From the distributor:
See: the incredibly comprehensive 10-disc career spanning collection from producer/director/writer/showman/star Ray Dennis Steckler – along with noms de cinéma that included Sven Christian, Wolfgang Schmidt, Cindy Lou Sutters and Cash Flagg – “an unheralded auteur misunderstood by the mainstream and de-legitimized by a critical community unable to appreciate his genius.” (PopMatters)
See: 20 incredibly strange films – scanned in 4K/2K from the best existing 35MM/16MM vault elements, sole remaining prints and video masters – including several rarely-seen, thought-lost or never-before-on-disc, plus all-new Special Features, audio commentaries, a full-color book and more that smashes the fun barrier!
See: the incredibly true story – filmed in Hallucinogenic Hypno-Vision & Terrorama! – behind one of the most incomparable, unstoppable and wildly original talents in horror, exploitation, adult film and pop culture history.
New Book:
The Incredibly Strange Filmmaker Who Stopped Living And Became A Mixed-Up Legend written by Zack Carlson, co-author of Destroy All Movies!!! and Bleeding Skull: A 1990s Trash-Horror Odyssey, with contributions by Charles Devlin.
Disc 1: Wild Guitar (1962)
Disc Specs:
Runtime: 90 mins
Audio: English Mono / Closed Captions
Region Free
Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1
Special Features:
- Bud Eagle Rocks — Interview With Actor Arch Hall, Jr.
- The Incredibly Strange Film Show Season 1, Episode 2: Ray Dennis Steckler
- Master Of The Grind — Interview With Ray Dennis Steckler
- Trailer
Disc 2: The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living And Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!? (1963)
Disc Specs:
Runtime: 82 mins
Audio: English Mono / Closed Captions
Region Free
Aspect Ratio: 1.75:1
Special Features:
- Introduction By Joe Bob Briggs
- Audio Commentary With Ray Dennis Steckler
- Audio Commentary With Joe Bob Briggs
- Archival Interview With Ray Dennis Steckler
- Archival Interview With Carolyn Brandt
- Deleted Scenes
- VHS Trailer
- Trailer
- TEENAGE PSYCHO MEETS BLOODY MARY Re-Release Trailer
- TEENAGE PSYCHO MEETS BLOODY MARY Radio Spot
Disc 3: The Thrill Killers (1965)
Disc Specs:
Runtime: 70 mins
Audio: English Mono / Closed Captions
Region Free
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Special Features:
- Audio Commentary With Ray Dennis Steckler
- Audio Commentary With Christopher Wayne Curry, Author Of The Incredibly Strange Features Of Ray Dennis Steckler
- Confessions Of A Thrill Killer — Interview With Actor Gary Kent
- Archival Interview With Ray Dennis Steckler
- Q&A At The York Theatre, San Francisco
- Alternate Cut: THE MANIACS ARE LOOSE (77 mins)
- Behind The Scenes Footage With Commentary By Ray Dennis Steckler
- THE THRILL KILLERS Trailer
- THE MANIACS ARE LOOSE Trailer
- THE MANIACS ARE LOOSE TV Spots
- Radio Spots
Disc 4: Rat Pfink A Boo Boo (1965) / The Lemon Grove Kids (1967, 1969)
Disc Specs:
Runtime: 67 mins / 78 mins
Audio: English Mono / Closed Captions
Region Free
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 / 1.33:1
Special Features:
Rat Pfink A Boo Boo
- Audio Commentary With Ray Dennis Steckler
- Audio Commentary With Aaron AuBuchon, Webster University Professor Of Film Studies
- First Lady Of Cult — Interview With Actress Carolyn Brandt
- Mondo Psychotronic — Interview With Mondo Movies Label And Psychotronic Video Store Owner Bal Croce And Friends
- Monster Mags, B-Movies & Rock 'n' Roll — Filmmaker Don Glut On Ron Haydock And Ray
- Original Opening Footage
- Color Footage Of Rat Pfink And Boo Boo
- Trailer
The Lemon Grove Kids
- Audio Commentary With Ray Dennis Steckler
- Archival Interview With Ray Dennis Steckler
- Tickles Talks — Interview With Daughter Laura Steckler
