JANUA-RAY: SUMMER FUN (1997) *

Summer Fun is Ray Dennis Steckler’s tribute to silent movies of yesteryear.  Nobody was making silent movies in the ‘90s.  Heck, even when Ray made his silent films in the ‘70s, it was out of necessity because he couldn’t afford sound.  Now, in 1997, he’s shooting on video and STILL chooses to make a silent movie.  I guess you have to give it to Ray for continuing to blaze his own distinct path.  

Not only is it a throwback to the silent movies of yore, but it’s a reminder of the films Steckler used to make early in his career.  The music and dance scenes look like they came out of Wild Guitar.  That doesn’t change the fact that this is one of his all-time worst.  

Dirty Barry is a sleazy Vegas real estate mogul who wants to buy Uncle Charlie’s camp.  When he refuses, Dirty Barry sends his goons out to kidnap his niece, Zoe (played by Ray’s daughter, Bailey Steckler).  Meanwhile, the camp’s annual Olympic games are taking place, which eats up most of the screen time.

Part of the fun of watching a silent movie comedy is the black and white photography and the sped-up antics of the stars.  Watching a silent movie shot in the ‘90s on a grainy camcorder is an odd experience to say the least.  It’s as if Steckler is replicating a silent movie without any of its charms.  For example, instead of traditional silent movie cards, Ray uses crappy computer-generated text that looks like it was made on a Tandy.  The music is often terrible and sounds like it was stolen from TV newscast.  

Steckler obviously shot this with friends and family and limited resources.  It must’ve been nice for him to get back to his Lemon Grove Kids-style roots.  That doesn’t mean it’s a rewarding viewing experience.  It’s almost like watching an hour-long campground commercial on public access television.  In short, Summer Fun is no fun at all.

This is the first time we’ve seen some of Steckler’s Shameless Self-Promotion in a while.  The “bad” Olympic team is named “The Strange Creatures” and they wear The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies T-shirts.  I kind of wish I had one of those.  As far as Steckler’s directorial signatures go, we have musical numbers, scenic shots of the Vegas Strip, long driving scenes, and a dash of Batman influence (the villain’s henchmen are referred to as “the undynamic duo”).  Steckler Stock Players are limited to Herb Robins (who hadn’t appeared in a Steckler film since Sinthia:  The Devil’s Doll) as Uncle Charlie and his daughter, Bailey, who later turned up in Steckler’s final film, One More Time.

AKA:  Summer of Fun.

JANUA-RAY: SLASHED… (2003) *

Slashed… is the second of Ray Dennis Steckler’s cut-and-paste mini-features (okay, shorts) that were self-distributed by Steckler as a “Lost Films Production” in 2003 (but shot much earlier).

As far as the “plot” goes?  It’s just a bunch of scenes from Red Heat shown in no particular order.  When that gets dull, Steckler tosses in scenes from Las Vegas Serial Killer in there to liven things up.  (At least he used that film’s best scene, the extended burlesque number.)  All this reminded me of those old Castle Films 8mm condensed versions of old horror movies you could order off the back of Famous Monsters.

Face of Evil was a cobbled together mess, but at least it had enough new footage to semi-warrant calling it a “new” movie.  As far as Slashed… goes, I think there may (MAY) have been about a minute of new footage of Lovie Goldmine (and that’s being generous).  I will say the music fits the action here a bit better than it did in Face of Evil.  

I guess if you don’t have eighty minutes to spend watching Red Heat, you could just watch this half-hour Reader’s Digest version (minus all the hardcore action).  I mean if you’re going to do that, you might as well watch Face of Evil.  It’s only a few minutes longer and it’s a lot more coherent.  

As far as Steckler’s signatures, it’s about the same as Red Heat and Face of Evil.  It was shot silently, there’s lots of footage of the Vegas Strip, and Steckler shamelessly reuses scenes from his older films.  Steckler Stock Players are basically the same actors who appeared in both Red Heat and Las Vegas Serial Killer; namely:  Pierre Agostino, Chuck Alford, and Lovie Goldmine.    

JANUA-RAY: FACE OF EVIL (2003) **

I didn’t realize that Severin’s Ray Dennis Steckler box set had two of his (never finished?) cobbled together short films, Face of Evil and Slashed… hiding in the Bonus Features section.  I wasn’t going to review them initially because they’re only a half-hour long, so they aren't really a feature-length movie.  I eventually changed my mind due to the fact that so many of his pornos were only in the forty-to-fifty-minute range and I counted them as “real” movies.  (Never mind that I just watched Scream of the Blind Dead, which was only thirty-nine minutes long.)  After all, the purpose of this month-long salute to Steckler was to be as much of a completist as I possibly could (which is why I subjected myself to both Blood Shack AND The Chooper).  So, why the Hell not?

A greasy guy (Will Long) drives around LA and watches Carolyn Brandt water her lawn.  Meanwhile, long scenes from Steckler’s Red Heat play out and the editing (unconvincingly) tries to make it look like Long is peeping in on the characters from the film.  He then goes off and strangles a few women until, in true Steckler fashion, his fate is sealed in the most inane way imaginable.

