Nightstalker

I have to agree with the other reviewers. There are several things wrong with this film: The real night stalker killed people of all races, not just hispanics. The focus of the story was not on the killer Ramirez, it was on the fictional character officer Martinez. If it was on Ramirez, we would have seen him watch his sister-in-law's murder at a young age, get in and out of trouble, and watch his progress into a serial killer. There is no background given. Also, the way he was apprehended never happened. I wanted to see the chase through a Latino LA neighbourhood, where locals chased Ramirez, and nearly beat him to death. And the car he was driving - where is the orange Corolla? The appearance of the cast was HORRIBLE. Take a look at detective Elliot (the white guy). Did ANYONE have combed hair in 1985? How about the black detective? Did anyone have a Boston Public bald hairstyle in 1985? All of the women's hairstyle were inaccurate. Yet they kept trying to throw in video clips from Iran and Bhopal India to set the era up. It's amazing they would overlook the casts appearance. The guy who played Ramirez looked the part - except for those pearly whites. The real Ramirez had rotting teeth with a foul odour. Martinez's coke-sniffing partner, played by Danny Trejo did an awful acting job. It was fake & forced. Oh, and they could have afforded to loose all of those demon scenes. They grew tiresome quickly and made me dizzy. 3/10

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.

This film is absolutely a true pain to watch. Literally!

The other comments have covered all the problems with this movie already, so I will just agree with them. But, it is the painful camera work and editing that truly made me look away from the tv. I understand they were setting the mood for the killer's issues and demons, but they should have let it go after the beginning. It hurt my eyes and I found myself getting more and more disinterested in the actual film premise, which is way off, because of the annoying camera.

And Danny Trejo? God, he was horrible in this. I realize he is not normally academy award material, but c'mon, this was so labored and corny.

Al in all, I would avoid this at all costs. 1 out of 10 rating.

This film made me feel travel sick from the start. I was expecting horror, gore and action i got neither!! The story only covered about 4 days of his life and hardly featured anything of any real importance at all it didn't give any background on him and it didn't show any detective work in detail.

Waste of my time!!