“The Lord above made the world for us, but the devil made Las Vegas” – Tony Christie
Sometimes writing causes you to pique your interest in a subject even further. Such is the case with the adult movies of Ray Dennis Steckler. Back in December 2017, I wrote up Steckler’s 1974 porno/stalker movie Fire Down Below, and in doing so, spurred myself on into ordering a DVD from Vinegar Syndrome, who put a threesome of Steckler’s pornos –Peeping Tom, The Mad Love Life of a Hot Vampire, and Red Heat- onto disc.
A man who needs little introduction in cult movie circles, Ray Dennis Steckler (1938-2009) worked on the fringes of Hollywood from the late 1950s onwards while simultaneously directing one of a kind, idiosyncratic oddities like The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and became Mixed Up Zombies (1964), Rat Pfink A Boo Boo (1966), and The Lemon Grove Kids Meet the Monsters (1965). Films that would later be re-discovered in the early 1980s, and lead to Steckler and his acting alter-ego ‘Cash Flagg’ becoming cult figures. Whilst waiting for cult stardom to come calling though, Steckler still had to pay the bills and kept afloat during his leaner 1970s period by turning to hardcore filmmaking. Steckler spent much of the 1970s and the early 80s in the adult industry, with mainstream credits being few and far between. Curiously he was thrown some legit work by British producer Greg Smith, he of the ‘Confessions of…’ movies. Steckler and his ex-wife Carolyn Brandt were hired to do some camerawork on Smith’s credit card fraud comedy ‘Funny Money’ (1983), presumably for its early scenes, which take place in Steckler’s adopted home of Las Vegas.
Steckler’s involvement in hardcore pornography was done under a slew of pseudonyms and wasn’t widely known till the 1990s, when knowledgeable companies like Something Weird Video and Alpha Blue Archives started nosing around in America’s pornographic past. Perhaps carelessly in retrospect, Steckler had left traces of himself all over these movies. Steckler’s ex-wife Carolyn Brandt frequently had non-sex roles in his adult movies, Brandt and Steckler regularly lent their voices to these films’ soundtracks, providing narration duties, and some of the same pseudonyms and cast members that Steckler used in his legit movies also showed up in his pornos. Its not difficult to put two and two together and detect Steckler’s directorial involvement in these films.
Evidentially Steckler wasn’t proud of his involvement in the adult industry, his website never mentioned these films, leading to large gaps in his filmography there, and he would reportedly put the phone down on anyone who dared to bring them up in interviews. Some rumours even claim that Steckler’s years in hardcore eventually lead him to seek psychiatric treatment. Steckler’s later legit films like The Hollywood Strangler Meets the Skid Row Slasher (1979) and The Las Vegas Serial Killer (1986), do put forward a case that his involvement with hardcore had changed him, and made Steckler more misanthropic. Anyone expecting to encounter the silly, joy de vivre of his early work in these films, instead will run headfirst into depressing, repetitious movies, heavily focused on the strangulation of women. Steckler’s later movies do little to conceal his adult movie involvement, it is impossible to watch Hollywood Strangler or The Las Vegas Serial Killer, and not reach the conclusion that these were a pornographer’s side projects. The world of The Hollywood Strangler Meets the Skid Row Slasher… full of Z-grade actresses playing nude models, crummy motel rooms, cutaways to the dirty bookshops and porno theatres of LA, plus the constant, misogynistic narration, illustrate just how tainted by porno Steckler had become.
In truth, I have mixed feelings about documenting Steckler’s pornos. You see, Rat Pfink A Boo Boo was one of my favourite childhood movies, how I must have played the shit out of that VHS tape…so part of me feels as if I’m betraying the man’s memory by focusing on a part of his career that he didn’t want to deal with, yet once you’re aware that a person has a darker, sordid side to them…its difficult to resist exploring further.
One of Steckler’s earlier pornos 1973’s Peeping Tom (aka The Creeper) effectively serves as a Las Vegas companion piece to the following year’s Los Angeles set Fire Down Below. It has virtually the same plot, a creepy loser passes the time by peeking in on several sexual vignettes, which make up the bulk of the film’s hour long running time. Peeping Tom is weaker than Fire Down Below in some respects, and stronger in others. Whereas the tubby voyeur/serial killer of Fire Down Below is an unforgettable figure, whose misogynistic voiceover dominates the soundtrack and who frequently intrudes on the narrative by strangling several of the women he’d been peeping in on, here the peeping protagonist is a comparatively anonymous figure. Only fleetingly seen in between porno scenes, at times it is easy to forget that he is there at all, with him often becoming invisible for large stretches of the film. In keeping with the tacky atmosphere of the Las Vegas setting, the film’s narration, by Steckler himself, introduces the protagonist as if he were a talk show host welcoming a star guest “join him tonight as he takes a look behind the many locked doors of the city”.
