Seemingly made with whatever loose change was found on the streets where it was shot, Ray Dennis Steckler’s The Hollywood Strangler Meets the Skid Row Slasher is a real trial by ire. Remember, you can’t spell “Ray Dennis” without “ADR,” because the entire movie is dubbed — the least of its troubles — and as if embarrassed of its inherent shoddiness, he directed under the nom de plume of Wolfgang Schmidt. Rhymes with what he made.
The title serves as a near-encapsulation of what little happens within its 72 interminable minutes. The Hollywood Strangler (Pierre Agostino, Steckler’s Las Vegas Serial Killer) spends his days answering sex ads in sex newspapers so he can photograph weather-beaten women in shorts so short, one practically can see the STDs. After clicking off a few shots, he strangles them to death.
Meanwhile, the Skid Row Slasher (Carolyn Brandt, Steckler’s Rat Pfink a Boo Boo) works in a pitiful used bookstore where the occasional — which is to say “daily” — wino stumbles in clutching a bottle of hooch and bothers her scant few customers. After following the drunks outside, she slashes them to death.
Eventually, after a little stalking, the two killers face off in a fatal duel. Who wins? Not the viewer, that’s for damn sure. —Rod Lott