Non aprite quella porta 3

Melanie Beck (Linda Hamilton look-a-like Tara Buckman) is the only surviving victim of a killer-rapist who wears a Freddy Kruger-esquire mask and claw. Despite having seen the killer's face, Beck has blocked it from her memory. Becoming suicidal, she tries to kill herself on the beach but is saved by Axel (Peter Hooten), another rapist sleazeball who keeps her locked in his hotel room. All this builds to a mind blowing conclusion that actually has a pretty clever and dark twist. I had higher hopes when I saw this billed as an "ELM STREET ripoff directed by Claudio Fragasso." Sadly, this is no TROLL 2 or ZOMBIE 4. The film is pretty ordinary for the genre and features the requisite gore and nudity. To its credit, it might be the only non-porn film in history to feature the "Little Red Riding Hood" inspired line, "Oh, grandma, what a big schlong you have!" The real surprise here for me is that this was filmed about 45 minutes from me in Norfolk and Virginia Beach, VA in 1989. Sadly, I wasn't living here at the time, but it is comforting to know that Fragasso and I have walked the same streets.

Directors Claudio Fragrasso and Bruno Mattei, the men responsible for such Italian trash classics as Troll 2 and Rats: Night of Terror, have done it again! And by that, I mean that Night Killer is another godawful piece of low-rent horror garbage so bad that it has to be seen to be believed.

In the film's pre-credits sequence, a killer in a demonic rubber mask (that looks nothing like Freddy Krueger, despite what it says on IMDb) and armed with a rubber glove with long talons, kills a dancer and her director, punching holes through their abdomens.

Following the credits, we meet mother Melanie Beck (Tara Buckman) who, moments after sending her daughter to stay with friends, slips down her sweater and fondles her bare breasts in the mirror. Unfortunately for Melanie, the masked killer who has been raping and killing local women, also has her in his sights; breaking into her home, he subjects her to an eight hour ordeal, which she narrowly survives when the killer is interrupted. The only problem is, Melanie's trauma has resulted in a complete loss of memory, meaning that she cannot identify her attacker.

Discharged from hospital, Melanie is subsequently pestered by a mysterious man while on her way to commit suicide at the beach. The stranger saves her life, but proceeds to keep her captive at a motel, submitting her to another terrifying experience. Is this man the same psycho who attacked her in her home? You'll have to wait till the end of the movie to find out, suffice to say that Fragrasso and Mattei have one hell of a silly revelation up their sleeves for the finalé.

Sadly, as nutty as it all is, Night Killer is also rather tedious, despite plenty of nudity and some hokey gore. The direction is ham-fisted (no surprises there), the dialogue is terrible (no surprises here either), the acting is awful (ditto), and the plot often perplexing (Why does the killer have an art studio full of really bad drawings? How does he manage to punch through someone's body? Why is the policeman's phone held together with Sellotape? What's with the Christmas gift for Clarissa?). I don't know how they do it, but Fragrasso and Mattei manage to botch things up at almost every turn, yet still avoid making their film 'so bad, it's good'. It's just plain bad.

Night Killer was released as a sequel to Texas Chainsaw Massacre in Italy for some bizarre reason and it makes no sense, because with its burnt faced killer with razor fingers, it'd make much more sense as a sequel to Nightmare on Elm Street. That's besides the point, because as many similarities as Night Killer has with other films, it's really its own beast.

It involves a woman who is attacked and raped by a serial killer and she loses her memory completely and ends up getting abducted by a random guy who may or may not be the killer who's still murdering women around the city.

Night Killer is poorly made from top to bottom with awful performances, unconvincing gore effects, and a script that seems to have been made up on the spot, but it's oddly compelling in its own bad movie way.

