Most VHS collectors have their favorite distributor and mine is Regal Video. Most of their covers are painted and almost always lurid, and the description of the movie on the back is often misleading or flat-out wrong. This means that you never know what you're in for when you pop in a Regal. Here's the description for the movie I watched, The Model Killer (1979) -
"A young lawyer lures beautiful models to his Hollywood apartment pretending to be a photographer, only to violently rape and strangle them. Only the perseverance of a distraught father's attempt to avenge his daughter's death causes the final bloody confrontation."
Although it may be quicker to list the things that description gets right, allow me to go over the parts that were wrong. There is no rape in this film. I could be mistaken, but I'm fairly certain there's no mention of the killer being a lawyer and I don't believe we ever see his apartment. And most importantly, there is no father avenging the death of his daughter! It's as if someone only saw a clip of the movie and just sort of made up the synopsis.
In actuality, this is a Ray Dennis Steckler film with the much more descriptive title The Hollywood Strangler Meets The Skid Row Slasher. Our model photographer strangles various women that he considers to be "garbage", secretly hoping to find one that's "like Marcia". While on the prowl, he runs into a bookstore clerk who he is instantly intrigued by, unaware that she makes a hobby of knifing hobos in dark alleys. There is no dialogue in this movie, all of the sound, internal monologues, and off-camera comments were done after the fact. That, compared with the thread-bare plot makes this movie oddly fascinating in an experimental film sort of way. Make no mistake, this is a sleazy slasher flick, but I would say that it's a must watch for fans of that genre. 7 1/2 out of 12 beers.
No comments:
Post a Comment