Occupation (Australia 2018: Dir Luke Sparke)

A rather bizarre and very busy - but not unenjoyable - Australian mashup of Independence Day and 1980s TV show V via Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of War of the Worlds, Occupation often feels like a mini series squashed into a single 2-hour episode.

In a classic disaster movie setup - following a voice over which suggests that an alien invasion might be useful to focus the planet away from its current pre-occupations - a random group of townsfolk in a small Australian town are introduced, their squabbles and antipathies rather paling into insignificance when an alien force first launches weapons, then a humongous hive ship, onto the community with devastating results. The remaining survivors are thrown together post attack, and Occupation details their lives and struggles, and the impact on family and community as a result of the invasion.

There’s no doubting the quality of director Sparke’s directorial vision; Occupation looks sumptuous and its effects work is extremely effective given the obvious budgetary limitations. But it’s not without issues - principally the idea of conveying the concept of a global alien assault feeling rather a stretch given the limited scope of the film’s geographical realm.

The first section of the film feels like Red Dawn territory, where the put-upon townsfolk decide to take arms against their sea of troubles and best the visiting aliens, tooling themselves up and basically being mad as hell and not taking it any more. The characters are much you’d expect from this sort of thing - pregnant woman, curmudgeonly guy, lantern jawed football player with undisclosed health problems – and it’s well signposted that their issues will feature as plot points later in the film.

One of the impressive effects sequences in Occupation

After a span of several months we learn that a kind of detente has been reached between the occupying forces and the Islanders, watched over by a huge alien ship, reminiscent of District 9. Much of the drama of the middle section is achieved by the cast struggling to live under alien rule and contain the more renegade factions who wish to take direct action. This becomes slightly unbelievable in the later stages of the film. Basically the aliens have visited earth because they have used up their resources and now want ours, and the weight of the firepower on display baffles as to why they didn’t just clear the planet of humans in the first place. The extended lead up to the final battle does at least allow some nuances of plot, particularly in one of the cast witnessing the frailty of the alien invaders and their need to support each other – knowledge which isn’t used against the occupiers in the last slug out.

Content wise the whole thing feels very PG-13 in tone. Swearing is a no-no – one character actually says “crap or get off the pot!” at one point – and the violence, although present, is rather muted, which reduces the ability for the audience to hiss the bad guys and their brutality. But this is a movie which is most impressive when the effects let rip and the gung ho action gets going. It's also one that relishes its patriotic touches, although it’s quite odd to see an Australian flag hoisted where one is used to the ‘Stars and Stripes’.

Occupation is released on DVD, Blu-ray and digital download from 21st January 2019 by Altitude Film Entertainment.

Supermarket Sweep #5 Christmas Special! Reviews of The Christmas Devil (USA 2016), Evil Elves (USA 2018), Mercy Christmas (USA 2017), 12 Deaths of Christmas (UK 2017) and Mother Krampus (USA 2018)

Supermarket Sweep returns for a holiday special! Expect Krampuses (Krampi?), dodgy looking Father Christmases, scared teens and...oh, let's just get on with it.

The Christmas Devil (USA 2016; Dir Jason Hull) Oh no wonder I was confused. This 2017 movie, packaged as a stand alone piece, is in reality the 2016 Krampus: The Devil Returns, a sequel to Hull's 2013 dud Krampus: The Christmas Devil. So let's do some catch up. In the first movie, a 1983 prologue sees little Jeremy abducted by a shabby looking Father Christmas character who singles out naughty girls and boys and carries them off into the snowy woods of Pennsylvania. Little Jeremy grows up to be an all round family man and cop, now investigating a fresh rash of abducted kids in his home town, and assembling a posse of mates to carry out a Santa hunt. Turns out that it's the actual Santa Claus doing the abducting, or more accurately his brother Krampus, giving a more literal twist to the old cliche of the twice checked naughty and nice list.

Crummy as that film was, it's a beacon of excellence compared to the sequel. Jeremy (A.J. Leslie from the first movie) is now living as a recluse, traumatised by the abduction of his wife and daughter at the end of the first film, and called upon by cop Dave to help investigate another batch of kiddie abductions. Paul Ferm returns as Santa Claus, and his brother Krampus has also made a comeback, although this time his head is more visible, looking like an angrier Ernest Borgnine at the end of The Devil's Rain. There's a subplot involving an evil mutha whose brother was shot by Jeremy and who wants payback, a storyline which serves only to get Jeremy in front of the megalomaniac Santa ("You mortals make up fairy tales about me to justify your own miserable existence. I have no measure of my actions. I'm a fucking god!"). Director Hull, who handled cinematography and editing duties himself on the first film, has ceded his position to several assistants for the sequel - with fairly inept results. Sound editing is all over the place and scenes are cut clumsily together, not helped by a soundtrack of mangled Yuletide favourites played on a tinny synthesiser. This is basically a stinker of a movie only leavened by some lovely snowy Pasadena locations. Be warned: a rather existential ending sadly paves the way for a third excruciating chapter.

Evil Elves (USA 2018: Dir Jamaal Burden) A director has to be extremely brave or extremely foolish to start their movie with a longish sequence featuring two young actors with no thespian skills whatsoever. But first time director Jamaal Burden - who in the credits offers the words "Through God all things are possible" (which presumably includes getting the funding to make this atrocity) - is clearly not alive to considerations facing 'regular' filmmakers.

"This sounds like that movie Truth or Dare, except with Snapchat filters" helpfully but inanely explains one of the characters (they have names but you don't need to know them) which is arguably a more accurate summary of this inexplicably awful movie than I could ever offer, a film which is apparently a sequel to a 2017 offering called The Elf.

Elves (it's Evil Elves on the DVD cover but just Elves in the title) starts off with a group of kids getting involved in supposed Truth or Dare style game that goes wrong when it turns out that the 'naughty list' they've each written up is being used  to - psychically - take out the friends one at a time, based on their transgressions, with the perpetrators' faces warping (with the aid of said facial filter). Somehow by about the hour mark this has become a story about elves being present at the birth of Christ and a link to the seven deadly sins. Seriously I have no idea what any of this was about. "The elf. It's cursed, or not from this realm," explains another of the characters equally unhelpfully, particularly as at the mid point the killings are carried out not by a person of restricted height wearing a cap, but a bloke wearing a Krampus mask.

Delights in this movie include: scenes where snowfall is clearly sprayed foam (at one point you can clearly see a big blob attached to the head of one of the actors); a grown man killed by Christmas tree lights; an extended scene where another character is menaced by rolling tree baubles; and someone else is clubbed to death with a three foot spindly Christmas tree. All of this cobblers is 'enhanced' by a totally over the top score by Sena Park and Julian Beeston, desperately trying to make it sound like something terrifying is happening. If indeed through God all things are possible, we must pray that this man never makes another film again.

Mercy Christmas (USA 2017: Dir Ryan Nelson) Michael Briskett is an awkward, overweight and decidedly put upon statistical analyst, who wears a Christmas jumper to his own party and papers his front door with seasonal wrapping. But when his boss Andy asks him to work over Christmas, for Michael it looks like the holidays are cancelled. Luckily things get a bit brighter when the boss's beautiful assistant Cindy takes a shine to him, and before you know it she's invited him to spend Christmas with her folks the Roubillards, and bring his work with him. Smell a rat? Uh huh; when Cindy's dad tells Michael that he'd love to have the geeky chap for dinner, and there's suspiciously human looking ribs on the menu, it can only mean one thing. Briskett by name, brisket by...menu option. And when Michael's boss turns out to be a member of the same family, not only is the analyst scheduled for the main course, but he's forced to finish a pile of paperwork first!

