Rat Pfink a Boo Boo

It is difficult to prepare people exactly for what they are going to see, this movie is a class act of its own: Made by the sixties maestro of improvisation, Ray Dennis Steckler, and this is his true masterpiece. It is jawdroppingly hilarious at every turn and totally inept at the same time, but it is FUN. Much better than most self-confessed comedies. Director Steckler, who always worked without a script, started this little monochrome movie as a dark, sinister thriller about 3 thugs harassing and stalking his gorgeous real-life wife, Carolyn Brandt. For reasons unknown he becomes pretty quickly fed up with the thriller, so our two protagonists are rushed in to a closet and stumbles out in Batman and Robin-like attires as the crimefighting duo, Rat Pfink and his assistant Boo Boo. At this point Rat Pfink feels that needs to remind Boo Boo that they have one weakness: Bullets! And then they are ready to rock. Highspeed chases at 20mph follows, speeded up by the oldest movietrick in the world: Fast motion. An incredibly inept fistfight in a backyard ensues, where poor Boo Boo stumbles and falls all over the place and in between all this our hero just whips out a guitar to sing a song for no reason whatsoever and everyone starts dancing. Steckler hijacked a local town parade for his movie, as his sub-shoestring otherwise wouldn't allow for such extravaganza. Time to round up your buddies for a good laugh, the more, the marrier. Like the crows sing in Disney's Dumbo: "I have seen everything, when I see an elephant fly" 9/10

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

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.

What can you say about this infamous mess? Steckler had a strange sense of humor but he was smart enough to keep putting Carolyn Brandt in his films. Brandt couldn't act much but she was a hot piece of ass and was always sexy in her roles. The dubbing is especially bad as there was no microphone during filming so all dialogue and sound effects were put in later like the sound of a toilet flushing when they tried to start the motorcycle! Rat Pfink's voice sounds like a drunk Bullwinkle or Yogi Bear. You know your in for a cheap movie when it has a narrator for no reason at all. The fight scenes are phony and what was up with having a gorilla in the film? The gorilla handler was a real strange guy, he sounded real gay and had a big round butt. Why was Rat Pfink always pointing his finger when they rode in the motorcycle? And Boo-Boo cannot fight to save his life. And when the thugs wanted to get money all they did was make crank calls to Brandt before they kidnapped her. Why? Movies that are this low budget and inept are interesting to watch and I wouldn't be telling the truth if I said I wasn't entertained by this nonsense. Good shots of Hollywood in the mid sixties. If you love really bad films than you have to see this one!

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.

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