Face of Evil was presented under the “Lost Films Productions” banner, which I think means Steckler released a handful of copies of it on video.  The quality is like fourth generation video, which makes everything grungy, almost like a snuff movie, which is a positive.  It’s all shot silently, and the music, which sounds alternately like incidental music from a porno, a New Age meditation CD, and a sitcom, never once fits the action, which is amusing.  

Apparently, Steckler started filming scenes of Long for a movie, but when he unexpectedly died, Ray was stuck with about ten minutes of footage he had no real use for.  Ever the thriftster, he cobbled it together with some (non-porno) scenes from his XXX flicks Red Heat and Sex Rink.  If you’ve seen Red Heat (or Sex Rink, I suppose), there’s really no reason to watch this as much of the best footage comes from that flick.  However, if you’re a big Steckler nerd and you have a half-hour to kill, there are worse ways to spend your time.  

There are a few Steckler signatures to speak of.  It was shot silently, there’s plenty of scenes of Hollywood, the completely random ending, and of course, the strangling women motif.  Of Steckler’s Stock Players, we have Long from Nazi Brothel (among others), and of course, Carolyn Brandt.  Lovie Goldmine and numerous others who are visible in the footage from Red Heat and Sex Rink also appear.  

TUBI CONTINUED… CRASH AND BURN (1990) * ½

I must not have gotten enough of people saying, “Crash and burn!” while watching Robot Jox, so I decided to check out this sort of sequel/sort of spin-off.  Thankfully, that phrase isn’t repeated nearly as often this time around as it refers to a computer virus.  

Tyson (Paul Ganus) is a motorcycle-riding rebel who drives through the wasteland and hunkers down at an old TV station to wait out a “thermal storm”.  The other inhabitants are an old newscaster (Ralph Waite), his camerawoman granddaughter (Megan Ward), a teacher (Eva LaRue), a Rush Limbaugh dude (Jack McGee), two hookers (Elizabeth Maclellan and Katharine Armstrong), and Bill Moseley.  During the night, the old dude is murdered, and the group eventually figure out one of them is a “synthoid” robot killer.  (“One of us ain’t one of us!”)

Crash and Burn is a bait-and-switch bore.  It was sold as a giant robot movie, but it’s more of a post-nuke murder mystery.  Or more accurately, a people walking around dark hallways, boiler rooms, and basements movie.  And a dull one at that.  There are also scenes that rip-off The Thing (there’s a blood test to see who’s human) and the Terminator (unstoppable robot killer).  

Once Moseley goes crazy (I would put a spoiler warning here, but c’mon, you knew the robot was going to be Bill Moseley) and starts killing everybody, the movie comes to life.  Too bad you have to wait until the last half-hour for the big reveal.  Even if Bill is only doing a thin imitation of his beloved Chop Top character (he even has an exposed metal plate in his head at one point), he’s still kind of fun to watch.  (“That’s all folks!”)  Till then, it’s a tough slog.

Oh, and if you came to the party expecting some giant robot action, you’re in the wrong place.  It takes about seventy-five minutes for Ward to get it online.  Once it finally wakes up, it doesn’t do a whole lot before it crashes and burns.    

AKA:  Synthoid 2030.  AKA:  Robot Jox 2:  Crash and Burn.  

JANUA-RAY: RED HEAT (1976) **

Our “director” Cindy Lou Sutters (the voice of Carolyn Brandt) tells us all about her latest porn starlet discovery, Mary (Lovie Goldmine), whom she christens “Red Heat” on account of her fiery crimson locks.  When Mary finds out her boyfriend (Pierre Agostino) is cheating on her, she goes crazy and stabs him to death in the shower.  Mary then goes out and kills more people, effectively leaving her director in the lurch.  Desperate, Cindy must go and find other starlets in order to complete production.  Meanwhile, a mugger on a motorcycle goes around holding people up and stealing their wallets.  It’s only a matter of time before the two of them meet.

Red Heat almost feels like director Ray Dennis Steckler’s trial run for The Hollywood Strangler Meets the Skid Row Slasher as both films have divergent plot lines and lots of sex and stabbings.    (Although I guess it would be more accurate to say The Las Vegas Serial Killer because of the setting and the mugger character.)  Like many of his other pornos, it’s not very sexy (to be fair, it's far from his worst) and features a lot of blowjob scenes.  Some of the dubbed dialogue during the sex is good for a laugh (“That’s enough kissing!  Let’s see some tit!”), but the dubbed moaning and sucking sounds are wildly overdone.

There might’ve been enough material here to make a decent movie, but the fact is there’s just way too much padding gumming up the works.  The endless shots of people wandering around Las Vegas, random waterskiing scenes, and porn inserts that have nothing to do with the plot get to be a bit much after a while.  Steckler also manages to further stretch out the running time by filming the cum shots in slow motion, one of which is set to the familiar tune of “The Hell Raisers”, the theme song from Doris Wishman’s Another Day, Another Man.  (In fact, a lot of the movie resembles one of Wishman’s XXX films.)