Nelson's seasonal comedy horror is surprisingly good, well scripted, often very funny and stuffed with old school gore effects. Most of the movie sees Michael trying to escape from the family that slays together, after discovering that the basement is full of other people who have been similarly captured. There's a great ongoing gag where, trussed up with Christmas lights, Michael is gently electrocuted by Andy as an inducement to carry on working; also a prolonged escape scene, with Michael tied to another (legless) captive, is both inventive and very funny.

Newcomer Steven Hubbell is excellent as Briskett, the most surprising action hero that the Christmas movie has ever seen. Casey O'Keefe is also excellent as the sweet by deadly Cindy, and the rest of the Roubillards provide solid support, taking sideswipes at the archetype of the churchgoing double standard Republican family. A big surprise, even more so considering this is Ryan Nelson's feature debut.

12 Deaths of Christmas (UK 2017: Dir James Klass) Ok so this movie, directed by Klass the same year he made The House on Elm Lake - with which it shares some of the same actors and its waterside location - is also known as 'Mother Krampus.' This is pretty confusing as the creature in this film, although female, is in no way connected with the Krampus legend. But it does have a titular link to our next film - of which more later.

Vanessa (Claire-Maria Fox from Scarecrow Rising) takes her daughter Amy (Faye Goodwin) to stay at her father Alfie's place for Christmas. Vanessa has recently separated from her partner Wildon (Tom Bowen) who has run off with a younger woman, Debbie (Dottie James). As if all this family strife wasn't enough to endanger the happiness of the holiday period (and with the prospect of Wildon and Debbie joining the merry throng, secretly invited by Amy), Vanessa's dad is protecting his family from a big secret: back in 1992 he and a group of townsfolk killed a woman, Molly, who had been suspected of abducting and killing kids in the neighbourhood, taking the law into their own hands. But at her death Molly cursed her killers that Frau Perchta, the Christmas witch (a real folk tale, fact fans), would return and avenge her death. And now just as the family arrive at Alfie's, he must reconvene with the original townsfolk, to work out how to deal with a rash of new child abductions, and the presence of a cowled demonic figure, who may well be Frau Perchta herself.

Confused? Yep, there's a lot going on in Klass's cheap, overambitious but very lively film. The director doesn't let little things like budget and quality acting get in the way of telling a story, but I have to cautiously commend him for this mish mash of It, A Nightmare on Elm Street and The Witch.

Whether you enjoy this film does involve a certain readjustment of what you you expect from a movie, but if you can see through the paucity of resources, 12 Deaths of Christmas is a rather inventive flick. Frau Perchta is way over used (and slightly too well fed to be an authentic witch), but the real standout is the profusion of gory scenes, which to be fair looked a little incongruous, and may only have only been mounted because someone on the FX team was good at synthetic innards creation. Honestly, I've not seen so many bargain basement disembowellings and entrail fondling (some of which are cooked and in one scene force fed to a victim) since Herschell Gordon Lewis's heyday. It was also impressive to see an ancient witch operating a modern oven and electric kitchen knife, but I'm probably being overly picky. If Klass's The House on Elm Lake was a bit of a drag, here he's tightened up the editing and while it's still a little overlong, it's never tedious. It's perhaps surprising that the story of a witch whose shtick was to disembowel her victims and replace their guts with rocks and straw (or Christmas lights in this case) hasn't been represented on screen as much as Krampus, as I for one would be quite happy to see the horned one rested a little in the movies.

Mother Krampus (USA 2018: Dir Eddie Lengyel) So 12 Deaths of Christmas's aka was also Mother Krampus, but here's a film that goes by the same name on the DVD cover, but also Lady Krampus. Oh hang on, its real title is Mother Krampus 2: Slay Ride. But apparently it's also previously been titled Naughty List and Slay Bells, but the movie itself is just plain old Mother Krampus 2, actually made in 2016. So that's me confused.

It doesn't really matter, as despite the snow on the ground and the occasional festive trappings, this isn't really a Christmas movie at all. Three girls, Athena, Victoria and Gracie, all reaching the end of their community service but far from reformed, are assigned to work in a homeless shelter and run home food deliveries for those in need. Arriving at the house of a seemingly kind old lady, Miss Smith, the trio are persuaded to carry out various chores. But what we know is that it isn't the old lady's house. Dressed in a mask and fright wig combo, she has entered the home, slaughtered the residents and assumed occupation. The trio are joined by another parolee, Candace (and her boyfriend Donnie, who's squirrelled out of sight), and later Paula, their Probation officer. Then Miss Smith proceeds to bump them off.

And that's pretty much it. Lengyel's previous movies (Scarred and Voodoo Rising, both from 2016 for example) have been have been fairly pedestrian backwoods set pieces, not without their indie charm but lacking in drama and overall watchability. Sadly Mother Krampus is no different, although it manages to tap into a sleazy mid 70s vibe, and while the death scenes are inept they are bloody. The director is to be congratulated on making a movie which is refreshingly plot free and concentrates on some characterisation, star of the piece being Roger Conners as drag queen Athena, never far away from a sharp put down, giving the movie a genuinely sleazy feel.

The House that Jack Built (Denmark/France/Germany/Sweden 2018: Dir Lars von Trier)

It starts with a conversation. A conversation between Jack (no surname) and Virge aka Virgil, author of 'The Aeniad.' Virgil is Jack's confessor, psychiatrist, and half of their talkative double act for the duration of Lars von Trier's latest cinematic polariser.

Jack (Matt Dillon) is a serial killer, who has murdered around 60 people, a mixture of men, women and children, although in The House that Jack Built he presents us with five 'randomly chosen' case studies mainly focusing on his female victims; the stories broadly echo the first five books of Virgil's major work, emitting a whiff of classicism which hangs around the whole movie. Jack is the wandering Aeneas of Virgil's epic poem, and Virgil (Bruno Ganz) the host and guide.

The case studies include Lady 1 (Uma Thurman), who Jack picks up at the roadside - her car has a flat tyre - and who gently needles him for a long time about whether he might be a killer and whether she is putting herself in danger travelling with him. Did she bring this on herself or is there a sense of the fates operating? Lady 2's story aligns with Book Two of The Aeniad - the Trojan Horse. The third episode features Sofie Gråbøl who it is assumed may have been a partner and with whom he was the father of two boys (although nothing should be judged at face value). The victim with whom he spends the longest time is Simple (Riley Keogh), a woman not given a 'Lady' label but a derogatory nickname; it's a terrible relationship, a depressingly ill (or perhaps un) matched power battle which allows Jack to unravel and possibly expose his true self for the first time - it also concludes shockingly.

This is the 'house' that Jack builds for himself, and as the film progresses over its 12 year span it's a building that threatens to crush him, hence the need to confess (although of course his confessor is as illusory as the classical muses which haunt his conscience).

Jack's testimony goes to great pains to inform the audience of the link between his 'work' and high art. Jack is an architect by trade, but he's also an engineer, although he feels that he was always destined for 'something greater' than both. It's a classical depiction of the serial killer; scenes from his childhood show the inevitable animal cruelty (don't worry - it's all done with edits and animatronics) and an obsession with the dark. The frequent references to troubled geniuses like Glenn Gould, William Blake and even Albert Speer illustrate his aspirations, although von Trier adds a full moon backdrop on one occasion to mark the 'constructedness' of his creation and, in a recurrent scene, has an insouciant Jack showing the audience a set of self describing cue cards, indebted to Bob Dylan's 'Subterranean Homesick Blues' promotional film.

While Jack is a man of some intelligence, and fits the profile of the psychopath by having an elevated view of his own talents, he's decidedly not a smooth talking killer. In reality he's a sweaty, OCD obsessed loner whose patter to gain entry to people's houses and lives is awkward and under-rehearsed, and whose fits of pique and operational slovenliness undermine his own perceptions of himself. The thin line between horror and humour is balanced perfectly here, although of course von Trier has to push that line a little further - a scene where he arranges his victims, preserved in his deep freeze, in tableaux mortes, and a long sequence where he temporarily disposes of a body while dealing with the police, are farcical and overblown.

