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MOVIE REVIEW:
KILLING SPREE
(1987)
DIRECTOR:
Tim Ritter.
STARRING:
Asbestos Felt, Courtney Lercara, Raymond Carbone.
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Wowee... I know the readers of THEBLUDGEONER.COM are a mixed bag but fuck me... I dunno if any nuts in this mixed bag are ready for this. There are B-grade
horror movies like classic 50s Ed Wood disasterpieces and there are insanely bad horror films like Roger Corman Z-grade shite. There are ridiculously bad
blockbuster films, eg. The Wickerman or anything else starring Nicolas Cage beyond the late 90s and there are straight to TV rejects. But then you have Killing
Spree... Those other films, if measured in levels of afterlife, are resting on the crusty surface of hell, slaving away at whatever soul slaves of hell slave
away at! But Killing Spree... shit... it's sitting down stairs with Satan... swilling down Black Tooth Grins and high fiving the red skinned granddaddy of hell.
Killing Spree is a cheap ass horror film directed by Tim Ritter and sits on the quality level of - B-GRADE PORNO. That's right, not just PORNO... B-GRADE PORNO. Nothing about this "film" ever
lifts beyond the level of B-GRADE PORNO and it's hard to imagine them ever intending to look any better. I guess B-GRADE PORNO doesn't sound so bad because pornos
have boobs, penetration and other naughty stuff. Unfortunately, Killing Spree has none of this... it's just representative of the bad quality that a B-GRADE PORNO
is produced with. Although it can be seen that horror films are Tim Ritter's passion, eg. a positive reference to a FANGORIA magazine is made loud and clear, it can be
seen quite clearly that either doing it right was not in his priorities. One can only assume much weed was smoked by all people involved in Killing Spree. The lack
of effort does not seem to have come from laziness, but more from the clumsiness that one trying their best to acheive something under the influence of
weed stumbles about with.
I'll tell ya - this is going to be a long review - because there are just so many things wrong with Killing Spree, I drool at the thought of diving into all of it! Take a deep fucking breath...
Tom Russo (Asbestos Felt) is your average adult male working hard to pay the bills to support his new home and new wife, Leeza (Courtney Lercara). That is, if your average male is a scruffy haired, scruffy beared,
weirdo who NEVER changes his clothes, ever. Leeza is a young "attractive" (her role is that of an attractive woman, but I'd hardly call her attractive myself) woman
who Tom, beyond all his will, cannot trust. He has cheated on by his last wife and he still carried that chip around on his dirty, unwashed shoulder.
To put it bluntly, Tom is a grumpy asshole. He's distrusting of his wife, he talks rudely to his friends and he's always pissed about not being able to pay the bills.
As you can see the movie exists right outside of reality with all THESE fantasty elements at play...
... anyway.
One night the newlyweds have Tom's friend (and boss... what the??), Ben (Raymond Carbone), over for dinner. Tom is pissed (again) about this because even though Ben is his BEST friend (it's
stated many times - BEST FRIEND) and even though Tom himself SET UP THE DINNER, he's just too tired to deal with Ben and this also means they HAVE TO eat pork chops for dinner,
because Ben loves pork chops. But Tom HAAAATES pork chops! "I HATE PORK CHOPS!" he yells. You should see his reaction, he gets quite furious over pork chops.
At the dinner table the conversation is filmed in an absolutely hilarious fashion. Camera angles are set up so we have the actor talking to the camera (which is not odd)
but unfortunately the actor's do not have the ability to pull this off. So there manner and demeanour in group shots is totally different to their close up demeanour. Not
to mention their mismatched reactions to things that have been said in other takes.
