Ray Dennis Steckler Day

 

‘The films of low budget director Ray Dennis Steckler present a unique balancing act between familiar B-movie tropes and the unexpected. With Wild Guitar (1962), The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed Up Zombies!!? (1964), The Thrill Killers (1964), and Rat Pfink A Boo Boo (1966), Steckler, a self-acknowledged Hollywood outsider, crafted a series of idiosyncratic low budget features in the heart of Tinseltown before eventually decamping to Las Vegas in 1970 for a career in porn and to teach film classes at the University of Nevada. In these energetic early films, his characters—drifters, rock ‘n’ rollers, killers, dropouts, superheroes, and struggling actors—seem to be plucked from Hollywood Boulevard and set down in a pulp comic come to life. The Hollywood strip appears again and again in the director’s films as a symbol of intoxicating fantasy and disillusionment. Indeed, Steckler’s work embodies, at first glance, a simple teenage dream of celebrity, violence, and goofy humor, but what lurks just below its campy, threadbare veneer is an underworld of cynicism, reflexivity, and rupture.

‘In perhaps the definitive interview with the director (in the invaluable Incredibly Strange Films), Steckler told writer Boyd Rice, “I’m not saying I’m a great filmmaker or anything; I try to just be different, not to be like everybody else. That’s all it is.”

‘Born in Reading, Pennsylvania, Steckler began making films as a boy using an 8 mm camera purchased by his father to create an amateur pirate movie with his friends. After leaving the Army, where he had been a photographer, Steckler came to Hollywood and found a job as an assistant cameraman on Timothy Carey’s cult masterpiece, The World’s Greatest Sinner (1962), eventually becoming the film’s cinematographer after the initial director of photography was fired.

‘After working as a cinematographer and occasional actor at Arch Hall Sr.’s Fairway Pictures (including a brief but memorable role as a frightened partygoer in the gloriously dumb caveman movie Eegah), Steckler directed his first feature film, Wild Guitar, for the company when he was only 23 years old. Like many of the other films produced by Fairway Pictures, Wild Guitar was a vehicle for Hall’s son, Arch Hall Jr., who he hoped to make a star.

‘In the film, which plays suspiciously close to a teenbeat version of The World’s Greatest Sinner, Arch Hall Jr. plays a would-be rockstar who comes to Hollywood from nowhere with an old guitar and a letter of introduction to no one in particular. The naive ingenue is quickly taken in by a crooked record company owner, Mike McCauley (Arch Hall Sr.), and his gang of buffoonish hoods, including Steckler (using the screen name Cash Flagg) as McCauley’s enforcer, Steak. Formally, Wild Guitar might be Steckler’s most ostensibly “normal” film but the vision it conjures of exploitation in the entertainment industry, and the vapid, mesmeric power of pop, is vicious.
“I believe: get an idea, go make it. Just do it,” Steckler told Rice, and in Wild Guitar, Steckler’s openness to unexpected resources and improvisation pays off. While filming, the director learned that actor Nancy Czar was a world-class skater, and took the shoot to an ice skating rink (years before Rocky) to create one of the film’s most memorable scenes. The sense that Steckler is making his film his way is palpable, and although Arch Hall Jr.’s subpar songs are shoehorned throughout, the director is doing what he would ultimately learn to do best: working with what he had.

‘Steckler’s next film represents a giant leap forward into the “psychotronic” realm. In The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!?—shot in just 11 days—Steckler plays Jerry, a hoodie-wearing misfit who would rather bum around the boardwalk looking for fun than get a job. After visiting a sideshow fortune teller who turns anyone who crosses her into a monstrous, half dead creature, Jerry is placed in a hypnotic state that causes him to kill. Hallucinatory mayhem ensues.

‘Beyond this minimal plot, The Incredibly Strange Creatures (his largest budget film at a meager $38,000) is filled with elaborate dance numbers (including a dream ballet), wildly unhinged camerawork (courtesy of a young Vilmos Zsigmond), grotesque makeup, and home movie-like sequences of carnival rides. In this film, perhaps Steckler’s best known work, he pushes beyond normative formal constraints as his camera careens between stylized precision to raw expressiveness like a tilt-a-whirl, creating a trash pastiche of bad vibes, psychosexual tension, and wonderfully cheap spectacle.

