[2] Steckler worked as a prop man before becoming assistant cameraman on the film The World's Greatest Sinner, directed by and starring Timothy Carey.
When Arch Hall Sr. was worried whether his film would play when the original choice of the heavy was black, Steckler told his friend he had to go and took the role under his onscreen name, Cash Flagg.
[5] In 1963 he co-produced his second film, The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies, co-starring his then wife, Carolyn Brandt.
[7] Initially distributed on the lower half of a double-bill by Fairway, Steckler took Creatures on the road himself and made it a success under a number of titles, including Diabolical Dr. Voodoo and The Teenage Psycho Meets Bloody Mary.
By the late 1960s, he also directed the music video for Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit", as well as promos for Jimi Hendrix, Nazz, and Frank Zappa.
Shortly after returning to Las Vegas, Steckler, who had been fighting heart disease for several years, died of cardiac arrest on January 7, 2009, aged 70.
[2] The rock critic Lester Bangs wrote an appreciative 1973 essay about Incredibly Strange Creatures in which he tries to explain and justify the movie's value: ...this flick doesn't just rebel against, or even disregard, standards of taste and art.
In the universe inhabited by The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies, such things as standards and responsibility have never been heard of.
In his 1969 film Body Fever, Steckler created a bit part for then destitute fellow director Coleman Francis, who, by coincidence, also achieved belated fame via Mystery Science Theater 3000.