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KILLERS 2: THE BEAST
David Latt made a huge impression on me with his underground masterpiece JANE WHITE IS SICK AND TWISTED, a darkly subversive comedy about a little girl determined to find her daddy and fulfill her Electra complex. Latt was able to convince a number of television stars to throw caution to the wind and ridicule the very media conventions that made them famous in the first place by filling all other JANE WHITE roles. The result was pure independent filmmaking magic, a movie that's as funny as it is intelligent and soulful.
Produced by David Rimawi
Directed and Edited by David Michael Latt
Written by Paul Bales
Director of Photograhy - Max Da-Yung WangHeather - Kim Little
Dr. W.B. Miller - D.C. Douglas
Latt's follow-up was the by-the-numbers SCARECROW 2: SCARECROW SLAYER, a movie shadowed by its predecessor - a geek-turns-vengeful-karate-demon thriller with lots of Asian Cinema kinetic energy. Unfortunately, the usual awesomeness of Tony Todd in the sequel couldn't keep up with Tiffany Shepis and her....ahem....assets ... found in the original.
Latt, returns with KILLER 2, a sequel to one of his earliest efforts. Rejoining him is his wife, Kim Little, who starred in not only the original KILLERS, but both of Latt's previously mentioned releases.
I've never seen the original KILLERS, and from what Latt tells me, there's no need. Even he doesn't sound thrilled with that early production. Besides all you need to know about the first film is recapped with seizure-inducing flashbacks. Picking up only days after Little's Heather was drugged and tortured by a horde of drug-peddling scum from whom she shotgunned an escape, she awakes bound and gaged in an insane asylum. The police and her family both believe poor little Heather went on a drug-induced rampage slaughtering those defenseless underworld pushers.
As always, Kim Little finds just the right note for her role. With Jane White it was infantile regression. With SCARECROW 2 she channeled FARGO's pregnant cop Margie gone all suburban. Heather is a daddy's girl gone rabid. Dumped upon and tortured by the hospital staff, Heather lets loose her inner Sigourney Weaver and does a fair bit of ass-kicking. At times she's such an unlikeable character that its easy to see why the hospital staff won't give her time enough to tell her story.
The hospital isn't anything we haven't seen in other movies. Indifferent staff. Scumbag interns. Patients with much more going on upstairs than the doctors give them credit. With such broad characters I expected Latt to unleash some of that vicious satire which overflowed from JANE WHITE. Sadly, he does not. Instead we are treated to a thin thriller where everyone in a position of power does their best to keep Heather down.
When things reach an us-or-them head between Heather, the patients, and the hospital staff, Latt throws in the out-of-left-field twist of twists by having the remaining drug dealers track Heather to the facility. It's like a deus ex machina in reverse. The arrival of the gun-totting villains quickly resolves any prior plot development, which isn't exactly a good thing, but their hasty introduction is so disorientating that the effect is slam-bang brutal.
If you though Kim Little's Heather was a toughie before, you haven't seen nothing yet (unless you've seen the first KILLERS, I guess). The final 25 minutes of shoot-out is well-paced action as Kim, in proper bad-ass fashion, takes down bad guy after bad guy. Hell hath no fury like a she-bitch in a straight jacket.
Through various business dealings David Latt has been responsible for the distribution of some of my favorite independent production, NIGHT ORCHID and SHAFTED come directly to mind. As a distributor, he's making a name for himself as a director's friend. As a director...KILLER 2 won't win Latt the accolades he received for JANE WHITE, but after SCARECROW 2 he's moving back in the right direction.