- Text Card For Live Show
- Footage From Unreleased Fourth Segment
- Parade Footage
- GOOF ON THE LOOSE — Short Film With Optional Director Commentary
- Trailer
Disc 5: Body Fever (1969) / Sinthia: The Devil’s Doll (1969)
Disc Specs:
Runtime: 78 mins / 77 mins
Audio: English Mono / Closed Captions
Region Free
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 / 1.33:1
Body Fever Special Features:
- Audio Commentary With Ray Dennis Steckler
- Audio Commentary With Dark Eyes Of London's David Dent
- Archival Interview With Ray Dennis Steckler
- Archival Interview With Carolyn Brandt
- Interview With Ray Dennis Steckler At The York Theatre, San Francisco
- Work Print Footage From BLOODY JACK (Unfinished Film Started After BODY FEVER)
Disc 6: Blood Shack (1971)
Disc Specs:
Runtime: 55 mins
Audio: English Mono / Closed Captions
Region Free
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Special Features:
- Audio Commentary With Ray Dennis Steckler
- Alternate Cut: THE CHOOPER (70 mins)
- Introduction By Joe Bob Briggs
- Audio Commentary With Joe Bob Briggs
- Audio Commentary With Aaron AuBuchon, Webster University Professor Of Film Studies
- Archival Interview With Ray Dennis Steckler
- Archival Interview With Carolyn Brandt
- Outtakes
Disc 7: The Hollywood Strangler Meets The Skid Row Slasher (1980) / The Las Vegas Serial Killer (1987)
Disc Specs:
Runtime: 71 mins / 76 mins
Audio: English Mono / Closed Captions
Region Free
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Special Features:
The Hollywood Strangler Meets The Skid Row Slasher
- Introduction By Joe Bob Briggs
- Audio Commentary With Ray Dennis Steckler
- Audio Commentary With Joe Bob Briggs
- Archival Interview With Ray Dennis Steckler
- Archival Interview With Carolyn Brandt By Ray Dennis Steckler
- HOLLYWOOD STRANGLER IN LAS VEGAS Trailer
The Las Vegas Serial Killer
- Audio Commentary With Ray Dennis Steckler
- Audio Commentary With Actor Ron Jason Moderated By Severin Films' David Gregory And Vinegar Syndrome's Joe Rubin
- Archival Interview With Ray Dennis Steckler
- The Las Vegas Thrill Killer — Interview With Actor Ron Jason
- Savage And Steckler — Interview With Actress Glenda Savage
- Promo For The Unfinished Film LAS VEGAS THRILL KILLER With Optional Commentary By Ron Jason
Disc 8: The Mad Love Life Of A Hot Vampire / Nazi Brothel / Love Life Of Hitler’s Nazis / Count Al-Kum
Disc Specs:
Runtime: 51 mins / 55 mins / 52 mins / 49 mins
Audio: English Mono / Closed Captions
Region Free
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Special Features:
- Steckler Locations Tour Of Los Angeles And Las Vegas With Vinegar Syndrome's Joe Rubin
Disc 9: Dr. Cock Luv / The Sexorcist’s Devil / Red Heat
Disc Specs:
Runtime: 52 mins / 60 mins / 81 mins
Audio: English Mono / Closed Captions
Region Free
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Special Features:
- Interview With Actress Lovey Goldmine
- Lost Film Productions Digest Versions Of FACE OF EVIL and SLASHED...
Disc 10: Summer Fun (1997) / Reading, Pennsylvania (2006) / One More Time (2008)
Disc Specs:
Runtime: 61 mins / 257 mins / 66 mins
Audio: English Mono / Closed Captions
Region Free
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Special Features:
- AMERICAN GRINDHOUSE Extended Interview With Ray Dennis Steckler
- Interview With Elijah Drenner, Director Of AMERICAN GRINDHOUSE
- Natasha Diakova's Screen Test For ONE MORE TIME
- Ray Dennis Steckler Talks B-Movie Filmmaking At Las Vegas High School
- Johnny Legend's Final Interview With Ray Dennis Steckler And Behind The Scenes Footage From ONE MORE TIME
- Audio Interview With Katherine Steckler
- MASCOT VIDEO By Filmmaker Joaquin Montalvan
- SUMMER FUN Trailer
Shop for the box set HERE.
