By this point, Ray Dennis Steckler had made a rock ‘n’ roll musical, a horror musical, a violent thriller, a Bowery Boys tribute kiddie flick and a campy superhero movie. Where does a restless mind like Steckler’s go next?
A hard-boiled detective movie, of course! But one that’s done the Steckler way, which means it’s totally out-to-lunch and just barely held together on a budget of about fifty bucks.
Steckler himself plays the private eye, world-weary, womanizing and provider of cynical first-person narration (“My whole life has been a movie, but I keep getting the reels mixed up.”). He frequently thinks about Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon and hopes to measure up to him, but knows that he isn’t half as cool. When it comes to iconic detectives, Steckler’s Charles Smith is a little closer to a low-rent, more pipsqueaky Travis McGee. He even lives a life off-the-grid on a boat.
His case: locate a lady cat burglar who made off with $150,000 worth of heroin owned by a blubbery Los Angeles gangster. Steckler’s leggy, brunette wife, Carolyn Brandt, plays the part and she’s pretty much Catwoman from Batman, complete with mask and fancy costume. She also very quickly lost the drugs because the dealer she was working with double-crossed her and made off with the stuff himself.
All of that happens in the first minute.
What follows is more plot than you usually get in a Steckler film along with more sex, including lengthy love scenes between him and Brandt. It’s some entertaining gutter noir.
Speaking of gutters, look for B-movie director/actor Coleman Francis in a small part as Steckler’s sad sack friend whose laundromat has gone out of business (too many darn wooden nickels in the machines and people stealing his soap!). According to the story, after they finished shooting the film, Steckler and Ron Haydock went out to celebrate and they found Francis drunk and downtrodden in the street. The flat broke Francis wouldn’t accept a straight handout, so Steckler gave him $20 to act in the movie that he’d just finished. They got together the next day and made up a few scenes on the quick (clearly inspired by Francis’s personal problems) that don’t have much of anything to do with the plot, but that aren’t that bad. It’s another hard luck case in the big city.