STRIKE ME DEADLY (1963) **

Jimmy (How to Make a Monster’s Gary Clarke) is a forest ranger who witnesses a hunter named Al (Steve Ihnat) murder a man in cold blood.  Al then starts a forest fire to cover his tracks and notices the ranger spying on him.  Jimmy heads for the hills with Al in hot pursuit.  He tells his wife Lori (Jeannine Riley from Petticoat Junction) to call the cops, but the desperate hunter shows up at their cabin and takes them hostage.

Strike Me Deadly is a Ted V. (The Astro-Zombies) Mikels movie, so it at least looks great.  The first act works up to a point, even if the pursuit is interspersed with stock footage of firefighters trying to put out a forest fire while library music blares on the soundtrack.  Mikels certainly wastes no time with the set-up either as he starts the movie off with a bang.

Once Ihnat holds the lovebirds hostage, Strike Me Deadly begins to lose steam and lose it fast.  It’s here where Mikels subjects us to a longwinded flashback detailing how the couple arrived at the cabin, which grinds things to a dead halt.  Clarke’s fight for survival is a heck of a lot more entertaining than Mikels’ chronicling of the couple’s various marital ups and downs.  Their cutesy moments together (like when Clarke clumsily uses chopsticks) are equally worthy of eye-rolling.  There’s also a long scene where they hang out in a nightclub where a (not bad) R & B combo plays that eats up a lot of narrative space and helps pad out the running time.

After the turgid second act, Mikels is unable to get the picture back on its feet. The finale is rather weak, and not up to the standard set by the crackling opening sequence.  All in all, this is far from Mikels’ worst, but it’s obvious he thrives when he has some sort of exploitative hook to work with.