And as with most serial killers, Jack's confidence is his undoing. He begins leaving photographs signed as 'Mr Sophistication,' baiting the police, Jack the Ripper style. And as his methods become sloppier, the cops eventually close the ring on his activities; Jack is going down. All the way down to Katarbasis - a literal descent to the underworld, prefaced by his appearance in a mock tableau of Eugène Delacroix's painting La Barque de Dante or 'Dante and Virgil in Hell.'

Lars von Trier is arguably the best Situationist director of his generation. He relishes the concept of 'play' and his films, as the critic Peter Bradhsaw put it in a review of 2011's Melancholia, demonstrate a genius "for making the audience's discomfiture part of the show itself." Of course von Trier is never far from the subjects of his films - he can be glimpsed as the disability faking Stoffer in 1998's The Idiots, switching his act on and off with practised immediacy, and the whole of Melancholia has been regarded as a response to his own bi-polarity. Jack's pleas for understanding in the face of his hideous track record ("Why is it always the man's fault?") could be von Trier's own - and the 'hand in gloveness' of Jack and the director reach their apotheosis where the director uses excerpts from his own movie back catalogue in the film to demonstrate...well, who knows?  It's a wild ride, that's for sure, and a decidedly unsavoury film, but I defy anyone to deny the craft and, yes, wit, on display in The House that Jack Built.

Supermarket Sweep #4 - Reviews of Curse of the Nun (USA 2018), The Legend of Halloween Jack (UK 2018), The Hatred (USA 2017), Tall Men (USA 2016), The Hybrid (UK 2014) and Scarecrow Rising (UK 2018)

More write ups of movies snatched (ok, ok bought) from UK supermarket shelves and reviewed for you, so in most cases you don't have to go anywhere near them.

Curse of the Nun (USA 2018: Dir Aaron Mirtes) I haven't seen Aaron Mirtes's previous feature Clowntergeist, but on the basis of this I'm inclined to check it out (hopefully it's still languishing on a supermarket shelf somewhere so I can include it in a future SS item).

On first appearances, Curse of the Nun feels like a rather cynical attempt to cash in on Corin Hardy's latest entry into The Conjuring 'universe' movies. At least there is a nun in this one - rather than, say, a film without a nun being repackaged with a new title (see SS reviews passim) - but within its financially strapped limits, this movie is rather interesting.

Anna (a very good performance from Lucy Hartselle) has come out of an abusive marriage and is rebuilding her life with new boyfriend Mike (Jonathan Everett) and daughter Claire (Kate Kilcoyne). They've been staying at Mike's aunt's house and are preparing to leave to set up in a new home. However, the current home has a resident ghost, that of sister Catherine, a nun who has been trapped in the house since death (which was previously a nunnery) and now needs to find a replacement, The Sentinel style, to allow her to ascend to heavenly rest. Of course we already know this courtesy of a prologue in which maintenance guy and part time paranormal investigator (the character is never really defined) KK (Brad Belemjian) gets trapped in the house, does battle with the nun and apparently meets his death. But when Anna is left on her own and the nun makes her appearance - with the clear intention of getting Anna to replace her - KK returns to help. Is he alive or dead? And is this all in Anna's head (she's had a history of drug abuse and mental instability)?

Stylistically very uneven - there are dashes of comedy which are quite unwelcome and the last half an hour is a muddled mess - and woefully cheap, I couldn't help but like this lively if bonkers movie, combining elements of the film from which it gets its name (the nun of the title is not badly rendered although as the whole thing takes place in daylight the effect is somewhat diluted), some neat little time loop tricks, an is-this-real-or-is-she-bonkers? plot and a lot of ambition. But a word to Aaron - if you want to suspend the viewers' disbelief, try not to have your crew reflected in shiny surfaces at least twice in the movie - you can get cheap software for that kind of thing, you know.

The Legend of Halloween Jack (UK 2018: Dir Andrew Jones) Ah, the movies of Andrew Jones. Director of eighteen features, his style has remained pretty much unchanged over the years: adopt an idea from an existing movie and turn it into a slightly different film  - The Amityville Asylum (2013), Poltergeist Activity (2015), The Curse of Robert the Doll (2016) for example; film it at home/at a mate's house/at the local village hall; keep it short (about 75 minutes should usually do it); and have it filled with reasonably talented actors sitting around talking for much of the film's running time. And hey presto, you have a movie. Or a lot of movies in Jones's case.

Jones' latest movie 'borrow' - or inspiration - is Dark Night of the Scarecrow (1981), which saw a wrongfully executed man, killed by a vigilante squad, returning from the grave to exact his revenge. So in this version, a killer, Kane, escapes imprisonment for murder on a technicality, and is set upon and done away with by a group including the family of the victims. But it turns out that Kane wasn't the killer, and so his spirit returns, inexplicably dressed up as a kind of scarecrow, to do away with them what did for him.

Jones has a habit of making his movies appear transatlantic, presumably to secure overseas sales. I really wish he wouldn't bother. The Legend of Halloween Jack is supposedly located in the US - there are references to 'Haddonfield' and 'Dunwich' as place names, and at least one of the actors attempts a US accent - oh and one of the families is called 'Tramer' - geddit? But unsurprisingly Jones is fooling no-one, and the rest of the cast's thinly disguised Welsh lilts are a bit of a giveaway; also if you want to convince audiences that this really is America, don't film one of your set pieces in the clearly labelled Pontlliw Vilage Hall.

Most of this is the director's business-as-usual approach. People sit around discussing the plot rather than it happening in front of us. To be fair this is one of Jones's slightly more lively features, and Welsh surf/Cramps band 'The Hangmen' turn up to deliver a few numbers at the Halloween hop, but generally the film is a low on gore, high on not much happening movie, and the use of public domain movie clips for no apparent reason is laughable. Honestly I don't know why Jones doesn't have the courage of his convictions, ditch all the references and make a straight up original film, as his go to cast aren't bad, and deserve more than this nonsense.

The Hatred (USA 2017: Dir Michael G. Keyhoe) In The Hatred's extended prologue, set in 1968, Samuel Sears is an ex member of the Third Reich (his real name is Siegfried) who has successfully hidden in plain sight, running a farm in rural America and subjecting his wife and daughter to strict rule. He receives a package through the post, direct from the Fuhrer, containing an Iron Cross style amulet, originally owned by the Knights Templar; the artefact is a storage vessel for pure evil and hate. He hides it in a hole in the wall of his barn, but not before the amulet exerts a satanic influence, causing Sears to murder his argumentative daughter Alice, only for his wife to murder him in return.

Cut to the present day and four women friends move into the same house, headed by Regan whose relatives have renovated it - or most of it; for some strange reason Alice's old room has been left untouched. Regan is here to babysit little moppet Irene,who seems to have developed a psychic connection with Sears's dead daughter. Pretty much as soon as the girls move in, tame spooky stuff begins to happen: shadowy figures are seen (unbeknownst to the mortal occupants); a hand shoots through a recently mouldy ceiling; rooms smell funny; and in one unintentionally funny scene, one character's phone sex session with her BF is interrupted by Nazi EVP - a real mood killer.

At the heart of all these supernatural shenanigans is the amulet, still embedded in the wall but working its mojo on the occupants of the house. But there's also the unquiet spirit of Alice, stalking the house and searching for...well I'm not sure exactly.