Shots of this guy hanging around Las Vegas street corners, nervously puffing on cigarettes, and running down the strip in slow motion establishes him as a possibly on the lam criminal. For all the fanfare of Steckler’s introduction though, we never get more than a thumbnail sketch of the man. Peeping Tom is more interested in handing the mic over to the people he is peeping at, and capturing their various dramas and blow outs. For a porno movie, people talk allot in Peeping Tom…actually let me correct that slightly, people yell, argue and throw insults around allot in Peeping Tom. For some reason when he took to porno, Steckler seemed to transform into Andy Milligan. Very early on you learn that Steckler’s pornos don’t want to turn you on and make you happy, these movies want to spit in your face. Normal, harmonious sex seems to leave Steckler cold, when his films are functioning on that level, Steckler’s direction just amounts to letting film run through the camera. His pornos are only really alive when there is bad blood on the screen, when people are hollering and blowing their tops. In that respect, Peeping Tom lets off the mother of all firecrackers right away.
Sexual Vignette 1# The peeping tom gets an eyeful and insight into the bad marriage of a white trash couple. The husband is played by Jason Wayne, who also had a prominent role in Steckler’s horror cheapie Blood Shack, the wife is played by possibly the most foul mouthed woman who ever walked the face of the earth. The air instantly turns blue and abusive, when this woman calls a man ‘bitch’, ‘bastard’ and ‘you motherfucker’, you just know she means every word. She gets the ball rolling by accusing him of infidelity, “who the hell you been fucking tonight, mister?”, closely followed by “that’s why I was with my lawyer today, bitch”. Hubby’s fuse is as short as hers “you fucking pig, I’ll knock your teeth in” he threatens. “You’re insane” he tells her “yeah, I’m with you” she shoots back. The constant stream of put downs and below the belt insults seem to be the norm for this pair. The woman grins like a Cheshire cat, and never seems more happier than when she is taunting his inability to keep it up, or speculating that the amount of women he has been fucking behind her back has probably left him impotent. The real pornography in this scene seems to be the trash talk dialogue, with the hardcore sex thrown in as an afterthought. Rightly or wrongly the scene incriminates the actor, Steckler and the audience as the type of men who can only really get off on a woman if she is treating them like shit. If that is your bag then you may well end up regarding this woman as some kind of goddess. The mere casting of this woman in a film like this flies in the face of conventional porno …where you’re meant to be turned on and digging the people who are onscreen…rather than being terrified of them.
The only time this couple stop yelling is when their genitals are in each other’s mouths, and even then they can’t resist coming up for air and spitting out a few more put downs in the process. “Whatever happened to the great lover, you can’t even get it hard” she bitches. “You said you could get me off, shows how fake your word is” he whines back. There is dialogue in this scene where you just can’t believe what you are hearing. Thoughts, insults and expressions of sexual disgust which your average person would keep buried deep in the very back on your mind are yelled out loud here. “JESUS, WOMAN, YOUR CUNT SMELLS” is his high point when it comes to insults. Don’t feel too sorry for the woman on the receiving end of this degrading comment though, as she reliably comes back at him with the even greater, knockout comment of “SHUT UP, BITCH, BEFORE I FART IN YOUR FUCKING FACE”. Who said romance is dead? Really, the film should have just consisted of these two lovebirds going at it hammer and tongs for the entire movie. The woman in particular is sensational, if someone told me she went on to become a serial killer in real life, I’d believe every word of it. You definitely get a ‘straight outta Spahn Ranch’ vibe from this one.
