Night Killer (1990)
NIGHT KILLER
WRITER: Clyde Anderson
DIRECTOR: Clyde Anderson
STARRING: Peter Hooten as Axel
Tara Buckman as Melanie
Richard Foster as Sherman
Mel Davis as Clark
Lee Lively as Dr. Willow
QUICK CUT: A single mother having troubles at home goes on a whirlwind romance with a mysterious stranger.
THE MORGUE
Melanie - After suffering a serious trauma, Melanie loses all sense of self, many of her memories, and struggles to recover what has been lost.
Axel - A mysterious stranger who harases Melanie, and kidnaps her, after saving her life.
Sherman - Melanie’s neighbour, who cares for her kid while she tries to get her shit together.
I attack the darkness!!
TRISK ANALYSIS: Welcome back, Triskelions! We are done with high school, we've made it through college, and we are graduating up to a slasher, with this week's wonderfully weird and cheesy Night Killer. I definitely am not burying the lede on this one, so let's get right to it.
The movie opens up with a group of dancers or actors practicing a routine on stage, and oh nooo, it's Stagefright 2: The Actoring!
One of the dancers arrives late, gets yelled at by the choreographer, and hurries off to get ready. Unfortunately, if she was late before, she is gonna be REALLY late when our killer shows up looking like some Freddy reject and does her in.
Greetings to off Broadway, witch!
With the scenes filmed to pad the movie out of the way, we jump to our actual story that is almost entirely unrelated. Sherman delivers a Christmas present to Melanie's daughter, and helps her to school while Melanie chills around the house, to get some writing done.
She gets a call on the weirdest sounding chirpy phone, from an almost as strange sounding man whom we never see the face of. She has no time for his drunken nonsense, overacts in the most hilarious manner, and hangs up on him.
While he shatters a glass in anger, she goes over to a mirror to take off her top and stare at her own boobs for awhile. As you do. The birds call her again, and she answers, still with her top down. Because everyone just casually answers the phone half naked.
This call is from another pervo who is spying on her, and using another creepy voice. So there must be a lot of that going 'round.
Mel calls the cops to trace the call, explaining she has two phone lines. While they do that though, they advise her to lock herself inside and stay safe, and will call back in five minutes. And…she has THE weirdest locks, that require a key on the INSIDE to turn and lock them?? Are they reversed? Was this ever a thing?
As she lounges around waiting, the clawed killer creeps about, scoops up her keys, and the phone chirps some more.
She picks up the phone, and the person claims to be the cop, but it's too soon. We find out the killer is inside the house, and using second line to harass her. That's...kinda clever.
The call is coming from INSIDE THE HOUSE!
The cop finally calls back, but the killer gets the phone first, and explains that he's her husband, and everything is fine. You know those hysterical wimmins!
We get a little cat and mouse as she locks him out of the living room, until he comes around another way and pins her to the wall.
He takes off the mask, revealing it to her and...HEY! Cameraman! Pull back out! Don't zoom...OH MY GODS THE CAMERAMAN IS IN ON IT!
Kiss me, baby!
We cut immediately to a hospital where Melanie is being looked after, following the attack. The shock of the trauma has left her with severe memory loss, forgetting her own name, her family, and naturally, the killer. Well isn't THAT convenient.
Despite her shoddy memory, they let her go, while Sherman and his wife watch over her daughter. As she drives home, some guy pulls up along side her, being Sexist McSleaze and chases her down when she's rude back to him.
She confronts him in a restroom, makes him take off his clothes and flush them down the toilet. This gives her time to get away, but he has very little shame and confidently walks out after a bit.
Geeze, fine, here’s the toilet paper!
Good lord, the campy, hammy acting in this is WONDERFUL. As he tries to leave in his skivvies, Axel is asked what happened to his clothes and declares, "Ah got MOLESTED! In the LITTLE BOYS ROOM!!" and it is glorious.
He gets a fresh change of clothes between takes, and rushes to follow Melanie. He somehow ends up at the exact beach she's at, chewing down pills to try and kill herself in despair.
Axel grabs her and forces her to drink some ocean water to flush out her system before that can happen, though.
This is the weirdest Hallmark movie I’ve ever seen…
While the creeper with the heart of gold holds back Melanie's hair, we see another man from behind picking up some random woman he's gonna kill to keep the plot interesting.
The movie does so much work to protect the killer's identity, like the mask, filming him from behind, and backlighting him...but there's a split second when he's entering his workshop with the soon to be victim... He's mostly drowned in light, but at one point he steps in front of said light, and you can CLEARLY ID him if you're quick enough.
Oops!
He eventually tires of their bedroom games, and dunks her face in wax, suffocating her, and eventually punching his glove through hr chest.
Pull my finger.
Meanwhile, Melanie has woken up, and Axel returns with some KFC and all her drugs and guns and various other modes of suicide.
We get some disturbing stuff as they talk about how she wants to die, some gunplay, but ultimately no one goes through with it.
Axel takes advantage of her mental state, using her, taking control of her, and making her essentially his slave.
He heads out to calm down, and locks her in for the night. This sequel to Misery is weird.
After Axel leaves, we cut to doctor lady scientist doing some work and being completely unrelated to the plot, when the killer shows up for a random kill to keep things interesting.
Can you show me where the dinosaur exhibit is??
In the meantime, Axel returns, is still feeling frisky, and ties up his victim to toy with her some more. They yell at each other, he lays down some ground rules, and it's generally skeevy.
Melanie slowly breaks down via plot convenience with a dose of mental trauma and a side of Stockholm Syndrome.
We also kill some time with the cops and her doctor talking to reporters, trying to explain her mental state and what's going on, and I just want someone to make stabby.
