Rat Pfink a Boo Boo

If you've seen Ray Dennis Steckler's cult classic 'The Incredibly Strange Creatures...' and thought it was a silly, unbelievably bad mess, you haven't seen anything yet!! 'Rat Phink a Boo Boo' actually surpasses it! It is even sillier, more incoherent, cheaper and basically makes absolutely NO SENSE at all. At least '..Creatures..' had a semblance of a plot, 'Rat Phink..' doesn't even bother trying! The movie begins like a thriller with the kidnapping of a rock singer's girlfriend by some heavies then... well I won't spoil the experience for you! Let's just say things don't turn out QUITE like you might think...

This is one of the strangest low (and I mean LOW!) budget movies of the 1960s. Watching it is like watching a car crash. You know you should stop looking at some point but you just can't tear your eyes away!

Makes Ed Wood look like Sam Fuller.

RAT PFINK A BOO BOO (5 outta 5 stars)

I have been dreaming about seeing this movie ever since I heard it mentioned in an old issue of Castle of Frankenstein Magazine when I was like 10 years old. It never plays on TV, never ever made it to any repertory cinemas in my neck of the woods... and not even the more eclectic video stores around here ever carried it. God bless the amazingly fast growth of DVD technology which allowed me to finally *purchase* the movie for my very own at a ridiculously low price! Even so... after purchasing it, I was scared to watch it at first. After having dreamed about this movie for so long could it possibly live up to my expectations? Or would it be just another in a long list of disappointments? Well, I needn't have worried... this movie... as low-budget and cheesy and downright STRANGE it is... it is absolutely brilliant! Infused with incredible passion from the director and the cast... it transcends its monetary limitations and is wildly infectious in its creativity! Rat Pfink and Boo Boo, our two low-rent superheroes, are obviously inspired by Batman and Robin... but actually created and filmed BEFORE the popular 60s TV show! A bunch of psycho delinquents are terrorizing women... when they begin to pick on the girlfriend of rockabilly musician Lonnie Lord (secret identity of Rat Pfink) they cross the line and incur the wrath of our heroes! Genius filmmaking! Just imagine what director Ray Dennis Steckler could do with a budget!

I have to say, I popped "Rat Pfink" in the VCR last night after watching "Blade Runner" for the first time, and I found it a lot more entertaining and fun. Ray Dennis Steckler's bottom-drawer ripoff of "Batman" (it even owes a lot to Jerry Warren's "Wild World of Batwoman") is actually entertaining in that exclusive, so-bad-it's-good way, with cheesy homemade costumes (Rat Pfink looks like a burglar in his ski-mask) and an overlong fight sequence that takes place in what is probably the producer's backyard. The presence of the luminous Carolyn Brandt (Steckler's girlfriend) livens things up nicely; like another reviewer stated, she's not much of an actress, but she's certainly easy on the eyes. Unfortunately, like a lot of the director's other films, "Rat Pfink" is padded out to an insufferable degree, to the point where it almost put me to sleep (but maybe that's a compliment in itself).

5/10

A strange hybrid of contemporary movies styles, Rat Pfink a Boo Boo begins as a seemingly straight, very low budget and amateurish crime drama. Cee Dee Beaumont (Carolyn Brandt), girlfriend to rock 'n' roll star, Lonnie Lord (Ron Haydock), is being harassed on the telephone by a gang of bored hoodlums. The first half of the film plays like a pulp melodrama, but this is also mixed with some beach party scenes. The whole film is a post-modern concoction of ideas, taken from the popular youth movements of the time. A year previous to the production of the film, an incredibly saccharine and asinine movie was released, that actually began a bizarre - if short-lived - series. Beach Blanket Bingo (1965), has been pilfered for the lame beach party scenes that interject throughout the first half of the film.

After Lonnie's girlfriend is kidnapped by the previously mentioned gang, he receives a phone call giving the demands for her release. This is where the film changes. It is not a revelatory change. It simply seems that the film maker just didn't know what to do with the ending. So, as per the previous action of pilfering, I can only assume he simply switched the TV on and was introduced to two popular shows that were being aired at the time. Lonnie, along with a character we hardly noticed in the previous half, Titus Twimbly (Titus Moede), step into a cupboard. After a kerfuffle they exit wearing ludicrous outfits, and proclaiming their super-hero pseudonyms as Rat Pfink and Boo Boo. (As a note, this was the full original title. However, in post production, the titles were messed up leaving the a instead of the and.)

What proceeds is a farcical parade of the eponymous super heroes gliding through the streets on a motorcycle and side car around the streets of Hollywood. This last part plays out like the camp Batman series that clearly influenced it, and the title being adapted from another cartoon TV character, Batfink. With it's cheap credentials in place, the film still has some amateurish charm. I believe that much of the humour is intentional, and the super hero section has it's tongue placed firmly in it's cheek - much like the Batman series that it is riffing on.

The film does deserve it's 2.9 IMDb rating, but because it is so low budget, I believe it has more to offer that let's say, for example, Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011), which has less to offer as it takes itself so seriously, and was made on a budget that could probably alter the third world. Also, with a running time of only 67 minutes, does not waste 3 hours of your life, and is worth it for it's outrageous acting, preposterous settings, and the more obvious limitations of it's director, a man who clearly lost his way 40 minutes into the film, resulting in the super hero ending, shoehorned into place.

www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com

Despite the fact that I missed the first ten minutes of this movie, I was still downright amazed by the sheer absurdity of the plot and the Batman-like fight scenes. I'm not saying this was a bad movie. It was a great movie. It has a certain quality to it that many movies don't... it's an abomination, but you can't tear yourself away from it. The characters are both absurd and captivating at the same time. It's certainly pushing the envelope for the "bad but incredibly amusing" category. And as for the costumes... Boo Boo's hat deserves a review of its own.