Dark Rider

I came across this movie in a list of movies inspired by true crime cases. The inspiration for this film was the cases of Ted Bundy and Edmund Kempler.

The script is very simple, clearly having some influence by European films like 'Bird With The Crystal Plumage' or 'Black Belly of the Tarantula'. However, Maralyn Thoma doesn't make this mystery that complex, focusing more on the cat and mouse game between the killer and the detective.

Compared to most modern slick thrillers and horror movies, it is easy to consider this film dull with it's steady progression and lack of cheap fake scares. What this film is trying to achieve isn't cheap shocks but a slow sense of frustration and dread.

The killer is underdeveloped as a character for a simple reason, this film is from 1978. A lot of the information about serial killers, their psycho-pathology and victimology was still being developed at the time. Without the information we take for granted now, it was much better to keep the tension by detaching from the killer, making him a monster by mystery.

The actors in this film are giving their all. James Luisi is a very sympathetic, complicated protagonist, absorbed in this case and torn between his home life with his family, and his mistress, a psychologist who can give him his first clues on the nature of this kind of monster.

The girls playing the victims are very convincing in their naivety, their shock at being trapped and their fear being in the hands of a madman. They aren't mere cookie cut bodies or subtly being blamed for their victimization, with small action and dialog, they are made real and ordinary for us.

Oh, and also because it is a late seventies film, there has to be one lame, over sentimental song. That's just a given.

This is an overlooked film, and that's a pity. For a true horror maven, it is well worth watching.

"Killer's Delight" opens with the familiar statement that the story you're about to watch is based on true events. You don't need to be Hercule Poirot or Sherlock Holmes to figure out the events in question refer to the bloody killing spree of notorious US serial-killer Ted Bundy, mixed with a little bit of Ed "the Co-Ed Killer" Kemper. Like usual, many important details are changed out of respect for the real victims. The modus operandi of picking up hitchhikers and almost exclusively targeting young attractive girls is kept in place, but the locations and names are different. Remarkable here, though, is how the makers also replaced Bundy's iconic beige Volkswagen Beetle with an old yellow Ford Van.

I have a passion for horror/thriller movies based on true crimes, and appreciated "Killer's Delight" quite a lot, but it's obviously a cheap, amateurish, and largely improvised B-movie. There also isn't much of a plot. Crazed killer, with mommy issues, picks up young girls and brutally murders them. Obsessive police detective tracks his down, but he's always too late to prevent another tragic murder.

Just because "Killer's Delight" is so low budget, the film nevertheless comes across as a raw and often shocking thriller. The opening scene immediately sets the right tone, as a ramshackle old Ford van parks at the edge of cliff, and the driver nihilistically throws the naked body of his last victim into the deep. Don't know about you, but I've seen opening sequences that are far less attention-grabbing. There are more shocking moments throughout the film, including the death-struggle of the poor girl who works at the pool and the unexpectedly downbeat finale. Lead actor (and John Saxon lookalike) James Luisi does a decent job as the hardened cop, and receives good support as well, notably from Martin Speer, Susan Sullivan, John Karlen, and many incredibly pretty girls in tiny bikinis. It may not be a great movie, but "Killer's Delight" accurately captures the gritty, shameless, nasty flavors of 70s exploitation cinema, and that's why it comes recommended to my fellow fanatics of this era.

I hesitate to mention that this movie was reportedly inspired by the real-life Ted Bundy and Ed Kemper murders because this is actually quite different from the "serial killer biopics" that are so popular today. On one hand, this is kind of one those low-rent crime dramas inspired by "Dirty Harry" (which was itself loosely based on the real-life Zodiac Killer). It is set in the suburbs of San Francisco, not far from where "Dirty Harry" takes place, and the focus is mostly on the two cops investigating the murders. The movie also mines the then-popular "sexy female hitchhiker" movies as pretty much all the victims are young females with tight shorts and loose morals.

In a particular absurdity though, the killer's main hunting ground is a single community swimming pool. This would not only seem to make him very easy to catch, but you would think he'd run out of victims pretty fast since people would STOP GOING SWIMMING AT THAT PARTICULAR POOL. But from a purely exploitation standpoint, of course, the pool locale provides for plenty of scenes of nubile girls in bikinis. The murders are pretty effective, at least while the killer remains a shadowy figure in a sinister yellow van. At one point, he picks up two girls hitchhiking back to the pool (where their mother had dropped off) from their boyfriends' house. One minute the two girls smoking dope in the front seat of the van with the unseen killer and the next minute one of the girls is tied up in the back watching as her friend gets brutally raped. After the killer comes out of the shadows though and turns out to be a short, pudgy John Karlen (from the Euro-fave horror flick "Daughters of Darkness"), the movie becomes significantly less scary.

The movie has some interesting, very 70's touches. The main detective is married (to a woman who's surprisingly understanding when the killer at one point dumps a body on their lawn), yet he's carrying on with a female professor of criminology, who hatches a crackpot scheme to catch the killer using herself as bait. The other detective (Martin Speer, who many may recognize as Dee Wallace's husband in "The Hills Have Eyes") is single, but quite a swinger himself. In one scene he is seriously rebuffed by a female colleague, but in the next scene he is in bed with her (only in the 70's--or, at least, only in the movies of the 70's). The cynical ending is also very 70's. And that, perhaps, is the best reason to see this today--it really captures the flavor of the era (think a kind of downbeat "Starsky and Hutch" with graphic violence and nudity). Not recommended for serious serial killer buffs, but a good movie for 70's crime thriller fans.

This so-called horror was made just before the slasher era. And it shows. It is based on the life of a real serial killer, Ted Bundy, but to be honest, it doesn't. Nevertheless this flick is worth seeing for those who wants to see the San Fran era at the end of the seventies, the clothes, the highway (before it collapsed in the 1989 earthquake) and the cars.

If you think you are going to see some nasty stuff well it isn't going to be so. There's no scary or bloody moment to see overall this flick. The only parts that your face can turn away is the part were they show the pictures from the crime delict. What you see are full naked girls being murdered.

It's slow moving in parts with stupid conversations between the detectives but the flick itself isn't released properly to this writing. You can catch it as Killer's Delight on DVD or on the extreme hard to get Dutch VHS with the opening credits as The Dark Ride which is even full uncut. I watched it on the Dutch release, dark in places because it's a low budget flick with no extra lighting. Still, for the real geeks worth picking up somehow.

Gore 0/5 Nudity 0,5/5 Effects 0/5 Story 2/5 Comedy 0/5

I don't know why, but I underestimated "Killer's Delight". After all it is a 1978 film, based on the Ted Bundy case, which has been worked to death over the years. Nevertheless, I was surprised that this exploitation movie was interesting, not predictable, and beautifully photographed with saturated colors. As the body count mounts, the arrogant killer continues to stick his ass in the face of the pursuing detectives. Speaking of the detectives, one resembles John Saxon, while the other looks like Serpico's brother. The killer also bears a slight resemblance to William Devane. But I digress, The whole thing is delightfully kinky, with nudity, torture, a trap, and a very satisfying conclusion. - MERK