JANUA-RAY: THE LAS VEGAS SERIAL KILLER (1986) * ½

Seven years after making The Hollywood Strangler Meets the Skid Row Slasher, Ray Dennis Steckler returned with this straight to video sequel.  Pierre Agostino once again plays the Strangler, who has now relocated to Las Vegas to prey upon more helpless women.  Unfortunately, the film is sorely missing the presence of Carolyn Brandt as the Skid Row Slasher.  She’s nowhere to be found this time around, so instead, we get two chuckleheads who stumble around Vegas and ogle women walking by, which is a pretty crummy trade-off if you ask me.  Occasionally, to break up the monotony, they’ll mug a woman.  Although they have just as much screen time as Agostino, these guys don’t make much of an impression.  There’s a reason why the movie isn’t called The Las Vegas Serial Killer Meets the Two Dudes That Stand Around Making Lewd Comments to Passersby.

The good news:  Agostino strangles lots of women.  The most memorable one occurs at a pool party at the home of “Las Vegas movie star, Cash Flagg”!  There’s also a nude burlesque number shown in its entirety.  Steckler also gives us a WTF close-up of a Papa Smurf doll during one murder sequence that’s good for a laugh.  That’s about it as far as the “good news” goes.

The bad news:  There is a shit-ton of padding here.  There is a bunch of travelogue footage of Las Vegas, along with repurposed scenes from the original film.  Remember the scenes of the random rodeo in Blood Shack?  Well, I hope you liked it, because there’s even more pointless rodeo footage in this one.  There’s also an equally perplexing sequence at an air show that is likewise only there to beef up the running time.  

Like the first movie, Steckler shot The Las Vegas Serial Killer silent.  Once again, there’s more narration/thoughts of the characters than actual dialogue.  The big difference this time out is that a radio announcer gets the bulk of the dialogue (much of which is repeated) to keep the audience up to date on the Strangler’s crimes.  The weird thing is it doesn’t sound like a human being, but rather a talk-to-type computer voice. 

Oh, and the ending sucks.  

As far as director signatures go, there’s a couple things of note.  Since Ray had moved his base of operations to Vegas by this point in his career, we get scenic shots of the Vegas Strip instead of Hollywood Boulevard.  He also manages to toss in some completely random parade footage, which makes it kindred spirits with Rat Pfink a Boo Boo, as well as the aforementioned rodeo bullshit.  Other than Agostino, there aren’t any actors who worked with him previously, although Ron Jason would go on to star in more Steckler productions down the road.  Steckler does, however, find some time to put in a little shameless self-promotion as a poster for The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies is seen hanging in a pizza parlor.  A character even exclaims, “Cash Flagg!  All right!”

AMBULANCE (2022) **

Will (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) returns home from the war to discover his wife is in desperate need of experimental cancer treatments.  Of course, the insurance won’t cover it, so he turns to his brother Danny (Jake Gyllenhaal) for help.  Naturally, his brother ropes him into pulling a bank heist for a big payday.  If you already couldn’t guess, things go south quick, and the brothers are forced to make their getaway in an ambulance with a feisty EMT (Eiza Gonzalez) and a wounded cop in tow.  Almost immediately, every cop in the city is after them, and it’s up to the brothers to do some fancy driving in order to keep out of the big house.  

I normally associate director Michael Bay with shaky-cam action sequences, rapid-fire editing, and big, swooping camera shots.  His movies were bad enough with all this stuff, but now, they have somehow gotten worse.  The reason?  Someone got the bright idea to give Mikey Boy a drone for Christmas.  Now, he’s mounting a camera to it and flying it around God’s creation during the action sequences.  That means more whooshing and swooshing, sometimes to nauseating effect.  (Especially during the pointless shots where the camera goes up and down buildings, Spider-Man-style.)  OK, there is one admittedly cool shot where the camera flies under a car while it’s in mid-air, but the rest of the flying camera shenanigans are just plain annoying. 

