Damn your eyes!
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The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and
Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!? (1964)
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Damn your eyes!!!!
4th of July 2025 Marathoning
McDowell and Comi prepare to leave for Mars. Aliens visiting the UN, dropping off their cook book, providing goodies for humans on Earth, easing them into trusting them, spiriting them away to be food for them on their home planet. To Serve Man is nearly 60 years ago. I've been watching Twilight Zone since I was a teenager in the mid 90s thanks to Sci Fi Channel. Many of my family have passed since (for instance, my mother's siblings are all about gone except one last sister), and it wouldn't be right to avoid a marathon during the 4th if just for nostalgic reasons. Syfy didn't see the value of TZ on Independence Day, except last year, so even though I cannot watch episodes like I do during New Year's Eve and Day, it is nice to try and sneak in a block of episodes whenever possible. I started with Death Ship from the fourth season, continuing with Stopover in a Quiet Town and The Gift . To Serve Man would feel like a later afternoon watch but SYFY showed it at 3:...
lol. Steckler was great, even when his movies weren't.
ReplyDeleteI agree. I'm so glad his movies exist.
ReplyDeleteHe wasn't a bad filmmaker at his best, either. INCREDIBLY STRANGE CREATURES is his best known flick, but by no means his best. My favorite is probably WILD GUITAR. Arch Hall Jr. and his hair in a "Hollywood story" picture about the rise of the sensational Bud Eagle (and his hair)! I like THE THRILL KILLERS, too. One of Steckler's oddest items is RAT PFINK A BOO BOO, which starts as a sort of straight horror thriller. In the midst of filming, he suddenly thought it would be funny if his two leads went into the closet and emerged as Batman and Robin, so he changed the movie in that direction right there on the spot. The shift in tone is as abrupt as a light-switch being flipped. From the moment Rat Pfink and Boo Boo appear, the movie becomes an over-the-top, silly homage to old serial adventures, and that's what it remains to the end. Kogar the Gorilla even appears. It was originally to be called RAT PFINK AND BOO BOO, but the printer screwed up the "and" and just had an "a." It would cost extra to fix the error, and since everything, at the time, was This-A-Go-Go and That-A-Go-Go, Steckler just told them to leave it as is. The more recent releases have restored the original name, which sort of sucks--I prefer A BOO BOO.
ReplyDeleteSteckler was always generous in giving interviews, and when his films were released on DVD, he always provided a ton of fun extras. A guy who loved making movies.
I watched his really strange Sinthia not too long ago. What a wild one that was! That was kind of in the middle of the Manson era of late 60s/early 70s exploitation. The Thrill Killers is my favorite of his movies. I love all those factoids on Steckler. I went into a Steckler phase not too long ago, ending with Hollywood Strangler. Joe Bob loves him. I think you sense that he loved making films, too. The fact his movies make the rounds with the cult crowd keeps him alive, I think.
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