Easy Kill

This one feels like a cheap rip off of MIAMI VICE. It stars Frank Stallone in one of his most wooden roles, playing a gangster wannabe who gets involved with a femme fatale and drug dealers. Painfully cheap and poor in every respect, this one tests the patience more than anything else. Inevitably, Cameron Mitchell makes an appearance.

"Easy Kill" (1989, Josh Spencer): Ah, "Easy Kill". I don't think I've ever seen a sleazier film than this. This film is 100% pure, uncut '80s sleaze. Every single scene just exudes it from every pore. The characters are scummy, the lighting is dark and smoky (but not in an evocative way), with most of the film taking place (where else?) in a bar, the costuming is all shoulder-pads and pastel dress shirt-khaki combos, the music is all '80s sax and synths. For god's sake, the film stars Frank f-cking Stallone, haha.

The film deals with a woman named Jade, who is fleeing from her murderous drug dealer husband, and is assisted by bartender Frank, who gets IN TOO DEEP, etc, etc. The main characters are played by Jade Badler and Frank Stallone, meaning, yes, they have the same names as their characters, making this seem less like a movie and more like what Frank Stallone does on Friday nights.

The film's technical aspects are about as accomplished as you'd expect from a cheapo '80s flick. The direction is staid, the acting poor, the editing jarring, the sound editing ludicrously bad, with the levels moving up and down within the same SHOTS, things cutting off and foleyed back within scenes, etc. (in a perfect storm of badness, her husband's dialogue appears to have been shuttled in from another film that took place on an airplane hangar, and also sounds like he does voiceovers for movie trailers when he's not shooting people and dealing coke) and the boom mike encroaches on about every third shot.

Frank Stallone looks like Sylvester and Jay Leno had a baby. Also, the film gives us a wonderful changing sequence between the two main characters, where we *deLIGHTfully* find out that he wears smaller, tighter underwear than she does. I can see how Frank Stallone's bulge was absolutely imperative to the film (in fact, he seems to take his shirt off at every opportunity, and I saw his breasts more than any gratuitous female, which seems to indicate that the filmmakers were unaware of the market for this film, unless of course I severely underrate the market for "lame action movies where less popular action-star brothers show off their hairy chests".

The film has a minor reputation in bad movie circles as being a classic of '80s action sleaze (hey, there's that word again), and it only sort-of delivers. The film doesn't fulfill all of the Hilariously Bad Action Movie Checklist (it has the bad acting, hilariously bad dialogue and mindbogglingly stupid plot twists, but lacks any propensity for sudden explosions), and seems to run far too long, making it closer to pure badness than fun badness. The film does have one shot (literally) that was a bit inspired (the husband shoots a dude in the face through a pillow, masking a shortcoming and making what could have been a neat motif with the feathers flying), but it comes almost certainly by accident. as doing anything right in this film was certainly not intentional.

{Grade: D- (1/10) / #25 (of 25) of 1989}