The Las Vegas Serial Killer (1986)

Trivia: Who is Ray Dennis Steckler's favourite filmmaker? If you guessed Michelangelo Antonioni, then you'd be correct. And it shows.

There's scarcely a plot to The Las Vegas Serial Killer. The strangler from Hollywood Strangler is now killing in Las Vegas. At the same time two muggers are on a rampage. Occasionally their paths cross without incident or even noticing each other, until the end. The film consists of these two unrelated parties doing their things--strangling and mugging--intercut with loads of documentary footage he shot of Las Vegas circa 1986.

LVSK is the last real film of Steckler's career. All he made after was a segment of War Cats with Ted V. Mikels. He also made a silent movie (a home video, really) of his granddaughters called Summer Fun as well as a short, unreleased extension to Incredibly Strange Creatures called One More Time that isn't even listed on imdb. So LVSK is the last official feature. And fittingly, it is the culmination of Steckler's cinematic style and ideas. His apotheosis. It is the most steckleresque of all Steckler films. It's Steckler concentrated to his essence in one supreme drop of Stecklerjuice.

Just like Blood Shack, it has videography of local events entirely unrelated to the plot. Only it has a lot more of them.
For one, our old friend from Blood Shack returns. Yes, it's the Helldorado Rodeo!
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And we get to see the Helldorado parade, too.
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Amateur videography at its finest. But wasn't there a serial killer on the loose? And some muggers?

Well, Steckler's not totally mad. He does at least put his mugger characters at the parade. And at the rodeo. And at the airplane show. That's rigth, there's also an airplane show.
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Most of the girls on the planes are nude and the muggers make obscene but not very witty comments about the cartoon females.
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About this plane, they say, "I bet that plane flies sideways!" What does that even mean? If that's a racial slur, it's quite over my head.

The muggers, in fact, spend the whole movie making comments about every woman they see. A great deal of the random footage Steckler takes of people walking around Las Vegas is made 'relevant' by the muggers' commenting on the women in the shot.
Like these: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2750/4080196558_2240349027.jpg
These legs are NOT Mugger Approved.
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Even when running from a good mugging, there's still time to hit on fat chicks.

In fact, the film is almost entirely made up of these Las Vegas events and videography to the point that I was sometimes surprised when the plot would suddenly start up again, with results like the following.
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Nothing ruins a good murder quite like Papa Smurf,
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And the serial killer steps into one of Steckler's porn films, apparently,

Like in The Hollywood Strangler Meets the Skid Row Slasher, it has the feel of being a sort of urban documentary capturing the city at the time, in this case Las Vegas in 1987. The serial killer plot is just sort of occurring within the documentary, almost disturbing its still waters.

For instance, what here appears to be a series of establishing shots actually establishes nothing.
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Copperfield was doing Caesar's Palace at the time of shooting. Interesting. Irrelevant, but interesting.

Also like Hollywood Strangler, LVSK is shot without sound. There are some voiceovers added later, not really synced up with anything. It's a silent film. But where Hollywood Strangler tried, at least, to have the voiceovers be very specific to what the characters were saying, Steckler loses that restraint with LVSK, making scenes of parties and parades cacaphonies of idle chatter emanating from no particular speakers. Combined with the random videography of the city, this odd use of sound makes LVSK seem like an Arthur Lipsett film with a serial killer plot thrown in as an afterthought. (Lipsett, if you're not aware, was literally insane and also worked for the Canadian Film Board. He made movies by assembling footage he shot around Ottawa of random people and places, found footage, and found radio broadcasts with no relationship to the images. He was quite popular in the '70s and even won an Oscar.) Anyway, the voiceovers in LVSK are usually a bunch of women and men saying inane things, snippets of conversation you'd hear on the street. Occasionally we hear a very robotic-sounding radio announcer, listed in the credits as Matthias Merlin, randomly reading out radio reports regarding the murders and other reports about Cash Flagg. There are no radios in site throughout the film, incidentally.

(Steckler's shameless self-promotion:
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A rather lengthy pool-party sequence occurring in Steckler's backyard is said by the radio announcer to occur at Cash Flagg's house. True enough.)

Joe Bob Briggs tends to joke that Steckler had become an experimental filmmaker with Hollywood Strangler, but with Las Vegas Serial Killer he really has. This is probably the weirdest horror film I've ever seen, and I've seen some weird stuff. There is just nothing else like this. I was mesmerized watching this film. It's not a good horror film at all. That's not how one should view this film, or one will be disappointed. This film is just so odd and abstract, watching it is a Zen experience: so little is happening, you just find yourself scanning the images, letting your mind wander, fantasizing, thinking about how you're going to write a review on such a film or whatnot. Steckler's philosophy was to shoot 'real time' instead of 'reel time' and I supposed he succeeded.

The one thing this film lacks to be the fulfillment of everything Steckler is Carolyn Brandt. She had apparently given up on Ray by this point. Brandt was a real foxy lady! The quality of women Steckler finds for this film just isn't quite up to Brandt standards:

Here are some beautiful women he found:
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A photoshoot scene with her takes up a good five minutes. And oddly enough it is the only sequence shot with sound.
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The credits tell me this is Miss World Burlesque. There's a lengthy dancing scene with her and she is exquisite. Her breasts looked fake, but her hair is lovely. And it takes some damn fine hair to outdo breasts, however fake.

Here are some not-beautiful women he found. Enjoy the '80s hair and fashion:
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Given the sheer level of detachment from plot Las Vegas Serial Killer, the lesson I learned from Blood Shack is more than needed for this film. To enjoy a Steckler film, you just have to enjoy what you're looking at, whatever is on screen, in any way you can. He's just filming stuff and you have to do the work of making it amusing. Lucky for me, I'm pretty good at that. I liked the airplane show, the parade, and, of course, the Helldorado Rodeo! I find them of anthropological interesting; these are cultural events I probably will never participate in, never get to see. Even if I could see them, I would be seeing them post 2010, not in 1986.

It's very difficult to rate this movie one way or the other. It is pretty shamelessly experimental. And the serendipity angle Steckler was going for, with his muggers and serial killer, really works pretty well. But there's really almost nothing happening most of the film. It can't be approached with a traditional viewing mode. I can say this, LVSK is pretty much the supreme Steckler film. That could be praise, or it could be the opposite of praise. Make what you will of that.