‘The film’s dark, nightmarish interiors and gleeful disregard for camera etiquette combine to make it unsettling and immediate in a way few films are. Its script (although there are claims Steckler often worked without one) echoes the camera’s nonconformist streak. The most memorable and profound bit of dialogue from any Steckler film comes in The Incredibly Strange Creatures as Jerry encounters an uptight young man, Madison, outside his girlfriend’s house. He flippantly asks the young man, “How’s college?” Madison responds, unamused, “It’s fine. You should try it some time.” Jerry, tickled by this, grins and volleys back, “No thanks. The world’s my college.” With this dismissive barb, both Jerry and Steckler might be speaking—Jerry about his approach to life, and the director about his exuberant, freeform approach to DIY moviemaking.

‘Co-produced by Steckler and his partner, George Morgan, the film’s financier, The Incredibly Strange Creatures was initially distributed as part of a double bill by Fairway Pictures. Eventually, Steckler took the film out on the road himself and showed it under a number of different titles (Diabolical Dr. Voodoo and Teenage Psycho Meets Bloody Mary) to relative success—relative to the film’s small budget, that is.

‘Steckler’s next film, The Thrill Killers, was a gritty crime story featuring a wide-eyed Steckler as escaped mental patient Mort “Mad Dog” Click. After a bravura stylized murder sequence where “Mad Dog” proclaims, “I hate people. They’re no good,” as light pulses through a dingy flophouse window, the film’s action culminates with his fellow escapees taking a group of diner patrons hostage. One of the hostages, Joe Saxon (Joseph Bardo), is a struggling film actor, which leads to the film’s most darkly reflexive moment, as the escaped patients “direct” their hostages.

‘The Thrill Killers, with its stark black-and-white, pseudo-documentary photography, and pervasive threat of violence, is Steckler’s most economical and potent slice of pulp dread. In a similar fashion to Steckler’s travels with the The Incredibly Strange Creatures, The Thrill Killers included a personal touch. Also called The Maniacs Are Loose, Steckler advertised that the film was in “Hypno Vision,” meaning, at key points during the screening ushers, and often Steckler himself, would race through the aisles eliciting screams from the audience. The Thrill Killer’s double life as both a grim work of cinematic art and schlocky spookshow encapsulates Steckler’s knack for slyly slipping his unconventional films into commercial spaces.

‘Steckler would follow The Thrill Killers with his most radically playful film: Rat Pfink A Boo Boo. Beginning with the same “just for kicks” criminality and violence as TheThrill Killers, Steckler’s followup makes a radical departure halfway through its running time. After a young woman, Cee Bee Beaumont (Steckler’s wife, Carolyn Brandt), is kidnapped, her rockstar boyfriend, Lonnie Lord (Ron Haydock), enters a closet with a dimwitted gardener, and the pair emerge as superheroes. The film’s second half becomes a goofy riff on Batman and Robin, as the duo pursue the kidnappers in slapstick fashion.

‘Steckler considered The Thrill Killers, with its true crime feel and depiction of violent, abnormal psychology, his answer to Psycho. It’s in Rat Pfink A Boo Boo, though, where he enacts Hitchcock’s narrative rupture. By using many of the same motifs and actors in between The Thrill Killers and Rat Pfink A Boo Boo, Steckler creates a weirdly solipsistic cinematic continuum.

‘After Rat Pfink A Boo Boo (in slipshod, Steckler fashion, a mistake with the titles turned “And”into “A”), the director would work on promos for rock groups like Jefferson Airplane and continue to make a few more kooky curiosities including the Long Goodbye-like lazy detective film, Body Fever (1969). Nothing, however, would ever reach the heights of conceptual and poetic brilliance of Rat Pfink A Boo Boo, which stands as the director’s last uncompromising masterpiece.

‘Ray Dennis Steckler’s true art was his attitude toward filmmaking, believing, “If you can’t have any fun don’t make a movie.” Echoes of this inspired approach can be seen in the films of John Waters, David Lynch, Damon Packard, and Nicolas Winding Refn (an avid fan who helped restore Wild Guitar). Although Steckler’s films were initially set adrift in the sea of B-movies and drive-in second features that filled American theaters during the 60s and 70s, people eventually began to take notice. The Incredibly Strange Creatures was cited by critic Lester Bangs as a masterpiece of bad taste and as his New York Times obituary states, “Mr. Steckler’s name began to be mentioned with those of genre masters like Russ Meyer and Ed Wood.”

