"I hate people. They're no good!"
Trash film director Ray Dennis Steckler made a bunch of films in his day. This here one is my personal favorite. It's a fairly straight-forward tale of a group of escaped mental patients on a bloody axe-swinging romp through a small town. Heads roll and Steckler(under the alias of Cash Flagg) even gets to show off his acting chops as the sneering main killer "Mad Dog" Click. Liz Renay, who would go on to appear in John Water's exceptional DESPERATE LIVING, plays the final girl who has to run around the desert in high heels in what is essentially an early example of a slasher film ending.
This was shown theatrically as THE MANIACS ARE LOOSE and THE MONSTERS ARE LOOSE in "HYPNOVISION" which meant that a colorful hypnotic prologue was added and at certain dramatic scenes a swirling colorful hypnotic disc would appear while Steckler and a few buddies would run out and menace the audience with knives and axes. Sounds like a fun time that could never be pulled off today without some potentially dire consequences. This gimmick would also be used again by Ray for his next, and probably most well-known movie THE INCREDIBLY STRANGE CREATURES WHO STOPPED LIVING AND BECAME MIXED UP ZOMBIES!!!?
"A hallucinogenic nightmare!":
No comments:
Post a Comment