Thursday, January 8, 2009

RIP Ray Dennis Steckler





GW Ferguson passed on the news earlier this subzero evening. Most people know him as the producer of THE INCREDIBLY STRANGE CREATURES WHO STOPPED LIVING AND BECAME MIXED-UP ZOMBIES, which also happened to be a musical. I saw this film on CREATURE FEATURES at a time when they were saving all the Universal Monster runs for the summer months when the kids were off of school. Steckler acted in his own films as Cash Flagg, a good a name as any, I suppose. Years later, as I discovered others...like myself who watched such oddities, I found out about films like THE LEMON GROVE KIDS MEET THE MONSTERS, THE THRILL KILLERS, and RAT PFINK A BOO BOO, a riff on BATMAN & ROBIN but the name had to get bastardized thanks to DC Comics being the corporate dick it always has been as well as Big Daddy Roth (rightfully so, in this case)wanting the trademarked Rat Fink off the film's title. Steckler made low-budget films through the late 90s, and had just filmed a sequel (yea, how cool is that?!) to INCREDIBLY STRANGE.... 2009 now gives us this film as well as the remake of PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE. Ray Steckler and Ed Wood, two guys who made crappy movies because all they really wanted to do was tell the stories no one else wanted to. I mean, c'mon, a zombie musical in 1964? The guy was a visionary.