‘Steckler uniquely faced the reality of making movies on the fringe with the barest of resources and negotiated an uneasy but fruitful treaty between the actual and the possible, all while having a good time. What resulted from his giddy desire to make movies is something incredibly strange and remarkably special.’ — Chris Shields

 

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Stills

 

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Further

Do It Yourself Madness: The World of Ray Dennis Steckler
“I Hope it’s Originality”: The Parallel Universe of Ray Dennis Steckler
Book: ‘The Incredibly Strange Features of Ray Dennis Steckler’
A Fan’s Tribute to The Incredibly Strange and Wonderful Ray Dennis Steckler
Podcast: THE INCREDIBLY STRANGE RAY DENNIS STECKLER
RDS @ Letterboxd
Ray Dennis Steckler Has Passed
The Ray Dennis Steckler Interview by ED Tucker
IT’S A SHAME ABOUT RAY: RAY DENNIS STECKLER (1938 – 2009)
Will the Thrill Interviews Incredibly Strange Filmmaker Ray Dennis Steckler
The Incredible Two-Headed Movie-Making Thing That Ate Las Vegas
Goof on the Loose: The Films of Ray Dennis Steckler

 

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Extras

RAY DENNIS STECKLER’S day has come… but are we ready for it?

The Incredibly Strange Film Show – Ray Dennis Steckler

Ray Dennis Steckler Interview

Valentine’s Day with Ray Dennis Steckler, Parkway Theater, February 14, 2002

Ray Dennis Steckler’s “MASCOT VIDEO” Store TOUR!

 

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Interview

 

Ed Tucker: Ray, I think by now most people are familiar with your more famous pictures like “The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed Up Zombies” and “The Thrill Killers”. I would like to talk about some of your lesser known productions including some of the more recent ones. The first film you ever made was the short “Goof on the Loose” in 1959, correct?

Ray Steckler: Yes, “Goof on the Loose” was the first film I ever did entirely by myself. I had always been a big fan of the silent comedians like Buster Keaton. He was tremendously physical comedian. He made some incredible films like “The General”, but towards the end of his career he had to make some terrible films just to stay alive.

ET: He was in a number of films for AIP including some of the Beach Party movies. It always amazed me because he was old and not a real match for these kinds of films. They would give him bad parts and only have him on screen for about ten minutes and he would still steal the show.

RS: He never made any money because he didn’t own the rights to his films like Charlie Chaplin did. He was at the mercy of the studios and just trying to stay alive and that was what they did to him. Towards the end he worked for MGM and they paired him with Jimmy Durantee. Buster Keaton was a very physical and mobile comedian, where Durantee was dependant on dialog. I guess they were pushing Durantee because he had had some recent success on Broadway but they were just mismatched.

ET: Keaton was still trying to make silent films, even then.

RS: Good for him. He was the last. Nobody has the guts to do that any more. Nobody except me. No one else would have tried to do what I just did with “Summer Fun”.

ET: In your acting career, did you limit yourself to just working in your own pictures? I know you had a brief cameo in the film “Eegah!” for Arch Hall but did you do anything besides that for anyone else?

RS: I did a few other parts. I was in “Las Vegas Weekend” and a few other pictures but they were for friends. It’s not like I went out and worked for anybody. I never solicited a movie role in my life. I was asked to do “The Incredible Two-Headed Transplant” but I saw the makeup and I told them you’d have to be a fool to do this, it will haunt you the rest of your life. Bruce Dern was in it.

ET: Bruce Dern, Pat Priest from the Munsters, and Casey Kasem.

RS: I don’t know if that was a mistake or not. I don’t think so. The film was directed by Anthony Lanza, who was my editor on “Wild Guitar”. He was a very interesting and talented guy. He edited some of “Strange Creatures” for me too. He did the scene at the end of the chase down the beach, which was really well edited with the rocks and the water and the splashing. When I took a look at it it was just edited terribly. I asked him what happened and he said there was nothing there. I went through all the trims and I re-edited the whole scene that day and I’m glad I did because I love that chase scene at the end. I didn’t have any faith in Anthony Lanza after that as an editor but I think he would make a competent director in the conventional sense. I never saw “The Incredible Two-Headed Transplant”. I don’t know what happened to him after that but I felt he had the ability to go a long way.

ET: I saw that film originally at a drive-in in Jacksonville, Florida on a double feature with “Frankenstein Conquers the World”. I even have the poster for it but I never realized Anthony Lanza directed it.

