Rating: 3/5
A stilted voice calls, asking for Jo Ann. Jo Ann initiates phone sex, reading a script about about bus exchange. She stops briefly to swat a fly. The stilted voice takes heavy drags off his cigarette. Laying around him are open BDSM porno mags. He grabs a knife off the table and runs it along his nipples. “Nobody can handle nipples like Bobo,” he says before hanging up.
That night, Jo Ann goes on a run with her dog Asberry. She finds her dog held by a man wearing a clown mask. He performs a routine with a baseball bat, and Jo Ann laughs and goes along with it. She tries to leave, but he won’t let her leave. Before she knows it, he swings the bat down onto her head.
The police are convinced that the killer is Kevin, a photographer who regularly shoots the girls. So, Kevin and his girlfriend, Kristi, decide they need to find the killer themselves.
The Brian De Palma influence leaps out. Cameron Dye has diet Craig Wasson energy.
While ostensibly a slasher, the film puts far more emphasis on eroticism than the kills. Not that it isn’t violent—it just leans closer to thriller than outright slasher.
The movie is also funnier than the material suggests — not a laugh riot or anything, but the women who work for the sex line have some jokes.
The filmmaking is a little clumsy. The cinematography is solid, although it has some hammy stylistic choices. The pacing drags, even when things are supposed to be exciting.
Still, this movie is quite well done, even if it doesn’t do anything too remarkable.