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Ray Dennis Steckler had been making slasher-esque movies since the early '70s, but by the time the slasher wave actually arrived, it's interesting how out of time his efforts felt. Take The Hollywood Strangler Meets the Skid Row Slasher, which follows two parallel killing sprees by the eponymous murderers. The Hollywood Strangler is played by Pierre Agostino, who perfectly embodies the kind of person you'd cross the street to avoid and usually looks like he's bitten into a lemon. (He also wears a Canadian tuxedo, which I maintain can be a great look in the right hands. These are the wrong hands.) Over the course of the movie, he books model after model for a number of racy photoshoots, only to be repulsed by (in his esteem) their tawdry nature and therefore feeling the need to strangle them to death. (One wonders if this isn't a self fulfilling prophecy, given that he's setting up the shoots. A bit of a hypocrite on top of being a murderous lunatic, if you ask me. Also worth noting that one of the models pokes her breast and goes "Boop!", and folks, I laughed.) Meanwhile, the proprietor of a pornographic bookstore, played by Steckler's ex-wife Carolyn Brandt, goes around stabbing hobos to death, an act usually captured with a barrage of shadowy, canted angles. (I did notice one shot where her switchblade had blood before she'd stuck her victim. Sticklers for technical proficiency are best to steer clear of the director's work. No sticklers for Steckler, is what I'm saying.)
Brandt is a reliably cheerful presence in Steckler's movies, but here she looks surly, which is perhaps in character but still dampens the proceedings noticeably. What happened to the actress who danced so joyously with Rat Pfink, Boo Boo and the gorilla in Rat Pfink a Boo Boo, or who made time to play catch with a briefcase full of heroin in Body Fever? One wonders if the years spent helping Ray on his pornos, including doing porno dialogue over narration in Red Heat, didn't take its toll. This borrows that movie's structure with its parallel murder/crime stories, but perhaps due to the absence of the obligatory sex scenes, it holds together a bit better. Like that movie, there's a fair bit of padding with Vegas street footage, but this one finds more squalid locations to complement the bright lights, giving the whole thing a seedy atmosphere, a tour of Vegas' B-sides, the parts the tourism board doesn't want you to see. (Yes, I realize Hollywood is right there in the title, but there's a good amount of Vegas in the finished product.)
Probably the most intriguing reading of this movie is through the lends of Steckler's relationship with Brandt. Agostino's character is reeling from his ex-wife having left him, and the connective tissue between the two plot threads is provided by Brandt catching Agostino's eye and Agostino then trying to work up the courage to ask her out (more or less). One wonders if between takes, Steckler didn't nudge Brandt here and there, suggesting that the two of them made such a great team that maybe it'd be nice to get back together, completely oblivious to any signals she's sending to the contrary. Perhaps that's why Brandt spends the whole movie frowning. I assumed the divorce was amicable, but also suspect the goodwill had started to run out.
While it's probably not appropriate for me to speculate on the status of Steckler and Brandt's relationship, one must note that she did not return for the follow-up, Las Vegas Serial Killer. This one brings back Agostino (now with a much more unpleasant speaking voice) and replaces Brandt with two guys in black shirts who make untoward comments about women and occasionally try to rob them. There's a half hearted attempt to cast Agostino as a Richard Speck analogue, as well as some references to the movie star Cash Flagg, which was a pseudonym Steckler used as an actor. Brandt's absence is definitely felt, and this one has even more Vegas street footage (but without the dingier locations for atmosphere), but shares an intriguing sense of narrative drift in light of the maddeningly uneventful proceedings. (Like Blood Shack, we even take a trip to the rodeo.) Both movies have soundtracks that are chintzy but sometimes atmospheric, at least when the synths start droning, and at a time when the slasher genre had become increasingly codified, their conceptual and structural crudeness give them a strangely archaeological quality. Truth be told, I wasn't concentrating too closely when I watched these, but found them strangely engaging on that level. Had I tried to pay full attention, I suspect my brain would be leaking out of my ears.