RS: This is what I am getting at. People remember that film but no one remembers who directed it. People see my films and they remember my name. I am not being immodest about this, but they remember my name and more. I even get accused of doing films I never made. “The Incredible Two-Headed Transplant” wasn’t Anthony Lanza’s film. He directed it, but he was doing it for someone else. The type of person who is going to pick up a camera and make his own film from start to finish is the type of person who will get destroyed in Hollywood.

ET: Hollywood rewards the person who is just doing a job?

RS: You have to understand something about Hollywood through the years. I have read a lot about it and let’s just say I am well versed in it. What is Hollywood? Is it a town? Is it a group of people? Is it a figment of your imagination? What is Hollywood really? Hollywood is a place where when they don’t need you any more, that’s it. They have the motion picture home now, thank God, to save some of these people. In Hollywood you work for five or ten years and then what? Do you go out and pump gas? Actors can be on a hit television series for three or five years and then it’s over. During that time maybe they made some enemies or said the wrong thing and suddenly no one wants them. I worked with a number of the major studios. I even had an office for a while at MGM. I worked with a number of key players including Harold Robbins. They all wanted to meet me but no one ever wanted to do anything with me. I was typed as a cameraman. I started off as a cameraman and I worked as a cameraman. I did the “Wide World of Sports”, I did a series called “The Professionals”, I filmed over one hundred commercials. I did all these things as a cameraman but it never lead to another job as a director. I had to go home and put money in a sock until I had enough saved up to start another picture.

ET: So you gave up on Hollywood?

RS: By the time I did “Body Fever”, I had found myself at a point in my life where I just decided to have some fun. I didn’t really care any more; the damage from Hollywood had been done. As I am sure you know, I didn’t start out acting in that picture but I ended up acting in it. I didn’t have enough money to do that picture correctly but I finished it. The very first day on the set in San Pedro, the assistant cameraman had $25,000 worth of lenses and he took his eye off them and someone walked away with the case. We had one lens left to shoot that day and it was a bad lens!

ET: You finished the final segment of “The Lemon Grove Kids” in 1969. How long after this was the film released to the theaters?

RS: I have to tell you, it was not very long at all. A fellow named Joe Karston had been doing road shows of my pictures since 1966 or 1967. He did “The Incredibly Strange Creatures” first (retitled “The Teenage Psycho Meets Bloody Mary”) and then “The Thrill Killers” (retitled “The Maniacs are Loose”). He came to me after that and said what have you got? I showed him “The Lemon Grove Kids” and he said that would be good for matinee shows. A lot of theaters back then enjoyed booking a matinee show just for Saturdays.

ET: How many years did that play as a matinee?

RS: That played for about five or six years. I think it all washed out about 1975 or 1976.

ET: That played for longer than I realized. You had a theater employee dressed as a mummy run through audience when this film played. What did you have for the others?

RS: When they did “The Thrill Killers” they dressed like the Cash Flagg character. When they did “Strange Creatures” they had people dressed like the zombies except for the first six months when I went on tour with the film. Then for “The Lemon Grove Kids” they did the mummy.

ET: Did you have to go back and film inserts for the mummy section?

RS: Yes. There was originally a mummy in “The Great Race” played by Bob Burns who also played Kogar the gorilla for me in Rat Pfink. Bob came back and did the mummy for me again in the insert footage. There was a girl in that scene with the mummy who had played a dancer in “The Incredibly Strange Creatures”. Her name was Cindy Shea and she was best friends with Carolyn Brandt from the time we moved to Hollywood. She was in the hospital with cancer and did not have long to live. She knew we were shooting that day and she actually left the hospital, she walked out. Somehow she got there and she walked up that big hill. I can still remember seeing her and I don’t know how she did it. She just said I want to be part of your movie please, just do something. I don’t know if I would have shot that scene the same way if she hadn’t shown up when she did. She was just wonderful. Less than a week later she was gone and I never really got over that. Someone wanted to be in one of my pictures that much.

ET: Didn’t Ron Haydock play Rat Pfink again in that same segment?

RS: Yes and he was also the guitar player in “The Great Race”

ET: I picked up a really cool CD called “99 Chicks” by Ron Haydock & the Boppers that has the “Rat Pfink” tracks on it. Are you familiar with that?

RS: That’s the one on Norton Records.

ET: Right, there are some great photos in the CD booklet too.

RS: Those came from me. They contacted me and I sent them some items on Ron for the booklet.