A prime example of PG horror so insipid as to be an insult to that rating, this does the usual first feature thing of cramming so many ideas into its 90 minute running time that none of them get any room to breathe or grow - it's like director Michael G Keyhoe realised he had only one opportunity to make a horror movie and threw it all in. The prologue is quite interesting, but falsely sets up the possibility that the movie might actually have a direction. The modern day elements are woeful, the build up of terror inept, and the four girls, Regan and her pals, are so much generic mall fodder whose valley speakisms and dreadfully delivered dialogue make their death scenes - all confusedly rendered by some weird editing - a blessed relief. Really really not good, and if you're interested the last shot suggests that the amulet is still in the wall, awaiting the next incumbents of the house. So now you're warned.

Tall Men (USA 2016: Dir Jonathan Holbrook) A salutary tale about the risks of overextending your credit, or a Lynchian parable of odd country folk and conspiracy theories? You choose, but this remake of Holbrook's debut movie, 2004's Customer 152, which I haven't seen (and nor have many by the paucity of coverage) looks like a thematic itch the director can't stop scratching. Clocking in a two hours and ten minutes, agreed it is way too long, but it's an idiosyncratic piece with some finesse that exceeds its micro budget.

Terence Mackleby (Bud Cort-alike Dan Crisafulli) is a man on the edge. Maxed out on his credit cards, he files for bankruptcy. But no sooner has he done this than he gets an invitation to sign up for a new credit company called The Card, which only charges 4% interest. A dream come true for the financially destitute young man, trouble comes after he buys a new car using the card, then subsequently loses his job (in a move which was clearly organised by shadowy figures behind the scenes at his employer). Mackleby's first statement shows that he owes the company over $30,000 dollars in his first month - turns out that the interest was a daily not monthly amount, plus 50% charge for each transaction. With Terence unable to pay, he receives a visit from three heavies (called Tic, Tac and Toe) who proceed to turn his life upside down in order to extract the outstanding monies, who may possibly be connected to the Babylonian Brotherhood, a race of shape shifting reptilians who transformed to humans around the time of Adam.

While considerably bloated running time wise, I quite liked this mix of the surreal, the comic and the horrifying (sometimes in the same scene); I think it's best read as a political polemic about the rise of the credit nation. "Aren't you just a bunch of loan sharks?" Terence questions as his fingers are being slowly broken by the debt collectors. "No, we're just hard working Republicans trying to make a difference," comes the reply. Not bad if you can stick with it, and full of lots of small imaginative touches, but would forty five minutes shorter really have hurt it?

The Hybrid aka Scintilla (UK 2014: Dir Billy O'Brien) Billy O'Brien is no stranger to bio horror. His 2005 feature debut, the gritty Isolation, dealt with the hideous results of experiments on cattle, set on a farm in Ireland. Nine years later he would return to the theme in the future thriller Scintilla, somewhat confusingly re-packaged this year as The Hybrid.

Powell (John Lynch) is sprung from a decidedly grotty jail (and the torturer's pincers) to form part of an extraction team; their goal is an underground facility in a civil war torn region of Russia, their mission the identification and removal of a scientist to a safe place. So far so Escape from New York, and the band of assembled mercenaries are authentically scuffed up. Once they have accessed the facility they witness the object of the experimentation - humans genetically spliced with alien DNA recovered from an ancient asteroid; named the Scintilla Project. Two specimens of the experiment, a young hybrid boy and girl - Goethe and Ali - who because of the injection of the DNA have attained full growth at the age of 5, are the focus of the scientist's work. They have advanced capabilities, including telekinesis and heightened vision because of compound eyes. One of the team is injected with the serum and mutates, while Goethe, driven into a rage because Ali is mercy killed by one of the soldiers, goes on the rampage.

The Hybrid is basically a sci fi exploitationer featuring the old B movie standby of people walking along corridors. What makes the movie more watchable than the average is the detail in the setting - although it was filmed in the north of England, it all looks authentically eastern bloc - and the bio stuff, like his work in Isolation, is rather nasty and quite plausible. Sadly the ending is a let down - nobody should end a film with a close up of a man eating a sandwich - but this is a strong UK science fiction film and well worth checking out.

Scarecrow Rising aka Bride of Scarecrow (UK 2018: Dir Louisa Warren) Honestly you wait years and then two killer scarecrow movies come along at once. I may have been fairly cruel about Andrew Jones's The Legend of Halloween Jack earlier on this page, but honestly Andrew, come back!

This monstrosity of a film opens with a very long written intro which witters on about the legend of the scarecrow and the abuse of justice back in 1910 that ended up with a farmer being crucified and his soon to be wife executed on trumped up charges of stealing, and the wronged man coming back from the grave for 48 hours every now and then, hunting for his lost bride to be, dressed as a scarecrow. Don't worry if you don't pick up all the details the first time round, the facts are repeated pretty frequently right through this turgid nonsense.

Amy Winhouse lookielikie May Sealey (Claire-Maria Fox), fed up with her work on a radio station, presenting a show called 'May the Dead Rest' (geddit?), gets a call out of the blue leaving her a country house in a distant relative's will. May and her boyfriend Darren, plus friends Anya and Chris, pack their things and go to stay in the house, which of course is the same place where the murdered farmer lived and where various unexplained murders have happened in the intervening years. What follows is an exercise in tedium as people get bumped off and May realises that her family connections have singled her out for attention by the ghost scarecrow. The same scarecrow seen leaning up against the wall in the stables or hanging on a post in the grounds then. While it's good to see women making genre films (Warren has made another scarecrow movie, Curse of the Scarecrow, this year too) this is just leaden cobblers.

The Facebook Reviews! Part 3.

A round up of various reviews which have made it to my Facebook page, reproduced here for your endless delight.

The Bermuda Triangle (Mexico 1978: Dir Rene Cardona Jr) "Bermuda triangle, can you see it from my angle?" famously sang Barry Manilow, two years too late to feature on the soundtrack to Rene Cardona Jr's 1978 take on one of the great mysteries of the seventies. And loathsome though Baz's tune is, it would have perked up this pedestrian horror/fantasy/adventure minimum opus no end. A ship cruises into the Triangle region full of the type of characters found in disaster movies - washed up drunk ex surgeon, gruff captain, superstitious crew member, annoying kid, simpering mother etc - and the recovery of an antique doll from the sea which turns out to have supernatural powers presages a series of turbulent events affecting all those on board.Yes, Cardona's found the secret behind all the missing planes and ships lost within those mysterious waters; it's a doll.

The toy is adopted by annoying kid Diane, who starts going a bit Regan MacNeil and (accurately) predicting the cast's impending deaths, starting with Simon, the black cook who seems to be in the movie for comedy value - you know, like they did back in the 1930s. There's a lot of quite nicely done underwater footage which is pretty to look at but slows the film down; on board most of the action seems to take place around some strategically placed rattan chairs. I say 'action' but this is a Rene Cardona film, don't forget.

Cardona was no stranger to exploitation, a talent inherited from his dad, but Jr had a slightly softer edge to papa's more lurid offerings like Night of the Bloody Apes (1969) and Survive! (1975). A year earlier he'd made Jaws ripoff Tintorera! and this film is less horror than a kind of micro budget at sea disaster movie with spooky elements. Like many films from the same decade, it ends on a rather ambiguous note, and perhaps somewhat distastefully with a list of the actual vessels that have gone missing in the area. Oh and he's rather cheekily nicked bits of Bebe and Louis Barron's soundtrack to Forbidden Planet for the weird scenes. I hope he asked permission.

Freak Show (USA 2017: Dir Trudi Styler) Apparently Styler stepped in to helm Freak Show - she was already one of its producers - when the original director bowed out at the last minute (although I rather fear that Ms T barged her way to the front). This is Styler's first feature and boy does it show. I shouldn't perhaps be too hard on her but this is an often botched opportunity to tell the story of a young guy who doesn't as much come out in high school as arrive fully out and then get progressively more outrageous. Twenty two year old British born actor Alex (Ghost Stories, The Imitation Game) Lawther is a revelation as the complex Billy Bloom, who takes on his high school's strict (and straight) codes as he vies to run for homecoming queen. 

