JANUA-RAY: THE LEMON GROVE KIDS (1968) **

Most directors start small and then work their way up.  Not Ray Dennis Steckler.  His first three movies, while still pretty cheap, had ambition, stars (well, Arch Hall, Jr. and Liz Renay, but still), and looked much bigger than their budget would imply.  By the time he made Rat Pfink a Boo Boo and The Lemon Grove Kids, he was making movies in his backyard for peanuts, using friends and family behind and in front of the camera.  That kind of handmade look is endearing.  

However, While Rat Pfink a Boo Boo is charming, inventive and fun, this is kind of a chore to sit through.  I think the whole premise of the movie started by someone stating that Steckler bore a passing resemblance to Huntz Hall from The Bowery Boys.  That must’ve sparked Ray to make his own Bowery Boys rip-off.  He also used the same basic structure of a Three Stooges short as the film is comprised of three short subjects starring “The Lemon Grove Kids”.  

“The Lemon Grove Kids”(* ½) has the Lemon Grove Kids getting into a tussle with their rival gang.  It’s decided that they should hold a race to settle their differences once and for all.  Naturally, the other gang try to sabotage the race.

From the perplexing silent movie title cards to the overdone sound effects to the painfully unfunny slapstick, The Lemon Grove Kids is pretty crummy in just about every way.  Comedies (especially cheap-o ones like this) that aren’t funny are often the hardest kinds of movies to stomach.  At least things end on a high note during the fun scene where Steckler winds up interrupting the filming of Rat Pfink a Boo Boo.  How meta!  The final bit where he is inexplicably pursued by a mummy goes on a bit too long though.

The second short is “The Lemon Grove Kids Meet the Green Grasshopper and the Vampire Lady from Outer Space” (**).  In this one, the Kids get hired to clean up the brush in Coleman Francis’ backyard.  Aliens led by a vampire woman (Carolyn Brandt) abduct some of the kids.  It’s then up Slug (Mike Kannon) and Gofer (Steckler) to save them.  

The Bowery Boys met monsters and ghosts, but they never got to tangle with aliens.  I guess having The Lemon Grove Kids go toe to toe with UFOs wasn’t the worst idea in the world.  After a longwinded set-up, the finale is pretty good… well, up until everything descends into chaos.  Once again, there are no real laughs to be had, but Brandt looks sexy in her Vampira-inspired get-up.  She’s easily the most memorable part of this segment.  Steckler’s daughter, Laura, who plays the youngest member of the “Kids”, Tickles, steals scenes by just being cute as a button.  

“The Lemon Grove Kids Go Hollywood!” (**) is the final segment.  This time out, the Kids get work doing odd jobs for movie star Cee Bee Beaumont (Brandt, playing the same character she did in Rat Pfink a Boo Boo, making this a shared cinematic universe long before Marvel made it trendy).  Two bumbling criminals try to kidnap her, and the usual hijinks ensue.

This one is just sort of ho-hum.  It’s not as painfully unfunny as the first sequence, but it lacks the charm of the second one.  Once again, Tickles is the best part.  She definitely deserved her own spin-off.

Director’s Signatures:  A long chase scene, musical numbers, a bizarre mash-up of genres, and at some screenings, people dressed like monsters ran out into the audience.  

Steckler’s Stock Player Round-Up:  Mike (The Thrill Killers) Kannon, Coleman Francis, Herb Robins, producer George Morgan, Ron Haydock, Carolyn Brandt, and Kogar the Gorilla.

Co-director Ted Roter, like Steckler, later wound up working in the porn industry, and his last XXX film was the first porno I ever saw, Scandalous Simone.

AKA:  The Lemon Grove Kids Meet the Monsters.

TUBI CONTINUED… AMITYVILLE KAREN (2022) *

Karen (Lauren Francesca) is a health inspector who gets a thrill shutting down businesses that are not up to code.  Her latest target is a local winery that is trying to branch out and hold beer tastings.  During her latest inspection, she steals a bottle of their newest wine (that came from a winery in Amityville), and drinks it.  Before you can say, “I want to speak to your manager!”, she becomes possessed and starts slaying people while saying obnoxious catchphrases like, “You’re canceled!” 

Amityville Karen is basically a one-woman show for Lauren Francesca.  Many scenes feature her bitching aloud to no one in particular about almost every kind of Karen complaint known to man.  She really goes for it, and if the material had actually been funny, her performance might’ve been memorable.  However, without any good punchlines or one-liners, it’s all bluster and no laughs. 