Sexual Vignette 2# The problem with Peeping Tom is that it peaks early and never really recaptures the intensity of the first vignette. Just where do you go from there? The sight of a man complaining that his wife’s cunt smells and her threatening to fart in his face is - after all - a tough act to follow. Our second peek into down n’ dirty Las Vegas is a foursome between two married guys and two skanks they’ve picked up on the strip. The guys brag about being married, joke about fucking around behind their wives’ backs and take bets on how long their marriages will last. Mean spirited banter for sure, but it lacks the viciousness of the first segment. The actors, long haired lanky hippies whose appearance is at odd with the square suburbanites they’re meant to be playing, give the impression of just being here for the balling, and regard all this Steckler dialogue as an inconvenience. One of the gals has a beehive and looks as if she’s taken time off from serving cocktails at one of the Vegas casinos. She has breast implants, really painful looking, done on the cheap, early 70s ones. One of the guys jokes that although he is married, it is okay to cheat on his wife because they don’t have any children.
Steckler’s pornos manage to be both minimalist and evocative at the same time. Nearly all of the sex scenes in his hardcore films look as if they were filmed at cheap, flophouse motels way off the strip. The type whose owners turn a blind eye to the activities of hookers, porno filmmakers and adulteress couples, and whose clientele turn an equally blind eye to the garish, threadbare furnishings because they are only there for the sex. If you want to know where people went for cheap, anonymous sex in early 70s Las Vegas, let Ray Dennis Steckler pornos take you by the hand. Incongruously, a statue of a satanic figure sits on the bedside table as the foursome go at it. Lucifer is everywhere in Steckler’s hardcore movies. Some have bona fide occult themes like The Sexorcist Devil and Sexual Satanic Awareness, but even when they don’t RDS seems to have insisted on decorating the sets with occult paraphernalia. It is an obsession played out mostly in his porno movies, rarely getting an airing in his legit movies, read into that what you will. Steckler only appears interested in the sex here when it threatens to crumble into dust. He lingers over one of the women struggling to get the guy hard, futilely sucking on his limp dick. Another of the guys keeps losing wood. Moments that any conventional pornographer would have cut out, the threat of sexual failure being the last thing a porno audience wants to be confronted with. Otherwise, there is nothing much to see here, better move on, ya peeping bastard.
Sexual Vignette 3# Do my weary eyes deceive me, or is that the guy who played the serial strangler in Steckler’s Fire Down Below? Yup, it’s the same tubby guy. While he doesn’t get to strangle any women here, he does get to blow off lots of similar steam. He is a relentless chatterbox, never shutting the fuck up for a second, mostly about his own sexual greatness. “I’m hot, I’m horny…look at this body” he exclaims, basking in his narcissistic glory and flexing none existent pecs for a disinterested hooker. Uber macho, he sports cowboy boots and a massive gut, he has the appearance of a man who should be playing a redneck sheriff in a Burt Reynolds movie, the Buford T Justice of pornography. In his mind though, Buford is the king of all men, as well as God’s gift to all women, and now he gonna whip off all of his here clothes and do the business in a porno movie, to prove to all you sombitches out there that Buford is the greatest!!! His partner in the scene is a third rate Regina Carrol, who really…really…doesn’t want to be in this movie, and does her best to avoid getting her face on camera. In contrast to his excitable bragging and yelling, she is very much zoned out to the point that ol’ Buford has to undress her and himself. “I want you baby, I gotta get you, I’m hot, I’m gonna do it, I mean it” predictably Buford is all talk and little action. Then again, he might as well be fucking a blow up doll for all the interaction he gets from her.
There is a cruelty here; after all here we are watching a poor delusional slob making a fool of himself in a porno movie. It’s impossible to damn Steckler for filming this though, because like him, you just can’t look away, as Buford’s crazy outburst just gets louder and louder. “Talk to me, tell me the truth, tell me the truth!!!!, talk to me, I want dirty talk, tell me to fuck you, tell me to cum, tell me to cum” he hollers as he pounds his gargantuan weight away on top of her. This results in a few token orgasmic moans from her, which are laughable in their half-heartedness. At this point, you almost expect Rudy Ray Moore to burst into the motel room and start joking “honey, you might not know he is in you, but you sure as hell gonna know that he is on you”. That Steckler managed to salvage one, very brief penetration shot from this scene is miraculous, naturally there is no money shot.
“Beg me for it” asks Buford, she doesn’t. “Alright, alright, whatever” he grumbles, resigning himself to yet another sexual failure. Given his delusions of grandeur though, maybe it’s just as well Steckler partnered him up with a passive, spaced out chick whose wasn’t interested in bursting his bubble and telling it like it is. Had Steckler put Buford together in a motel room with the insult spewing ball buster from Sexual Vignette 1#, they’d probably have ended up murdering each other, then Steckler would have ended up with a snuff movie on his hands.
