Friday, December 6, 2024

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: SERIAL KILLER IN TRAINING! (2023) ***

FORMAT:  DVD

Laura Giglio and Stacie Kaye go out camping in the woods.  Their holiday is ruined when a killer in a black mask (Jason Pollack) sneaks up on them, knocks them out with chloroform, and ties them up with duct tape.  Before he can kill them, his father, who is none other than “The Necktie Strangler” himself (director Gary Whitson under his usual GW Lawrence non de plume) shows up and chastises him for being so sloppy.  Luckily, the killer is dumber than a bag of hammers, so the girls are able to easily escape.  However, he follows them home where he makes them play a game that neither of them may survive. 

Serial Killer in Training! is one of the latest offerings from W.A.V.E. Productions and it’s refreshing just how unrefreshing it is.  Here we are in 2024, and Whitson is still making them the same way he did back in the ‘90s.  Sure, the digital cinematography looks much better now than it did in the old videotape days, but it’s still all wonderfully amateurish.  (There are flubbed lines and jump cuts aplenty.)  Sure, it may lack the kick of some of Whitson’s best stuff, but in terms of plot (which is a fancy way of saying “nonstop chloroforming and bondage”), it gives you everything you could more or less ask for from a W.A.V.E. movie. 

Plus, it’s only thirty-five minutes long.  There is zero fat on this thing, and it moves like a freight train.  It’s like watching a regular movie, but with the boring parts cut out.  Or maybe a regular movie played at 2x speed, except everybody doesn’t run around like Charlie Chaplin and talk like an overcaffeinated auctioneer.  The highlight comes during a surprisingly effective scene where the killer throws darts at his victims.  It also helps that Giglio (who has always been one of my favorite W.A.V.E. actresses) and Kaye are both game for anything. 

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