Most everyone else in the cast is painfully amateurish, stumbling over their lines, and visibly sweating in front of the camera.  The biggest “star” in the cast is a slumming James Duval as an employee at the winery.  Boy, Donnie Darko was a long time ago.  Lilith Stabs is also in there briefly as a groupie, but she’s more or less wasted.

For some ungodly reason, this clocks in at a whopping 103 minutes.  There’s just barely enough of an idea here to make a movie, and one that probably could’ve and should’ve only been about 75 minutes.  I mean say what you will about all those recent Full Moon movies.  Even if they do suck, they’re only an hour long (or less).  And trust me, you feel every painful minute of this.  Note to prospective low budget filmmakers:  If you’re going to cash in on the “Amityville” franchise, please keep the running time to a bare minimum.  I mean did we need the ten full minutes of news anchors and social media videos of people talking about Karen at the end?  

Making fun of “Karens” is about the lowest hanging fruit imaginable.  Because of that, a horror comedy about a possessed Karen should’ve been a can’t-lose proposition.  Too bad the filmmakers couldn’t even wring one decent laugh out of the premise.  It’s enough to make you want to speak to the movie’s manager.

JANUA-RAY: RAT PFINK A BOO BOO (1966) ****

(Originally reviewed March 17, 2020)

Wikipedia defines an auteur as “an artist, usually a film director, who applies a highly centralized and subjective control to many aspects of a collaborative creative work; in other words, a person equivalent to an author of a novel or a play.  The term commonly refers to filmmakers or directors with a recognizable style or thematic preoccupation.”  If that doesn’t describe Ray Dennis Steckler, I don’t know what does.  He’s probably best known (and rightly so) for The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies.  This, however, just might be his magnum opus.  

Rat Pfink a Boo Boo is what you get when you take a hard-hitting crime melodrama, a rock n’ roll musical, a dime-store superhero movie, and a killer ape flick, toss them in a blender, and put the setting on WTF.  Apparently, Steckler started out making the crime picture and became dissatisfied with the results.  To amuse himself (or more likely to cash in on the popularity of Batman and Robin) he had his main characters become half-assed superheroes mid-film.  He also padded out the rest of the running time with musical numbers and an attack by a guy in a (rather impressive) ape costume.  The results are Z movie heaven.

What’s interesting is that the early scenes are quite intense, given the budget and the fact that it was shot silently with the sound added in post-production.  Steckler manages to wring genuine suspense from the scenes of the trio of hoodlums mugging a woman in an alley, as well as the scenes where they verbally harass Carolyn Brandt (Steckler’s leading lady on screen and off) over the telephone.  He does a fine job on the musical sequences too (this is the guy who made Wild Guitar after all).  The editing of the performances is remarkably competent and would look right at home on MTV if it had existed in 1966.  

It’s when heartthrob singer Lonnie Lord (Ron Haydock, who also wrote the screenplay) and dim-witted gardener Titus Twimbly (Titus Moede) become their crimefighting alter egos Rat Pfink and Boo Boo does the movie really take off.  The costumes look like they came out of a dime store, but that’s kind of what makes them awesome.  The fight scenes have a filmed-in-someone’s-backyard quality to them.  What’s astonishing is that they are staged and edited with a surprising amount of panache.  You also have to give Steckler credit for staging long motorcycle chases and parade scenes with no budget and zero permits.  It’s guerilla filmmaking at its finest.  (Speaking of gorilla, the ape suit is excellent and probably ate up whatever budget Steckler was working with.)

What’s more is that the film is only 66 minutes, and it moves like greased lightning.  There’s no fat on it whatsoever.  Sure, Incredibly Strange Creatures is great and all, but it bogs down like a son-of-a-bitch in the second half.  This one is over before you know it and leaves you wanting more.  

Oh, and how about that title?  You might think it’s a weird play on “a Go-Go”, but it’s not.  The onscreen title was supposed to read “Rat Pfink AND Boo Boo”, and the person who designed the titles just forgot to add the “N” and “D”.  I wish there was a better explanation for it.  Then again, the oddball title just makes the movie that much more memorable.