ET: There is one I have never seen before of him on the hood of a car holding two masks. What are they from?

RS: One is the head from “Thrill Killers” that rolls down the stairs. I’m not sure about the other.

ET: How about the shot of Ron performing on stage dressed as Rat Pfink?

RS: That is from the tour we did to promote the film. We went around to supermarkets with Ron dressed as Rat Pfink and another guy doing Boo Boo because Titus Mode was not available. It was also me, Carolyn Brandt who was my wife at the time, and my 81-year-old grandfather. We went all over the place trying to drum up interest in the film. We shot some color film of those appearances that I put on the end of the “Rat Pfink” video.

ET: There is also a picture in the booklet of a pulp novel called “Caged Lust”. It looks like Bill Ward style artwork on the cover and it is credited to Vin Saxon. Is that for real?

RS: Oh yeah. Vin Saxon was, of course, Ron Haydock. He must have written fifty of those things. One was called “Ape Rape”. They were very strange.

ET: Well with a title like “Ape Rape” I’m not surprised.

RS: You have to understand, that was how Ron made a living towards the end of his life. They would pay him $500 to write one of these things. The books are very rare now because they only printed about 20,000 of them to begin with. I think Norton must have a whole collection of these things somewhere. They came to me looking for one of his titles but even I didn’t have it. Ron Haydock made movies for me but no one else would give him a chance. I not only gave him a chance, I hocked my house to make those movies and to record those songs because I believed in him. Then he got screwed up with depression a couple of times thinking that no one cared about him. I cared about him. I say this, if you go through your whole life and you only have one person who cares about you, who is willing to sacrifice for you, then you are well ahead of the game. That’s honestly what I believe and when Ron killed himself there was no reason for him to do that except he felt he wasn’t wanted.

ET: Hold on, did Ron kill himself? I thought he died in a car accident hitchhiking back to California from visiting you in Vegas?

RS: It wasn’t an accident. I had given him a plane ticket too but he wouldn’t use it. I could talk about the whole story but I don’t want it changed. If enough people want to hear about it, I’ll tell you. It’s not a story that puts Ron Haydock down, he was my best friend. I think my career almost came to a halt when he died.

ET: Whatever happened to Mike Kannon who played Slug in “The Lemon Grove Kids”? I thought he was great in the Leo Gorcey part.

RS: He became a security guard at the Romane headquarters of Howard Hughes. He was the one who got tied up when Hughes was robbed and they got all his papers. He also acted in “The Getaway” with Steve McQueen. He was a fine actor.

ET: One of your later films actually takes its title from a character in “The Lemon Grove Kids”, how did you come up with the idea of “The Chooper”?

RS: Herb Robins played the character in the “Green Grasshopper” segment and that’s what he did, he went “choop, choop, choop, choop, choop”. So he became “The Chooper”.

ET: (Laughs) That’s it? That’s all there was to it! I saw a video box for the film one time and they had this elaborate definition for how a Chooper was a legendary evil spirit!

RS: Nah! Whatever we had, that was what we made a movie with. I said hey we’ve still got a Chooper suite so Ron became “The Chooper”! It didn’t even fit him, it was too small. My whole philosophy is when it’s someone else’s money your spending that’s a whole different ballgame than when it’s your own. Before you make a movie you look around and see what you have, not what you want to go get. Think about all the things you don’t have to spend money for and then write your story around them, because now you’ve already saved $20,000. If you look at my films you will see the same things here and there because if it was still good, fine, then we used it again.

ET: Was “The Chooper” released to theaters?

RS: It played in one theater in Denver, Colorado but was really just straight to video.

ET: So you were eligible for the Academy Awards?

RS: (Laughs) Yes, that’s a good line!

 

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15 of Ray Dennis Steckler’s 58 films

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Wild Guitar (1962)
‘Ray Dennis Steckler made his directorial debut with this surfer rock-scored, Elvis Presley-inspired B-movie about an aspiring musician’s sudden success. Swerving between Faustian fable, pop comedy and music industry parody, it features the early work of Oscar®-winning cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond!’ — MUBI

the entirety

 

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The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies (1964)
‘Hoping to relax for the day, beatniks Jerry (Cash Flagg), Angela (Sharon Walsh) and Harold (Atlas King) head for a seaside carnival. But after visiting strange fortune-teller Madame Estrella (Brett O’Hara), Jerry is transformed into a ruthless killer with a penchant for performing song and dance at the park’s nightclub. And as if Jerry’s attacks along the beach weren’t enough, Madame Estrella inadvertently unleashes a horde of undead minions on the unsuspecting carnival populace.’ — archive.org

the entirety

 

