Sweet Kill

A handsome and lonely gym teacher Eddie Collins can't perform sexually due to his constant watching of his mother undress while he hid in her closet as a child.His only recourse is to kill the women he tries to sleep with and stash them in a pigeon hutch on his roof.He hires a prostitute to dress as his dead mother,the only way he is able to achieve sexual gratification..."The Arousers" is the first film of director Curtis Hanson.Originally shot in 1971 under the title "Sweet Kill",this film lingered on the shelf until 1973 when executive producer Roger Corman had Hanson shoot two days of nudity inserts to spice-up the film.Angus Scrimm of "Phanatsm" fame has a small cameo here.Overall,this is a good piece of sleaze from the early 70's that should satisfy the exploitation fans out there looking for plenty of nudity,sex and violence.7 out of 10.

I would have never expected Curtis Hanson directing such a film; I hardly realize that LA CONFIDENTIAL maker gave us this more than twenty years earlier. And besides, I also hardly believe that former Hollywood actor in the fifties Tab Hunter could perform in such a film. Not a bad one though, so typical from from late sixties, early seventies. A period where anything was possible, ANYTHING. I was not bored with this film, not disappointed, not deceived, unlike many other stuff of this kind. Good, solid script and a convincing acting performance from Tab Hunter. I think Matt - forever young - Dillon could have played such a role.

"Sweet Kill" was the very first film of writer/director Curtis Hanson who would become reasonably successful and acclaimed more than twenty years later thanks to a couple of popular mainstream titles such as "The River Wild", the Oscar-winning "LA Confidential", "Wonder Boys" and the Eminem biography "8 Mile". But like so many other now famous & influential film makers (Francis Ford Coppola, Jack Nicholson, James Cameron, Joe Dante, Jonathan Demme…), Curtis Hanson in fact owes his entire career to the support and mentoring of one of the most important individuals in the history of cinema; namely Roger – "King of the B's" - Corman. Back when "Sweet Kill" was first released and quickly turned out unsuccessful at the box-office, it was executive producer Roger Corman who came to the rescue and instructed Curtis Hanson to add a lot more female nudity and change the title to "The Arousers". It didn't help all that much, but at least and thanks to Corman we're treated to copious amounts of gratuitous B, B and B (which stands for boobs, bums and bush). During the first five minutes, for example, 3 different nameless and totally random women are walking nonchalantly through the screen butt-naked! Not taking into account all the bare female flesh, "Sweet Kill" is half fascinating and half of a failure. The film is undoubtedly inspired (like countless of other movies) by Hitchcock's "Psycho", with another cinematic madman that is actually good- looking and sophisticated, but socially incompetent due to his sexual fixation on mommy. Hanson introduces Tab Hunter, a former poster-boy from the fifties, as an introvert serial killer slash gym teacher Eddie Collins. Numerous beautiful and predatory women literally throw themselves at Eddie, but he's only turned on when he pays a prostitute to dress up like his own mother. "Sweet Kill" opens quite promisingly, with the murder of some beach girl and subsequently the hiding of her corpse in the pigeon loft above his apartment (where she remains throughout the entire movie, by the way) but then the film gets gradually more boring, repetitive and predictable. I'm honestly convinced that Curtis Hanson wanted to draw a profound and insightful portrait of his protagonist serial killer, but Eddie Collins remains a bland and largely uninteresting character and he hardly ever succeeds in generating suspense or discomfort. It's a forgettable film, with a nevertheless good performance of Tab Hunter and a fairly uncanny score, and you could probably never guess from this early work that Curtis Hanson would hold an Oscar for best screenplay in his hands 25 years later.

It's hard to imagine that Curtis Hanson, the man who directed the exceptional films 'L.A. Confidential' and 'The Bedroom Window' could make such an unmemorable film. Too bad, because it had potential to be a real cult classic. Tab Hunter's performance is terrific as the man who is unable to make love to women, so in order to compensate he murders them. Everything is in place for a great movie and the first third of the film is really quite intense.

To show everything from Hunter's point of a view is voyeuristic treat at first, and it all seems quite real. Sadly, director Hanson loses sight of this edge early on and uses the same gimmick throughout, making it quite monotonous and ultimately boring. Not only that, but he shows us other unimportant characters just to fill the already short running time (84 min), because there really isn't enough of a movie here.

I managed to find this film under it's alias name 'The Arousers.' Despite my negative remarks, the movie is worth a look, if anything to see one of Curtis Hanson's firsts and Tab Hunter's creepy performance. Maybe some viewers will get into it, but I lost it after a half hour.

It must have been hard to imagine in 1973 that the director of this low budget shock flick would go on to make one of the very best crime films of the nineties with LA Confidential, but indeed that was the case. Anyway, this was his first attempt at directing, and it's a rather lukewarm film. I never go into films like this expecting too much; generally these film were made with the intention of getting as many people into a theatre as possible and that isn't usually the best base for a great film. This one focuses on Eddie Collins, a disturbed man who gets into murdering women after one unsuccessful encounter and then ends up not being able to shake off the urge to do so. The film was obviously made on a shoestring budget and it does look very cheap. There's also rather too many sex scenes in the film which were obviously included to help sell the film, but actually end up making it all the more boring. Naturally the point of the film is to see the lead character butchering some women rather than any kind of character study, and that's really all we get. Still, Sweet Kill is not a total dead loss; it makes for an interesting watch and fans of low budget seventies exploitation will probably get a kick out of it.