555

Absolutely horrid shot-on-video slasher effort which has absolutely nothing to make you want to not destroy it on sight. A true snoozer with a painful pace, weak "gore" which is pretty much girls getting blood splashed on them (from the *offscreen* kills of their boyfriends), ugly nude women, and acting so horrid it isn't even funny. Nothing can save this film from it's incredibly boring and awful status, even the decapitation pictured on the video box (even though it looks cool). There are no redeeming factors here. It's not even so bad it's good... It's that boring. Skip it or feel the pain.

555 is an extremely rare, SOV (shot on video) slasher flick from the 80s that brings something a little different to the table. The plot concerns a cross-dresser serial killer who kills his victims on the 5th day, of the 5th movie, of the 5 year. Hence the title 555. Back in the 80s and even today, rarely are there slasher films that boast a cross-dresser killer. Hide and Go Shriek and Unhinged immediately come to mind. Despite it's low budget, 555 manages to deliver. It has decent plot and a nice body count to boot. The gore and violence is brutal and very well-done for the budget they had. The ending was predictable but nonetheless entertaining. The only thing that really hampers the film is the poor video camera it was filmed on. The color balance seems off and a bit hazy. Nevertheless, it's a fun low budget horror flick that is underrated and almost impossible to get ahold of. If you manage to come across a copy on ebay (good luck) pick it up. It makes a nice addition to any horror completionist's collection.

My review was written in February 1989 after watching the show on King video cassette.

Aimed squarely at the gore market, "555" is a competent video thriller made in Chicago.

Storyline, in the vein of '50s B pictures, has a serial killer operating by the lakeside who preys on couples, decapitating the man while mutilating and sexually assaulting the woman.

Mara-Lynn Bastian is the feisty reporter on the case, with various police and other officials as possible suspects. Jeffrey Lyle Segal and Maureen Kalagian's special makeup effects are interesting, and duly repeated at the end as "highlights".

Acting is a bit stiff while Lamar Bloodworth's video camera captures vivid-looking bloodletting presumably for hardcore fetishists.

This one perpetuates itself to be a movie with a future cult following. The only following I see this one recieving is for one of those "ten worst movies shot on video" lists but it's probably too obscure for that. Anyway somebody somewhere might derive something out of this, I can't. The video box proudly exclaims "Uncut Unedited Director's Cut". Pretty funny when you realize that's the only version that was ever released anywhere.

555 is one of the best SOV movies I have ever seen. It's very gory and violent and there are a couple of scenes that are almost unbearable to watch (like when the killer is rapeing a dead girl and when it gets a close up of the knife going into a young girl). The movie trys to be violent and gory and it really is. The acting isn't exactly the greatest, either. This isn't a movie for the little ones nor for the people who are weak in the stomach to unsettling things.

2 out of 4 stars.

Contains adult language, adult content, extreme violence, and sexual situations.