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The Thrill Killers (1964)
‘Thrill Killers follows three separate narratives that collide at the climax. Joe Saxon (Joseph Bardo) is an unsuccessful aspiring actor struggling in the Hollywood rat race, to the despair of his long-suffering wife Liz (glamour icon Liz Renay). Meanwhile, wild-eyed feral loner Mort “Mad Dog” Click (portrayed by Steckler himself under his fabulous acting pseudonym Cash Flagg) is embarking on a seemingly random killing spree. And then comes the news (relayed over a tinny transistor radio) that three ax-wielding psychotic murders have escaped from a high-security mental institution. While the violence is tame by modern standards (and mostly occurs just out of frame or in shadow), thanks to Steckler’s dynamic no-frills film-making it packs an unexpected jolt, with a visceral sense of panic and claustrophobia. Admittedly, the decapitated head bouncing down a flight of stairs is unintentionally funny.’ — Bitterness Personified

Trailer

the entirety

 

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Goof on the Loose! (1964)
‘‘Goof on the Loose‘ is an early Steckler curiosity that pays homage to slapstick comedies of the silent era. Some of it is funny, some of it is a bit too random but it’s nice to see Steckler’s range of interests and genres and his wife/ muse Carolyn Brandt. Made in 1964, the same year as his best film ‘The Thrill Killers’.’ — Dennis Vehlen

the entirety

 

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Lemon Grove Kids Meet the Monsters (1965)
‘Three short films directed by Ray Dennis Steckler, Ed McWatters and Peter Balakoff in 1965 feature the adventures of the “Lemon Grove Kids” in this “Bowery Boys” inspired kiddie film.’ — Videodrom Verleih

Trailer

 

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Rat Pfink a Boo Boo (1966)
‘The first half of this is a suspense thriller, but Steckler got bored and turned it into a superhero comedy for the second half. It climaxes with Rat Pfink and Boo Boo fighting a gorilla (a guy in a gorilla suit). It ends with Rat Pfink and Boo Boo riding in a real parade (I wonder if Steckler got permission or if he just crashed it), and the cast (including the gorilla) dancing on a beach. Scattered throughout are musical numbers. The moral: it’s Steckler’s movie and he can do whatever he wants.’ — Will Sloan

the entirety

 

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Jefferson Airplane White Rabbit (Official Music Video) (1967)
‘Music video for Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit.” A woman evocatively moves around a beach, a rock, and through waves while images of a caterpillar, a chess piece, and the band’s “Surrealistic Pillow” album cover are inter-cut.’ — IMDb

the entirety

 

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The Mad Love Life of a Hot Vampire (1971)
‘Dracula is a pimp who sends his female vampire hookers out to collect blood by the most unusual methods from unsuspecting and horny victims.’ — IMDb

Excerpt

 

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Blood Shack (1971)
‘Around the midpoint of BLOOD SHACK, Carolyn Brandt takes a somnambulistic midnight stroll. The wind whips her hair. The moonlight catches her eyes. The dark blue sky outlines her path. It’s poetic, chilling, and beautiful, like the climax from I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE combined with the artsy minimalism of Roberta Findlay’s A WOMAN’S TORMENT. This scene is at odds with the rest of the movie, which jams together mundane narration, ill-fitting music cues, and The Chooper’s baffling attack scenes. But that’s why I love it. From THE MAD LOVE LIFE OF A HOT VAMPIRE to LAS VEGAS SERIAL KILLER, movies from Steckler’s twilight years are scattered and unintentionally avant-garde — you never know what to expect from minute to minute. With its focus on barren desert vistas and stream-of-consciousness plotting, BLOOD SHACK is totally unconventional and thoroughly strange. In other words, it’s just one more reason why the work of Ray Dennis Steckler should never be forgotten.’ — Joseph A. Ziemba

the entirety

 

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The Sexorcist (1974)
‘When reporter Janice Lighting (Carolyn Brandt) follows up a hot lead on a mysterious document that can summon the devil, she brings death to her own door in this bloody horror-adult film hybrid featuring possessed prostitutes, creepy amulets and even creepier artwork.’ — Diabolik

the entirety

 