The day Claudio Fragasso (or Clyde Anderson, as he prefers to call himself) dies and arrives at the gates to confront Saint Peter for the trial whether he belongs in heaven or hell, I strongly advise him to plead "temporary insanity" for the year 1990! I don't know what Fragasso smoked back then, but it must have been great stuff! How else would you explain the fact that he spawned both "Troll 2" and this "Night Killer" in in and the same magical year? These two films are extremely different in terms of content and atmosphere, but both are incredibly awful yet wondrously absurd and insanely entertaining. "Troll 2" is legendary trash-heritage and world-famous, whereas "Night Killer" is obscure and unknown. Undeservedly so, I must emphasize, as this utterly bonkers horror oddity should urgently be discovered by all fans of slasher movies, rape & revenge thrillers, gialli and bizarre cult films in general!

You know that indescribably joyous feeling you experience when watching something truly bad and amateurish, but simultaneously so much fun? Well, "Night Killer" guarantees this feeling from start to finish! According to notes in the trivia-section and some random interviews I read on the internet, Fragasso initially intended for this film to be a psychological thriller without gore, but behind his back the producers instructed Bruno Mattei to shoot an additional load of nasty and sleaze-laden sequences. Personally, I think this is a bunch of nonsense. Fragasso is simply incapable to pen down a serious psychological thriller and, besides, he and Mattei have been best friends and business partners since the late 70s already, so I find it difficult to believe Mattei would "betray" his buddy Fragasso like this. "Night Killer" is indeed unstructured, clumsily edited and totally senseless, but that's just the regular way these two geniuses work together. Pure entertainment is what matters, and "Night Killer" delivers.

The film opens marvelously, with 2 random beauties in standard 80s aerobic outfits savagely getting slaughtered during their dance rehearsal by a maniac in a monstrous mask and a glove with sharp claws. You'll read in other reviews that the killer's mask resembles Freddy Krueger's face, but the people who wrote that should urgently re-watch the entire "Nightmare on Elm Street" series. The mask looks like an ugly demon's face, mutilated by a flamethrower and then resurrected again. The claws on the glove are clearly made of rubber, and yet the maniac manages to bore holes through women's stomachs with them! The script then suddenly seems to realize the 1980s are over, so the action moves away from the dance academy. Our sick killer subsequently targets beautiful single mother Melanie Beck, and stalks her with obscene phone calls before perpetrating into her house. Maybe, just maybe, Melanie is a logical choice because she fondles her naked breasts while talking to herself in the mirror. He attacks and viciously rapes Melanie, but she survives the attack and enters in a state of shock and complete amnesia. Melanie escapes from the hospital and attempts to commit suicide, but the poor thing runs into a crazed madman again and he holds her captive in a sleazy motel room. The film then insists that we believe Melanie's new kidnapper, Axel, is the same person as the ugly mask murderer, and meanwhile he also cheerfully continues to slay other women, like a prostitute with whom he enacts a perverted Little Red Riding Hood role-play! If you think "Night Killer" can't possibly get any more jaw-droppingly absurd or delirious, just wait until you witness the completely deranged denouement!

But now for the hardest part of this review. How to possibly rate this fantastic piece of rubbish? In terms of sheer entertainment, I'm honestly tempted to reward "Night Killer" with a perfect 10/10, simply because I was rejoiced from start to finish and even watched some key sequences several times because I couldn't believe my eyes the first time. Other arguments for a high rating are the fast pacing, the copious amounts of reasonably decent make-up effects and the truckload of bloodshed and perversion. A massive score is also quite misleading, of course, because "Night Killer" inarguably remains pure trash with terrible acting and lousy scripting. Still, I had a tremendous great time and I give it 8/10. Finally, one last example of unscrupulous and typically Italian horror marketing. The "official" title of the film is "Non aprite quella porta 3", which literally translates as "Don't Open That Door 3". It's the local title under which the horror classic "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" got released in 1974, and thus they wanted everybody to think this was a sequel. Never mind the fact there isn't a chainsaw in sight, and the producers also didn't take into consideration that the actual "Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part III" also came out later that same year, in 1990.

The movie is awfully good. It doesn't have any good characters, the directing is horrendous, the cutting is mushy, the score is bad and the whole movie is great.

I laughed my ass off when I watched the movie. Don't expect any good movie. You just gonna have to watch Night Killer without your brain, brainlessly.

P.S. why is it called Non aprite quella porta 3? Did they think that they are gonna skip the previous two movies and make the third one. I just want to know that.