Night Killer was written and directed by Claudio Fragasso the same year he made the immortal Troll 2. That means he was firing on all WTF cylinders when he made this looney tunes horror flick. It falls just short of attaining the silly heights of Troll 2, but there are moments here that come awful close.
The movie plays like a hodgepodge of a bunch of other movies rolled into one. The opening scene is like something out of A Chorus Line where a bunch of dancers are rehearsing for a big production. One of the dancers is attacked by a guy in a knockoff Freddy Krueger mask who drives his comedically large claw right through her stomach and out her back, Evil Dead style! That’s three movies being ripped off in one scene! I love it!
The killer next sets his sights on Tara Buckman, who gets a great scene where she does a weird monologue topless to herself in the mirror. Then, the killer menaces her on the phone a la When a Stranger Calls before sexually assaulting her. The attack leaves Tara with amnesia. Since she can’t identify the killer or herself, she tries to kill herself. Luckily for her, some rapey asshole (Peter Hooten, the original Dr. Strange) keeps following her so she can’t do the job. Unluckily for her, after he saves her life, he makes her do a bunch of kinky sex games, which leads to a bunch of 9 ½ Weeks kinds of shenanigans.
I was all ready to christen this as a must-see WTF masterpiece, but about halfway through, the zaniness kind of dissipated a bit. Not enough to completely derail the proceedings. Just enough to keep it from being a bona fide bonkers classic. The final shot is a real winner though.
Still, there is plenty of lunacy early on to make Night Killer worth a look. Heck, it’s worth seeing just for the hilarious dialogue. I’m pretty sure if I quoted some of my favorite lines, I would get banned from Blogger for violating the site’s Terms of Service agreement. However, the scene I can quote should be enough to make you want to see it. It comes when the killer is playing a kinky sex game version of Little Red Riding Hood with a drunk babe and she says, “My, grandma, what a big schlong you have!”
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