Exploitation Nation

Yep, We’ve lost ANOTHER one folks. The last few months have been really bad for losing legends in this business. Rudy Ray Moore, Bettie Page, Bill Landis, and now the unforgettable Ray Dennis Steckler. He passed away on January 7, 2009 at the age of 70 after a long battle with heart problems. He had been in and out of the hospital for several days and finally passed away in his sleep.

Steckler is much loved in the cult film community for his off kilter and totally unique independent films that burned up drive in screens beginning in the 60’s. He began working with Fairaway Films, the company owned by Arch Hall Sr. that generally were a vehicle for his son Arch Hall Jr. that made teen films for the drive in market. Steckler’s first gig was assistant cameraman to the great Vilmos Zsigmond on the now classic caveman extravaganza Eegah!!! starring Richard  Keel and Arch Hall Jr. After the success of that flick Steckler was bumped up to director for his first film, also an Arch Hall Jr. vehicle called Wild Guitar, a gritty indictment of the music business. Steckler also starred in the film as the main heavy under his pseudonym “Cash Flagg“.

Soon Ray Dennis Steckler was to branch out on his own and make the movie that would make hims famous. The world’s first horror, monster musical, featuring a lovely leggy woman who would become his wife for a number years named Carolyn Brandt. The film was called The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed Up Zombies. Easily one of the best exploitation titles in the history of cinema, though the workers at theaters who had to do the marquees hated Steckler for it. This was also the first film where Steckler started using gimmicks to promote his flicks. For this one he promoted that the movie was in “monster-vision” and would have people dressed as the ghouls in the film run into the audiences and drive-ins of certain cities to scare the pants off the patrons. It worked. The movie, though never huge, was a moderate success and claimed a place in the exploitation pantheon.

His next film showed that he could be a serious filmmaker as well. Mixed Up Zombies, is more of a lark, fun, goofy and totally off the wall. But The Thrill Killers is something else entirely. Gritty, spare, mean spirited and actually suspenseful, it is the movie most people point to as being Steckler’s masterpiece. Shot in black and White it evokes the best elements of Film Noir and the writings of Jim Thompson. Once again it features Carolyn Brandt and Cash Flagg in the lead roles establishing them as his main repoirtory actors. This was also successful on the drive in circuit.

Steckler branched out on hs next film. Actually a series of shorts collected into one film called The Lemon Grove Kids Meet The Monsters. A love letter to the East Side Kids films of the 30’s these are sweet natured, fun throwbacks to a time gone by. There is nothing scary, no violence, just lots of shenanigans and goofiness that the whole family can enjoy.

For the next film he started out with a return to the mood of The Thrill Killers. A mean and violent kidnap drama about a woman who is nabbed by some thugs and her boyfriend and buddy who have to get her back before she’s done for. But as Steckler puts it. He got bored halfway through shooting and wanted to do something else. So the story changed completely and suddenly the boyfriend and his buddy became Rat PFink A Boo Boo (the typesetter on the titles forgot the rest of the word “and” and Ray couldn’t afford to get them redone, so the title is now and forever Rat PFink A Boo Boo costumed Superhero’s with no real super powers who ride around on a motorcycle yelling “Fight Crime!“. There’s lots of backyard rockabilly music and witty dialogue such as an early exchange between the heroes: Boo Boo- “What’s our only weakness Rat Fink?” Rat PFink- “Hmmm. Bullets!” The Final movie is a weirdo treat with the first half being a taut thriller and then the heroes go into a closet about midway through and come out as the superheroes and it becomes a different movie altogether! This film is probably the one that best shows why people love Steckler and his work, as it is cinema at its most free and nonjudgmental. It is story tellinig kind of like those Choose your Own Adventure books we read as kids. Totally charming and irresistible.

I don’t know if it was for financial reasons or what but for Steckler’s next film he dipped his feet into the murky water’s of the sexploitation arena. In 1969 this was still softcore but is still quite a jump from Rat PFink A Boo Boo to Sinthia the Devil’s Doll. The weird thing is that Sinthia is almost an art film. It delivers what it promises in the area of sloppy softcore sex, much of it incest based with the teenage Sinthia wanting to bop her daddy. But the direction on the film is filled with heavy saturated colors, gelled lighting and weirdo filters. I would almost swear the movie was a homage to Kenneth Anger’s work at times, as obsessed as it is with color, framing and occult themes. So even though it is Steckler’s entry into the netherworld of sex film, it is in some ways one of his most interesting pictures too.
Body Fever was next, which was Steckler’s all and all out Film Nior. Having not seen this one, I really can’t comment on it too much. I have it on my shelf and need to visit with it. It looks interesting to say the least.

