humans with the sound of his voice, thus becoming an unwitting tool for the most diabolical forces of evil known to man.
Soon afterward, Carter vanished forever whilst visiting his sister in San Francisco, perhaps a victim of his own prophecy.
Seven years later, when Carter was pronounced legally, dead his admirers held a spirit funeral over an empty black coffin."
These words - originally transcribed by the site Taliesin Meets the Vampires - start the film and then we're instantly slammed into a Dixieland band playing a song called "Alabama's Ghost" that spoils most of the movie. That's when we meet our hero, Alabama, who crashes a forklift into a room that is filled with the magical tools of Carter the Great. He decides to visit the magician's sister in San Francisco and learn more about how he can become a great magician.
Alabama is played by Christopher Brooks, who also played Hieronymous Bosch in Roseland and Jesus Christ in The Mack. He also shows up in Godmonster of Indian Flats. He's incredible in this movie, to the point that you could have really told me he really was the character and that they just filmed his crazy life and didn't tell him that this was a narrative film.
She agrees to allow him to keep the Raw-Zeta, which he believes is hashish, and Zoerae - her granddaughter - will travel with Alabama, teaching him more of the ways of magic. However, when our protagonist leaves, we learn that the old woman is a man. And a vampire. And soon, we also discover that Zoerae is also a vampire, part of a coven that still follows Dr. Caligula and will use the media airwaves of a man named Gaunt to speak through Alabama, transforming the Raw-Zeta to Deadly Zeta and take over the world.
If you make it this far without wondering what the hell is going on, I'd be amazed. This movie is quite literally insane on every single level and I love it for whatever it is.
Meanwhile, Alabama is being managed by Otto Max, a rock and roll promoter, and learns that being a big star isn't everything it's cracked up to be. Oh yeah - he's also mentored by the ghost of Carter the Great, who is trying to help him battle the vampires and become King of the Cosmos. But dude, those vampires have whole factories where they use young hippy girls as fuel.
Carter's ghost is played by E. Kerrigan Prescott, who was also Prof. Clemens in Godmonster of Indian Flats and the lead character, Adam Wainwright the Black Bandit, in Roseland.
In 1973, $50,000, an elephant and possibly no small amount of drugs could create something this baffling and wonderous. It also has Turk Murphy, Dixieland jazz trombonist who ran the club Earthquake McGoons in San Francisco and also lent his voice to cartoons on Sesame Street.
There's also a robotic version of Alabama, vampire bikers, the aforementioned elephant, lots of hippy freakout dancing, German undead scientists obsessed with marijuana and no small amount of musical numbers. I can't even begin to explain how much I love Hobbs' films and how much nearly everyone else will probably hate them. Nothing and everything happens all at once.
There's a battle between Carter's ghost and Alabama over the nature of magic. A real magician never reveals how they perform their magic and Otto demands that our hero reveal how an elephant can vanish.
This is a movie where the end credits come in at the beginning and a hippy singalong can bring a man back from the brink of death. The copy that I watched was beat up and appeared to be a VHS dub of a print that had run through every drive-in and grindhouse in the country, watched at 9 AM on a peaceful Sunday morning when most of the rest of the normal world was asleep. I can't think of a better way to watch this movie.
I hope that when you watch this film, you feel the same magic and joy that I felt.
But more important to our studies, Hobbs also wrote and produced four films, the missing potentially forever Troika, Roseland, the incredibly strange Godmonster of Indian Flats and this movie. I am pleased to report that in the first minute of this movie, it somehow outweirds even the Godmonster. How is this even possible?
"Whilst storm clouds gathered over Europe in the years before the war, Hitler's most brilliant and renowned young scientist, Dr. Kirsten Caligula, vanished suddenly from her laboratory in Berlin.
World press received unconfirmed reports that Dr. Caligula - an expert in robot technology - had been dispatched to Calcutta, India, on a top secret mission for the Fuhrer himself.
Her orders: to interview the world-famed magician and spiritualist Carter the Great at his Mountain retreat near Calcutta. There to study his most recent discovery a rare super-substance known as Raw-Zeta.
It was rumored amongst scientists of the time that Carter's substance resembled a highly potent form of hashish known as Cartoon-Khaki. Other authoritative sources in the Far East reported that Raw-Zeta, when refined electronically, could result in the formation of Deadly-Zeta.
Carter - in ghost form - was introduced into a human body by Chinese acupuncture techniques. In his last public statement, Carter warned that any mortal wired to Deadly-Zeta could be used as a broadcasting catalyst to enslave all humans with the sound of his voice, thus becoming an unwitting tool for the most diabolical forces of evil known to man.
Soon afterward, Carter vanished forever whilst visiting his sister in San Francisco, perhaps a victim of his own prophecy.
Seven years later, when Carter was pronounced legally, dead his admirers held a spirit funeral over an empty black coffin."
These words - originally transcribed by the site Taliesin Meets the Vampires - start the film and then we're instantly slammed into a Dixieland band playing a song called "Alabama's Ghost" that spoils most of the movie. That's when we meet our hero, Alabama, who crashes a forklift into a room that is filled with the magical tools of Carter the Great. He decides to visit the magician's sister in San Francisco and learn more about how he can become a great magician.