Kudos for failing to conform to standard teen movie feelgood moments (and for setting the film in a rather timeless John Hughes high school set up playing against the expectations of that kind of movie), but the film's humour generally falls flat, and Bloom's homecoming appearance fails to hit the mark as a set piece, despite its over the topness. Some of the supporting cast are also pretty poor (my guessing is that Styler isn't an actor's director) and without Lawther's assured but vulnerable performance, this would be a damper squib than it actually is.

The Fields (USA 2011: Dir Tom Mattera, David Mazzioni) Mattera and Mazzioni’s previous directing credit was the Lynchian but rather directionless The 4^th Dimension back in 2006. The Fields has a great sense of scene - rural US in the early 1970s with a backdrop of the Charles Manson murders. It's a 'true' story in that it describes the writer's experiences growing up in a dysfunctional, possibly psychotic extended family who in turn live next door to some hippies who may be leftovers from the original Manson 'family'.

The child's POV makes the events feel very fractured and confused, which doesn't lend itself to easy or satisfying viewing. It's a frustrating watch - not helped by having visual trappings of horror without being a 'horror' film per se - but it does leave the viewer with a distinct sense of unease long after the film has finished, helped by the nightly newscasts offering reportage style accounts of the Manson murders. An atmospheric but by no means an essential film with some good underplaying by quality actors.

The Fall of the House of Usher (France 1928: Dir Jean Epstein) I had resisted seeing this film up to now - original title 'La Chute de la maison Usher' - because the only easily available sources were murky pixellated 'public domain' copies. Last night's screening of a restored 35 mm print at the NFT (courtesy of the Cinematheque royale de Belgique) was an opportunity to see Epstein's breathtaking movie on the big screen, complete with versatile musical accompaniment - and occasional moaning - from the BFI's own pianist-in-residence Stephen Horne.

Filmed in the last year before sound would replace silence in cinema (although purists would be right to point out that silent movies were never truly 'silent', as they were very often accompanied by music and indeed sound effects) Epstein's film uses fluid camerawork and surreal touches (an early signature of assistant director Luis Bunuel) to fashion a story which retains only traces of Poe's source text but captures the author's melancholic state better than pretty much every other screen adaptation of his work.

Epstein reduces the story's characters to Roderick Usher (Jean Debucourt), his wife Madeleine (Marguerite Gance, Abel Napoleon Gance's first wife), visitor Allan (Charles Gamy) and a doctor (Fournez-Goffard). Usher is possessed by the need to complete a painting of Madeleine, and as it comes to life (literally a breathing, blinking portrait), his wife fades, becoming incorporeal, eventually falling into a death state. But once interred in the family vault, Usher is panicked by the idea that he may have buried her alive. All this takes place in a single set designed by Pierre Kefer, which is so expansive and desolate that Tod Browning must have been taking notes, so much does it resemble the Count's Transylvanian home in his 1931 movie Dracula - and indeed Perry Ferguson's great hall at Xanadu for Orson Welles' Citizen Kane (1941). Epstein throws in some seemingly random Poe references - a black cat is seen and a family tomb is inscribed 'Ligeia' - but this is a muse on the themes of Poe's work rather than a direct adaptation, and as such is incredibly unsettling.

The Phantom Baron (France 1943: Dir Serge de Poligny) I was very lucky to have seen a rare print of this movie at the NFT as part of the 2018 French 'Fantastique' season. Serge de Poligny's witty, mysterious film combines the gothic, comedy of manners plotting and some gorgeous magic realist touches, with dialogue by Cocteau (stylistically building on his 1932 film The Blood of a Poet and taking notes for his La Belle et La Bete three years after this movie) and clothes by Christian Dior.

Written off in many critical circles - even by some who have actually seen it - as an extended exercise in whimsy, it nevertheless effortlessly shifts moods from light to dark at a moment's notice, shamelessly borrowing from Nosferatu (a frenzied carriage drive towards a seemingly abandoned castle on a hill) and The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (a somnambulist carrying off a sleeping woman) in its fairy-tale-esque story of two half sisters who take up residence in a crumbling castille which houses a secret behind its walls. Cocteau himself appears as the ghostly Count, disappearing into dust at the film's climax.

A beautiful film but the poor quality of the print shown, which broke down during screening, and the slightness of content suggests that, sadly, this one is unlikely to get the Criterion treatment any time soon.

Widows (UK/USA 2018: Dir Steve McQueen) I saw this last night at our fabulous new venue West Norwood Library & Picturehouse. It's slick and generally well acted, with echoes of Michael Mann in its balletic set pieces and Steven Soderbergh's sense of understated menace. The first half is arguably more absorbing than the more by the numbers second, with the motivations of and relationships between the characters being gradually developed, but there are some pacing issues; some parts feel ruminative, almost languorous, while others feel rushed. This can lead to a stop/start feel, and there are some plot reveals which come across a little clunky. 

Also I wasn't sold on the plot's political/personal economics connections (although there's an effective scene, shot from outside a moving vehicle, where the passing street views subtly change from wealthy town residences to the low rent city outskirts in a perfect visual explanation of the differences between the 'haves' and the have nots'). The relationship between lead widow Veronica (Viola Davis) and Harry (Liam Neeson), which is fundamental to the plot, doesn't really ring true, but despite the fact that McQueen is not really an actor's director - he's too in love with the interiors to notice the people - this is ok film-making; not a film of the year by any means, but reasonably diverting while it's playing.

Goof on the Loose: The Films of Ray Dennis Steckler - Part 1 - the 'Hollywood' Years

Ray Dennis Steckler in later years

It's the first time I've split a single post into two parts, but there's a lot of characters in this story and I want to do them justice.

A while back I wrote a piece on the movies of Arch Hall, father and son. Loosely intertwined in Hall Sr and Jr's cinematic story was another genuinely independent but arguably way more talented film making oddball: Ray Dennis Steckler.

Born in Reading, Pennsylvania in 1938, Steckler was raised by his movie loving grandma, who no doubt would have exposed him to The Bowery Boys, The Three Stooges, Monogram and Producers Releasing Corporation westerns and the spookshow movies of the 1940s, all of which would find themselves informing his work. And one of the things I love about Steckler is that he never forgot these influences, which, combined with a profound sense of family and home - his earlier films were all located in his LA neighbourhood and often featured friends and acquaintances - gives a real sense of someone in love with film for its own sake rather than for commercial reasons.

Following the inevitable production of 8mm films with his mates as kids, using a camera bought for him by his grandma, and with the taste for visual arts fuelled by the study of photography as a military cameraman between 1956 and 1959, after army service Steckler headed for Hollyweird USA. Cutting his teeth working behind the scenes on TV shows handling props (including a stint at Universal where, employed on Alfred Hitchcock Presents, he quit before being fired following a near miss with Hitch while pushing a wheeled A-Frame down a corridor way too fast) his first gig - as Raymond Steckler - was replacing fired cameraman Ron McManus on the eccentric Timothy Carey's 1962 little seen vehicle The World's Greatest Sinner (aka Frenzy) - according to Steckler, at one point Carey threw a boa constrictor at him. Here he worked alongside one Edgar G Ulmer and a twentysomething Frank Zappa on music duties, who went on to describe the movie as 'the world's worst film.' Now where have I heard that before?

The same year he also shot Secret File: Hollywood, his non union status ensuring that he remained uncredited on that movie - it was here that he met Arch Hall Sr for the first time. As well as working on commercials and TV series for Warner Brothers like 'Wide World of Sports' and 'The Professionals,' in 1962 Steckler lensed Rudolph Cusamano's slightly less obscure Wild Ones on Wheels aka Drivers in Hell, but this time he also appeared in front of the camera for the first time in the role of 'Preacher Man', a bespectacled hep cat character described by one critic as 'a beatnik petty criminal with a crazy patois and a sports car he calls "Baby".'

