Rating: 2.5/5
Cult Movie Challenge 2024 | 26/52 | Video Nasties
St. Louis, 1977 A black Cadillac drives the city at night, stopping at a pier. The men exit, pulling an unconscious Peter Sykes out of the back seat. Sykes is a known murderer and bank robber. They throw him into the Mississippi and drive off.
Susan walks up the stairs to her apartment. Once inside, she calls for her roommate, Jenny. When she turns on the hall light, she finds Jenny dead, pinned to a door.
Two detectives, Paul and Larry, arrive on the scene after the police have detailed the place. They wait until the team finishes collecting prints and pulls down Jenny’s body to interview Susan. Susan mentions a boy named Charlie who came by her office to have an interview with Susan’s boss. Jenny ran into him later that night. Susan stays with a friend upstairs, so she isn’t alone.
Cut to Charlie going for a jog, remembering how he killed Jenny. Later, he freezes up and flashes back to Vietnam — explosions, missing limbs, and whatnot.
He finds and steals a car. He comes across a hitchhiker and picks her up. She tries to talk to Charlie, but he drives erratically, reliving Jenny’s murder over and over. It seems like he may have killed her because of his low libido. They arrive at the beach, and for some reason, the hitchhiker sticks around and goes skinny-dipping. Surprise, Charlie freaks out and kills her.
The detectives follow Susan’s lead and speak to her boss. But her boss is being cagey about Charlie. When they leave, the boss calls an associate — a former army buddy of Charlie. It seems Charlie is part of a larger conspiracy between conservative business leaders in the community. But Charlie was only supposed to kill Peter Sykes, not all the other women he continues to kill.
I wish our friend Charlie would go out and kill himself. Sure would save us a whole lot of work.
Who will get to Charlie first? How many will Charlie kill until then?
The film blends vigilante and slasher — an interesting idea that isn’t explored well here. The detective work is tedious because we already know what’s going on. Meanwhile, the film only gives the conservative cabal attention near the end. Mostly, we just watch Charlie kill.
The movie has so many minutiae — standing around while someone finishes something, giving detailed directions over the phone, and SO MUCH SMALL TALK. They throw around names of characters we never see. Meanwhile, we wait for a character to say the name of anyone we see.
I guess we’re supposed to assume that Vietnam made Charlie a serial killer, or awakened something in him. Regardless, he kills against his will — it’s more compulsion than predilection.
So, somewhere along the way, when it becomes more detective story than slasher, the film charmed me. I think Susan doing detective work added a more compelling dynamic. In the end, Charlie gets the short end, plot-wise, because all we know is that he’s a Vietnam vet who kills.
The third act is legitimately good! It’s a shame that the movie up to that point is okay, verging on bad.