Killing Spree (1987)

You know, there's every indication that this movie wasn't supposed to be taken seriously.

Not that this is some smirking meditation on the whole Mad Slasher genre, like Airplane! was to disaster films or Dr. Strangelove was to Cold War paranoia films.  No, this is an entirely different bird, this is.  Oh it's funny alright, but a lot of times it isn't funny ha-ha.

Something you have to understand is that the whole Mad Slasher world of films is ripe for parody as it is.  It's all so ridiculous and so unapologetically dense and over-the-top in its various incarnations that you can't watch an example without finding yourself talking back to the screen.  The victims run through the woods or the hospital hallways or whatever so fecklessly and with such disregard for good hiding places or protecting one's self with any available sharp objects or blunt instruments that it becomes almost embarrassing.

"Hey, the killer got 'em from somewhere - why can't you?"

Killing Spree understands full well how ridiculous the whole enterprise is.  So much so that it takes the middle road in parodist terms - it's not as messy and grandiose as Sam Raimi's Evil Dead movies, but it's also nowhere near as dull-witted and toothless as Greydon Clark's Student Bodies or Alfred Sole's Pandemonium.  In short, director/writer Tim Ritter at least has seen a Friday The 13th or a Repulsion in his time.

So it goes thusly: Average guy Tom Russo (Asbestos Felt...yeah; I'll get to that name in a minute) lives an average life in suburbia with his average wife Leeza (Courtney Lercara) and has the average problems any guy would have including the belief that Leeza is cheating on him. This happened to him before with his last wife...and IT ALMOST DROVE HIM CRAZY!

Wait a minute, though; what would make Tommy boy even suspect his loving wife to be even the slightest bit unfaithful to his big, manly orange troll-like hair?  Nothing really...except for the fact that he finds her diary lying around which details many sordid affairs with several of Tom's friends and neighbors, and a few repairmen and delivery boys here and there.

You know, Leeza, there's such a thing as lockable diaries.

Anyway, this sets Tom's nerves on edge and he explodes in a hail of hairy homicidal rage, killing off his elderly friend Ben (Raymond Carbone) and Ben's teenaged girlfriend Angel (Rachel Rutz), a pencil-thin electrician (Alan Brown), a chunky delivery guy in a pink cowboy hat (Bruce Paquette), a karate-chopping TV repairman (Joel D. Wynkoop), a nondescript lawn guy (Kieran Turner) and an amazingly annoying next-door neighbor lady (Cloe Pavel) who has an amazingly annoying music theme.  Why? Because they all slept with his wife - except for Angel and the annoying next-door neighbor lady - maybe.

Guess what, though...even after killing everybody, it doesn't mean that these dead bodies are going to take such a thing lying down.  Some undead shambling is in order....

The home video school of film-making has given us many examples of how to - and how NOT to - make a movie.  Certainly Chester Novell Turner has no right to call himself a director just because he can hold a video camera.  Tim Ritter however, is no Chester Novell Turner - and that is a compliment.  Working with what he has available, Ritter made films that, rationally, were the better of his brethren, if only because he knew what worked.

He at least knew how to cast his movie.  Look at the star of Killing Spree - one Asbestos Felt.  It's one thing to have the name Asbestos Felt and be an actor, but you also have to have the look that embodies the name Asbestos Felt: bright reddish-orange hair and a beard that seems to be made of an angora sweater wrapped around his head...oh, and it has to be ready to get teased into Nartuto-esque spikes at a moment's notice.  Seriously, this man looks to have been made out of both asbestos AND felt.

And those eyes: with those wide, crazed eyes that open bigger than Little Orphan Annie's, Asbestos (if I may) knows how to emote psychotic jealousy from zero to crazy, as it were.  If someone is going to erupt into a spree of killing, you'd want it to be this man.

Do I really need to mention anyone else?  They're all just victims of Tom/Asbestos' wrath anyway and we don't really have any Lee Strasberg alumni in evidence.  Not that you need any actors for something like this; the ultimate joke in a movie like Killing Spree is the fact that everybody, except the main killer, has the acting talent of a row of plastic milk jugs.

Well, I guess I should mention the lady who plays his wife Leeza.  Courtney Lercara is an actress who, on the basis of the five movies listed on IMDb...has been in five movies.  Including this one.  She's become more of a spokesperson for cancer survivors everywhere which is a good thing; any way she can keep from being connected with a movie character whose best aspect was the fact that she could share the screen with the likes of Asbestos Felt is a major bullet point for the ol' resume, lemme tell ya.

Director Ritter has also seen Creepshow, apparently, since he knows when it's the right time to put a red cel on the klieg light when Asbestos goes into Berserker mode.  And the level of cartoonish deaths (decapitation by a ceiling fan, screwdriver through the top of the head, murder by lawn mower, death by having your decapitated girlfriend's head thrown at you) makes you wonder just how many episodes of Happy Tree Friends one movie can inspire....

And by the end, when we have a whole house full of the undead stumbling around, demanding that Tom/Asbestos kill himself so they can feel a little bit better about being dead themselves, we have come full circle in what certainly must be one of the most incredible flicks ever inspired by Fangoria Magazine - I'm serious; not only has Ritter admitted publicly that he has read every issue of the magazine, Tom/Asbestos even reads a Fangoria during one scene.  Imagine if he'd made a sci-fi flick - we may have been treated to someone leafing through Starlog!

So Killing Spree is a good movie, then?  Well, it does have scenes that cannot possibly be taken seriously and acting that follows suit.  And I have to come back to Asbestos Felt, whose crazy, cackling revenge makes one think that if a Muppet ever became a method actor, he would be the result.  Not that this makes the film the same quality as, say, a Roman Polanski work or a John Piquer Simon.  It does have something to it, though.

And what that something amounts to is a sense of fun that makes the viewer realize that this was good time for everyone on camera and behind the camera, and it was a sense of fun that made it through the screen and to the viewer.  How is anybody supposed to take a movie seriously that has a bit part with a woman whose hair looks to be modeled after a parrot, a Koosh Ball and Phyllis Diller?

This is Asbestos Felt's film, beginning to end.  If you do watch Killing Spree, you'll be drawn to him, you'll pay attention to everything he does, you'll admire his decision to wear bikini briefs as he cleans up after one of his dirty deeds and, more than anything, you'll wonder why more actors don't have names as good as his.

Should you watch Killing Spree?  Probably; if you like ridiculous movies that have a sense of humor, ridiculous acting that makes you appreciate the restraint of Betsy Palmer in Friday The 13th (1980) and a mood that helps you realize that, just maybe, this whole genre needs a good slap in the face.  It sure got one here.

You could do worse for $75,000 than make a movie like Killing Spree.  You could replace all your hair with orange cotton candy.  I know of at least one man who did it....