The Hollywood Strangler Meets the Skid Row Slasher (Steckler, 1979)
Ray Dennis Steckler had been making slasher-esque movies since the early '70s, but by the time the slasher wave actually arrived, it's interesting how out of time his efforts felt. Take The Hollywood Strangler Meets the Skid Row Slasher, which follows two parallel killing sprees by the eponymous murderers. The Hollywood Strangler is played by Pierre Agostino, who perfectly embodies the kind of person you'd cross the street to avoid and usually looks like he's bitten into a lemon. (He also wears a Canadian tuxedo, which I maintain can be a great look in the right hands. These are the wrong hands.) Over the course of the movie, he books model after model for a number of racy photoshoots, only to be repulsed by (in his esteem) their tawdry nature and therefore feeling the need to strangle them to death. (One wonders if this isn't a self fulfilling prophecy, given that he's setting up the shoots. A bit of a hypocrite on top of being a murderous lunatic, if you ask me. Also worth noting that one of the models pokes her breast and goes "Boop!", and folks, I laughed.) Meanwhile, the proprietor of a pornographic bookstore, played by Steckler's ex-wife Carolyn Brandt, goes around stabbing hobos to death, an act usually captured with a barrage of shadowy, canted angles. (I did notice one shot where her switchblade had blood before she'd stuck her victim. Sticklers for technical proficiency are best to steer clear of the director's work. No sticklers for Steckler, is what I'm saying.)
Brandt is a reliably cheerful presence in Steckler's movies, but here she looks surly, which is perhaps in character but still dampens the proceedings noticeably. What happened to the actress who danced so joyously with Rat Pfink, Boo Boo and the gorilla in Rat Pfink a Boo Boo, or who made time to play catch with a briefcase full of heroin in Body Fever? One wonders if the years spent helping Ray on his pornos, including doing porno dialogue over narration in Red Heat, didn't take its toll. This borrows that movie's structure with its parallel murder/crime stories, but perhaps due to the absence of the obligatory sex scenes, it holds together a bit better. Like that movie, there's a fair bit of padding with Vegas street footage, but this one finds more squalid locations to complement the bright lights, giving the whole thing a seedy atmosphere, a tour of Vegas' B-sides, the parts the tourism board doesn't want you to see. (Yes, I realize Hollywood is right there in the title, but there's a good amount of Vegas in the finished product.)
Probably the most intriguing reading of this movie is through the lends of Steckler's relationship with Brandt. Agostino's character is reeling from his ex-wife having left him, and the connective tissue between the two plot threads is provided by Brandt catching Agostino's eye and Agostino then trying to work up the courage to ask her out (more or less). One wonders if between takes, Steckler didn't nudge Brandt here and there, suggesting that the two of them made such a great team that maybe it'd be nice to get back together, completely oblivious to any signals she's sending to the contrary. Perhaps that's why Brandt spends the whole movie frowning. I assumed the divorce was amicable, but also suspect the goodwill had started to run out.
While it's probably not appropriate for me to speculate on the status of Steckler and Brandt's relationship, one must note that she did not return for the follow-up, Las Vegas Serial Killer. This one brings back Agostino (now with a much more unpleasant speaking voice) and replaces Brandt with two guys in black shirts who make untoward comments about women and occasionally try to rob them. There's a half hearted attempt to cast Agostino as a Richard Speck analogue, as well as some references to the movie star Cash Flagg, which was a pseudonym Steckler used as an actor. Brandt's absence is definitely felt, and this one has even more Vegas street footage (but without the dingier locations for atmosphere), but shares an intriguing sense of narrative drift in light of the maddeningly uneventful proceedings. (Like Blood Shack, we even take a trip to the rodeo.) Both movies have soundtracks that are chintzy but sometimes atmospheric, at least when the synths start droning, and at a time when the slasher genre had become increasingly codified, their conceptual and structural crudeness give them a strangely archaeological quality. Truth be told, I wasn't concentrating too closely when I watched these, but found them strangely engaging on that level. Had I tried to pay full attention, I suspect my brain would be leaking out of my ears.