Anyway, while they're eating dinner Tom has to answer the door to his neighbour and
upon his return his wife and his best mate Ben are talking closer at the table. I'm not talking touchy feely close or even flirty, they're just sitting next to each
other and talking. This drives Tom MAD! He's angry at Ben because he has an 18 year old girlfriend and Ben is like... seriously... fucking 60 at least. He's like a
60 year old jew and he's best friends with Tom who is his scruffy, smelly, homeless looking EMPLOYEE!?!?!? So now he thinks Ben is after his woman, and I guess he's
insecure that his wife prefers rich, 60 year old Jews over scruffy, smelly, homeless looking HIM. To be honest, they're both slim pickings and she should just get
the fuck out of there. During Tom's insane rantings in which he yells in a completely monotone pitch, he says to Ben "Get out of my house before I throw you out -
YOU BIG ASS!" haha Gold. This guy REALLY IS angry!
With Ben's departure Tom goes off on another rant to his wife about Ben being a pilot and all they care about is getting laid. He disapproves of Ben's relationship with
an 18 year old girl and doesn't trust him because of that. No wonder he called him a big ass! His wife reassures him she wants the marriage to work, they kind of make up
and then she hugs him and says "I LOVE YOU" to which Tom replies, "I believe you..." hahaha. Methinks it is time Tom took a look at his own damaged goods ass and started
assessing his own behaviour. He needs a good sesh of Dr. Phil to see he's pushing the people that love him away from him.
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Tom Is damaged goods though. His ex-wife cheated on him. But to say he is damaged goods is really under-stating it. I'll put it this way... that night Tom has a dream in which he
walks into a room and his wife and Ben are... well they're not even fucking. She's just sitting on top of him (he's fully clothed) and she's wearing a skirt and bra. He walks in holding a knife, with his tongue poking out, with his hair all on end, yelling "JUUUUST STOOOOP IIIIIT" (bare in mind reading that just then would have been
at least fifty times more dramatic than how the actor performs it) and they laugh at him. Ben proclaims Tom's wife gives great head then his wife's head turns into a giant
set of lips and starts sucking Ben's cranium off while drooling a milk type substance! (keep in mind... the way I described that actually sounds better than how it looks)
Then Tom wakes up screaming. I see... Tom... I think it really is time for Dr. Phil...
The next scene is a treat and true example of this movie's biggest area of failure. This area is the complete inability to seemlessly add in non-essential dialogue with essential
story carrying dialogue. Read on for an example:
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^^ David Lynch is dreaming again... |
Tom sits down at work and eats lunch. A co-worked named Stewmaster (Vince Miranda) comes up to Tom with his pay cheque. Tom says thanks "Stewmaster". He then asks Stewmaster how he got the name.
Stewmaster: Well, you know, it's funny you ask that. I used to work in a kitchen and while I worked there I knew how to whip up a mean stew. So people started calling me Stewmaster
and I guess it just sorta stuck.
Tom replies: Yeah, that sounds good.
Then Tom moves straight onto a detailed and specific question about a character that matters, Ben, the guy who he's convinced is porking his wife! He then has a look at his paycheck,
which has been severely cut and he surprisingly becomes angry. Anger is one of the only emotions Tom seems to be able to grasp. It could be a primitive brain type deal, not sure.
His hair cut and beard suggests to me that primitive and Tom have alot in common. Anyway, after settling down over the pay cheque, Tom says to Stewmaster, "I can't wait to see Leeza's
reaction to THIS!" At that VERY
moment the camera suddenly zooms in to the back of the cheque and zooms back and now Leeza is holding it in their living room (one of the MAIN locations of this film)! hahaha VERY clever!
That's fucking classic. It's all done like handycam
style zooming though. No, no - don't let the description of that ambitious cinematography fool you - it looked shit.
Naturally, Leeza isn't even that angry over the pay cut on the
cheque. What a surprise, Tom was angry over nothing again. Tom and Leeza just finish discussing their own poverty, to the point of discussing second jobs, etc. Then Leeza concludes by saying
"I'm going shopping with a friend now. You can come if you want? We could eat out?" Tom seems annoyed that she could've gone out earlier in the day to shop. I'd be annoyed that she's
about to go fucking shopping and EATING OUT when he just got a 40% pay cut!? What the FUCK!? Now he's NOT annoyed/angry over that!? You're weird, Tom... weird and VERY badly acted. hehe.
