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Steckler began as a camera assistant on Fairway’s caveman-on-the-loose-in-Palm-Springs campfest EEGAH (1962) and then directed their next feature WILD GUITAR the same year. Using his frequent nom de screen “Cash Flagg,” he also co-starred in the latter as the thuggish henchman of a record company executive (Hall Sr.).

The star of EEGAH and WILD GUITAR, Arch Hall Jr. knew Steckler from the Fairway days until what was his final public appearance on November 14, 2008: a special Los Angeles County Museum of Art screening of NO SUBTITLES NECESSARY: LASZLO & VILMOS, a documentary about Fairway Film cameramen-turned-world-class-cinematographers Vilmos Zsigmond and the late Laszlo Kovacs. FANGORIA is privileged to have Arch Hall Jr., remember and eulogize Ray Dennis Steckler:

I first met Ray at Fairway Studio in Burbank, when he was associated with some of the films I was involved with. Ray was capable of doing almost anything—coming up with story ideas, working as a director, a camera operator, a cinematographer—and he had the respect of people who were good at each one of those skills. So I would say he was a genius. In the late ’50s when he was in the Army Pictorial Corps, he had gotten into movie cameras, and I think that’s where he got the spark of “I’m gonna be in the movies.”

I met him through Fairway International Films and got to know him slowly, working with him first on EEGAH. I didn’t know him too much then and didn’t really see his talents; on EEGAH he was more or less backing up Vilmos Zsigmond as an assistant cameraman, as well as other capacities. He was well-liked by everyone. But he was the director of the next film after that, WILD GUITAR—that was his first time directing a film. He was probably 23, 24, and as a director he was intense! He definitely had a style of his own.

When he and I did the fight scene, it was like 2 or 3 a.m.—when working on a Fairway film, it always was 2 or 3 a.m., it seemed like!—and we were tired. We kind of choreographed the fight, blocked it out several times and figured out how we were going to do it. Then when they actually rolled the film and we did it, I misjudged distance and I actually hit Ray. I mean, I hit him hard—I knocked his teeth out. Some were broken back out of position and some came out of his mouth. Well, Ray got Vilmos to paint a piece of Styrofoam white like teeth, and he used duct tape to keep it in place in his mouth, and we kept on shooting, in order not to lose time and to stay on schedule. That’s how hardcore Ray Dennis Steckler could be. He was not a candy-ass at all, he was tough. Ray was somethin’ else.

My dad and Ray may not have always seen eye to eye. They were different generations, and of course my dad was always looking at the clock and thinking practically while Ray would get off on these creative tangents. Ray had such a colorful imagination—look at the titles of some of the things he came up with! You just read the list of titles and you can see what a vivid imagination he had. And he would coin things like “Shot in Hallucinogenic Hypnovision” [laughs]—just crazy stuff! My dad had a vivid imagination too, and when you’ve got two real Type-A alpha dogs in the same area, there are going to be sparks once in a while. It was never anything of any magnitude, it was just differences of opinion on the details, because my dad had great respect for Ray and knew he was a talented guy. My dad called upon Ray’s genius imagination often on a variety of issues across the board. Ray was such a “Swiss army knife-type” person to have around because he could pick up anything and figure out a way to fix it and make it work, especially when it came to cameras.

Of course, one of the films that he’s most famous for is THE INCREDIBLY STRANGE CREATURES WHO STOPPED LIVING AND BECAME MIXED-UP ZOMBIES!!?, and that’s one that kind of “describes” Ray Dennis Steckler’s ability to come in at you from all points of the compass! Whatever genre you could name—horror, crime, comedy—he could do it. He even got into the subterranean-budget “adult movie” thing in the ’80s, which he didn’t really brag too much about, but he wasn’t ashamed of it either. He could do anything, and worked with some of the best people in the business. Early on, he did a lot of music videos too, with Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Frank Zappa, Alan O’Day…even with Arch Hall Jr. [laughs]!

I’m so glad I was able to see Ray in November. Ray called me and said, “Hey, you gotta come out to LA this month. On the 14th, they’re screening NO SUBTITLES NECESSARY at the LA County Art Museum.” I said, “I think I’d like to do it but I dunno, Ray, let me think about it a couple days.” So I thought about it and, to be perfectly honest, it was gonna be tough to get away from home, it was an expense to go out there and I had made up my mind that I was going to say no and apologize and tell him to enjoy it without me. But then I had a dream about my father, and in the dream he told me I must go to Los Angeles. No kidding! So I took off for LA and met Ray and his wife Katherine and daughter Laura, who had driven down from Las Vegas, where they live. When we met in the lobby of the hotel where we were all staying, I told Ray about the dream, and he put his arms around me and gave me a hug.

When we went to the screening, it was a big shindig, a lot of A-list people; we saw Vilmos outside and we all started talking, me and Vilmos and Ray and [Fairway acting veteran] Burr Middleton. Ray got sidetracked, several people got him talking, and while this was going on, Vilmos told me, “After the screening, there’s going to be a panel discussion and Ray is going to be up there participating.” I thought that was great. They screened the documentary, and excerpts from WILD GUITAR and INCREDIBLY STRANGE CREATURES were featured in it. When it was over, there was the panel—the director of the documentary, James Chressanthis, and Vilmos and the producer and Peter Fonda. And there was a chair for Ray—I’m sure it was for Ray, after what Vilmos me—but no one told him! Now it kind of pisses me off to think about it, because after a while the panel began to drag on and got not-so-interesting. Fonda went on and on and on and the audience was chuckling courteously but…I think it was kind of boring them! Finally, toward the very end of it, Vilmos asked if Ray was in the audience and would he please stand up and identify himself, which he did. Of course people applauded, and that made me feel really good. And Ray began to participate in the panel from the aisle, with a wireless hand mike.