Wild Guitar - Steckler's first directing credit

Later in 1962 Steckler hooked up with Arch Hall Jr and his dad - the first of his two collaborations with the father and son film making duo for Hall Sr's company Fairway-International Pictures. Steckler took on (uncredited) camera duties, and also appeared briefly - as Mr Fishman - in the Hall Sr directed Eegah, unceremoniously dumped into a swimming pool by a resurrected caveman in the shape of seven foot plus Richard Kiel; his girlfriend - and future wife - in the scene was one Carolyn Brandt, destined to be a pivotal figure in Steckler's life. A story from the shoot recalls that the crew were filming, without permission, on land owned by one Harpo Marx. When Marx turned up to ask what the hell was going on, Steckler reportedly told him that they were shooting an educational film for UCLA, although it's unlikely that he was believed. Rather bruised by the experience of directing, Hall Sr took a back seat with the next vehicle for his son, giving rise to Ray's first directing credit - the movie was Wild Guitar. You can read more about both those films here. Steckler also had a small speaking part in this movie as a villain called 'Steak,' and it was the first time he used his alter ego name Cash Flagg, a pseudonym whose origin related to Steckler's legendary penchant for hard currency over cheques, which had a habit of bouncing in Tinsel Town.

Goof on The Loose (1964) Filmed in and around the Steckler family home and nearby Echo Park, Los Angeles and utlising friends and family (which he would continue to do in future films), this 8 minute silent independently made 'home' movie - "dedicated to the laugh makers of long ago" according to the intro card - was actually filmed in 1959, but released immediately prior to Incredibly Strange Creatures...). Its title possibly inspired by the 1953 Three Stooges short Goof on the Roof, the movie features Rick Dennis (who'd appeared in both Wild Guitar and Wild Ones on Wheels) as a drunk, and his goofy friend (Bert Leu Van) messing around in a series of visual gags and pratfalls. Carolyn Brandt turns up in beachwear as does Steckler in a cameo wearing a skirt!

The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies !!? (1964) By 1963, Ray had become fed up with being on the payroll of other movies. As he said in an interview in 2000, "I really hated working for other people."

Back in Reading, Pennsylvania, a young Steckler would spend hours at the local funfair befriending the carnival workers, a group of people who he came to love but who also taught him the art of huckstering, a talent he deployed throughout his career. It also gave him the setting for his most well known feature film, in glorious Eastmancolor, called The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies !!? which he started filming in January 1963 (apparently it's important to get the punctuation right at the end, an issue that wouldn't have occurred if the team had continued to use the film's working title, Face of Evil). This is a movie that's probably more famous for its title - changed, according to a popularly recited story, at the request of Columbia Pictures who felt that the original - The Incredibly Strange Creatures, or Why I Stopped Living and Became a Mixed-up Zombie - was too close to Stanley Kubrick's then latest picture Dr Strangelove...or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. The idea of Kubrick's legal team suing Steckler for $3 million would be rather outrageous had the director not loved the story so much (Ray's movie cost $38,000 to make and, save for a donation of $300 would probably not have been completed, as it allowed Steckler to keep a roof over his head). For a long time Incredibly Strange... was rather caught up in the 'trash films you may not like' category. Well I love it. It's far better put together than its detractors would have you believe, part of the reason being that the camera team included fledgling cinematographers Lazlo (Easy Rider) Kovacs - who also did a behind the camera stint the previous year on the Arch Hall Jr 1963 vehicle The Sadist - and Vilmos (Close Encounters of the Third Kind) Zsigmond.

Some of the Incredibly Strange Creatures...

In Incredibly Strange Creatures... Steckler (again as Cash Flagg) plays slacker Jerry, who thinks that paid work is a downer and just wants to hook up with his girlfriend, fairly posh Angela, whose folks think Jerry is a bum. Elsewhere dipso dancer Marge Neillson (Brandt) is drinking - literally - at the last chance saloon as she's told to lay off the sauce and stop fluffing her routines. Seeking her fortune, she happens on Madame Estrella's tent and learns of her impending death (a ripe performance from Brett O'Hara as Estrella - previously Susan Hayward's stand in and who also appeared in Wild Ones on Wheels - her natural beauty disguised by a gypsy outfit and hairy stick on wart). Jerry and Angela, together with their friend Harry, also have their fortunes told. Jerry ends up being hypnotised by Estrella, who turns him into a zombie. Jerry is forced to carry out murderous acts (including killing Marge and attempting to murder Angela) - it turns out that Estrella has been converting a number of the men working at the carnival into murderous beasts - and Jerry is the latest. They're all ugly bugly because the fortune teller chucks acid into their faces to disfigure them. However the zombies have the last laugh, breaking free from their place of imprisonment and exacting their revenge on Estrella. Zombie Jerry, who's only a bit of a zombie, presumably because he's running the show or was better at dodging acid, is shot dead by the police while making a heartfelt speech to Angela.

What's not mentioned in this summary are the show tunes which pepper the movie, with titles like 'Choo choo, ch'boogie' and 'Shook Out of Shape,' and a number of dance routines featuring lines of girls who've been given seemingly little or no rehearsal time. Truly the first monster musical, this is a freewheeling movie with more than a hint of being made up on the spot - and that's not a criticism; Steckler was proud of this approach to filmmaking. The exteriors were filmed at the Pike amusement park in Long Beach, California, tapping in to Steckler's fairground past, whereas the interiors were shot on sets built in an abandoned Masonic temple in Glendale, California (used the same year to shoot Vic Savage's The Creeping Terror). Steckler apparently fended off union intervention by shooting on an upper floor of the building and putting up fake signs that the lifts were out of order - nifty!

The movie was released by Fairway-International Pictures, which gave Arch the ability to sneak the flick onto the lower half of a double bill, with one of his own films as the A picture (maybe The Nasty Rabbit?). Steckler subsequently bought back the distribution rights and cued the movie up with Coleman Francis's 1961 Tor Johnson vehicle The Beast of Yucca Flats (Francis would later turn up in some of Ray's features). He maximised the shelf life of Incredibly Strange Creatures... by re-titling the film several times for re-release, including Diabolical Dr Voodoo, The Teenage Psycho Meets Bloody Mary, and The Incredibly Mixed-up Zombie. Steckler also advertised the movie in a number of different viewing formats, taking a leaf out of William Castle's huckster manual. According to Steckler, his film was shot in in “Bloody-Vision,” “Terrorama” and “Hallucinogenic Hypnovision,” the latter of which involved Steckler and his team running out into venues wearing monster masks. Whew!

The Thrill Killers (1964) "I just wanted to make another movie," said Steckler in an interview when asked retrospectively about his next film. Completed a year after filming Incredibly Strange Creatures...  and just after his stint as camera operator on Phillip Mark's nudie cutie Everybody Loves It (credited as Raymond Steckler) Steckler wrote, produced, and directed The Thrill Killers, apparently inspired by his exposure to Psycho with which he was so impressed that he saw it twice "to make sure it was a movie." But in its intensity and amoral lawlessness, not to mention the down at heel country locations, it more closely resembles Arch Hall's The Sadist (1963).

Steckler maintained that he wasn't initially to be cast in the movie, but inserted his character into it to lengthen the running time. The original story focused on the escape of three inmates from a secure facility. Having made their getaway, the prisoners, all insane, terrorise the local community. Meanwhile the brother of one them, also a crazed killer (Steckler), is called on to assist the fugitives, until the police intercept and take out the bad guys. This plot summary is purposely brief; there's a lot more to this movie than those few lines.