Today’s bloated big-budget superhero movies could take a page from Ray Dennis Steckler’s playbook.  There’s more ingenuity on display here than in a dozen MCU films.  Do you think the Russo Brothers could make something this good if they had a Ray Dennis Steckler budget?  Who knows?  I’d rather imagine what Ray could’ve done had he been given just a tenth of a budget as those guys had when they did Avengers:  Endgame.

AKA:  The Adventures of Rat Pfink and Boo Boo.

JANUA-RAY NOTES:  

1) The opening in which a trio of hoodlums attack a woman in an alley has a very Thrill Killers vibe to it, as do the scenes where they terrorize Carolyn Brandt.  

2) Director Signatures:  The opening title sequence uses the same font and grainy art style of The Incredibly Strange Creatures, there’s some odd narration in the beginning (“This is Lonnie Lord… his fans are legion!”), scenic shots of Hollywood Boulevard, lots of musical numbers, and a LONG chase scene in the third act. 

3) Steckler’s Stock Player Round-Up:  Carolyn Brandt, Ron Haydock, Titus Moede, and James (the nightclub comedian from Incredibly Strange Creatures) Bowie. 

4) Shameless Self-Promotion:  During the “Rat Pfink” musical number, one of the dancers wears one of the zombie masks from Incredibly Strange Creatures.

5) Like Incredibly Strange Creatures, this is an odd mash-up of genres (in this case, crime thriller, musical, and superhero movie) that should NOT work, but it’s so damned charming that you (or at least I) just have to love it.  

6) I like that Rat Pfink and Boo Boo’s alter egos have alliterative names, just like all the best superheroes.  

7) The scene where Haydock and Moede emerge from the closet in their Rat Pfink and Boo Boo garb is one of my favorite scenes in cinema history.  Very few movies turn on a dime so sharply midway through and manage to make it work.  Rat Pfink a Boo Boo is one of those movies.  Only a guy like Steckler could pull off something like that.

8) The Severin Blu-Ray only contains the black and white version, so I guess that means I won’t be parting with my Media Blasters DVD of the tinted version any time soon.  It’s still a fun movie either way, but I personally prefer the cheesy color sequences from the DVD.

TUBI CONTINUED… VIRGIN SACRIFICE (1960) **

A big game hunter named Samson (David DaLie) goes into the jungle to fill an order for a travelling circus.  His professor buddy has a house in the middle of the jungle, and he invites Samson to stay with him while on his hunt.  When some natives kill his friend and kidnap his hot daughter (Angelica Morales), it’s up to Samson to save her before she can become their virgin sacrifice.  

Jungle movies were big in the ‘30s, all the way through to the ‘50s.  By the time the ‘60s rolled around, filmmakers had to do something to spice up the sagging genre, and nudity was a surefire way to do just that.  Now, there had been nudity in jungle pictures prior to Virgin Sacrifice, but these scenes were mostly in the anthropological vein of topless tribal dancing or mundane scenes of native women going about their day wearing only a skirt.  

What makes Virgin Sacrifice different is that the nudity occurs during the titular ritual where a virgin is tied up and has her blouse ripped off before she is killed by a witch doctor in a weird mask.  Another thing that makes it different is that this scene occurs right up front as our big game hunter has a flashback to seeing the ritual the last time he was in the jungle.  Most of these vintage exploitation numbers usually make you wait till the end to see the T & A.  This one hooks you right away.  (There’s also a tantalizing skinny-dipping scene later on in the flick, although nothing is explicitly shown.)  

Notice I said the nudity makes Virgin Sacrifice “different”, not “better”.  After the opening instance of sacrificial skin, things bog down in a hurry.  Once our hero finally gets to the jungle, we get all the requisite scenes of him (or more precisely, his stunt double) wrestling with wildcats, receiving ominous native warnings, and shit like that.  All of this isn’t too terrible or anything, but the long scenes of native dancing to monotonous rhythmic drumming started to lull me to sleep after a while.  

Fortunately, it’s only an hour long.  Despite the short running time, it’s still heavily padded with long scenes of people traipsing through the jungle.  Even then, I was somehow able to power through it.  I have to admit, the nudity (however brief) did help make it all go down a little smoother.  

AKA:  Fury of the Jungle.