She goes out and leaves us to sit and watch Tom sitting with a couple of magazines for 30 seconds. I'm not talking as though it's been shot in an interesting fashion. I mean it's one badly
set up camera angle while Tom angrily flips through a smutty magazine and then pleasingly flips through an issue of FANGORIA. An issue that I own actually. I have something in common with
this film! Ech... I feel dirty. Fortunately for Tom, he finds his wife's diary which proves that she IS fucking around on him with that fat, 60 year old Jew, Ben. Unfortunately for Tom's
face this makes Tom really angry and makes him pull some of the weirdest looking facials I've seen this side of Silent Night, Deadly Night part 2!
Remember the ugly rubber face
things you could manipulate by sticking your fingers in the back of them? <--- If you don't - then educate yourself and follow the link. Times the ugliness of those rubber faces by 50 and
that's the face Tom pulls while he's angry. Shit I wish I could rip the whole damn movie and put it on this review to SHOW you the ridiculousness!
After this discovery Tom goes on a synthesiser and saxophone scored stroll along some dumpy looking local river. He stares out amongst the completely uninspiring scenery which looks as though
it's been chosen at random and right there and then he feels compelled to smash his beer against a tree trunk in an extremely unconvincing manner. He's angry... but not as angry as a guy with a
huge beard smashing a beer against a tree should be, so now we KNOW he's acting. Damn, it had all been so convincing thus far... He then reads the diary again sitting on the back of his seriously
beat as all shit car. At this point superimposed footage of Tom and his wife frolicking on the beach plays over the footage of him reading in frustration at 50% opacity. I think they're trying
to show him remembering good times. These good times are obviously far and few between because the only memory we see is footage of them at the beach on this one particular day, looping.
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But suddenly, fuck that! He's had enough and he's angry. I know because the synthesiser score just went up in tempo and that means intensity. Then we see Tom walking in a rage down a dark corridor
by the beach, like KoRn in the "Y'all Wanna Single" film clip, kicking at the walls. Fuck, he's angry... I can tell because he's moving his fists around in a cartoonishly angry way. He strolls up to the end of a peir, angry still. This is where
he happens upon a stranger and just punches him right off the edge of the peir. Why? Because he was there! Don't get in Tom's way or question him at all. He's angry over a totally unrelated topic
that you have nothing to do with and he WILL fuck you up over it. After that violent outburst he decides to walk into the shallow tide at the beach with all his clothes and shoes on. A beach goer
frolicks by and Tom pushes him over, asssaulting him. He chases the guy out further into the water and there's a struggle. Suddenly, Tom walks off back onto land and the man is left floating, face down...
drowned and dead I assumed... but he wasn't. Just shocked?
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Tom: Why would she cheat one me?? I'm nice, I'm good ^^
looking, I don't have any vices...
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Well, now I'm just GLAD Tom's wife is fucking around on him. This guy is simply a fucking jerk! The beach, at the time, was full of people. So now Tom has just tried committing murder in broad daylight on an innocent man surrounded by witnesses. Funnily enough, as he's trying to drown him the other people swimming in the ocean seem baffled
and confused, I'm assuming because they're confused at the filming of a cheap movie at the beach. At this stage of the movie (20 minutes in) we should all know what confusion feels like.
Tom goes back home and Ben comes around with his Sex Pistols fan girlfriend. I know she's a Sex Pistols fan because she looks skanky and extreme 80s punk styles. Tom's woman is not only performed by
an extremely incapable actress but she's also a bitch. She asks where the toilet is and on her way past Tom she suggests he get's a life?? Well, after this I'm not surprised Tom makes it his priority to cut off Ben's girlfriend's head and throw it at Ben with the intention of killing him from the impact to his skull. Luckily the head was made of wood (believe me, it looks as though it was made of wood) because it did just the treat. Not convincingly mind you, it's just we know Ben died because the movie needed him to. Thank god the movie is calling the shots around here. He buries them both in the
smallest grave I've ever seen and things are back to normal. All Tom's problems have been killed away...
