Las Vegas Serial Killer

For starters, you just can't film your actors and then dub all the dialogue during post-production. It looks and sounds absolutely ridiculous. Luckily, or unluckily, it doesn't affect the quality of this film.

Mr. Steckler has treated us to an utterly pointless and boring hunk of junk here. It all starts out with a very flimsy premise. A serial killer of seven women has just been released on parole after serving only six years. Ugh...those darn liberals!! It comes as little surprise when several women soon turn up being strangled to death. Our serial killer becomes the main suspect. Talk about hard-nosed detective work.

The viewer is treated to unbearably long scenes of a couple of guys standing around on a Vegas street corner making lewd comments about women walking by while occasionally photographing them. Who are these guys? We have to wait until late in the film to fully realize their (un)importance. There is also a scene showing a parade go by. That would be fine if, let's say, there is an assassin on one of the floats and he is plotting to kill the President or something. Alas...no. Not here. It exists only to pad the running time. Thanks Mr. Steckler!

You get to see multiple topless women and a couple of brain-numbingly long scenes of women dancing seductively in some dive bar. Notice a pattern? Such as way too many scenes of absolutely nothing that go on way too long? That doesn't make a fun movie. 1/10

"Las Vegas Serial Killer" is the cinematic equivalent of elevator music. You barely notice its presence, but at the same time it's intensely irritating. This is supposed to be a sequel to 1979's "The Hollywood Strangler Meets The Skid Row Slasher", but somehow it's even more boring than that one. The thing is, at least the original had two serial killers going for it. You had a scene where the strangler strangled a girl, then one where the slasher stabs a hobo: rinse and repeat until you finally have eighty minutes. Unfortunately the skid row slasher isn't in this one, she's replaced by two muggers who stand on a street corner and make sexist comments for the entire movie. Why are we even following these guys, what do they have to do with the plot (so to speak)? Once you find out, you'll feel like burning down a building.

Even though Ray Dennis Steckler made some...interesting features in the 1960s, by 1986 he was clearly too lazy to make something even vaguely watchable. Bizarrely though, his lazyness often kicks in when there's not even any work at hand. For instance, he comes up with this lame reason why the Hollywood strangler is released from prison: apparently the bodies of his victims were never found, even though he just threw them in dumpsters. That makes no sense, but here's the thing: the strangler wasn't even caught in the first one! Why not just pretend he's been killing more people for the last six years? The psyche of Ray Dennis Steckler is very mysterious.

The most fascinating thing about Steckler's career is that his development somehow goes backwards, while cinema as a whole was taking huge steps forwards. His first few movies seem like actual movies, low-budget but everything you need is there. Then he started shooting without sound, but still dubbed in dialogues and sound effects rather competently. And here, in one of the final films of his career, we barely hear dialogue and if someone does talk we usually get a shot of his back or something. This is 1986 we're talking about, was it really that difficult or expensive to shoot with sound by then? Even though Steckler's movies didn't sell too poorly, it always seemed like he had even less money for the next feature.

If you're interested in 75 minutes of ladies who really suck at pretending they're getting strangled, interspersed with muggers doing nothing and unrelated footage of local events (we see a rodeo, an airplane show AND a parade) that are just there to pad out the running time, this is certainly the movie for you. How's that for an endorsement?

I only got about 10 minutes into the films before turning it off. It looks like it was filmed with a super 8 camera. All of the dialogue is over dubbed. Lots of B roll for the non acting scenes. It maybe the worst thing I have ever watched. If you like porn style acting from actors who may or may not be aware of that the cameras are even rolling; then movie is stellar. I'm sitting in my chair right now wishing I had one of those flash pens they used in men in black so that I zap myself and forget I ever saw this load of crap. If I could I would rate it lower.

In the pantheon of bad filmmakers, there are a handful of names that rise (or fall?) above the rest. Ed Wood. H.G. Lewis. Al Adamson. And another such name is Ray Dennis Steckler, the man behind such enduring classics as The Incredibly Strange Creatures That Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies, Rat Pfink a Boo-Boo, and The Lemon Grove Kids Meet the Monsters. After that string of wretched but harmless trash was released in the 1960's, Steckler's films started taking on a darker tone, perhaps reflecting the changing mood and tastes of the times. Eventually he devolved into directing hardcore porn films, although he would still occasionally release slightly less tawdry fare. Las Vegas Serial Killer is one such production, although its quality is even more substandard. A late middle-aged photographer wanders around Las Vegas, strangling random dancers, prostitutes and models as he crosses paths with them. Meanwhile, a pair of guys in matching black T-shirts and sunglasses also wander around Las Vegas, occasionally robbing tourists and business owners at gunpoint. A voice-over radio announcer keeps the viewer up to date with the manhunt for the killer and the robbers. Most of this 76 minute wonder is comprised of stock footage of the Las Vegas strip, a rodeo, traffic, and bad showgirl dancers. A lot of it looks at least ten years older than the film's release date. For only the most self-loathing film addicts. Steckler writes and directs under the pseudonym "Wolfgang Schmidt."

This had the makings of a half-decent film, or it would have if it had had a half-decent script, or any script at all. A serial killer is parolled after a mere six years because although he has been convicted of one murder, the shrinks don't believe his confessions to the others. You know what's gonna happen now: he heads straight to Las Vegas, and the body count mounts. Two other criminals are headed to Las Vegas as well, but they are small potatoes, mugging women and occasionally men, then driving off with their victims' cash and cards.

The paths of the killer and the professional criminals cross; he strangles a woman they have left locked in the trunk of a car, so now they come under suspicion. Later, their paths cross again. What more do you need to know?

Did this lowlife really utter "Die garbage" every time he strangled an innocent woman? The soundtrack and the ending save this ultra-low budget effort from being a total turkey, but it really is sad more effort wasn't put into it.