After a faux historic card announcing that the events in the film took place back in 1965, The Thrill Killers opens with what will become a Steckler standby - some fascinating shots of Hollywood Boulevard (which have become more so with the passing of time) including footage of Mann's Chinese Theatre, showing Mary Poppins, which had been released in August of 1964. The movie was shot in black and white by Joseph V. Mascelli (later author of industry bible 'The Five Cs of Cinematography') and an uncredited Lee Strosnider. We're introduced in voiceover - by Coleman Francis - to Joe Saxon (Joseph Bardo, onetime boyfriend of Mae West), an out of luck actor trying to get work. Back home his wife Liz bemoans his unrealistic expectations (neither are in the first flush of youth) and the lavish industry parties he throws, hoping for a casting break. Liz was played by Liz Renay, who had just got out of prison after spending 27 months incarcerated in Terminal Island, California, for perjury - laundering money for her boyfriend, the racketeer Mickey Cohen. Renay needed a job and Steckler was happy to offer her one (as subsequently did Arch Hall Sr). Her acting career never took off; she had a role in John Waters' 1977 movie Desperate Living and turned up in two of Ted V. Mikels' later works, but she successfully toured with her daughter in a joint strip act, and infamously did a streak along Hollywood Boulevard in 1974, the first grandmother to do so. Incidentally her 1992 published autobiography was entitled 'My First Two Thousand Men'; Renay's daughter Brenda, who shows up in a party scene later in the movie along with a rather tipsy looking Arch Hall Sr and The Thrill Killers' producer George J Morgan, took her own life at the age of 39 in 1982.

Ray Dennis Steckler and Liz Renay in The Thrill Killers

The trio of escaped prisoners, whose character first names are all the same as their real ones, were played by claustrophobic Gary Kent, axe wielding Keith O'Brien (sadly his only acting credit) and Elisha Cook Jr alike Herb Robins (as Flagg's brother). Robins had been very badly beaten up shortly before shooting was about to begin. Worried that Steckler wouldn't be able to put him in front of the camera because of the bruising and stitches to his face, the director went ahead and used him anyway. In close ups of his face on screen, he looks authentically messed up in a way that make up alone (on Steckler's budget anyway) just couldn't achieve.

The Thrill Killers also included Carolyn Brandt again as newly engaged Carol, young, in love but sadly despatched by one of the killers. The film also announced the arrival of Ron Haydock into Steckler's story; Haydock performed additional dialogue services on the movie and also played one of the cops at the film's climax. He was a fascinating figure in his own right (in 1977 Haydock tragically died in a highway accident after being hit by a truck at the age of 37, ironically walking home after an evening at Steckler's house - although Ray confessed in one interview that it may have been suicide). Atlas King also turns up, briefly, as a guy who is killed, and whose car is commandeered by Mort "Mad Dog" Click (played by Steckler in his Cash Flagg nom de cinema) early on in the movie - King was the donor of $300 to Steckler during the making of Incredibly Strange Creatures...which ensured that the movie got completed, and which gave King his first acting role.

Thematically The Thrill Killers is a world away from Incredibly Strange Creatures... As well as being more structured it is in places a very nasty film. Steckler's scenes, including menacing a prostitute in her room before killing her, still pack a punch today; and the arrival of the fugitives, particularly Keith, with his manic love for the axe, provides for some very disturbing moments. "Poor old Frank," muses Keith on examining the blade that's been used to behead him, "he had dandruff." (I can't help feeling that the trio might have been an inspiration for the escaped lunatics in Alan Birkinshaw's 1978 British movie Killer's Moon). The film's final reel chase, utilising the arid locations of California's Topanga Canyon - beloved of many makers of horror and sci fi films - builds a level of excitement that arguably makes this Steckler's most conventionally successful film.

The Thrill Killers was subsequently revived and shown around the country in the early 1970s at theatres and drive-ins, retitled The Maniacs Are Loose! Cashing in on the success of the 'live in the theatre' monsters stunt pulled when Incredibly Strange Creatures... toured the US (with Steckler himself as one of the 'zombies' let loose in the auditoria), it was decided to repeat the idea. A new prologue was added to the movie - in colour - with stage hypnotist Ormond Magill informing the audience that a whirling 'hypno disc' at points during the movie would prompt Cash Flagg-a-likes (recruited by theatre managers at each venue wearing masks designed by Don Post) to enter the audience wielding rubber axes.

Rat Pfink a Boo Boo (1965) After The Thrill Killers Steckler was asked to be camera operator on the soft core sex comedy Everybody Loves It (1964) and Director of Photography on an adults only movie called Scream of the Butterfly (1965) by Bill Turner and Alan Smith, who had been choreographers on Incredibly Strange Creatures... The director, Argentinian Eber Labato, had never made a film before, but was married to Nelida Labato who just happened to have a leading role in the flick. Interestingly it was the first time that Steckler had shot a film in Las Vegas. He was already growing tired of Los Angeles, and the city smog wasn't doing much for his allergies.

But his next project was the movie where Steckler famously got bored half way through making it, and decided to change tack story wise. Rat Pfink a Boo Boo starts off as a gritty stalker flick, with a gang of chain-wielding hoodlums mugging a streetwalker, then, needing more money, turn their attentions to one Cee Bee Beaumont (Carolyn Brandt, whom Steckler married during filming). They find her name rather randomly in the telephone directory, abduct her from her home and require a $50,000 reward from her boyfriend Lonnie Lord (Ron Haydock, credited in the movie as Vin Saxon, a name that Haydock would later use as the author of a number of rather extraordinary pulp books with titles like 'Ape Rape' and 'Caged Lust.'). Lord and friend, local gardener Titus (Titus Moede), seem powerless to find a way out, but once they disappear into a closet together they emerge to pretty much everyone's surprise as comical superheroes Rat Pfink (Haydock) and Boo Boo (Moede) and zoom off in their motorcycle/sidecar combination to beat up the hoodlums and free Miss Beaumont.

Apparently Steckler got the Rat Pfink and Boo Boo idea as a result of failing to secure the rights to the Batman and Robin characters, which he'd hoped to turn into a musical. Although that bid failed, he decided to use some superheroes anyhow - this was before the 1966 TV series about the Gotham City superheroes - Steckler's thoughts were harking back to the 1943 Columbia serial. His friend Haydock had written a song called 'Rat Pfink' (a popular slang name at the time for the putz in your life) and Steckler decided to use it, assembling a couple of decidedly dowdy costumes to complete the crime fighting duo's rather down at heel look. And Boo Boo was named after the colloquial name for a softball team in Reading, Pennsylvania - come on you Boo Boos!

Haydock's payment for this rather unglamorous role - he also co-wrote the, ahem, script and was Assistant Director - was to have some of his songs featured in the movie, namely 'You're Running Wild,' 'Rat Pfink' and 'Big Boss a Go Go Party'; footage of all three show Ms Brandt and others frantically frugging to the beat. Haydock also gets to sing a slower ballad 'I Stand Alone.' The rest of the movie's score is once again down to Henry Price, but there are a couple of spaced out surf numbers (including an opening theme over Thomas Scherman's brilliant titles) by Charles B Tranum, of which little is known apart from the fact that he may also have had a career as an ad man.

It's clear from the first half of the movie that Steckler was aiming for another The Thrill Killers - the photography is quite noirish and, if you ignore the Haydock musical interludes, the mood is rather grim. But perhaps in anticipation of his next movie, Steckler feels the need to lighten the tone, and the second half of the film is one long chase scene with pratfalls aplenty, some amusing lines (Rat Pfink warns Boo Boo that the only thing that can kill them is bullets) and Carolyn Brandt being a lost damsel in distress, at one point being abducted by Kogar the ape ("Put me down, you big ape!" cries Carolyn) played by prop collector and part time actor Bob Burns, who would play the role on no less than nine different occasions in his career - now that's typecasting!