JANUA-RAY: THE THRILL KILLERS (1964) **

(Originally posted July 17th, 2007)

Ray Dennis (The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies) Steckler directs and stars (under his usual pseudonym “Cash Flagg”) as Mort “Mad Dog” Click, a vicious killer.  A prostitute calls him a “weirdo” and he replies, “You don’t say!” and kills her.  Meanwhile a trio of madmen escapes from the nuthouse and terrorize a couple.  One guy uses an axe to decapitate people.  In the film’s best scene, he picks the dandruff off his axe after he uses it to cut a guy’s head off.  They then terrorize a movie star and his wife in a diner.  When the couple fights off the psychos, Click then shows up and stalks them.  Click kills a bunch of cops and escapes on horseback but is gunned down.  The black and white photography is great, but the movie’s not in the same league as Steckler’s other classics like Incredibly Strange Creatures…, Rat Pfink a Boo-Boo, and The Hollywood Strangler Meets the Skid Row Slasher.  With Liz (Desperate Living) Renay and the usual Steckler stock players Carolyn Brandt, Titus Moede, and Atlas King.  I think the narrator was Coleman (Beast of Yucca Flats) Francis.

AKA:  The Maniacs are Loose!  AKA:  Mad Dog Click.  AKA:  The Monsters are Loose.

JANUA-RAY NOTES:

1) My assumption in my original review was correct, that is Coleman Francis as the narrator.  You have to wonder if he wrote his own narration as lines like, “Joe is caught in a world of ‘non-reality’” sounds like something right out of The Beast of Yucca Flats.

2) As with the other films in the box set I’ve seen so far, the print looks excellent.  

3) Director Signatures:  Like Wild Guitar, this starts out with some great footage of Hollywood Boulevard at the time.  The opening credits sequence uses the same typeface as The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!? and similarly ends with a zoom-in on Cash Flagg’s eye.  As in The Incredibly Strange Creatures, it also has a long, drawn-out chase scene in the third act.

4) Steckler’s Stock Player Round-Up:  Atlas (The Incredibly Stranges Creatures) King, Arch Hall, Sr. (playing himself!), Titus Moede, Carolyn Brandt, producer George Morgan, and of course, the ever-present Cash Flagg.  

5) Shameless Self-Promotion:  A poster for The Incredibly Strange Creatures can be seen hanging in the diner.

6) Gangster moll-turned-B-Movie actress Liz Renay went on to work with Steckler’s Wild Guitar co-star Arch Hall, Jr. in The Nasty Rabbit and Deadwood ’76.

7) The main problem with The Thrill Killers is that it feels like parts of two movies Frankensteined together to make an uneven whole.  It wouldn’t be a big issue had the two sections been equally entertaining.  As it is, the scenes of Steckler stalking his victims are a lot more entertaining than the ho-hum stuff with the trio of escaped axe murderers.  (That, and the final chase scene goes on FOREVER.)  Steckler did a much better job bridging two separate stories and styles later on with the immortal Rat Pfink a Boo-Boo.

8) Don’t get me wrong.  There is some good stuff here.  The sequence where Flagg smacks the prostitute around in time to the flashing lights outside his hotel room is well done.  It’s a shame that kind of snappy editing is largely absent elsewhere in the film.  

9) The Blu-Ray contains an alternate cut called “The Maniacs are Loose”.  It’s basically the same movie, but with a “maniacs are in the theater” gimmick similar to Incredibly Strange Creatures where people in masks would run into the audience at certain times.  This version has a color opening sequence starring “The Amazing Ormond” (from Ron Ormond’s Please Don’t Touch Me) who uses a Hypno-Wheel (again, similar to Incredibly Strange Creatures) to hypnotize the audience into thinking they will see maniacs among them in the theater.  Then, at certain times of the movie, the Hypno-Wheel will flash on screen, signaling when the maniacs will terrorize the audience.  Ultimately, The Thrill Killers isn’t much with or without the gimmick.

TUBI CONTINUED… AFTER SCHOOL SPECIAL (2017) NO STARS

Politically incorrect humor has its place, but you probably shouldn’t even attempt it in this day in age unless you’re a certifiable comic genius.  The makers of After School Special clearly are not.  In fact, it seems like they purposefully tried to see how fast they could piss off every minority group known to man.  In the first ten minutes, there are homophobic, racist, and sexist jokes (on top of the prevalent dick and pedophile jokes), and none of it is remotely funny.  At all times it feels like a comedian who keeps doubling down on the “I’m an equal opportunity offender” defense, with each joke being more tasteless than the last.  

