KILLING SPREE

Directed by Tim Ritter

Tom Russo – Asbestos Felt
Leeza Russo – Courtney Lercara
Ben Seltzer – Raymond Carbone
TV Repairman – Joel D. Wynkoop

What would you do if you thought your wife was cheating on you with half the town? How about kill every poor schmuck who throws your gal a lingering once over? That’s what happens in Tim Ritter’s gore-soaked, black comedy, KILLING SPREE. What our hero, Tom Russo, doesn’t count on is that the dead seem to get pretty pissed off when they’ve been taken out of the game prematurely.

This is one of Tim Ritter’s earliest works, and stylistically, one of his most primitive. The camera doesn’t move and some of the compositions are dry. But in the long run, who cares! This is a film in the grand style of H.G. Lewis. As long as it delivers the goods, does it matter if the actors are a little stiff? Not at all. Hell, I even cheered when some annoying character got the top of his head lobbed off via ceiling fan.

The film feels like a sequel in a slasher series. We know people are going to die, we just wonder how interesting their deaths are going to be. Each one needs to be more creative than that last. How do you improve upon a ceiling fan laced with machetes? How about a pretty grizzly scene with a lawn mower…

This flick is good, old fashioned, sick fun. You sit back, enjoy the gore, and laugh your ass off at Joel D. Wynkoop, whose karate hasn’t improved in 15 years. This guy’s funny even when he’s getting his guts torn out by our boy Tom.

If you just want to kill some time then you could a hell of a lot worse that KILLING SPREE. Not a masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination, but fun none the less.

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Twisted Illusions