Steckler’s directorial signatures are abundantly clear.  We get lots of footage of the Las Vegas Strip, constant narration due to the fact the film was shot silently, plenty of stabbing scenes, and a multitude of long blowjobs.  Of the usual company of Steckler Stock Players, there’s the usual cronies like Carolyn Brandt and Pierre Agostino.  Most everyone else in the cast (according to IMDb) were also in Steckler’s Perverted Passion.

AKA:  Nancy.

TUBI CONTINUED… ROBOT JOX (1990) ** ½

Robot Jox is basically Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots:  The Movie.  In the post-nuke future, the remaining nations of the world settle their conflicts by putting two dudes in giant robots and letting them duke it out.  “Robojox” Gary (Alien Nation:  The Series) Graham (the movie would’ve been called Robojox, but MGM threatened to sue because it sounded too much like Robocop) walks away from the giant robot fighting circuit when his mech accidentally kills a bunch of spectators.  The government wants to replace him with a test tube baby pilot (Anne-Marie Johnson) who is viewed as the future of the sport.  Naturally, she can’t handle the pressure, so Gary has to hop into to cockpit and fight the Russian baddie (Paul Koslo) to the finish.

Robot Jox was directed by the great Stuart Gordon, but if you go in expecting another Re-Animator you are going to be severely disappointed.  (Re-Animator star Jeffrey Combs also appears as one of the fans in the stands.)  At $10 million, this was Empire’s biggest budgeted film.  However, Gordon probably needed double that to fully achieve his vision.  The stop-motion special effects and robot battles are pretty good.  It’s just that there aren’t all that many of them.  Most of the running time is dedicated to dull espionage drama and predictable sports movie cliches.  

Although I liked Gordon’s other forays into science fiction (Fortress and Space Truckers) better, this one isn’t too shabby.  Even when things bog down, there’s still plenty to enjoy.  I liked that in Gordon’s future, everyone wore face masks when they leave their house.  The scene where the Jox use a dual gender locker room also predates Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers by several years.  And the fact that the test tube babies were called “Tubies” made me smile since I’ve been watching Tubi non-stop since the new year.  

Oh, and if you take a shot of your favorite alcoholic beverage every time a character says, “Crash and burn!”, you’ll be ready to check into a psych ward before the end credits roll.  That motto was also the title of the spin-off.  Robot Wars was the real “sequel”.  Sort of.

JANUA-RAY: THE SEXORCIST’S DEVIL (1974) ** ½

After watching so many cheap Ray Dennis Steckler porno flicks, the first thing you notice about this one is that it at least looks like a real movie.  The camerawork is much better and the acting (especially by Steckler’s wife, Carolyn Brandt) is certainly an upgrade from the likes of Count Al-Kum and Dr. Cock-Luv.  That doesn’t exactly make it “good”, but it is one of the best Steckler pornos that I have seen.  

Brandt plays a reporter named Janice who is doing a story on a professor of the occult (Kelly Guthrie).  When he reads a cursed parchment, it awakens a Satanist named Volta (Doug Darush, who kind of looks like Adam Driver).  He seduces Janice’s roommate, a hooker named Diane (Lilly Lamarr) and soon, he takes possession of her soul.  Volta then commands her to “bring more souls to Satan”, which is just a fancy way of saying, “Stab a bunch of people”.  Eventually, the professor (who has spent most of the movie sitting in his office staring at the wall and yelling, “EVIL!  EVIL!”) arrives on the scene to perform a sexorcism (driving away a spirit who has sexually possessed someone).  

Although most of the dialogue comes in the form of narration, what spoken dialogue we do get is pretty great.  Such lines as, “SEXORCISM?  What the fuck is that?” and “Bite it!  Chew it!  Suck it!  You can’t hurt me!” had me chuckling.  The sex scenes are slightly better than most of Steckler’s previous porn work, although there’s a heavy concentration on blow job scenes.  The lack of variety also doesn’t help as Lamarr is the lone female sex performer, but I must admit, the Satanist angle works better in a porno than say, vampires or Nazis.  That doesn’t hide the fact that none of this comes close to being titillating for a second.  

Steckler does a better job when it comes to the horror scenes.  The murder sequences are quite bloody, and he even delivers a not-bad homage to the shower scene in Psycho.  The exorcism… excuse me… SEXORCISM finale is also rather memorable.  

There aren’t many of Steckler’s director signatures this time around.  The constant narration calls to mind a lot of his later-era films such as The Hollywood Strangler Meets the Skid Row Slasher (I have to wonder if Steckler borrowed the idea from his pal Coleman Francis’ Beast of Yucca Flats) and the stabbing scenes are kind of similar to the ones found in The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies.  Steckler’s stock players are rather plentiful though, and include Brandt (of course), Guthrie (who later appeared in Steckler’s Sex Rink), and Darush (who previously had a role in Ray’s Devil’s Little Acre).    

AKA:  Undressed to Kill.  AKA:  Sexorcist Devil.  AKA:  The Sexorcist.