...until his wife starts fucking the electrician and every other maintenance guy under the sun too! Of course she writes about this in her diary too so the movie has another 45 minutes of things to cover. Mind you, this doesn't stop the movie from covering the same thing, over and over.
Tom kills the electrician first by replacing the ceiling fan blades with lawnmower blades, lowering the ceiling fan a little and lifting the electrician up into it. This slices a portion of his skull off,
exposing his brain. Didn't look terrible. All that leads us to a hilarious scene in which the wife walks in on Tom shampoo vaccuuming the floor of the room he just killed the electrician in and he
explains he's cleaning the carpet because it was so dirty and hasn't been cleaned since they moved in, suggestively worded as though she should've done it by now. She says he could've left it and she
would've done it later to which he responds:
TOM: Oh... NO... IT WAS QUITE A MESS... *evil laugh* MORE THAN YOU'LL EVER KNOW... *another evil laugh*
LEEZA (Tom's wife): *chirpy* Okay, well I'm gonna go cook some dinner now!
Umm... excuse me? How about - What the hell does "more than I'll ever know mean??". What the fuck is with that evil laugh? THIS FUCKING SCRIPT READS LIKE STEREO! AIIIEEEEE!! *slaps forehead*
Anyway, after several days pass of Tom not changing his clothes, Tom's angst building over secretly knowing of his wife's infidelities and other things happening within the confines of Tom's living room, the killing spree begins. Tom sends his wife away for a few days, so he can do lots of killing without being busted by her. Why hasn't he just tried killing her yet? He can't bring himself to do
it. You're whipped, cunt. Now we are treated to some serious levels of gore here. Serious, serious violence. But unfortunately the effects are so bad none of this makes you cringe or feel repulsed or
whatever we sick gorehound fucks get out of seeing horror movie gore. You just kind of laugh and think to yourself, "are these guy serious!?".
The following is a list of several different kills that occur throughout Killing Spree that will sound better on this review than they actually look:
1. The TV repairman is asked by Tom (who, by this point, can't stop cackling like an evil wanker) to test his "martial arts" skills on him and he beats Tom down for a beat. But eventually Tom gets a hold
of him and cuts the fuck out of him with a chainsaw.
2. A courier delivery man stands below Tom, talking to him like the fat slob he is, when suddenly Tom drops a screwdriver into his head from about a meter or two above. Apparently a meter or two is enough height for a screwdriver to gain enough speed to penetrate the thickness of the skull. I beg to differ... but hey... it's your call movie! Then he shouts out to the delivery guy as he stumbles around dying in an unconvincing manner,
"YOU SCREW MY WIFE! I SCREWDRIVE YOUR HEAD!"
W0o0! Good one, Tom!
3. A gardener is buried by Tom in the back yard with only his hands and head exposed. Not before Tom knocks him to the ground in what is some terrible acting. A vicious blow to the head yet the gardner falls backwards in slow motion, quite cautiosly catching his fall and then once comfortable, slumping to the ground. Once buried, Tom cranks the lawnmower and hacks away at his head and hands. Again... this sounds so much better than it looks!
4. Tom's old lady neighbour comes around, after discovering his killing spree, to ask him to kill someone for her. Tom doesn't want anything to do with it and instead pulls off the lower half of her face with a hammer. Why not, Tom, why not? Again, this looks terrible and at no point has the kill scene been executed to make it at all enjoyable for the viewer to watch.