The most important bit is, if she has been kidnapped by the killer, as some people believe, he would make her relive her psychosexual trauma, which would bring back her memories and drive her to kill the stabby man.
He didn’t get out of the cock-a-doodie car!!
Which is more or less what happens as she plays with a gun and it goes off, but only shooting out a mirror. Axel calms her down, and asks what she remembers. All she can recall so far as that he wants to kill her.
Some cops find Melanie's car, call it in, and the lead detective with Dr. Willow freak out a bit. They're surprised that she was taken, and that they had a plan, but now it's all gone pear shaped.
But Melanie has gone full Stockholm by this point and is hanging out with her killer boyfriend, who takes her out for a Sunday drive to run some errands and get some fresh air.
I’m not Doctor Loomis, but I play one on tv.
Willow makes an appeal over the tv to the killer to turn himself in and release Beck, and no harm will come to him. Meanwhile, the hotel manager recognises Beck's photo and calls it in.
Detective Clark arrives at the motel, so Axel and Melanie bonk him out. Sherman has also heard the news, grabs a gun, and goes to save Melanie like he saved her before, at the cost of his face.
Axel and Mel hit the streets, and while he makes a phone call to the cops, she sees a newspaper with her face on it, since she's missing.
"Have you seen this woman? Oh my god, I AM that woman! I'VE seen me!"
Dormammu! I’ve called to bargain!!
This jogs something in her memory, and Melanie runs off. Axel gives chase, leaving the cops standing their holding their dicks, unable to trace the call.
Sherman has the good fortune to come across her first, and says he'll take her home, hoping she'll remember something. So they drive off, leaving Axel distraught. This movie is just maggoty with plot convenience.
They get back to her house, and Melanie is seriously out of it, in a state of shock, at best. Sherman rushes off saying to lock herself in, and this is the start of several nice echos to the first attack.
Once he's gone, the birds start chirping again, and it's the killer, and we are in the endgame now.
She hangs up, again the birds chirp, and once again, the call is coming from inside the house. The killer once again removes his mask, and instead of hiding it from us, the movie reveals at last that the killer is...SHERMAN!
I’m your neighbour now, Nancy!
But wait, then who the hell is Axel?? Don't worry, we'll get there, dear readers. But first, we get a flashback so the movie can tell us how he got those scars.
We see Sherman hand her the knife in the flashback, and she naturally uses it to slash his face, then he tumbles down the stairs. Melanie follows to finish the job, but is too weak and dazed to make it, collapsing halfway there.
He explains how he got the knife back, but that's when authorities started showing up, and Axel, and have I mentioned, the overacting in this is GLORIOUS?? The actor playing Sherman, when he does evilvoice is AMAZING.
Are you trying to seduce me, Mrs. Beck?
While she turns on the charm offensive, Melanie slides her hands all over Sherman, and gets ahold of his switchblade. And we get ANOTHER stab in the dick! What is it with September and dick stabbings??
This pushes Sherman over the edge, which he was already teetering on anyways, and he points a gun at Melanie to end this.
Which is when Axel shows up to crash in through the window and shoot Sherman a few times so HE can end this.
Refenestration!
The movie could end here with the worst Hallmark movie couple ever being reunited, but the movie has some exposition to lay down, and I am grateful for it.
Willow and Clark arrive on the scene, some reporters grill us, and the Doctor explains that Axel is Melanie's husband, and they devised this plan, to force her to relive the experience, as best they could, via her husband playing the stalker role.
That is SQUAWKED UP, my Triskelions. And...I kinda like it, but I will get into that in my deeper thoughts in a bit. So let's wrap this up, as Clarissa unwraps her Christmas present, and receives a brand new mask!
I’m your daughter now, Melanie!
TRISK ASSESSMENT
Video: It looks pretty good, even for something this low budget and sleazy. It looks more like something from the early to mid 80s, instead of the 90s, but a solid enough video.
Audio: Nothing too stand out, but it’s pretty good, although all the funky voices get a bit hard to hear at times.
Body Count: Not a bad mix, but a bit light, with most of them being added after the fact to pad things out and keep it interesting.
1 - Elizabeth gets slashed by NotFreddy around four minutes
2 -Then the choreographer gets slashed and then falls to her death shortly after
3 - Random victim gets dunked in wax and gutted.
4 - Random doctor lady gets gutted
5 - Sherman gets shot by Axel.
Best Corpse; Probably the girl dipped in wax, since that’s something that stands out.
Blood Type - D+: Not much blood, and some of the effects are way on the cheap side, with the killer’s face just being a simple mask to boot.
Sex Appeal: Boobs almost immediately, and very often throughout the movie.
Drink Up! Every time you hear the birds chirping
Movie Review: The movie is a bit of a mess, but for the most part, it hangs together at the end of the day. All the killings are added after the fact, to keep things interesting. This infuriated writer/director Claudio Fragasso, and created a rift between him and longtime collaborator Bruno Mattei, who filmed the scebes. The clawed glove was added in these scenes, which you’ll notice are never seen during the proper plot, and it’s just there for blood and gore. On the one hand, the motivations with these killings are vague and completely removed from the story, but I get the need for wanting to beef up the scare factor and gore. But I also get how it distracts from the psychosexual drama Fragasso was going for. Still, it’s a weird movie, it’s a heck of a ride, and aside from being cobbled together, it largely works. Four out of five phone lines.
Entertainment Value: It all comes down to the acting, for me. And this movie is so hilariously over the top, as I said repeatedly. That stuff keeps me going when the movie might sag in the middle, and is a blast tow watch. Also, the kills are decent enough with the gut punches with the claws, as well as the complete WTF plot. Four out of five not quite Freddy masks.
