Rat Pfink A Boo Boo is a hard title to review properly. It’s a film I give one star in terms of actual filmmaking, whether it be acting, writing, editing or even making any coherent sense. But I give it a very wholesome five stars for effort and enthusiasm. It’s a bomb and a turkey and it clearly knows it and never takes itself seriously so despite being a terribly made film, it’s also a hell of a lot of fun.
What I consider to be THE definition of a real cult movie, Rat Pfink A Boo Boo was originally meant to be a straight-faced suspense/thriller involving a gang of thugs stalking voluptuous women in dark alleys. However, the movie’s creator, Ray Dennis Steckler, one of my favorite role models in directing, got quickly bored with that idea and, after viewing the incomplete footage, saw how campy and B-grade the idea was and decided to do something completely different instead.
The film starts off for the first 30 minutes as a poorly made and unconvincing suspense movie intercut with scenes of a famous surf rock singer, Lonnie Lane, singing generic go-go dancing songs that bear no relevance to what’s going on. For now. There’s also a brief cameo by a gardener who does the best MST3K stinger line never riffed in a very badly acted scene with the thugs. Anyway, turns out the gal these thugs are stalking to rob is none other than Lonnie Lane’s girlfriend and after the thugs beat up Lonnie and the gardener and hold Lonnie’s gal, Cee Bee Beaumont, for ransom, it’s from this point the film starts to get a little strange.
Lonnie is furious and he wants revenge for these no-good punks so he and the gardener go inside a room and emerge as Rat Pfink and Boo Boo in what has to be the most cheaply made and pathetic ideas for superhero costumes ever conceived. It’s from this point forwards that the film ceases to take itself seriously anymore and turns into a nonsensical riot that involves a fight scene that looks like it was shot on a $2 video camera in a random stranger’s backyard, a gorilla escaping from the City zoo and wreaking havoc on Rat Pfink and Boo Boo and a street parade held in Rat Pfink’s honor for “saving the day”.
It really is an astonishingly bizarre film and a true absurdity in filmmaking but I admire the reckless spirit the film has throughout. A brief intro on the official DVD by Ray Dennis Steckler shows his indomitable spirit and enthusiasm in making this film, knowing although the film itself was terrible, was only in it purely for loving the art of making films. It’s a bad excuse in actual talent in filmmaking, with incredibly corny lines delivered wooden with flat emotion and extreme glare reflecting of the camera lens in some very poorly lit cinematography during driving scenes but it truly needs to be seen to be believed. An essential oddity in cult cinema and a virtually unheard of camp classic.
