Nightstalker

This movie was rented because I was interested to learn about the L.A. serial killer Robert Ramirez. Instead I suffered a terrible brain-busting headache. The movie was poorly made. It was more like a music video rather than a movie.

Every couple of minutes, the shots would flood with hundreds of images and

speed metal making the viewer confused and annoyed. I watched about ten

minutes of this movie before I stopped it. There was no way in hell a movie with a speed metal soundtrack is worthy of my time.

This movie makes Paul W. S. Anderson and Uwe Boll look talented, and their flicks appear enjoyable. Unbelievably, Fisher's "Nighstalker" manages to be, simultaneously, campy and filthy, annoying and dull, unnerving and boring, ridiculous and repulsive. There is really nothing good about it, apart from perhaps the cover and Bret Roberts - the actor who portrays Ramirez (and even he looks - expectedly - embarrassed when the hack "director", Fisher, has him play a flour-covered "vampire" weirdo, which, in Fisher's 12-year-old mentality was intended as a "symbolic" representation of what Ramirez sees in his "possessed" mind during the crime spree).

The "story" is sub-imbecilic and is not in fact even loosely based on the actual events. Fisher's "writing" skills are almost as high as those of a drug-induced 13 year old metalhead, fresh after drinking a sixpack of beer and viewing "House of 1000 Corpses" with his Deicide tape playing right into his ears. In fact, said metalhead would probably write and direct a better movie than Fisher's (well, it certainly could not be any worse!) - at least in *his* film, there would be no unnerving stroboscopic Pokemon "techniques", which Fisher loves so much.

As far as the director's "factual" treatment and "research" go, this flick's script was apparently based on Fisher's experience of trying to read a short, misspelled summary of an article reviewing a book with a chapter whose part described a documentary about comic books depicting serial killers, who happened to include Ramirez. Fisher's directing is, if possible, even worse than his "writing" - often, this flick is simply unwatchable, with its shaky, chaotic camera movement and ridiculous (and nauseatingly long) high-speed segments set to obnoxious, vomit-inducing, ear-shattering noise which Fisher apparently considers to be "music" (and which in fact did not even exist in 1985 - Night Stalker would listen to the likes of AC/DC and Springsteen, not some antitalent, late 1990s Death Metal bands).

The only potentially redeeming aspect of this movie might be the fact that, much like Ed Wood's movies (which are, of course, infinitely better, involve much more talent, decent music and superior directing), it often manages to be unintentionally funny. For instance, Fisher often makes an infantile attempt at inserting cheap "ambience" into scenes by filling their backgrounds with repeated white noise and incomprehensible mumbling done in a low bass. He intends this mumbling to be the "voice of Satan", but it sounds exactly like the Psychlos from John Travolta's

Therefore, every time I heard Fisher's "Satan", I would think "Ooh-oh, it's Travolta the Terl!" and burst out laughing. Fisher's ludicrous image of "Satan" himself - the aforementioned flour-covered bald Howard the Duck reject with sharp teeth - made the scenes even funnier.

As for the DVD itself, there were some deleted scenes (even though the whole film should have been one deleted scene), a trailer, a bit better than the flick itself (in the same sense as gonorrhea is better than AIDS), plus a commentary track from Mr Antitalent himself, Chris Fisher (at least I've read that there is a commentary, on the DVD box - I did not actually listen to it, since I have no intention to hear talentless dolts drone about themselves.)

A while ago I bought the DVD with the TV film about Ramirez ("Manhunt") from Amazon Europe, and any second of that film highly surpasses Fisher's lameness. I never thought I could see someone less talented than Paul W. S. Anderson and Uwe Boll actually find employment in Hollywood - but today I saw him, and his name was "Chris Fisher".

Nightstalker is one of those movies that could have been so much more. Fangoria called it "a first-rate house of horrors" and it was an official Sundance selection. I guess I missed something. The first ten minutes of the film is nothing but rapid, frenzied "crack montages" shot over speed metal. It's cool, but it's too much. Every time we spend screen time with the killer, it's in this fashion. You see these so much that you become dulled to them and it just becomes headache inducing. The style is almost too chaotic. At the same time, it's the only thing I will remember about the movie. One scene in particular that I did like was when the Nightstalker is walking up to a house and it's accompanied by a very cool effect. I'm not real sure how they accomplished this. Incidentally, the flick was produced by its co-star Danny Trejo. In the end, it's nothing special and will disappear into the void of the based-on-a-real-killer sub-genre.

First, its nice to see a horror film that ably represents the Puerto Rican community. What a shame its so terrible. Far more funny than frightening, the killer seems to be a deranged My Chemical Romance fan who has violent delusions that he is Satan. He only murders females, and he likes a bit'o necrophilia after the event. YUCK. The black cop in charge brings in an ethnic gal in on the investigation to combat claims the department isn't 'inclusive' enough, but this little lady doesn't take any crap and refuses to be sidelined. But what will she do when the long-haired goth wannabe targets her? DUN DUN DUNNNNN..

Advice to the director: shaking the camera up and down and putting a rubbish black metal song on in the background does not make a movie scary. Rather, the killer's manic fits and hallucinations that he sees the devil are portrayed so OTT you're be rolling on the floor laughing rather than cowering behind a cushion. You also get the usual clichés of the heroine's elderly partner and mentor in the force being killed, and even the compulsory scene of her having to hand over her gun and badge after messing up. The rampant unoriginality could be forgiven if the rest of the film were up to scratch, but alas it's so boring you'll be itching to turn off the disc and stare at TV static for 90 minutes.

Not recommended, but the disc makes a nice coaster!! *Sips hot beverage* 2/10

This is not going down as one of the all-time greats. Hey, I was just looking for a Danny Trejo fix until Machete comes out. He played a don't-give-a-damn cop here that was not as raw as I usually see him.

His partner, before she transferred to Homicide, was the ever luscious Roselyn Sanchez, who plays Elena on "Without a Trace." She is the feature of this movie, except for, of course Nightstalker and his ever-present buddy, Demon. I only mention them in passing as they are the main characters. They really don't do much. Everything is pretty much off-camera here and the movie deserved no more that a PG-13 rating for the violence. There was no sexuality, despite the MPAA claim. I doubt they even watched it as they would be immediately put off by the Death Metal music and the absolutely irritating camera work that was supposed to show what the Nightstalker was seeing and feeling as he operated high on crack. I suppose that was the intention; it was just plain irritating. Maybe they though the Satanic symbols were too much for the little ones, and they didn't want to be accused of offending someone's religion. Who knows? I got my Trejo fix, and got to see Sanchez (always fully clothed), so who cares.

Danny Trejo was a co-producer of this film. Tood bad he didn't remember his other 138 films and give us more reason to watch.