The bank heist scenes are decent too.  It’s just that the action becomes overly chaotic once the brothers hop into the titular automobile.  Some of time it’s hard to tell who’s shooting at who during the gunfights and who’s chasing who during the chase scenes.  I mean, I assume the robbers are shooting at the cops and the cops are chasing after the robbers, but it sure would’ve been nice to see it in a coherent manner.   

Gyllenhaal has a couple of good moments.  Whenever I was about to mentally throw in the towel, he would chew the scenery or rock out to Christopher Cross.  That at least kept me going, as I wanted to see what he’d do next.  The rest of the cast, unfortunately, aren’t very memorable.  

Car chase movies are hard to screw up.  I mean, I even kind of like Smokey and the Bandit 3.  You’d think this kind of scenario would be right up Bay’s alley.  I guess he was too busy fucking around with his drone and namechecking his previous movies (having someone quote Sean Connery in The Rock is what passes for “Meta” in a Bay flick) to deliver the goods. 

TUBI CONTINUED… CANDY (1968) *

Candy was like the North of its day.  It’s a bloated, boring, big budget, all-star, box office dud.  It’s a comedy with zero laughs.  It’s one of those movies where it’s amazing that they were able to get so many talented people involved and STILL managed to make it dreadfully unfunny.  

Candy (Ewa Aulin) is a schoolgirl who gets into various sexual misadventures.  Her list of lovers includes a poet (Richard Burton), a gardener (Ringo Starr), a general (Walter Matthau), a surgeon (James Coburn), and an Indian guru (Marlon Brando).  Throughout all of this, Candy goes from compromising situation to compromising situation with the same blank expression on her face… much like the audience.  

This movie has aged like milk in just about every way.  It was bad at the time of release, I’m sure, but it’s gotten much worse since then.  It’s horribly dated, and I’m not just talking about the ‘60s fashions, hairstyles, and music.  Not only does the whole plot revolve around a bunch of creepy dudes trying to perv on an underage girl, but you also have Ringo and Brando embarrassing themselves in brownface.  Everyone, including co-writers Terry Southern and Buck Henry (who cameos as a mental patient) seem to be working under the assumption that the louder the actors are and the more chaotic the scene is, the funnier it will be.  The only one who comes close to getting a laugh is Burton, but that’s only because wherever he goes, his ascot keeps blowing in the breeze.  

What’s the point of all this, you ask?  Maybe that we put too much trust in our artists, military, doctors, and religious figures.  That when you come right down to it, all of them will jump at the opportunity to get into a young girl’s pants.  I guess that’s the one thing that hasn’t changed in the fifty-five years that this was made.  That doesn’t necessarily make it funny or entertaining though.

JANUA-RAY: THE HOLLYWOOD STRANGLER MEETS THE SKID ROW SLASHER (1979) ***

You’ve got to give it to Ray Dennis Steckler’s The Hollywood Strangler Meets the Skid Row Slasher:  It has a great title.  It’s second only to Steckler’s The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies.  While it’s not quite up to the zany levels of that classic, it is one of Ray’s better films.  

Johnathan (Pierre Agostino) is a serial killer who hires models to pose nude for him before he strangles them to death.  Meanwhile, a lonely woman who owns a bookstore (Carolyn Brandt) goes around slicing and dicing the bums that hang around Skid Row.  And… They meet.  That’s the plot!  I mean, what more do you need to know about a movie called The Hollywood Strangler Meets the Skid Row Slasher? 

Steckler gives you exactly what you would want/expect from a movie with that title.  No more.  No less.  If you were hoping for more, sorry you’re out of luck.  

Steckler does a pretty good job, all things considered.  There’s enough strangling and slashing to keep the plot moving forward (my favorite scene was when the Strangler killed a girl who was wearing nothing but a KISS beach towel and then Steckler gives us a close-up to the band's Destroyer album), and the Taxi Driver-esque scenes of Agostino stomping around Hollywood Boulevard are rather moody 

This almost feels like Steckler’s version of a Doris Wishman movie.  He shot it silently and most of the dialogue occurs in narration as characters’ thoughts.  The fact that sex and violence are often combined is very much like one of Wishman’s roughies from the ‘60s.  The use of the term “photographer’s models” instead of “hookers” was also pretty dated by the time the film came out, further making it feel like a lost relic from the ‘60s that happened to be released in the late ‘70s.  That’s not a criticism, just an observation.  

