Wild Guitar (1962).The films of low budget director Ray Dennis Steckler present a unique balancing act between familiar B-movie tropes and the unexpected. With Wild Guitar (1962), The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed Up Zombies!!? (1964), The Thrill Killers (1964), and Rat Pfink A Boo Boo (1966), Steckler, a self-acknowledged Hollywood outsider, crafted a series of idiosyncratic low budget features in the heart of Tinseltown before eventually decamping to Las Vegas in 1970 for a career in porn and to teach film classes at the University of Nevada. In these energetic early films, his characters—drifters, rock ‘n’ rollers, killers, dropouts, superheroes, and struggling actors—seem to be plucked from Hollywood Boulevard and set down in a pulp comic come to life. The Hollywood strip appears again and again in the director’s films as a symbol of intoxicating fantasy and disillusionment. Indeed, Steckler’s work embodies, at first glance, a simple teenage dream of celebrity,...
- 6/13/2022
- MUBI
*Cue the music* Do, da, do, da, do, da, do, da, six more days 'til Halloween, Halloween, Halloween. Six more days 'til Halloween... I will let our readers finish the rest. Halloween is next week, so what's better than a book dedicated to the Halloween franchise? Taking Shape: Developing Halloween from Script to Scream by Dustin McNeill and Travis Mullins is available now. Also in today's Horror Highlights: a Blood & Gourd animated teaser, the newly restored Eegah (1962) on Blu-ray and DVD, and Red Letter Day Blu-ray release details.
Taking Shape: Developing Halloween from Script to Scream Book Release Details: "Silver Shamrock. Thorn. White Horses. It’s all in here. Join authors Dustin McNeill and Travis Mullins for a deep dive into the evolution of Halloween’s vast mythology. Extensively researched, this is the ultimate guide to the first forty years of Haddonfield history. Rejected scripts, deleted scenes, unused ideas, alternate...
Taking Shape: Developing Halloween from Script to Scream Book Release Details: "Silver Shamrock. Thorn. White Horses. It’s all in here. Join authors Dustin McNeill and Travis Mullins for a deep dive into the evolution of Halloween’s vast mythology. Extensively researched, this is the ultimate guide to the first forty years of Haddonfield history. Rejected scripts, deleted scenes, unused ideas, alternate...
- 10/25/2019
- by Tamika Jones
- DailyDead
With Halloween only a week away now (how in the heck did that happen?), of course there are a ton of horror and sci-fi home entertainment offerings arriving on Tuesday, ready to get you primed for all your spooky shenanigans leading up to October 31st. In terms of new titles, both War of the Planet of the Apes and Annabelle: Creation hit various formats, and Criterion has put together a stellar release for Olivier Assayas’ Personal Shopper as well.
On the cult side of the genre spectrum, we have a myriad of movies to look forward to, including a quartet of titles from Vinegar Syndrome: The Corpse Grinders, Demon Wind, Blood Beat, and the double feature of Prime Evil and Lurkers. Arrow Video has assembled a special edition set for Herschell Gordon Lewis’ Blood Feast that’s a must-own for any splatter fans out there, and the Warner Archive Collection...
On the cult side of the genre spectrum, we have a myriad of movies to look forward to, including a quartet of titles from Vinegar Syndrome: The Corpse Grinders, Demon Wind, Blood Beat, and the double feature of Prime Evil and Lurkers. Arrow Video has assembled a special edition set for Herschell Gordon Lewis’ Blood Feast that’s a must-own for any splatter fans out there, and the Warner Archive Collection...
- 10/24/2017
- by Heather Wixson
- DailyDead
Stars: Sean Kenney, Monika Kelly, Sanford Mitchell, J. Byron Foster, Warren Ball, Ann Noble, Vincent Barbi | Written by Arch Hall, Joseph Cranston | Directed by Ted V. Mikels
Recently on television in the UK there was a show about what is in your pet’s food, and how shocked you would be. They missed a trick with that by not showing The Corpse Grinders afterwards. I’m not saying there are people in real pet food, but documentaries such as that are sensationalised tabloid style shows that people fall for. The Corpse Grinders though is a 1971 Grindhouse film that is being released on DVD by 88 Films featuring corpse grinding, cats with a taste for flesh and bad acting.
When the Lotus Cat Food Company finds itself in financial trouble it needs a cheap source for meat and find it in the graveyard. With human flesh entering the feline food chain it...
Recently on television in the UK there was a show about what is in your pet’s food, and how shocked you would be. They missed a trick with that by not showing The Corpse Grinders afterwards. I’m not saying there are people in real pet food, but documentaries such as that are sensationalised tabloid style shows that people fall for. The Corpse Grinders though is a 1971 Grindhouse film that is being released on DVD by 88 Films featuring corpse grinding, cats with a taste for flesh and bad acting.
When the Lotus Cat Food Company finds itself in financial trouble it needs a cheap source for meat and find it in the graveyard. With human flesh entering the feline food chain it...
- 3/11/2014
- by Paul Metcalf
- Nerdly
Los Angeles — James Comisar is the first to acknowledge that more than a few have questioned his sanity for spending the better part of 25 years collecting everything from the costume George Reeves wore in the 1950s TV show "Superman" to the entire set of "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson."
Then there's the pointy Spock ears Leonard Nimoy wore on "Star Trek" and the guns Tony Soprano used to rub out a mob rival in an episode of "The Sopranos."
"Along the way people thought I was nuts in general for wanting to conserve Keith Partridge's flared pants from `The Partridge Family,'" the good-natured former TV writer says of the 1970s sitcom as he ambles through rows of costumes, props and what have you from the beginnings of television to the present day.
"But they really thought I needed a psychological workup," Comisar, 48, adds with a smile, "when...
Then there's the pointy Spock ears Leonard Nimoy wore on "Star Trek" and the guns Tony Soprano used to rub out a mob rival in an episode of "The Sopranos."
"Along the way people thought I was nuts in general for wanting to conserve Keith Partridge's flared pants from `The Partridge Family,'" the good-natured former TV writer says of the 1970s sitcom as he ambles through rows of costumes, props and what have you from the beginnings of television to the present day.
"But they really thought I needed a psychological workup," Comisar, 48, adds with a smile, "when...
- 12/24/2012
- by AP
- Huffington Post
Psychotronic filmmaker Ray Dennis Steckler lost his battle with heart disease on January 7, 2009 in Las Vegas, Nevada; he was 70 years old. With his passing so goes Cash Flagg, his hoodlum alter ego and star of Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies, The Thrill Killers, Lemon Grove Kids Meet the Monsters and Wild Guitar. We also say farewell to Sven Christian, Wolfgang Schmidt, and Cindy Lou Sutters; other Steckler pseudonyms; there were 12 of them at last count and I am sure we will miss them all.
Steckler started his film career by finishing principal photography on Timothy Carey’s World’s Greatest Sinner. He then went on to capture Arch Hall Jr.’s delinquent delight in 1962's Wild Guitar, and after that he was off and running, shooting films without ever a finished screenplay in hand.
Steckler always did the best he could with what he had,...
Steckler started his film career by finishing principal photography on Timothy Carey’s World’s Greatest Sinner. He then went on to capture Arch Hall Jr.’s delinquent delight in 1962's Wild Guitar, and after that he was off and running, shooting films without ever a finished screenplay in hand.
Steckler always did the best he could with what he had,...
- 1/12/2009
- by Johnny Butane
- DreadCentral.com
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