Then Steckler jumped into the pornography game with both feet with back to back hardcore pictures, both with horror overtones. Mad Love Life of a Hot Vampire  and The Horny Vampire (both 1971) were his introduction to the pure smut world. I have not seen Mad Love Life, But The Horny Vampire is very silly stuff, spending more time with the title role played by Vincent Alexander (the Sheik from Ilsa harem keeper Of the Oil Sheiks) running around Las Vegas trying to get laid. It’s a fish out of water comedy story that has hardcore sex every few minutes. It is pretty clear that Steckler is more interested in the goofy comedy than the sex scenes. Both films are directed under his non de plume Sven Christian.

Later that year he bounced back with the movie that is my favorite of his films, though many of his fans hate it. The incomparable Blood Shack also known as The Chooper. Easily his most bizarre movie to date, it tells the tale of a washed up actress, played by Carolyn Brandt who inherits a dessert property. But on this property an deadly spirit called The Chooper has been murdering people for years (only the white trash handyman/groundskeeper is ever left alive, and the two little kids from the neighboring house played by Steckler and Brandt’s daughters). The movie is moody as hell, with a windswept landscape that is hypnotizing. The music is awesome, and even though the acting is all over the place, there is something about it that suckers me in every time. Add to this the fact that this was shot just after Steckler and Brandt had gotten a divorce and there is an air of melancholy and sadness that permeates every frame. The camera looks at her from afar, watching her as if for the last time. The kids are a hoot too. The scene where they describe how The Chooper will kill you and eat you up is pretty hilarious and good acting for kids that couldn’t be older that four or five. This is the steckler movie I can watch anytime.

After Blood Shack he delved into the murky world of pornography pretty much full time. Using various pseudonyms such as Sven Christian, or Cindy Lou Strutters, he made well over a dozen hardcore films over the next decade or so. Most of them have the oddball qaulity that mark them instantly as a Ray Dennis Steckler film as per usual the content around the sex seems to have more weight than the sex scenes themselves. Take for example one Perverted Passion about a disgusting Peeping Tom who goes around watching people have sex, when he isn’t going to hookers himself and strangling them. There’s a side story about a guy on a motorcycle ripping people off too. Really far too much plot for a hardcore film, and the sex scenes involving the peeping tom and gross as the guy is fat, disgusting and has the smallest dick in the history of porn cinema. But the movie around all that is pretty engrossing and weird as hell. Typical of Steckler, he would mine the footage from this film and several other of his hardcore features and re-cut them into short non-hardcore movies that would be used as extra’s on his DVD’s years later.

In 1979 he would finally get out of the porno gutter and direct another thriller called The Hollywood Strangler Meets the Skid Row Slasher. Shot for literally peanuts (probably his lowest budget legit movie) and starring his Ex-wife Carolyn Brandt once again this told the story of two serial killers at work, one a woman and one a dude and how they would eventually have to meet. Shot completely MOS meaning without sync sound, this was elemental filmmaking at its most base. But it had a little bit of gore and did well on video a few years later.

Steckler went back to the porno world and did some more movies such as Debbie Does Las Vegas. He came topside once again in 1986 with Las Vegas Serial Killer a movie he wa shooting when a British television crew decided to devote an episode to him. That Show was The Incredibly Strange Film Show (I geuss they really liked Steckler) hosted by one Johnathan Ross. This show aired on The Discovery channel a few years later in the United States and opened the flood gates for cult cinema for many people. Their episode on Steckler is particularly entertaining as they go behind the scenes on Las Vegas Serial Killer even giving Johnathan Ross a cameo where he gets robbed.

After this Steckler opened his own video store in Las Vegas and worked that successfully for man years. He retained the copyrights to his films and leased them where there was interest. Most recently Media Blasters put out deluxe special editions of pretty much all his classics with commentaries, interviews and shorts. They are most have discs and are now available in box sets simply called “Midnight Movies I & II” The first couple of films have the original cover art, but then from Blood Shack on they went with horrible Ward Bolt photography cover art that sucks balls. Which is my only complaint with the discs.

Steckler continued to make films up until his death. When he died he was working on two films, something called “One More Time” and ” Incredibly Strange Creatures 2” .

Ray Dennis Steckler was a true maverick filmmaker, who did everything on his own, by his own terms. No one stood in his way or told him what to do. His films are unique, fun, honest and all around entertaining movies that are unlike anyone else’s. But even more importantly by all accounts he was a kind man, whom everyone seemed to like and respect. I’ve never heard a bad word or story about Ray Dennis Steckler. Plus he was the pioneer of independent cinema, he was out there doing it when most of the others who broke out in the seventies where sitting in the their own poop. He deserves a special place in the Hollywood pantheon.

Here is a link to an article on Fangoria’s website by Tom Weaver where Arch hall Jr. talks about his friend and working with him. As well as the last few days they spent together. It is very touching.

We’ll miss you Ray. You were something else.

Andy Copp
2009-01-10
17:19:35

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