Rat Pfink a Boo Boo (1966)

Rat Pfink a Boo Boo (USA, 1966) 67-72 min tinted B&W DIR-PROD-DOP: Ray Dennis Steckler. SCR: Ron Haydock, from a story by Steckler. MUSIC: “Henri Price” (aka- André Brummer). CAST: Carolyn Brandt, “Vin Saxon” (aka- Ron Haydock), Titus Moede, George Caldwell, Mike Kannon, James Bowie, Keith Wester, Bob Burns. (Craddock Films)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: this review was influenced by viewing the old VHS edition by Camp Video, which gave the film a wraparound narrative. Other copies omit the opening described below, which makes the superhero revelation more of a surprise. I’ve however decided to leave these observations as-is, for contemporary readers to understand the different versions and conditions in which we sometimes had to view films back in the day.

Of Steckler’s output, Rat Pfink a Boo Boo is a film that most feels like it was made off-the-cuff (well, more than usual). Initially, Steckler and company were shooting what was to be a standard crime caper, as a trio of bad guys kidnap lovely Carolyn Brandt (whose character’s name is the acronym Cee Bee), who happens to be the girlfriend of recording star Lonnie Lord (played by Vin Saxon- AKA co-screenwriter and musician Ron Haydock).  Midway, Steckler decided “you know what?  This sucks.”  So on a lark he had Lonnie and his sidekick Titus (who is also Cee Bee’s gardener) go into a closet, and come back out dressed up as dime-store superheroes. It is jaw-dropping to see the entire tone and story shift at the moment you see the two-shot of Rat Phink and Boo Boo proudly posing for the camera once they get out of the closet (you can even hear “ta-da” kind of music on the soundtrack). (For more recent example of a film that changes midway, consider From Dusk Till Dawn, where a kidnapping melodrama suddenly becomes a vampire film!)  Interestingly enough, Rat Pfink opens with our superheroes being lauded in a parade, therefore it almost looks like the superhero angle was planned from the get-go. It would be funny though, if the viewer had NO inkling that this movie was going to change so much.

Rat Pfink has the same feel of the old Mickey Rooney-Judy Garland “Hey I’ve got some curtains in the barn, let’s put on a show”. In this case, “Hey, let’s get some friends together and do a movie this weekend”. This could only explain how on earth Kogar the Gorilla (played by legendary memorabilia collector Bob Burns) makes it into this movie. As our intrepid duo chases down the kidnappers into those classic B-movie permit-free generic meadows, suddenly appears a man looking for his pet gorilla! I get the feeling this too was a product of “Hey, Bob has a gorilla suit, let’s throw him into the movie too!” For instance, Incredibly Strange Creatures got made because Ray knew some out-of-work chorus girls, and they choreographed some numbers to interest some prospective backers to front the cash for the quirky monster movie which occurs all around them.

Early in the film, you see some modest home-movie footage of kids running around in the yard (at the same time, an overreaching narrator describes Rat Pfink’s benefit to humankind)- actually material scalped from Steckler’s own home movies. If you look over the thirty-year oeuvre of Steckler, you can also see a similar document of his family. Naturally, Carolyn Brandt appears in many of them, but their kids also pop up in Blood Shack and Summer Fun (which is a 1997 home movie about his daughters). He has even assembled a video package called Carolyn Brandt: Queen of Cult, which is a pastiche of clips from his wife’s career. Despite that his films are quirky products of various figenres, they are secondarily personal filmed records of his loved ones maturing over the years: a moving photo album for all.

Steckler has made changes to his works numerous times based on chance events, but this film is especially informed by its improvisatory nature. It seems that every reel of this film takes an about face from the previous one. After the parade and home movie opening sequences, we get a standard thriller sequence, followed by a makeshift rock video of Lonnie and Cee Bee. Then a long sequence of a guy delivering phone books almost makes us think he is going to a major character in the stew as well, instead is just a shaggy dog to get us to the killers from the earlier scene. There are a couple of pregnant sequences in which the killers could theoretically grab Cee Bee at any moment but they do not. In one scene the trio even shows up and terrorize her at her deck door, and the viewer naturally is conditioned to think: “Okay the jig is up for her.” Suddenly, the next scene features Cee Bee dancing at a backyard rock n roll party! Part of this film’s charm is that it successfully frustrates our expectations every few moments. In essence, Steckler is playing a practical joke on our conditioned responses to years of movie going. We always expect to know where this film is going, and we are always wrong. How else does a gorilla wind up in a climactic fight scene? Why else are there two endings: a parade and a surf/garage number played at -you guessed it- the beach? If anything, the film’s gravest flaw is the attempt to look structured with the explanatory opening scenes.

Rat Pfink is also noteworthy for the different tones that operate throughout the picture. Considering overall that the movie is about dime-store superheroes, the entire project could have been a juvenile exercise. But the film is played straight during its early scenes -the hooligans carry hammers and chains, and are sadists. I realize that the tones are different because he had started to make one kind of picture, yet it works! (Compare with his film, The Thrill Killers, which also successfully inserts campy moments into a narrative with some truly loathsome bad buys.)

Edited from a piece originally published in Vol. 1, Issue #5. UPDATE: according to legend, the film was supposed to be called Rat Pfink and Boo Boo, but the titler mistakenly put “a” instead of “and”, and Steckler couldn’t spring the 50 bucks to fix it. (However, if the titler screwed up, they should’ve fixed it on their own nickel.) The director has also said that his daughter kept chanting “Rat Phink a Boo Boo” during a fight scene, and he liked the sound of it. The former story compliments the film’s off-the-cuff nature, while the latter is another example of his movies being a family affair. Either version is appropriate.