Fatal Pulse

I've seen plenty of stupid and utterly worthless slasher flicks,but "Fatal Pulse" manages to be the worst of them all(still I need to see "Blood Lake" and "The Last Slumber Party").It's extremely routine and offers zero surprises.The plot is simple:a black-gloved killer is knocking off sorority sisters...The acting is awful,the gore is non-existent and the killings are lame(the victims are strangled,electrocuted,etc.)However one killing totally cracked me up:unlucky sorority girl has her throat slashed with a record.There is also plenty of nudity to satisfy some teenagers.Avoid this crap like the plague.3 out of 10.Give it a look only if you are a masochist or a rabid collector of low-budget slasher movies.

This movie does NOT take itself seriously. It's a slasher comedy about sorority girls that get killed by a psycho. One by one the coeds end up murdered. They intentionally add sound effects and act silly. If you have seen Evil Laugh or Student Bodies then you will most likely enjoy this film. It's creepy at times and is a decent slasher that makes you laugh! I rated it higher than other reviewers because they take movies like this too seriously. Watch Fatal Pulse if you like cheesy horror comedies with cool death scenes, a creepy killer, and suspenseful music!

My review was written in March 1988 after watching the movie on Celebrity video cassette.

"Fatal Pulse" is a direct-to-video slasher film that is a throwback to the days before women protested against the genre. Pretty sorority girls are killed in bloody fashion and the campus killer's identity is very predictable.

Murders are tied to a locale, a fraternity house owned by Joe Phelan (a dead ringer for his real-life brother Martin Sheen). Hero Ken Roberts ridiculously uses his girlfriend Michelle McCormick as bait to flush out the killer. Ineffectual cop on the case is played by porn star Herschel Savage, here credited as Harvey Cowen.

Softcore sex tease alternates with spilling of blood, while the windup, that the killer was suffering from a fatal illness and used hallucinogens (that turned him into a maniac) to combat it, comes off as silly. For the umpteenth time, a false ending is tacked on. Acting is way below average.

this is hands down one of the worst movies i have ever seen. its such a simple crappy movie, yet i had no idea what was going on. the video was crap, the audio was crap, the nude scenes were crap, even the revealment of the killer was crap.

i find it hard to believe that anyone rated this as a 3 or above.

Someone is killing nubile sorority girls. At first suspicion falls on the creepy live-in landlord of the sorority house (how many college sorority houses have creepy GUYS living in them--and how can I get a job like that?). Then everyone begins to suspect the boyfriend of the heroine, who was with one of the girl's right before she was killed. The final revelation is pretty ridiculous and veers into the realm of science fiction.

This film is preposterous. The dialogue is ludicrous. The acting is abysmal. The murders are laughable. The only remarkable thing about is the way it manages to aggressively undress all the female cast-members (except the lead, who, of course, is by far the best looking). The female victims are even all naked or topless WHEN they are murdered (except for one girl who has just changed her shirt a few minutes earlier, but is technically dressed at the time). When I first saw this in the early 90's I found it pretty sleazy and offensive, but after watching a lot Italian sleaze and Eurotrash films in recent years, I think I've become to desensitized to stuff like this, and was mainly impressed with the fact that only one of the girls here has obviously fake silicone breasts.

This is one slasher movie that could genuinely be labeled "misogynist" though, and not just because of the gratuitous female nudity. Some of the murder scenes are kind of prolonged. One girl is electrocuted--topless, of course--for several boob-bouncing minutes. Another is tied up and smothered with plaster, which the killer takes time to smear all over her bare breasts for some reason before plastering her face. What really bothered me though was not what the killer did to the females, but what he failed to do to do to two insufferably annoying male characters: "Brad", a New Jersey-accented "punk" tough guy played by an actor who left no scenery unchewed whenever he was on screen, and "Captain Marvin" a dimwitted guy who dresses as a superhero and watches re-runs of "Green Acres" and "Petticoat Junction" (remember these are supposed to be COLLEGE students). I really have to wonder about a movie that strips, murders, and sometimes mildly tortures numerous anonymous bimbos (some of whom never even appear in the film before their death scene), but yet fails to put these two male cretins out of everyone's misery.