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| In the end, as movie folk lore would have it, if you've been unfairly killed your soul can't rest and you'll rise up from the dead to get supernatural vigilante justice on your killer. This happens in Killing Spree and Tom is suddenly dealing with alot of fucking undead people all at once. Let me assure you, at no point is this convicing, frightening or enjoyable. The undead speak like normal
people, even at one point having a lengthy discussion amongst themselves about whether it's better off to kill Tom's wife instead, because she started this whole mess with that pesky diary of hers. Speaking of Tom's wife and her diary. She comes home and Tom locks her and himself up in what is FINALLY a new set, appearing to be an unfinished room of the house (??). While the undead have their meeting outside the locked door, Tom's wife tells Tom that everything in her diary were infact smutty stories she was writing for a magazine and she just got paid a large sum of cash for them so he won't need a second job. Yes, he killed all those people for no reason at all.
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^^ TV Repairman: KEEYAHHHH! |
OHWWW! TOM! YOU FAILED, SIR!
Tom kills himself with a hacksaw to the throat (looks shit) to save his wife, the undead return to their graves and all is at least SANE again. Of course even sanity in this movie is unconvincing. So, Tom's
wife heads out to the front of the house... because... she does... and wouldn't you know it! AIEEEE! Tom's undead body smashes out through the stairs and grabs out at her with his fingers opening and closing. Naturally this is accompanied by a terrible synth track rip off of the famous PSYCHO shower scene score. Then the movie ends and we are given one last treat which is Abestos Felt rapping over the closing
title credits.
Killing Spree is fun. I'll give it that. It's a good laugh and to be honest, even amongst cheap indie horror films, there is NOTHING ELSE like this. It is so terrible it's remarkable and a must for a once off viewing. But it's problems are abundant and unfortunately these problems stop it being a worthy collectable, because it never plays up to it's own ridiculouslness enough. It almost tries to take itself seriously
when nobody watching it ever could.
There are moment's where things that were in certain places before hand are not there in the next frame, or have been moved. There is a particular scene where Tom's wife walks out of a door and actually stops and waits just outside the door, where we can quite visibly see part of her body. She's just standing there, for no reason other than waiting for the director to call "CUT!". Assuming the director was awake
or on set.
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The fact that Tom never once changes his clothes is extremely obvious and very lazy of the costumer designer, director, editor and anybody who should've had a non-stoned brain on set.
The acting is inexcusable and I'm telling you, these people all had to be mates of Tim Ritter. The locations used are all clearly rooms of one house that somebody within the production owns and all sets
looked completely fucked. Void of any character, any lived in feel or any atmosphere. It leaves the whole thing feeling like situations set up just so we can see some extreme gore, poorly executed later on.
Asbestos Felt, the main actor, who has grown to some level of odd cult status (I'm not talking Bruce Campbell cult status. I'm talking the local hobo who everyone talks about type cult status) has a bizarre monotone delivery of all his lines and his facials are something that need to be seen to be believed.
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^^ This is pretty much about as erotic as the movie gets. |
In the end I would advise people who are into the more morbid oddities of film to check this one out, but I could easily imagine most people not wanting to own it past a one off viewing. I tell you I'm into alot of bad movies and not even these strikes me as a movie I must own. I first saw this movie ten years ago when I was stoned as fuck and we all had a good laugh. I spent the last decade wondering if I'll ever see it again. Thanks to my mate Joe I have and although I loved revisiting the film in all it's bizarre nature, I'm pretty sure I'm done with this one. It's following surprises me and for the first time ever I cannot support this underdog... because really, it's a total piece of crap.
I can't score this film as I would others. So I've done it in two categories. The first is "intentional" which means in terms of sitting to an actual movie and wanting to enjoy it for what a movie should be. The second category is "unintentional" which means it's entertaining/hilarious/so embarrassing it's good but at no point is it what the film intended.
While screaming "YOU SCREW MY WIFE, I SCREWDRIVE YOUR HEAD!", I give this movie:
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1 OUT OF 5 INTENTIONAL JAGER-BABIES. |
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3 OUT OF 5 UNINTENTIONAL JAGER-BABIES.
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