The casting of the supporting players took a similarly far-flung approach. Off-Hollywood fringe dweller and everyone’s favorite lunatic Timothy Carey and the clearly bemused and bewildered former matinee gargoyle Victor Mature are the film’s guest stars: Carey as its all-purpose Maldoror, an avatar of bellowing evil endlessly waving shotguns, nooses, and marketing suggestions (“The whole phallic thing is happening!”) in the Monkees‘ direction; Mature as the Big Victor (a dig at the group’s record label, RCA), sporting everything from Mother Gin Sling’s dressing gown to Sherlock Holmes’s deerstalker, and occasionally towering over the proceedings like a giant, Naugahyde-tanned jinni from The Thief of Burbank.

• Chuck Stephens, “Head-zapoppin’!”; The Criterion Collection: Current, November 23, 2010