Der Sunset Killer

The first entry in this series is mediocre. Although it's okay to watch if you have nothing else to do or watch, it really isn't more than that. Resembles a made-for-tv movie.

I am a really big fan of Judd Nelson and he ruled in this movie. He's so good at being the bad guy. Judd plays Buck Taylor, a demented serial killer who picks his victims from a phone book and calls them before he enters their house and kills them. And the victims' names resemble his. And he tears the pages out with the victims' names underlined in red with messages like "catch me if you can" that he leaves on the dead bodies for the police. Buck does these horrid things because his father was abusive and he kills to show his dad that he's good at something. I really enjoyed this movie and it showed how good of an actor Judd is. Great film!

This crime story has some scary scenes, with an especially memorable one early on with a woman hiding in a clothes dryer. In fact, the first half of this is excellent but it peters out that point with two typical Hollywood clichés of crime movies of the period.

They are: 1 - the good cop (Leo Rossi as "Sam Dietz") going it alone despite the orders of his superior; 2 - the killer going to the good cop's house to kill his family. Too bad it stooped to these obvious story lines because this could have been an outstanding serial-killer movie. As it is, it would up being slightly better- than-average. By the way, what's with Meg Foster's eyes? It looks like they have no pupils. It's eerie to look at that woman's face.

This movie spawned several sequels and the sequels were better and better as they went along.

This one's funny because it's your basic procedural potboiler about a hotshot rookie detective and his grizzled old partner tracking a murderer, which, yeah, is pretty standard, except here the grizzled old partner doesn't really do anything. He doesn't help solve the case, he doesn't mentor the rookie in any meaningful way, he doesn't offer any profound insights into life… all he does is sit around and bitch and moan about how work sucks and how the boys at the crime lab can take care of it. It'd be like if Morgan Freeman had spent the whole run-time of 'Seven' playing cards with that crew in the library and let Lab Tech #1 do all the work.

Judd Nelson rules in this flick. I'm surprised nobody seems to know about this one. If you see in the store, give it a try. I think you'll be entertained. Rossi is pretty good in this too. His banter with Loggia is straight out of a buddy-cop movie encyclopedia, but it works.