This is an updated version of a review that was originally published in Bleeding Skull! A 1990s Trash-Horror Odyssey.
In third grade, we had to write a story and share it with the class. Mine was called “My Monster” and it was about all the incredible things my monster did—it cleaned the house with Pine-Sol, drank instant coffee (Sanka, never Folgers), and worked as a successful lawyer for Jacoby and Meyers, a real-life personal injury firm that runs countless commercials during the weekday afternoons when personally injured people are at home. The story was a hit and I was awarded a gold star, the 9-year-old’s equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize. I had unknowingly created a satire about consumerism and the litigation-obsessed culture of the United States, and I had knowingly created an enthralling story where my monster helps get a client 2.1 million dollars after an unfortunate scooter accident.
When the class had to write another story, more than half the students wrote ones inspired by commercials. There were ones that involved Palmolive, which softened hands as you did dishes, and others with “set it and forget it” appliances. These stories had their own merits but, of course, nothing really measured up to the original. I think everyone knew that my story couldn’t be touched, but it didn’t keep them from trying.
I guess what I’m saying is that I was a pretty big deal in third grade. I had a gold star.
But I’m also saying that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
A group of dancers sway and pulse frenetically. It’s that terrifying boundary where aerobics and modern dance (pronounced dahnse) meet. Picture a fish out of water doing the Running Man. Now put it in a leotard and leg warmers. Congratulations, you have just imagined the opening scene of Night Killer (and also Dance or Die, High Kicks, and every movie that involves dance and aerobics, of which there is surprisingly many and not enough).
A shadow moves across a window. A gnarled hand with sharp claws reaches into a ladies’ locker room. A vicious, bald figure with a deformed, burned face snarls. Is it Freddy Krueger? Nope, but it sure looks like him!
The claws rip through a choreographer’s chest and she goes flying off the mezzanine. In answering that age-old question, “Dance or die?” She chose “die.” Or rather, someone chose it for her.
Melanie Beck (played by Tara Buckman from Silent Night, Deadly Night) has a young daughter and a marriage on the rocks. A drunk guy keeps calling her. She likes to talk on the phone topless and rub her chest in the mirror. I had a neighbor who’d talk on the phone naked in front of his window and scratch his junk. Melanie hears strange noises inside her home. She calls the police who advises her to “lock herself in the house.” This seems like a fantastic idea. The deformed, burned figure with claws who is most definitely not Freddy is most definitely in her house. There are desperate screams, blood-hungry threats, and bizarre sexual tension.
“Are you ready to play, Mrs. Beck?”
She survives, just barely, but the killer is still loose. Now something is broken inside her. Soon she’s demanding a sexual-harassing creep in the ladies’ bathroom to strip down to his skivvies and flush his clothes down the toilet. To answer your question, he wears blue banana hammock briefs. She then heads to the beach where she downs a bottle of pills, only to get saved by the blue-brief-wearing creep. He explains that drinking a lot of seawater will help her avoid an overdose. We’ve been doing it wrong this entire time!
The creep holds her captive and now Melanie has been pushed past her dissociative state and into a psychotic break, with a bit of Stockholm syndrome mixed in for good measure. She begs her captor to kill her, even writing, “I kill you kill me” on the mirror in red lipstick.
Meanwhile, a man in what is most definitely not a Freddy mask attacks ladies around town.
Night Killer is a psycho-sexual drama with emphasis on the psycho—and really, it should be psychos. It’s not exactly a rip-off of Nightmare on Elm Street, but it certainly gets close at times. There’s a bit of home invasion, a bit of Cinemax-after-dark, a bit of slasher, and healthy servings of sleaze and melodrama. For the most part, Night Killer makes no sense, but it is consistently entertaining. There’s an erotic retelling of “Little Red Riding Hood,” an assault in front of an aquarium full of plankton, and a man who eats KFC while a woman holds a gun to her head. There are a few twists that are hard to decipher, but you can comprehend just enough to suspend everything you know about narrative and plot to enjoy a killer who is most definitely not Freddy.
The lesson I learned in third grade is that if you’re going to imitate something, you better put your own perspective on it to make it yours. Claudio Fragasso and Rossella Drudi managed to take Freddy Krueger and reimagine him enough to make him not be Freddy Krueger, save the mask and claws (which are slightly different to avoid a massive lawsuit, probably by Jacoby and Meyers). Night Killer takes one of our most beloved cultural icons, and then promptly throws it in the dumpster unexplained. We expect nothing less from the geniuses who brought us Troll 2 and Monster Dog. The film explores the boundary between ripping something off wholesale and taking something and running with it. And while nothing will ever measure up to the original, nothing should ever stop a filmmaker from trying.
This film features a slow-motion unwrapping of a gift.
