Super someones and saucers
The Adventures of Rat Pfink and Boo Boo (1966)
Director Ray Dennis Steckler may be most widely celebrated for 1960s cult rough-gems Wild Guitar, The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies, and this.
"Rat Pfink and Boo Boo!" intones the trailer's narrator, doing his best Walter Winchell. "Masked men dedicated to fight crime and preserve justice!"
Viewers lured by that stentorian pronouncement surely were disappointed when the half-price superheroes didn't appear until the flick's midpoint.
Early sequences featured Pop-star main character Lonnie Lord singing "Running Wild" and "Rat Pfink." (Lord was played by Ron Haydock, under pseudonym Vin Saxon.)
Lord's girlfriend Cee Cee is the disquieted recipient of heavy-breather phone harrassment. The flick's dramatic tone intensifies when the capris-and-crop-top lass is later kidnaped by Linc, Hammer, and Benjie of the Chain Gang.
In the process, Lord's gardener Titus Twimbly is tossed around. (Cee Cee is Carolyn Brandt. And overalled trowler is Titus Moede. Bafflingly, none recieved recognition statuettes.)
In logical reaction to baddies absconding with fair Cee Cee, Lord sits back in his living room, strums an acoustic, and croons "I Stand Alone."
Director Steckler is said to have eventually grown dissatisfied, even bored, by the project. So, crime drama somersaulted into carnivalish ridiculousness: Lord and Twimbly emerge as upholders of propriety Rat Pfink and Boo Boo. (And when they do, the B&W movie changes into (sort of) color -- a Wizard of Oz effect for grindhouse haunters.)
Ensuing scenes capture chases, songsongsongs, and (unrehearsed) hand-to-hand combat.
The online HaphazardStuff's reviewer put it well: "The fights look like something the neighborhood kids would do, on a boring Saturday afternoon."
During a late-in-story donnybrook, a gorilla appears and joins in. Huh?
By the conclusion, Cee Cee is rescued, the Chain Gang miscreants are soundly vanquished, and all is well with the world. Ratpfink and Boo Boo, cruising on their trusty Ratcycle, are ostensibly feted in a well-attended parade. (Reportedly, though, the actors simply stowed away in someone else's event.)
(Incidentally, I first learned of Steckler and Incredibly Strange from a 1974 Rick Johnson Creem magazine piece.)
The Adventures of Rat Pfink and Boo Boo trailer
"Rat Fink" (All songs: Ron Haydock)
"Running Wild"
"Go Go Party"
Flying Saucer Rock N Roll (2006)
The plot supped voraciously from 1950s drive-in throwaways, and raced without so much as a shred of profundity. (Both creator options were entirely apropros.)
A slumbery, Ike-era American town is besieged by green-flesh Martians with googly eyes, insect antennae, and behind very much in mind. (Repopulating Mars is later disclosed as their ambition.)
Initially, the dark-of-night invasion is known only to a square, his beat-daddy cohort, a honey-next-door, and bongo-village, Krebsian sophistidorks of tissuey consciousness. (Once they've puffed the Red Planet magic dragon...all bets are off.)
Unlike some actual sci-fi flicks of that era, Flying Saucer never lags. (A common negative for such movies is that only the title and monster moments merit attention.)
An urgency drives the quest to smash the silk-sheets conquest from space. Particularly frantic are the scenes in which a stereotypical, grumbling farmer ("What're you hooligans doin'?) is conscripted by the desperate young heroes, and a sort of HG Wells blunderbuss is slapped together (cleverly depicted in comic book frames).
Heightening things still further are dynamic performances by top Rockabilly names like the Chop Tops, Thee Merry Widows, Koffin Kats, and director Eric Callero's own Keen Kousins. These blow-ups cascade audience-ward in both background soundtrack and gig footage.
By the conclusion, the weed-entranced Beats -- by this point sporting greasepaint pallors -- have assisted my least-favorite Martians in corralling girlfolk, and our valiant protagonists dash to the rescue (quadruple-pipe blunderbuss at the ready).
When one fried-brainpan aggressor is blasted by the good guys, his creepy fellows also collapse. "The world was saved by a Square and a Beat!"
An IMDb reviewer waxed head-over-heels: "This was a home made film by a talented young man, Eric Callero (aka Cody Devereaux, of the Tonight Show with Conan) & his parents for about $1,000.00. Most of that for food & drinks. They wrote it, designed & built all the sets, designed & engineered the gore & special effects, designed & fabricated the costumes, and used their own cars. Eric wrote and played many songs. Enlisted the help of his friends from around the world to put their songs on the soundtrack. He edited the film for nearly a year, making it a better film than the material he was working with. All the cast and crew worked their butts off for the love of cinema."
Flying Saucer Rock N Roll trailer
clip (2:02)
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