1964 B-movie
Rating: 7/20
Plot: Homicidal maniacs on a bloody rampage!
By Ray Dennis Steckler standards, this is pretty good! By other directors' standards, it probably isn't. I do think this early Steckler work shows that he has some visual sense, or at the very least, he's willing to take some chances and experiment a little, most notably with some odd camera angles, some weirdo perspective shots, and a chaotically edited scene of scissor violence. As you might expect if you've seen Steckler's work, some bad writing, some worse acting, and a lack of evidence showing the guy had any idea how the story was going to go before he started shooting it brings this down. Of course, those might actually be the reasons why you'd watch a Ray Dennis Steckler movie anyway. You probably don't watch his films because you want to see scenes--like the aforementioned scene of violence or a climactic chase sequence on foot through the hills--go on for way too long. But if you do, this delivers there as well.
Steckler himself (as Cash Flagg) plays one of the homicidal killers. I'm not sure if he's a "thrill killer" exactly because I was a little confused about who was thrill killing in this movie and just engaging in plain, everyday killing. He's almost believable as a psychotic guy in some scenes, and he's almost got a presence. Compared to almost all of the rest of the performers here, he's pretty good. You do get the impression that he thinks he's a little better than he actually is though. But hey, he also does his own stunts, so there's that. The best moment is when he takes the hat from a cowboy he's shot so that he can run around with a cowboy hat on instead of running around without a cowboy hat.
Here's something I was confused about. The movie opens by saying the story is based on true events in 1965, but the movie came out in 1964. Trying to figure out how the hell that happened threw me off in the early going.
Steckler put his kids on screen in this one just like he did in Blood Shack. At least I think it was his kids. They looked like the same kids, but there's a chance I just think all kids look the same. Two performers stand out more though. One is this guy at a party who says, "Joe, I saw part of your movie this afternoon. Boy, was it bad!" and then spits out the worse fake laughing that I've seen in a movie in a really long time. He also demonstrates his inability to clap properly in a scene where he's watching people dance. The other is Keith O'Brien who plays Keith, one of the escaped lunatics. He's the one with the ax. Things really picked up once those characters were introduced. I mean, without them, I doubt this movie would have had any decapitations.
And yes, all three of the crazy guys have character names that match their actual names--Keith, Gary, and Herbie. Well, Herbie is Herb, I guess. I think that's probably close enough.
I'm having trouble thinking of another scene that has a lengthy (and also frenetically edited) chase sequence with a horse and a motorcycle. Maybe this is the only one. That's something.
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