Sexual Vignette 4# I don’t know if it was intentional, or if the movie just naturally came out this way, but Peeping Tom has a pattern of following up explosive moments with airless porno padding. Maybe Steckler felt his audience needed space to get their breath, and so beguilingly threw in some regular sex that isn’t fuelled by trauma or dysfunction. This segment is very basic porno loop material, no premise or set up, little dialogue, just a couple balling on a motel room floor. Occasionally there are cutaways to the peeping tom peering through some ugly red drapes. The man is this segment, a bespectacled hippie who resembles Sonny Bono, is familiar from Steckler’s Fire Down Below, where he cries during sex. Steckler lingers over the sight of this guy’s cum as if it were gold dust, and given that so many of his male performers in this film fall at the last hurdle, maybe it is.
Sexual Vignette 5# We’re back to neurotic sex for the grand finale, Steckler’s case study here is a deeply repressed young woman with mommy issues. ‘Cathy’ is partnered up with a pushy guy she met at a party. She lives with her mother, and has brought him back to mum’s place, but just can’t relax. “My mother wouldn’t understand things like that” she complains when his interest in her turns sexual. The guy gets her clothes off, but she is plagued by fears that mum will come home and catch the pair of them “what will I say, what will I do”. The guy tries to pacify her with claims of “live for now, not what might happen”.
The whole scenario feels too real, too convincing, too personal, as if someone was trying to exercise the trauma of coming on to an awkward, prudish girl in the repressive 1950s, only to get caught out by her mother. Steckler’s setting for this scene is for once at odds with what is being played out onscreen, hilariously so. Cathy is meant to be under the thumb of a strict, conservative matriarch, yet Steckler shoots the scene in what looks like a Satanist’s garage. ‘Mum’s place’ has a stone brick wall with obscene looking graffiti on the walls, a suitably Satanic looking red leather couch that Cathy and the guy fuck on, plus the expected occult paraphernalia on the walls. If mum hates sex so much, why has she graffitied what sure looks to be a massive cock on the wall? A bad role model if ever there was one.
Cathy isn’t particularly attractive, but is one of the few genuinely erotic things about this movie, you really buy into her being a sexually repressed woman who was trying to work off some of her inhibitions and issues by appearing in this movie. Cathy is the only person to convince you that she isn’t faking it on film here. There is a vulnerability to her. Out of all of this film’s parade of the sexually hopeless, for some reason she is the one you end up giving a damn about, which makes the mean-spirited edges to her scene even harder to take. The guy turns out to be a smarmy creep who isn’t worthy of her. In order to get her to loosen up he talks her into believing she is his first time, he then wraps his arms around her with his fingers crossed. Naturally, Steckler can’t resist going out on a downer, as horror of horrors, mum returns home, causing the guy to flee with his pants in his hands and for a traumatised Cathy to plead “oh mother, I know you won’t believe this, but I can explain everything”.
Some might feel that Steckler’s masterstroke in Peeping Tom comes during Cathy’s scene, where whilst having sex with her, Cathy’s boyfriend admits he likes to watch porno films, because they are “very instructive”. Leading Cathy to ask “why would you wanna watch somebody do that?” whilst doing just that on film herself. Clearly this is Steckler’s way of throwing the spotlight onto his audience, angrily directing Cathy’s question at them. A reluctant, self-hating pornographer lashing out at his audience. It is a powerful moment for sure, but to me at least, Steckler’s true moment of twisted genius comes right at the end of Peeping Tom. Its night-time and our lonely voyeur is hanging around outside a closed Las Vegas gift shop, he stares sadly into the window. In that window is a mini-Christmas tree and other festive merchandise, at which point it hits you like a train…yes, Peeping Tom is a….FUCKING CHRISTMAS MOVIE!!! That all the misery and dysfunction in the sexual nightmare Steckler has just laid upon us has actually been playing out during the time of peace and goodwill to all men is such a mindfuck to leave your audience to contemplate…. Good grief, Steckler!!
“Sex is to be enjoyed by everyone” claims Steckler’s narrator at the end, absolutely nothing in his film backs this up. VIVA, LAS VEGAS!!!
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