This might be Steckler’s purest movie.  There’s no fat on it, except for the scenes of Agostino in his coop petting his pet pigeons.  Or the random sex club roller disco scene at Plato’s Retreat West.  (Steckler would later make a porno of that title using the same location a few years later.)  

Steckler also wrote some great lines like, “I was right.  She IS just like all the others.  Worse maybe”, “You want a shot of my buttocks?  Doo-Doo-Doo!”, and “Die, garbage!”  

The last name of Pierre Agostino’s character is “Click”, which makes this sort of a loose sequel to Steckler’s The Thrill Killers.  Also, the title, The Hollywood Strangler Meets the Skid Row Slasher calls to mind the alternate title of The Incredibly Strange Creatures, Teenage Psycho Meets Bloody Mary.  Other Steckler signatures include:  A Yellow-on-Black opening title sequence (like Blood Shack), scenic travelogue shots of the sex theaters and porno shops of Hollywood Boulevard (which make this a nice time capsule of the era), scenes that take place on the beach, and weird narration.  We also get a little bit of Steckler’s trademark self-promotion as posters for his adult films, Teenage Massage Parlor and Teenage Hustler can be glimpsed in the background in one scene.  However, this time around Brandt and Agostino are really the only members of Steckler’s Stock Players to put in appearances. 

When I first saw this on video back in the ‘90s, I thought it was okay.  Probably a ** ½ flick.  Now, seeing it in the proper context of Steckler’s work, I have a better appreciation for it.  I’d say it’s a *** movie now.  Heck, it looks like a goddamned masterpiece next to Sinthia:  The Devil’s Doll and Blood Shack. 

Steckler followed this up seven years later with a sequel, Las Vegas Serial Killer. 

AKA:  The Hollywood Strangler.  AKA:  The Model Killer.

TUBI CONTINUED… DEEP IN THE VALLEY (2009) **

Perpetual loser Lester (Chris Pratt) wins a vintage porno booth in a contest and invites his buddy Carl (Brendan Hines) over to check it out.  When they go inside the booth, they are magically whisked away into an old porno movie.  While the uptight Carl tries to find a way out, Lester sets out to make the best of the situation by trying (and failing) to hook up with as many hot sorority babes, sexy cheerleaders, and naughty nurses as he can.  

Despite the fact that the characters find themselves in an old porno, the movie itself is strangely chaste.  There’s no nudity (except for Pratt’s butt) and the innuendo would feel at home on a sitcom.  In fact, with a few slight edits, it probably could’ve been PG-13.  

Pratt is kind of funny and gives the best performance of the movie, but I can’t help to think he’s probably embarrassed by the film given his conservative lifestyle.  Denise Richards looks foxy as ever as the sorority house’s den mother and Christopher McDonald (looking like a gaunt Ron Jeremy) is the porno director/inventor of the nudie booth.  Scott Caan is amusing as the detective trying to bust our heroes.  It’s just a shame he wasn’t given any funny lines.  

The whole film is like that though.  There’s a good idea for movie here.  (It’s kind of like Delirious, except with a porno instead of a soap opera.)  I mean, who wouldn’t want to be sucked in a porno flick?  Let me rephrase that.  Who wouldn’t want to find themselves transported into a porno?  However, the filmmakers never really take full advantage of the admittedly solid premise. 

It feels like a case where they had a solid first draft of the script where they mapped out the plot, situations, and character development, and assumed they could always go back and add more jokes later.  Except, they kinda forgot to do that by the time the cameras rolled.  The jokes that are there are obvious (people have sex at the drop of a hat, the cops wear tight uniforms that show off their cleavage, etc.) and aren’t especially funny.  

The biggest problem is the lack of T & A.  I could’ve been more forgiving of the lame humor if there were scads of nudity about.  (You know, like a real porno.)  Sadly, that wasn’t the case.  Overall, Deep in the Valley is rather shallow.

AKA:  Hot Babes.  AKA:  American Hot Babes.