This post discusses the Severin box set in detail:
The Incredibly Strange Films of Ray Dennis Steckler on Severin Blu-ray
Ray Dennis Steckler’s films reveal him to be a bona fide American surrealist.
by Budd Wilkins | October 27, 2022 | slantmagazine.com
ray collections of exploitation and cult film pioneers like Al Adamson and Andy Milligan. Now they turn the spotlight on Ray Dennis Steckler with a 20-film box set that spans the filmmaker’s entire career from his 1962 debut, Wild Guitar, to 2008’s One More Time, an oddball sequel to arguably his most famous film that was made just prior to his death in 2009. Factor in short films, alternate cuts, footage from unfinished projects, copious interviews and commentary tracks, as well as a 100-page book—not to mention the gorgeous restorations of the films themselves—and you’ve got one of the most essential home video releases of the year.
In many ways, Wild Guitar, a raucous exposé of recording industry corruption made by producer-writer-actor Arch Hall Sr. as a starring vehicle for his son, is the odd man out in this set. Essentially a work-for-hire, Hall advised Steckler to stick close to the script, leaving scant room for the unfettered inventiveness that characterizes his preferred approach to filmmaking. Nevertheless, this is a well-made, thoroughly entertaining film with Steckler turning in the first of many performances in his own films as the amusingly named Steak.
Boasting arguably the greatest title in film history, 1964’s The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies shows Steckler in complete creative control over what was billed as the first ever monster musical. Arguably Steckler’s masterpiece, the film certainly lives up to that bit of ballyhoo. It’s a giddily carnivalesque tale of mutilation and mind control, featuring a surprising amount of existential malaise. What the film also reveals is that Steckler can be called a bona fide American surrealist. His improvisatory approach to storytelling is akin to the surrealist technique of automatic writing: He began the shooting day by sizing up the set or location in a meditative manner, only then figuring out what was going to happen. As a result, Incredibly Strange Creatures unspools like a lividly hued fever dream, and it contains a truly dazzling dream sequence that utilizes a fascinating array of performance art, razor-sharp editing, and delirious multiple exposures.
Working chronologically through the films in this set, you begin to notice that, owing to a sense of playful self-referentiality, they all seem to take place within the same cinematic space. (Call it the Stecklerverse.) This tendency toward the self-aware starts out simply enough with the appearance of posters for earlier Steckler movies that are visible in the background. A Wild Guitar poster, for instance, turns up on a dressing room wall in Incredibly Strange Creatures. A mask from Incredibly Strange Creatures in turn serves as a throwaway gag during a pool party in 1966’s bizarre Rat Pfink a Boo Boo, which begins as a straight crime drama before spiraling into a superhero parody. Things get more convoluted in 1964’s The Thrill Killers, which leavens its brutal antics concerning a trio of escaped madmen with a satirical take on Tinseltown that sees real-life producer George J. Morgan playing a fictionalized horndog version of himself.
The Lemon Grove Kids, a trilogy of short films that serve as a love letter to the Bowery Boys, doubles down on the intertextuality. In the titular first segment, Gopher (Steckler) literally runs into the ending scene of Rat Pfink a Boo Boo, momentarily bringing to a standstill the climactic battle between Rat Pfink (Ron Haydock) and an escaped gorilla called Kogar (Bob Burns). The third segment (knowingly titled “The Lemon Grove Kids Go Hollywood!”) has Carolyn Brandt revisiting her role as jobbing actress Cee Bee Beaumont from Rat Pfink, and even includes a scene set in the real-world Steckler-Wester Film Productions offices. The middle section (“The Lemon Grove Kids Meet the Green Grasshopper and the Vampire Lady from Outer Space”) boasts some really wild costume and set designs, suggesting Steckler’s affinity with the pop culture-inflected mythos of George Kuchar, just as the more infernal elements of his 1970 shrieky psychodrama Sinthia, The Devil’s Doll brings Kenneth Anger to mind.
Be sure to watch the alternate cut of 1971’s Blood Shack titled The Chooper, because all of the overtly meta elements have been removed from the former version. Either way, this is a surprisingly elegiac horror movie made on one location in Pahrump, Nevada, for a budget of around 500 bucks, but only in the alternate cut does Brandt, who was married to Steckler at the time, play a fictionalized version of herself as a disillusioned scream queen eager to escape the demoralizing depredations of Hollywood. Once again, posters and publicity stills feature prominently in the set design, only this time they’re actually the topic of discussion between Carolyn and ranch hand Daniel (Jason Wayne), when he expresses an avowed enthusiasm for the bloody goings on that they depict, an admiration Carolyn cannot bring herself to share.
