Fantom Killer

"Fantom Kiler" is definitely the most sexually violent giallo ever made.It makes "The New York Ripper" and "Giallo a Venezia" look tame.The plot is simple:A small town is plagued with a series of brutal slayings of young women.The bodies are found naked and savagely mutilated.A misogynistic serial killer(Fantom Kiler)is unstoppable!The film is packed with the scenes of sexual violence,there's also plenty of sex and explicit nudity.Still the killings are very stylish and really sick-one victim is literally raped with the knife!The acting is pretty bad,but the ladies are really sexy.However I don't think this film is Polish at all.I'm from Poland and I know Polish horror genre very well,but I've never heard about Roman Nowicki before.In fact this sleazy series(yes,there are also "Fantom Kiler 2" and "Fantom Kiler 3")isn't even known in Poland.The funniest thing is that the Polish and Russian dialogue doesn't even match with English subtitles(actually some Polish lines were clearly stolen from various Polish films like "Nic Smiesznego" or "Tato").I'm fairly sure that this film was made in the UK and the credits are all pseudonyms-just like in "Last House on Dead End Street".This is surely very mysterious!All in all if you like erotic horror movies give this one a look.Recommended.

Fantom kiler (1998)

BOMB (out of 4)

Pointless, tasteless, disgusting, amateurish and just downright pathetic horror/sex film from Poland, which caused quite a stir when it hit the underground market several years ago. A man in a mask goes around slaughtering, mutilating and sexually assaulting women who he deems whores. The sexual violence in this film is quite disturbing and even more disturbing is the fact that several people actually get off on watching this type of stuff. I've always stood up for horror films and the mainstreams attack on the violence against women but this film here crosses about every single line and creates new lines just to cross them as well. We see women getting raped by knifes, tire irons and various other objects and for what? There's no story going on here, just various images of women being tortured. The other half of the film is nothing but nudity as the women, for no reason whatsoever, take their clothes off at every chance they get. A truly pathetic film and what's worse is there are two sequels.

Might as well stop watching this movie after its first few minutes, they already spoil everything in there during its intro.

But seriously, I'm still really not sure what to think off this movie. This movie doesn't really fit into one particular genre but in this case that really isn't a good thing. It makes this movie a real mess, that is like a crossover between an Italian giallo, fantasy and soft-core porn. I'm definitely sure I would had liked this movie a whole lot better if it had picked one clear approach.

I guess in essence this movie above all remains soft-core porn because of all of its explicit nudity but even a soft-core production needs sex sequences in it, which this movie strangely enough doesn't have at all. I say strangely enough since it's a trashy European production, that has all of the right settings and female models in it, for it.

And as an horror/mystery or giallo, you just simply can't take this movie seriously enough. It's low budget and it features no real story or mystery in it. It still does feature some gore and other explicit sequences but strangely enough the movie doesn't shock at all with any of it.

What's also really a problem with the movie is that is starts to drag far too early on already. The movie is constantly repeating itself (just like its awful music) but what's even far more annoying are its actual killing sequences. They just go on and on forever with its build-up to it and even when someone gets finally stabbed it still manages to go on and on for the sequence to finally end.

I honestly really loved this movie its visual style and approach, which was also foremost the reason why I still kept on watching but I just feel that this was something that would had worked out way better for an 30 minutes short and not for an 90 minutes full length movie like this one.

Really a disappointment, considering all of its potential.

4/10

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Good old Trevor Barley (hiding behind an alias, Roman Nowicki). Clearly spotting a gap in the market, he made this, an erotic horror about a serial killer murdering young women. Even though it was all made in the UK, fearing the authorities, Barley set it in Poland and hired Polish/Russian actresses who speak in their native tongue in the film, thus it's dubbed and looks like it comes from Poland. Clever!

Anyway, the film itself is pretty unremarkable and technically inept - the killings are mysogny to a whole new level with buxom babes being stripped completely before being killed in cruel and unusual ways (one is raped by a knife!).

How anyone can compare this to the works of Fulci or other great Italian directors is beyond me - this is a very cheap and nasty film that is only passable as entertainment and just not that shocking. The ideas certainly are, by the way its made dilutes it so much that you end just watching the screen for the sake of it.

Best to borrow a friend's copy first and see what you think - you may enjoy it, but you may not. I for one, didn't really; it was viewable but could have been so much more with a little more time, effort and money.

If you have any perception of "Fantom Kiler" being a sexually explicit slasher movie, then think again. What we have here is 82 minutes of cheap home made pornography.

There's no plot to speak of, just a succession of naked ladies. The entire thing is filmed as one massive masturbation fantasy. The few male roles are comedy toilet cleaners and police officers, who are dubbed with an audio quality that doesn't sound anything like the rest of the film's soundtrack! Oh yes, and the murders are fixated on the vagina and the anus. I can imagine the director getting into a froth of excitement over each drawn out scene of chase, stripping and sexually related death (all the women are directed to act as though sexually aroused during their murders).

There are a total of 4 sets - an office, a lobby, a bedroom and a forest (which looks to be about 5 meters square and indoors). All the women in the film become naked and oiled up (?), sometimes within mere seconds of appearing on the screen. And there are plenty of extremely explicit close ups. Some of the film is based around two toilet cleaners who imagine what all the women who pass by would look like naked...cue lots of footage of women naked. We also spend nearly 15 minutes watching one of the cleaners stick a wooden spoon up some girl's butt.

Take it from me, "Fantom Kiler" is pornography, nothing more. It's also not even Polish (which is what it's trying to look like, but they can't even do that convincingly). It's a film about naked women...everything else is an afterthought, in fact it's practically a waste of time trying to review it in the horror/thriller genre at all.