You have to understand how ill the man was. Cardiac-related things…he was very weak. He probably should have not come to Los Angeles, but he did. But Ray got up and in a booming voice—they didn’t even give him a microphone at first!—he was talking to the audience with a terrific volume and was very entertaining, and told a couple of anecdotes. He said, “Do you remember, Vilmos, the night we were down in Hollywood about 3:30 ia.m. shooting WILD GUITAR, and some union goons came down?” Vilmos was outside changing film magazines in the Arriflex when these goons came up and said, “Give us the film.” Vilmos kept on working, fidgeting inside the black bag changing it, showing no sign of being intimidated. The union guys made some bodily threats—“We’re gonna bust somebody up tonight, and why don’t we start with you guys?”—and they started pushing and shoving, roughing Ray and Vilmos up a little bit.

So Ray turned to Vilmos and said, “Hey, Willie, just give ’em the damn film. It’s not worth getting knifed over!” So Vilmos said, “Well…OK…” and he pulled 200 feet of film out of the bag and gave it to ’em, and these guys snickered and spat on the ground and turned around and walked away. And after they walked away, Vilmos winked at Ray—Vilmos had given ’em the brand-new, unused film that he was about to load into the camera, not the film they had just shot [laughs]! You don’t survive the hell of the 1956 Hungarian revolution the way Vilmos did by being easily intimidated! Of course, Vilmos remembered that incident and he was laughing about it, this man who has reached the top of his game, an Academy Award recipient whose career is not slowing down. After Ray shared that story with Vilmos and the audience, he carried on in great style and got many laughs and applause. This was a very savvy audience and, yes, it was a very good night. Vilmos and Ray had a great love and respect for one another, and it was very evident to everyone who saw them together that night.

After the screening, a group of us went to Canters Delicatessen on Fairfax and spent a couple hours reminiscing. It was such a wonderful experience. Even in his failing health, Ray still had dreams of going on to other things. But—I didn’t know this till later—at 5 or 6 a.m. the next morning, while I was already on my way to the airport to go home, Ray took a turn for the worse and was taken to a hospital in Torrence, where he spent about four days. When he got well enough to travel, they drove back to Las Vegas, and he was home no more than a day or so before he was back in a hospital again. I happened to call not knowing this and his wife answered his cell, and she was in the emergency room or the intensive care area as they were booking him. I heard Ray in the background, “Who is it, honey?” and when she said, “It’s Arch,” he said, “Oh, let me talk to him.” She handed the phone to Ray and he asked me how it was going, and I said, “I don’t want you to get tired talking. Is it OK with the doctors if you talk?” He said, “Don’t worry about that. Oh, and I apologize, I wanted to send you a poster, remember I talked about that?” “Ray!” I said, “Relax! Take it easy!” But that was Ray: He was super-intense and focused all the time!

Ray loved the business, he loved films, and the fact that excerpts from INCREDIBLY STRANGE CREATURES actually played at the Cannes Film Festival [as part of NO SUBTITLES NECESSARY] pleased him to no end. He may have never achieved the mainstream status of a very famous producer or director or anything like that, other than his high cult status, but as far as his intellect and his wit and his understanding of the business, be it in front of or behind the camera, he really knew it all. His career spans so many different genres, so many different periods, and at so many different levels, and he made a living at it, and had fun being part of the industry no matter how crazy and obscure things would be. As far as cult films and everything, I don’t think it’s possible to get much more far-out than Ray’s imagination. And don’t forget, above it all, he was a devoted family man, husband, father and a man of great character. That’s why I feel so privileged to have worked with him and to have known Ray Dennis Steckler.

Actor and horror historian Bob Burns adds:

An old friend of mine just passed away who I hadn’t seen in years. His name was Ray Dennis Steckler. If that name sounds familiar, it might be because you have some of his films in your collection. They're certainly not the high-end classics, but they are still iconic in their own way. Some of the titles are RAT PFINK A BOO BOO, LEMON GROVE KIDS MEET THE MONSTERS, THE THRILL KILLERS and, possibly his best-known film, THE INCREDIBLY STRANGE CREATURES WHO STOPPED LIVING AND BECAME MIXED-UP ZOMBIES!!? I had the pleasure of working with Ray on two of his films. In RAT PFINK, I played my gorilla character Kogar, and in LEMON GROVE KIDS I was Kogar again plus the Mad Mummy.

I met Ray through my late friend Tom Scherman, who created all of the zombie faces in STRANGE CREATURES. Ray was a real nice guy. He shot everything in 16mm. He never got permits for anywhere we shot. He could talk his way out of any problem. He was sort of a poor man’s Ed Wood. He had a great imagination and a wacky sense of humor, and was a good director. Another thing he had in common with Mr. Wood is that no one ever got paid, but didn’t mind because he was such a great guy to be with.

I’ll say one more thing: Ray made more films than Ed Wood. Later on, Ray moved to Las Vegas and bought his own movie theater, so he would always have a place to play his films. A few years ago, they finally started releasing some of his pictures on DVD. I couldn’t be happier about that.

Maybe Ray can team up with Ed Wood in that big movie studio in the sky and make some really wild films.

I will miss him a lot.

Rest in peace, my good friend.