During the war A Nazi scientist named Dr. Caligula (Karen Ingenthron), who was an expert in robotics, went in search of a Magician named Carter the Great (E. Kerrigan Prescott), at the behest of Hitler, to interview and study with him. Carter had discovered a substance known as Raw Zeta which was similar to a form of hashish called Khartoum Khaki. When Raw Zeta was refined and introduced into the human body via acupuncture it would form Deadly Zeta. This new substance gave people the power to hypnotize others. Carter warned that a person wired to Deadly Zeta could be used as a broadcasting catalyst to enslave anyone hearing his voice. Not long after that Carter disappeared.
Alabama (Christopher Brooks) works at a nightclub as a stage manager and overall janitor. One night, while breaking down a set and putting it away in the club basement, Alabama inadvertently puts a hole through the basement wall with a forklift. The wall opens up into a secret chamber. Inside the chamber Alabama finds equipment to perform magic tricks. The equipment once belonged to Carter the Great. Also, in the hideaway he finds some really good hash.
Alabama decides to use Carter’s magic tricks and, with the help of who he thinks is Carter’s sister (Ken Grantham), bills himself as Alabama the Great, King of the Cosmos. He goes on the road with a promoter, Otto Max (Steven Kent Browne). Otto is, in reality, a vampire who works for Gault (Ken Grantham), the leader of a bunch of free spirit vampires. Gault plans on using Alabama to enslave the planet thus providing them with an endless supply of fresh blood.
“Alabama’s Ghost” was released in 1973 and was written and directed by Fredric Hobbs. The film is a bit on the obscure side. It is a psychotronic horror comedy with musical numbers and a tiny bit of blaxspoitation. It is basically science fiction on acid.
The plot sounds like fun, but it’s not. It’s weird, but not in a good way. There’s a lot of shit going on, but it takes forever. In addition, there are a few subplots unfolding. At one point Alabama gets scared and runs home to his mother. She performs a voodoo ceremony. In another part Dr. Caligula is making robots and makes one that looks like Alabama. Another part focuses on the vanishing elephant trick and the fact that Alabama was going to reveal how the trick was done; something that Carter’s ghost was dead set against. Most of the sub-plots are barely cohesive when it comes to how well they work with the main plot. Even the sub-plots are hard to follow. Perhaps you have to be in tune with Hobbs’ style of filmmaking to get anything out of it. The plot is so complicated that a chunk of it has to be spoken as a voiceover at the beginning of the film.
There is a lot of surrealism in the film as well. It reminded me a little of “Santa Sangre” 1989 but not as bloody or perhaps even “Brazil” 1985. Director Hobbs’ other claim to fame is the equally strange “Godmonster of Indian Flats” 1973
Other setbacks are that fact that the sound isn’t always in sync and the film quality is old, so the sound and the visual clarity of the film are a little fuzzy.