Alabama is played by Christopher Brooks, who also played Hieronymous Bosch in Roseland and Jesus Christ in The Mack. He also shows up in Godmonster of Indian Flats. He's incredible in this movie, to the point that you could have really told me he really was the character and that they just filmed his crazy life and didn't tell him that this was a narrative film.
She agrees to allow him to keep the Raw-Zeta, which he believes is hashish, and Zoerae - her granddaughter - will travel with Alabama, teaching him more of the ways of magic. However, when our protagonist leaves, we learn that the old woman is a man. And a vampire. And soon, we also discover that Zoerae is also a vampire, part of a coven that still follows Dr. Caligula and will use the media airwaves of a man named Gaunt to speak through Alabama, transforming the Raw-Zeta to Deadly Zeta and take over the world.
If you make it this far without wondering what the hell is going on, I'd be amazed. This movie is quite literally insane on every single level and I love it for whatever it is.
Meanwhile, Alabama is being managed by Otto Max, a rock and roll promoter, and learns that being a big star isn't everything it's cracked up to be. Oh yeah - he's also mentored by the ghost of Carter the Great, who is trying to help him battle the vampires and become King of the Cosmos. But dude, those vampires have whole factories where they use young hippy girls as fuel.
Carter's ghost is played by E. Kerrigan Prescott, who was also Prof. Clemens in Godmonster of Indian Flats and the lead character, Adam Wainwright the Black Bandit, in Roseland.
In 1973, $50,000, an elephant and possibly no small amount of drugs could create something this baffling and wonderous. It also has Turk Murphy, Dixieland jazz trombonist who ran the club Earthquake McGoons in San Francisco and also lent his voice to cartoons on Sesame Street.
There's also a robotic version of Alabama, vampire bikers, the aforementioned elephant, lots of hippy freakout dancing, German undead scientists obsessed with marijuana and no small amount of musical numbers. I can't even begin to explain how much I love Hobbs' films and how much nearly everyone else will probably hate them. Nothing and everything happens all at once.
There's a battle between Carter's ghost and Alabama over the nature of magic. A real magician never reveals how they perform their magic and Otto demands that our hero reveal how an elephant can vanish.
This is a movie where the end credits come in at the beginning and a hippy singalong can bring a man back from the brink of death. The copy that I watched was beat up and appeared to be a VHS dub of a print that had run through every drive-in and grindhouse in the country, watched at 9 AM on a peaceful Sunday morning when most of the rest of the normal world was asleep. I can't think of a better way to watch this movie.
I hope that when you watch this film, you feel the same magic and joy that I felt.
Fredric Hobbs Cult Hero
kennywest61615 February 2004
We all know of Ed Wood and John Waters. Some know HG Lewis or Al Adamson. Not too many people have seen cheap films by Andy Milligan or Ted V. Mikels. If you've seen Andy Warhol it was probably in school. Here's the new kid on the scene, Fredric Hobbs. I have seen alot of bad movies that are good.I've only seen a few that were honestly GREAT BADFILMS. This is one of the best. It stars Chris Brooks(look up his career it will amaze you how successful he became)who stars as "Alambama". Alabama is a stage manager at the nightclub "Earthquake Magoons" who discovers a hidden chamber under the nightclub. Alambama stumbles onto the tomb of "Carter the Great", a stage magician from the 20's. Alabama dresses as Carter and becomes certain that he could be a magician as well. What Alabama doesn't know is that Carter the great was developing a substance called "Raw Zeta". Zeta looks like hashish and is refered to as "Cartoon Khaki". Raw Zeta refined gave Carter complete control of people electronically. Sound weird yet? O.K., here we go. Jazz bands, dope smoking transvestite vampires,voodoo ceremonies, Hip Lingo,greedy Scottish rock promoters,motorcycle races,hippies and more hippies, and last,parading Elephants and a vampire smorgasboard. need I say more except please put this on DVD! I only have an Elvira Chiller Theater VHS of it.
"Who's the ghostest with the mostest?"
udar5526 September 2023
An aspiring musician/janitor named Alabama (Christopher Brooks) stumbles upon the possessions of magician Carter the Great in the basement of a San Francisco club. Looking to return the items to his relatives, he ends up smoking some ashes (!) and coming in contact with the ghost in the afterlife. Naturally, this means he starts his own hippie magic show and soon is wowing the world with Carter's old tricks. But turns out his management is hellbent on world domination via TV waves. Oh, and they are also vampires for no specific reason. Writer-director Fredric Hobbs also gave the world Godmonster of Indian Flats (1973) so it is no surprise this is an odd one. I swear I had to listen to the opening monologue three times to make sense of it (something about Nazi doctors who made robots visiting Carter in India where he found a super rare hashish). I'd say the first hour or so is "normal" but then things just get bonkers. Hobbs was apparently heavily involved in the art world in San Francisco and he makes sure to wedge in one of his works (a ghastly repurposed dune buggy he deemed an "energy sculpture" is Alabama's ride when he becomes famous). It is all very...strange. This came out on Elvira's Thriller Video label back in the day and I'm kind of shocked no specialty disc label hasn't jumped on putting it out.
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