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Red Heat (1974)
‘RED HEAT is equal parts off kilter Vegas travelogue, bloody sex killer flick and raunchy loop package, all in one. The off-screen female narrator tells you of her wild times directing skin flicks. Then she tells you about her star Red Heat who went on a serial murder spree. The sex scenes are raunchy hotel room balling, populated by hardboiled, aged Vegas pros.’ — permateen

Trailer

 

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Teenage Hustler (1976)
‘The director’s credit on-screen reads “Ricado Malatote”, the usual credit went to “Harry Nixon”, but cult fave Ray Dennis Steckler has TEENAGE HUSTLER in his bag of tricks. Spotlighting an extremely sexy one-shot artiste “Mary Monroe” in several sex scenes the film is easy to absorb, even if crudely made. It tells the story of English Billy Boynton, described as a con man and a sex freak. In tandem with his confederate, an unscrupulous porn photographer, he schemes to bed down prostitutes and then blackmail them with photos of them in action. This makes very little sense, but is the hook for 64 minutes of porn. The girls are mainly no-name talent, including Amazonian Monroe (she towers over the male cast), busty, attractive and fresh looking. Late in the film the busy Eve Orlon plays another prostitute they scam named Trixie. English Billy eventually gets his comeuppance, but film ends promising a sequel purportedly concerning his new landlady and her daughter, which likely was never made.’ — hiroti_futasiko

Watch the entirety here

 

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The Hollywood Strangler Meets The Skid Row Slasher (1979)
‘Belonging firmly in the same camp as other sleaze epics of the time, DON’T GO IN THE HOUSE (1979) and DON’T ANSWER THE PHONE (1980), as opposed to the sustained terror of Carpenter’s then recent slasher opus, THE HOLLYWOOD STRANGLER MEETS THE SKID ROW SLASHER is slasher burlesque, pure and simple; just a celluloid conveyor belt of visual titillation clearly with Steckler not feeling the need to generate even a modicum of suspense. He does, however, make the most of the scenery: Hollywood at its very trashiest and sleaziest (much like New York’s Time Square’s Neon porno palaces were the backdrop for so many similar films around this time), it seems that there aren’t any other buildings apart from the streets and streets of ‘Flick’o’rama’s and ‘Sin-o-ram’s – it’s the apex of punk rock nihilism and post-60’s cultural decay (it’s hard to believe all this existed when compared to today’s relatively puritanical and antiseptic society). The film’s decided cheapness only adds to its overall no-darn-good ambiance: looking like a particularly threadbare 60’s trash movie (no surprise given who was behind the camera), probably shot on 16mm – it looks like it was all made without sound and was dubbed in post-production and has a bizarre soundtrack of music which veers from acid rock to burlesque stock to ambient musings, which just boosts that unrelenting grindhouse feel (in-fact the movies’ monumentally inappropriate closing song (“You’re my love … no one can deny!”) is the scariest thing in this flick).’ — Hysteria Lives

Excerpts & review

 

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Las Vegas Serial Killer (1986)
‘After six years incarceration for his famous strangling spree, Johnathon Klick is paroled on the technicality that most of the bodies couldn’t be found. Hearing the release announcement on the radio, two sunglassed sleazeballs make their way to Vegas, apparently to rate women’s legs and steal purses. Johnathon immediately resumes his old ways, choking a girl with her own bikini at a pool party, grabbing another outside a bar, interrupting a photo shoot for a mini model massacre, and he even gets hired as a delivery man for Pizza ‘n’ Pizza, driving exactly one pie to a topless girl in a Jacuzzi — all whilst muttering, “Die, garbage!” Aimlessly wandering around the Glitter Gulch for most of the film’s duration, the three criminals’ paths continually cross, leading up to a shock ending and one of the greatest freeze-frames in the history of cinema.’ — Bruce Holecheck

Las Vegas Film Locations Las Vegas Serial Killer 1987

 

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One More Time aka The Incredibly Strange Creatures 2 (2008)
‘The final film of maverick director Ray Dennis Steckler, a long-gap sequel to his most famous film, The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies (1964). However, Steckler himself referred to it as an “extension” of the earlier film, stating: “Would Orson Welles make a sequel to Citizen Kane?”

