Blood Shack (1971)

Having heard much of cult director Ray Dennis Steckler, I have finally gotten around to viewing one of his films: Blood Shack, also known as The Chooper. Blood Shack is the story of a ranch upon which there is a small, abandoned house, or a 'shack' if you will, that is supposedly haunted by a vengeful Native spirit called "The Chooper". This is the same "Chooper" as found on the cover of the DVD, http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2582/4078953818_fc1144acf2.jpg
Seeing that, I thought, "It's the Alice Chooper!" I'd forgive the dorky name for an Alice Cooper lookalike in the role. Well, the DVD box has deceived us all, because this is in fact the Chooper:
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2576/4078952312_6a0f83d159.jpg
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2645/4078952374_25f3157154.jpg
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2765/4078195655_2b3d69753c.jpg

So that pissed me off, actually. I don't mind a bad film. But Media Blasters, who released the DVD under their Guilty Pleasures label, actually took the time to make up some guy as a frightening-looking badass and put him on the boxcover as The Chooper, because they know that that makes a pretty cool box. But Steclker didn't do that for the movie even knowing that would make a pretty cool movie.

So the plot, or what little of it there is concerns this Chooper killing at the ranch, which Carolynn Brandt has just inherited from an uncle. The foreman of the ranch is that scrawny fellow in the pictures above who is just obsessed with the Chooper. He must say 'Chooper' with that mushy yokel mouth of his a good forty times during the film, and it never gets old, right? He also, strangely, disposes of the bodies the Chooper leaves behind, because 1. he's slow-witted and really believes in the Chooper; 2. he doesn't want the ranch to be destroyed by an investigation. Because police officers investigate with wrecking balls in this world.

Steckler claims to make movies about movies, rather than about reality. So you get some genre appropriation. Carolynn Brandt inherited the ranch and there's a yokel who wants to buy the ranch for the water rights she doesn't realize she has. That's classic western plotting. Then there's the stuff with the Chooper, including a classic roughy sequence of a lady getting undressed then stabbed sequence. There's a fist-fight. There's an entranced midnight stroll scene, kind of like in I Walked with a Zombie, which Steckler hints at in his commentary but never mentions by name. This gives the movie a very choppy, or is that choopy?, quality.

So, I'm starting to learn how to watch a Steckler film. Don't worry too much about the plot. Just enjoy what you're seeing, whatever there is to enjoy. Because that's how he shoots: he finds things he considers interesting, shoots them, and throws them into the movie. His shooting philosophy is to have no script and to put whatever serendipitously enters his range--physicall or mentally--into the film. This is why you get lots of shots of his daughters just playing and improvising dialogue. They're actually pretty good, and, yes, adorable. Then there's the 15 minutes of the 55 minute run-time taken up by a county rodeo that happened to be nearby the shooting location.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2615/4078196415_578c024b76.jpg
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3501/4078953244_ed9171863a.jpg
I find it amusing that Steckler isn't given any special position to shoot from; he just has to sit in the audience, shooting past people's heads with his little 16mm Bolex.

Like I said, you have to enjoy the individual moments in Steckler's films, and I did. I liked seeing the rodeo. This is probably the only existing video record of this small county rodeo and that gives it anthropological interest to me. I will probably never experience a county rodeo, but even if I some day do so, it won't be a county rodeo from 1971!

I also found myself strangely fascinated by Carolynn Brandt's fashion sense. We never get to see her naked--she was Steckler's wife at the time--but frankly her clothes are more interesting to me than her breasts. Check this out. Perfect Ranchware?
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2549/4078195907_4e482d42b9.jpg http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2224/4078195983_6c57df0532.jpg
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2449/4078195785_80e788cf95.jpg
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2785/4078195741_7a050ede65.jpg

She's quite a pretty lady, though: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2649/4078953020_0759cf107b.jpg

Another thing that's interesting is that Steckler really can shoot. He's a good cinematographer. There are a lot of nice compositions, this being my favourite, http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2659/4078195841_0cbc9c8209.jpg

So there you go, it's a bad film from the perspective of a traditional cinematic viewing experience, mostly because it's padded out to reach feature-length run-time. But I found my own way to get some enjoyment out of it.