Two high school losers are on the brink of not graduating.  Their principal decides to give them one last chance and signs them up for a “mentoring” program.  However, their “mentor” winds up being a sleazy bar owner who just wants to use them as cheap labor.  When they learn one of their classmates have been kidnapped by a secret society of perverts, they set out to rescue her.

If you can’t tell from that “plot” description, After School Special is all over the place.  To call it a “plot” is an insult to storytelling in general.  It’s more like a couple of half-baked subplots indifferently slapped together until the filmmakers reached something (close) to a feature length running time.  The jump from an Eyes Wide Shut-style Illuminati party to a training montage of an ex-secret agent grandma whipping the boys into shape is especially head-scratching.    

The leads are pretty bad, but the “name” cast do what they can.  We have porn star Kayden Kross as a sexy teacher, Jason London as the boys’ clueless dad, and Nick Swardson as a stoner janitor.  Eric Roberts (doing a broad gay characterization) and Ron Jeremy play themselves, and also happen to be members of the depraved secret society.  In case you’re wondering, this is exactly what you would expect from a movie in which Eric Roberts and Ron Jeremy play themselves.

This was especially disappointing given that it was directed by Jared Cohn, who did Bikini Spring Break, Jailbait, and Locked Up, all films that look like they belong in the Criterion Collection compared to this.  Although I enjoyed all those movies, he should be sentenced to a lifetime of detention for directing After School Special.

JANUA-RAY: THE INCREDIBLY STRANGE CREATURES WHO STOPPED LIVING AND BECAME MIXED-UP ZOMBIES!!? (1964) ***

(Originally posted July 17th, 2007)

This is undeniably Ray Dennis Steckler’s masterpiece.  It’s a nutty horror musical that deserves its cult following.  The plot has Jerry (Steckler using his usual pseudonym Cash Flagg) taking his best girl and foreign friend to a carnival where he falls for one of the strippers.  She lures him into the booth where her sister, the fortune teller hypnotizes Jerry, splashes acid in his face and turns him into a murderous zombie.  In the end, her pit full of zombies escapes and cause carnage at the carnival.  

This is all well and good but to pad the running time, Steckler haphazardly tosses in some awful musical and dancing numbers (one including a tribal dance) that have nothing to do with anything.  The best scenes are the ones in which Steckler (who kinda resembles Nicolas Cage) gets hypnotized with a trippy spinning wheel and goofy sound effects.  The protracted chase on the beach finale doesn’t do it any favors either, but there is enough general goofiness to keep you entertained.  Besides with a title like that what’s not to like?  

Steckler’s usual cohorts Carolyn Brandt and Titus Moody also have small roles.  Laszlo Kovacs and Vilmos Zsigmond were the cinematographers.  Steckler did The Thrill Killers next.  

AKA:  Teenage Psycho Meets Bloody Mary.  AKA:  Diabolical Dr. Voodoo.  AKA:  AKA:  The Incredibly Mixed Up Zombie.

JANUA-RAY NOTES:  

1) Most prints of The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!? I have seen (particularly the one shown on Mystery Science Theater 3000) were often muddy and murky, which made the film look like a cross between the Zapruder film and someone’s last known photograph.  Severin’s restoration looks like a million bucks.  

2) The opening title sequence, in which Cash Flagg’s face slowly morphs into an ugly zombie is an all-timer. 

3) I see that Steckler took a page out of Arch Hall, Sr.’s playbook by having posters of his previous films lurking around in the background.  There’s nothing like shameless self-promotion.

4) In my archive review, I refer to the musical and dance numbers as “awful”.  I am happy to say they have grown on me over time.  I still don’t think they are necessarily “good”, but they certainly add to the overall oddball vibe that makes the movie such a unique experience.  

5) Another thing that has grown on me about the movie:  Atlas King’s performance.  I used to think his thick accent and unintelligible ramblings were annoying, but like the various dance numbers, it’s just another bizarre component that makes TISCWSLABMUZ!!? A work of deranged genius.  

6) The hypnotism scenes are genuinely great, and the close-ups of Flagg’s bulging eyeballs are effective.

7) The extended nightmare/freak-out sequence, while primarily only there to pad out the running time, is also really well done.

8) Was Cash Flagg the first person to rock the hoodie look?

9) Not all the musical numbers are bad.  Far and away the best song is “Shook Out of Shape”, which is, as the kids say nowadays, a “banger”.