‘This is a 66-minute home movie, shot on video that was primitive even in 2009 (it may actually be videotape). Steckler reprises the character of Johnny, now an old man, who is haunted in his dreams by the murders from the 1964 movie (did they not actually happen? I’m unclear of this). We see Steckler wandering around an amusement park (the same one that was in the first movie, I believe), riding a bus, sitting on a bench, checking out a bar band (we see Johnny Legend perform “You Are a Rat Fink,” the theme from Steckler’s Rat Pfink a Boo Boo!), etc. As in the original film, he finds himself hypnotized by a fortune teller and driven to murder. Briefly we see zombies. All of this is heavily padded with scenes from the 1964 film, which underline how completely Steckler’s craftsmanship deteriorated when his early cinematographers Vilmos Zsigmond, Laszlo Kovacs, and Joseph V. Mascelli left him in the dust.

‘One More Time takes a meta turn in its last act. We see Steckler as himself interviewing potential cast members for an Incredibly Strange People sequel. Then we see Steckler at his Las Vegas video store being told that, while Incredibly Strange People is a beloved classic, nobody is willing to finance a sequel. However, Steckler’s business partner tells him, “You’ll get it done. You always do.” Steckler decides to try to win the budget at the slot machines, and the film climaxes with home movie footage of the Steckler family having fun at a Vegas casino.’ — Will Sloan

the entirety

 

 

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p.s. Hey. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. The ‘Sark Matter’ link didn’t work. And I have a no Jordan Peterson policy so the second link was like a shuttered dark ride. ** Ian, Hey, Ian! No, the dark ride is a staple here in Europe. There are these mobile fun fairs — ‘fete forains’ as they’re called in France — that travel all over the country during the year, going from town to town, and they always have a dark ride, usually one quite elderly and barely refurbished over time. I’m happy that dadhood is sitting well with you. That was/is a cool find, that antho. I’ll try to search it out. Enjoy Roxy, natch. Oh, and I’ll be writing to you about you-know-what very shortly. Have a great one. ** Jack Skelley, I … don’t think you’ve used that one before, JackforkFestival! Ah, POP, my lost great love. It had a dark ride that was in the form of a fake mountain where you rode a train through caves and a tropical forest, I think, and there was scary stuff, I can’t remember what. It was lovely. I think all the other dark attractions there were walkthroughs. Sweet re: the tons to be caught up on. And, yes, Sabrina in the hood! And I will see you ‘with bells on’ tonight/this morning! ** Dominik, Oh, yeah, dogs like food too. But I always feel like dogs like other things too whereas I always feel like pigeons only like food. Me too, I’ve been a freelancer my whole life. With lots of stress but no regrets. Excellent that you have that current reliable and money-forking job. Hope they continue to value you highly. Wow, tough choice! I think I might pick ‘The Witches Forest’ just because it’s completely mysterious and has such a nice facade. And in working order, I think. And you? Love going back in time and forcing James Cameron to make the new ‘Avatar’ movie on a $50,000 budget, G. ** Steve Erickson, I like your script idea, natch. So how would said supernatural force taking over manifest itself visually in said film? Oh, yes, I liked your black hole derived music piece a lot. I think I forget to follow up on my listening experiences re: you and yours too often. The conceit is that home haunt in our film isn’t scary enough. It wants to be, and it tries on a homemade/household budget, but it isn’t. So it’s not extreme, for sure. It inspires an extreme act, but it itself is a charming disappointment. ** _Black_Acrylic, I so agree! Wow, maybe there are those recordings somewhere. I’m going to search. Happy about the progress on your flat, and I hope whatever butts are kicked that need to be kicked to get you over that welcome mat pronto-ish. ** Sypha, Oh, huh, about the date thing. I don’t remember where I found that one. I actually like ‘Cometh Darkness’ better but both titles are fine. Air quotes: I always forget to use them too. They’re so much better than emojis. ** T, T! Buddy boy! You have returned from the everything that seemed like nothingness from the blog’s point of view! We didn’t get the funding we wanted, but we got just enough to barely be able to make the film, and we’re going to, yes! You’re back next week! Yes, definitely hit me up when you set down and are ready for company. It’ll be great to see you! Lots of catch up on, no doubt! I’ll take that weekend you wished for. I don’t know why, but it sounds like perfection. Maybe because I’m going to Disneyland on Monday and I’m feeling impatient. May every cup of coffee you drink this weekend taste deliciously atonal. ** Right. I’m pretty sure that the great Dennis Dermody did something about Ray Dennis Steckler on his great site Original Cinemaniac which then influenced my decision to do a Day about this wacky filmmaking motherfucker. See you on Monday.