Wild Guitar (1962)

Wild Guitar (USA, 1962) 93 min B&W DIR: Ray Dennis Steckler. PROD: “Nicholas Merriwether”(Arch Hall Sr.). SCR: “Nicholas Merriwether”(Arch Hall Sr.), Bob Wehling. DOP: Joseph C. Mascelli. CAST: Arch Hall Jr., Nancy Czar. “William Watters” (aka- Arch Hall Sr.), “Cash Flagg” (aka- Ray Dennis Steckler). (Fairway International)

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In the camp classic Eegah, the eponymous lovesick caveman crashes a rock n roll backyard party headlined by its young leading man, Arch Hall Jr. This scene features an unbilled cameo by Ray Dennis Steckler as a cocktail-swilling chatterbox whom Eegah chucks in the pool. This film was one of several produced by Arch Hall Sr. through his banner Fairway International Pictures, in a bid to turn his son into the next teen idol. Steckler would again join forces with the Halls for the rock n roll masterpiece, Wild Guitar, which would mark his debut as a director.

Around the same time of his directorial debut, Steckler had also assisted in camerawork on Timothy Carey’s way-gone The World’s Greatest Sinner, and the Robert Clarke no-buck noir Private File: Hollywood. He also assisted behind the scenes on Eegah, likely prompting Arch Hall Sr. to give the young auteur his ascension to the director’s chair.

Fairway’s teenage sensation plays Bud Eagle, who arrives in Hollywood to start his career as a musician. After some B-roll around Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, he settles into a fleabag café (where posters for Eegah, Drivers to Hell and The Choppers adorn the walls!) and captures the attention of the spunkily cute Vicki (played by Nancy Czar, whose tenure as a figure skater made up the other seven-and-a-half of her famous 15 minutes). Noticing the guitar, she asks, “Are you a musician?” With his bashful puppy dog face, he replies, “Well I wouldn’t go as far as to say that.” Then Vicki drags Bud to a televised talent show, and prompts the producers to use him as a last-minute replacement. The stage manager grumpily replies, “What do we care? We can always go back to unemployment.”

Once this gawky kid with a baroque ducktail mop of hair (rivalling only the hairstyles in Aki Kaurismaki’s Leningrad Cowboys Go to America) belts out “I’m Gonna Love You Baby”, the studio audience jumps to its feet to embrace him and get his autograph! Ah, the magic of movies… Soon Bud is courted by the shifty Mike McCauley, the head of Fairway Records (!), played by, you guessed it, Hall Sr. Wild Guitar is certainly not a showcase for Arch Jr.’s acting talent, but still you can’t help but root for him as he gets involved with corruption, kidnapping and blackmail in the recording business. Because of his unease before the camera, he ends up being somewhat vulnerable, thereby sympathetic. Best of all, there is a generous supply of songs: “You Don’t Love Me Anymore”, the mournful “I Love You Vicki” (featuring the trademark offscreen female choral background), and best of all, the rousing “Twist Fever” in the film’s dynamite finale on the beach. Yes, it is true Arch Jr. was meant to be going places.

Seen in context with Steckler’s subsequent films, Wild Guitar appears to be his most “conventional” movie, if because he was a hired gun on an Arch Hall vanity project. Yet, like Incredibly Strange Creatures or The Thrill Killers, Wild Guitar belies its measly $12,000 budget because he has a great cameraman – in this case, the legendary Joseph Mascelli, with second unit work by the soon-to-be legend, Vilmos Zsigmond! (It is a Falstaff-ian tragedy that around the same time Zsigmond won the Oscar for Close Encounters, Steckler had reduced himself to making things like Sex Rink.)

The plot is the most coherent in all of Steckler’s 1960s films, and yet on-the-spot improvisation was required to help flesh out this movie. Originally, a huge black actor was hired for the role of Steak, Hall Sr.’s henchman.  However, Fairway feared losing bookings in the South if they had proceeded with an integrated cast.  At the last minute, Steckler took the role, and the legend of “Cash Flagg” was born: an alias he often used as an actor of his own mad movies.

Arch Hall Jr. was actually a physically imposing guy, even if he still lacked the body language to carry that onscreen. It would look silly to see Bud Eagle being menaced by the lanky Cash Flagg, so instead Steckler played up the villainy by turning Steak into a humourless sleazeball. With his chipped front teeth, long nose, prematurely balding hair and beady eyes, Steckler is certainly an unconventional-looking leading man. His films are always populated with interesting faces: the first memorable visage in Steckler’s ouevre is his own!

Originally, the running time of Wild Guitar was too short, so they shot additional scenes, giving more meat to the story (as would Steckler’s last-minute hiring of Coleman Francis in Body Fever).  These extra moments include the kidnapping subplot, which weighs considerably in the final third. The three buffoons who attempt to capture Bud Eagle would seem right at home in Steckler’s Lemon Grove films, which are home-movie valentines to The Bowery Boys, as their dialogue and posturing are very similar. Also, at the film’s midpoint is a bizarre subplot where Bud meets a burned-out musician who used to be under contract by McCauley, and explains how he got screwed. Yet, these scenes blend well with the rest of the “rags to riches” story. The unusual framing and cutting so typical of Steckler can also be seen in this early work (with an early editing credit for Anthony Lanza), chiefly in the moment where the burned-out musician falls down the stairs.

A recurring motif in Ray’s filmography is a climax on a beach or a meadow, where you can get in, shoot and get out before people start asking for permits. Wild Guitar ends with a show-stopping “Twist Fever”, performed on the beach. This sequence is an early precursor to today’s music videos, with its creative visual touches featuring piles of LPs, swirling dissolves and enthusiastic twisting teens.

This movie is another stepping stone in the onscreen relationship between Steckler and his wife, the long-legged beauty Carolyn Brandt. She had appeared in a walk-on with her husband for Eegah, and is briefly seen as a dancer in Wild Guitar. Ms. Brandt would soon be featured more prominently in their films together. I cannot help but wonder how she felt, coming to Hollywood for a hopeful career as a dancer, only to get together with a visionary director of Grade Z genre pictures, sleeping in cars to keep costs down? Otherwise would she have been another chorus girl lost in the assembly line?  And yet her legacy lives on today thanks to her considerable participation in these bargain basement wonders.

Wild Guitar would make an interesting double bill with the low-budget 1962 thriller, Wild Ones on Wheels. (It was also released as Drivers to Hell, hence the poster seen in the café.) Although directed by Rudolph Cusumano (who also made Private File: Hollywood), this compares favourably with Steckler’s own works, not just because of his double duty as a cameraman and actor. One could say this film gave him a chance to prepare for the villainy of Steak: he is a scene-stealer with the energy and hip talk in his supporting role as “Preacher”, one of the bad guys who terrorize lovely Francine York and her ex-con husband over some stashed loot.  (It is small wonder the film is marketed on video today with his role made to look more prominent than it really is… that’s the exploitation business for you!) Like Steckler’s films to follow, there are times in which the plot unexpectedly turns, more to upset our programmed responses, although not to the lunatic degrees that he would soon exercise.

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Edited from an original appearance in Vol. #1, Issue #4. (“Ray Dennis Steckler and You”) Wild Guitar is easily found online or on video because of its public domain status, however you’ll really want to see it in its widescreen glory, on the Severin Films 10-Blu-ray set, The Incredibly Strange Films of Ray Dennis Steckler, which no true Stecklerhead can be without.