After most of what little cast there is in The Chooper winds up dead, Carolyn muses that she’ll worry about it all tomorrow, “if tomorrow ever comes,” a weirdly disenchanted dictum that’s accompanied by a shot of the setting sun. The film exudes a palpable aura of discontent, inviting a certain amount of biographical speculation, especially since the film marks a shift between Steckler’s L.A. productions and the ones that he went on to make in Las Vegas, a change that reportedly had a deleterious influence on his family life. On a more bizarre note, the costume worn by the titular sword-wielding maniac was donned by a strange creature in the middle segment of The Lemon Grove Kids, further looping in connections with earlier Steckler films.
The Chooper also sees an end to Steckler’s genre productions (at least until later in the decade), since he spent most of the 1970s and ’80s churning out porno films, several of which are available in this set. The titles included here all sport some sort of horror or Nazisploitation elements, and as such serve as hardcore variations on the aforementioned softcore (and totally bonkers) Sinthia, the Devil’s Doll. The set then moves forward to an outlier from the late ’70s, The Hollywood Strangler Meets the Skid Row Slasher, a tangibly tawdry saga of mad love and mutually assured destruction between the titular psychos. Also included here is it’s 1986’s sequel, Las Vegas Serial Killer, which continues Steckler’s referential habits by featuring a party at Cash Flagg’s house, Flagg being the name he routinely acted under.
Late in his life, Steckler made a number of films using nothing more than consumer-grade camcorders. One More Time, from 2009, plays like an “extension” of Incredibly Strange Creatures for its first three-quarters, featuring the return of Steckler’s Jerry character from that film, until he flips the script to reveal it’s all been a dream of renewed glory before ending things on a far more mundane and melancholy note. Divided into four “takes,” and running more than four hours long, 2006’s documentary Reading, Pennsylvania is an exercise in (and philosophical rumination on) nostalgia, as Steckler returns to his hometown for his 50th high school reunion. The film ultimately develops into a rather poignant examination of the methods a filmmaker can utilize to capture the multifaceted realities of a city.
The first section of Reading, Pennsylvania serves as an overture, set entirely to music, as Steckler and his wife make their way across country from Las Vegas to Reading, then tour the streets of the town. Along the way, we witness various scenes and characters that Steckler will return to (and expand upon) in later sections. Only at the very end is there any use of sync sound for an interview with a local journalist who provides us with some needed context about life in Reading. The following segment exhibits a more straightforward man-on-the-street interview technique while touching on topics that range in significance from where to get the best food to how to improve on city life under current political conditions.
Reading, Pennsylvania’s final two parts return to Steckler’s career-spanning fascination with films that are in dialogue with other ones. The third section consists entirely of Steckler participating in a screening and discussion of the first two segments of the film at the now-defunct Melwood Screening Room in Pittsburgh, after which he methodically interviews the handful of attendees about their responses. The final segment sees Steckler returning to his hometown for a Reading on Film festival, a vast swath of which consists of Steckler focusing his camera on a screen showing a variety of advertisements and other bits of film that showcase Reading over the years. Taken together, these multifarious “takes” on Reading add up to an unexpectedly moving three-dimensional portrait of an American city.
These late films indicate the twofold nature of Steckler’s approach to the surreal. On the one hand, there’s the focus on the dream life that features prominently in more than one Steckler film, allowing him to indulge in free-associative imagery, from the mesmerizing hypno-swirl in Incredibly Strange Creatures to the writhing painted nudes in hell of Sinthia, the Devil’s Doll. (Most of Steckler’s dream sequences are vibrantly colored.) But alongside that—and grounding the realism from which his surrealism springs—is Steckler’s painstaking attention to the here and now, “stolen” moments in time (often street scenes shot without benefit of permits) that turn up time and again throughout his work. So Steckler’s films ultimately succeed both as playful exercises in various genres as well as surreptitious documentaries that chronicle times and places now long gone, for which they continue to serve as poignant indices.
I'm curious about the later Steckler movies, even the pornos to some degree since so many of them used footage also found in the horror flicks, but not at this price. My morbid curiosity has its limit.
ReplyDeleteYep, despite my compulsions I have to draw the line. I just don't see myself watching these films very many times. I purchased Severins' Folk Horror set when it was released and thought it was well worth it.
ReplyDeleteI have most of the Steckler movie on DVD, so that's a factor. I'm intrigued by the Folk Horror stuff. I'll have to give it a look.
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