NEW YORK - R.I.P R.D.S.

“The world is here to be enjoyed, not to make you depressed.”

He made fantastically crappy movies for lunch money and they became cult favorites and Mystery Science Theater 3000 mainstays and as of today he’s dead. But please don’t remember Ray Dennis Steckler as just another Ed Wood. “If somebody comes up to me and says ‘You remind me of something,’ they’re on my shitlist.” Steckler never gave two shits about UFOs or vampires, and, he would never be caught dead dressed in angora and a woman’s brasierre. Steckler was a man’s man, and he died wearing pants.

Ray Dennis Steckler started his career in Hollywood as a card-carrying union technician working at Universal and other major studios until he had the bad luck of knocking over an A-frame that nearly collided with Alfred Hitchcock’s much-storied head, potentially depriving cinema of such late masterpieces as Frenzy and Family Plot. After his near-snuff of Hitch, Steckler turned to the low-budget world of Hollywood’s poverty row for work and never looked back. He made his directorial debut with Wild Guitar, a film as unwatchable as its title is magnificent. As of now, there are no garage rock bands that I can find that have swiped this title for a name, but give those kids a week.

Steckler hit his stride in the 60s with a series of oddball horror and sci-fi flicks distinguished by their low budgets, dadaesque visuals, outrageous plots (or lack thereof), and sporadic musical numbers. Even more importantly, they all had impeccable titles. The Incredible Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living And Became Mixed Up Zombies landed with a tremendous thud on the drive in circuit-in 1963 and notably featured camerawork by future Oscar winners Laszlo Kovacs and Vilmos Zsigmond. Billed as the first-ever “monster musical”, this is the film for which Ray Dennis Steckler is mostly fondly remembered, owing to a heady mix of scantily clad dancing girls, kooky musical numbers with songs like “Chooga Chooga,” gallons of creatively applied greasepaint, and a few dime-store monster masks. Steckler not only wrote, directed, photographed, and produced Incredibly Strange Creatures, he also starred under the pseudonym Cash Flagg (another great name!) as Jerry, a hapless beatnik who sets the film’s story into motion when a strange visit to a boardwalk psychic turns the unlucky hepcat into an incredibly mixed-up zombie, man.

The trailer for Incredibly Strange Creatures.

Lester Bangs lovingly wrote that “like Beyond The Valley of the Dolls and a very few others, [Incredibly Strange Creatures] will remain as an artifact in years to come which scholars and searchers for truth can turn to and say, ‘This was trash!’" And what trash it is! Roundly ignored by everyone except Lester Bangs, Jim Goad, and the usual assortment of film geeks and scumsuckers who worship at the altar of crap, Incredibly Strange Creatures finally ascended to cult immortality in 1997, when it was featured as an installment of Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Steckler aficionados, however, will make a case for his 1965 film Rat Pfink a Boo Boo, as his greatest achievement. Another ersatz rock musical which follows the two eponymous superheroes, Rat Pfink and Boo Boo, on a adventure that is kind of like an episode of the old Batman TV show, except weirder, cheaper, and dreadfully paced. Honestly, I have never been drunk enough to find it likeable, but for the sake this tribute, Rat Pfink must be highlighted as one of Steckler’s most beloved films and most critical to his reputation as a filmmaker. If Incredibly Strange Creatures is Steckler’s Citizen Kane, then Rat Pfink is his Magnificent Ambersons: the favorite of the hard-core fan, the underappreciated masterpiece. But consider this: Rat Pfink enjoyed a proper DVD release in Scheckler’s lifetime while Ambersons still exists only in moldering old VHS dubs sold by some dickhead on eBay for $30 a crack. It’s tempting to imagine Ray and Orson hanging out on a cloud, lamenting low-budgets, two-faced distributors, and cheapshit investors while blowing cigar smoke into faces of cherubim.

Here is the only clip you ever need to see from Rat Pfink a Boo Boo.

Though he is dead, Steckler isn’t through with us yet. Like Stanley Kubrick before him, Steckler died putting the finishing touches on his final opus. One More Time, a long-awaited sequel to Incredibly Strange Creatures, 45 years in the making, will be released on DVD this June. Industry sources tell us it was made for a mere $3,800, or one tenth of the money spent on the first installment. But I bet it’s ten times as good!

Have fun in heaven, Steckler.

MATTHEW CARON

Comments

[the egg man]

if john waters had some of this inversed sense of talent in his early days, maybe pink flamingos would have actually been good and not just shocking and vulgar.

[larry storch]

Man he looks like Nicholas Cage in that picture.

[monday monday]

Not many people are aware of the sequel, The Incredible Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living And Became Mixed Up Zombies That Went To Salem, Oregon (Yeah, We Know You Think It Should Be Massachusetts, But This Is A West Coast Thang) And Opened A Gluten-Free, Organic Muffin Shop And Lived In A Cabin On The Outskirts Of Town.

[a baldwin brother]

nick cage/rocky dennis/john kerry mash-up in that picture

[oliver]

yes, he looks like nic cage, but he also looks like someone stretched out the middle part of his face. this isn't a dig, just an observation.