The Thrill Killers (1964) 69m.
After force-feeding my brain RAT PFINK A BOO BOO, I'd pledged never again to watch any film by Z-grade writer-director-actor Ray Dennis Steckler. But I was surprised to find THE THRILL KILLERS a much more tightly-made piece of work. As it stands, it's probably Steckler's best film, though admittedly that isn't saying a lot. Tightly edited, with a jazzy score and some involving sequences, it's a cut above most other Z-features, but also shares their pitfalls. Story basically recounts the encounters between psychotics and anyone unfortunate enough to run into them, providing Stecker with an excuse to string together a number of set pieces. Its main problem is that characters belong to different stories - it's like Steckler started filming four different projects and then decided to put them all together for the last half. At the start we're not even sure who the main character is supposed to be, or how other characters are meant to relate to each other.
THE THRILL KILLERS' best feature is that it's wonderfully unpredictable, although this may be a natural consequence of Steckler's seemingly undisciplined approach. He doesn't play by the rules of conventional movies and doesn't guarantee the safety of any of the characters. This results in some inspired, demented moments. My favorite is when one psycho makes a phone call to an even more psychotic acquaintance, asking for help to get away from his 'crazy' friends! Steckler isn't really playing for laughs, though. In fact much of the violence, though offscreen, is unsettling (Steckler himself is well cast as thug 'Mad Dog' Glick). As a one-man show, Steckler has talent (next to Z-grade alumnus Herschell Gordon Lewis, he's Orson Welles), but it is uneven. It would have been interesting to see what he would have done if contracted by a studio with a bigger budget - I believe this could have been regarded as a classic B-feature if it had been made with more experienced actors and writers. If you've never seen a film by an indie director before, have a look. Just don't spend more than a dollar on it.
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