One other crew member of mention is future multiple Oscar and Emmy nominee Keith A. Wester. This was only his second sound credit and because Steckler shot on a Bolex non sound 16mm camera, Wester was responsible for adding all the dialogue, score and sound effects post production. Well, as Steckler has commented while rather chuffed at the leg up he gave Wester, you got to start somewhere! Oh and the reason why this title is Rat Pfink a Boo Boo? Well the lettering guys loused up in the opening credits - it may have meant to have been an ampersand instead - and Steckler couldn't afford the extra bucks to fix it.

Lemon Grove Kids Meet the Monsters (1965-1969) Steckler's love of old Bowery Boys movies, and his emotional links with home, family and friends coalesce in this slight but fun slapstick film which includes just enough weirdness to remind you that Ray's still at the controls. Like The Thrill Killers and Incredibly Strange Creatures... before it, Lemon Grove Kids is a lovely time capsule of a past age; although the area near Hollywood where it was filmed hasn't changed that much, a quick Google maps trip shows that the neighbourhood still feels bright and airy, and full of possibilities for a young film maker.

Lemon Grove Kids was originally conceived as a feature but, with the usual limitations of money and film stock - but never enthusiasm - it became a series of three shorter films packaged together (a fourth was planned but never completed). Steckler had apparently tried to sell to TV but his production standards weren't high enough to sustain much interest. Ray pays tribute to Bowery Boy Huntz Hall in his role as 'Gopher' (as Cash Flagg, natch) - in fact it was so good that Hall's wife threatened to sue him - and the rest of his cast are made up of various friends and family plus regulars from his previous films, including Mike Cannon as 'Slug,' (who also does a fair takeoff of the Bowery Boys' character 'Slip' played by Leo Gorcey) and Keith A. Wester, playing Marvin Marvin.

The three shorts making up the movie are 'The Lemon Grove Kids,' 'The Lemon Grove Kids Meet the Green Grasshopper and the Vampire Lady from Outer Space' and 'The Lemon Grove Kids Go Hollywood!'

In the first, the Kids face off a rival gang, but are persuaded to settle their differences via a local cop (producer George J Morgan in dress up) and to compete in a cross country race, which the other gang fix by using a shady character called 'The Saboteur.' Steckler spiced up the proceedings by including a rather meta sequence towards the end, featuring Kogar the ape abducting Carolyn Brandt (as Cee Bee Beaumont, in the exact scene that was reproduced in Rat Pfink a Boo Boo) and a mummy (Bob Burns playing both creatures); the footage seems incongruous until the camera pulls back to show that the whole thing is a film set for a movie being made by a local amateur company, and onto which 'Gopher' has accidentally blundered. When screened at kids' shows, this part of the movie would be the cue for auditoria staff to invade the theatres dressed as mummies, a gimmick which apparently once again effectively gave paying audiences the wim wams.

In 'The Lemon Grove Kids Meet the Green Grasshopper and the Vampire Lady from Outer Space,' Steckler makes use of a prop flying saucer - which he'd just acquired - for a story involving the Kids running across a human grasshopper and Carolyn Brandt doing her best Vampira impersonation. The grasshopper (who has arrived in the flying saucer) and the vampire abduct little kids and adults while they're doing odd jobs for Mr Miller (Coleman Francis again). There are some witches too. None of it makes any sense, but it's bright, fun, and everyone seems to be having a good time.

In the last of the three films, 'The Lemon Grove Kids Go Hollywood!' (the only one of the three not to have theatrical distribution and actually completed in 1969), Steckler takes a sideswipe at the movie industry. The Kids arrive at the house of movie star Cee Bee Beaumont (Brandt) to do a little housework, while she rehearses for an audition. Some hoods kidnap the star for a ransom but her director doesn't think she's worth paying for. The kids eventually beat up the hoods and the director changes his mind about the star's value when he sees all the free publicity that Beaumont has generated, subsequently casting her in his next production, 'Cleopatra.'

Trade Bill for The Lemon Grove Kids Meet
the Monsters

Although Lemon Grove Kids was very much a Steckler production, Ray only directed the first segment, the rest being handled by Ted Roter (his only mainstream credit before a career in adult movies). While the film is a lot of goofy fun, like Rat Pfink a Boo Boo before it, it's mainly interesting for the shots of suburban Los Angeles in the 1960s. It also showcased Steckler's spirit of fun for the first and last time - so maybe he'd got it out of his system.

Following this Ray went on to film short promotional movies for many of the counter culture music stars of the 1960s. Details on exactly how many he made are scarce, but it is popularly believed that he directed Jefferson Airplane's 'White Rabbit' (1967) - which also featured Brandt as a dancer (Carolyn had previously danced in the 1965 movie It's a Bikini World, frugging to The Castaways playing 'Liar Liar') and The Nazz's 'Open My Eyes' (1968). More sketchy are the claims that he also made promo films for Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Todd Rundgren and The Lewis & Clarke Expedition. Ray also assisted (uncredited) in the camera work for colour sections of the otherwise black and white 1966 witchcraft movie Incubus, directed by The Outer Limits' Leslie Stevens, which has the dual distinctions of featuring William Shatner in one of his first screen roles, and of the script being written in Esperanto. Sadly only one copy of the film survives in an entirely black and white version, so we'll never know precisely what scenes Steckler shot or whether they even made it into the finished film!

The same year he was cinematographer on the rape/prostitution drama The Velvet Trap, also filmed on location in Las Vegas. For this movie Ray went by the pseudonym Sherwood Steckler, a habit he was to develop for many of his future films. Around the same time he was co-producer of Curt Siodmak's comedy Ski Fever, under the name Wolfgang Schmidt. Made in 1967 but only released in the US in March 1969, it starred Dean Martin's daughter Claudia, a rather chaste story of hi-jinks and shenanigans in a ski lodge which feels in its chunky knit cosiness like a shelved Frankie Avalon project.

Body Fever (1968) In terms of features, Ray pops up again in 1968, trying his hand at the deadbeat gumshoe genre quite a few years after such movies fell out of favour with Hollywood. This one also went under a number of different titles including Deadlocked, Super Cool and, impressively, The Last Original B Movie. Body Fever was possibly Ray's most coherent film to date, and even had a script. Well, sort of - Steckler admitted that most of it was made up as he went along.

Wearing the toupee bought for the actor who was due to play the lead, but was sacked after three days of shooting, Steckler plays Charles Smith, a down on his luck private dick literally living off the grid on a boat. He's employed by Harris Ferguson (Alan Smith, the same guy choreographed the dance sequences in Incredibly Strange Creatures...) to track down cat suited burglar Carrie Erskine (Brandt) who has made off with a bag of heroin; although unbeknownst to everyone else, she's had the stash stolen from her by drug pushing Frankie Roberts (Gary Kent from The Thrill Killers).

Body Fever also features appearances from several Steckler regulars, including Ron Haydock as a photographer, Herb Robins and Joseph Bardo - even Liz Renay turns up in a party sequence filmed, like much of the movie, in Steckler's basement. There's a couple of scenes, tacked on to the movie only so Steckler can give a little screen time to his old pal Coleman Francis, who reportedly was in a very bad way at the time of filming (he died, aged 53, just a few years later). Ray contributes the obligatory laconic voiceover, and also has romantic interludes with a couple of girls in the movie as well as Brandt. Clearly influenced by some of the French nouvelle vague directors - there's some handheld photography and a bit of Bogart adulation which emulates Godard's 1960 movie Breathless and Steckler clearly views Brandt as his Jean Seberg - Body Fever's watchability is considerably enhanced by some splendid cinematography by an uncredited Jack (Top Gun, The Hitcher) Cooperman. But it's overall a darker movie than his previous output, signposting the tone of future projects, and is also the first of Steckler's movies not to be produced by George J Morgan.

So that's the end of Part One of the Ray Dennis Steckler story - in Part 2 we'll see him move to Las Vegas and in a number of different directions.