Another piece of sleaze from Ray Dennis Steckler? Do go on! Readers might remember how Shocktober 2023 all of a sudden became very Steckler-centric for me. And here he is already, at entry number three. This grimy, virtually dialogue-free slasher-thriller is surely one of his lesser films — the fact that he used an alias says a lot — but there’s still plenty to like. All the real locations, the seedy underbelly of sunny LA, the influences from stuff like Peeping Tom and Taxi Driver.
Beyond the smirky title, fit for any psychotronic lineup, is a pretty grim serial-killer movie that has more in common with Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer than any number of cheap exploitation movies of the 70s. Not that this isn’t exploitative, but the violence is often set in bleak, naturalistic settings, frequently with no music. The murders are ugly, the victims powerless, the killer a deranged, ‘normal’ guy roaming the Sunset Strip, hating the people around him, especially women. A Travis Bickle without a plan, he picks up girls, pays aspiring models to pose for his camera, then kills them, in an endless death loop.
Meanwhile, someone is slashing winos on Skid Row. But who? Does the mousy bookstore clerk know anything about it, hmmmm? And what will happen when the strangler meets the slasher (with literally ten minutes left of the movie)? If you’re thinking wedding bells, think again.
The ADR does a lot of heavy lifting here, the strangler basically never speaks, yet we hear his v/o all through the film. The creepiest thing about it though, basically a political commentary by Steckler, is the complete absence of cops; killers kill with impunity, on a whim, unmasked, in broad daylight, at a pool in a nice part of town, in your neighbor’s apartment. On imdb someone called it ”strangely entertaining”. Yeah. Dr. Runtime very much approved (72 mins).
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