Suspense from the Great North
My review was written in December 1992 after watching the movie on Paramount video cassette.
"Killer Image" is a well-made Canadian suspense feature debut that has inexplicably opened at year's end in Los Angeles to qualify for Oscar consideration. Its natural home is home video, where Paramount Home Video released it this past summer.
M. Emmet Walsh toplines as a corrupt senator whose brother, perennial screen baddie Michael Ironside, is shown dumping a body in the film's opening.
Incriminating photos of Walsh with a prostitute, snapped by Paul Austin, cost the shutterbug his life. Austin's brother Max (John Pyper-Ferguson) is out to set things right, but Ironside frames him for the murder of another hooker and discredits him with the police as a "boy who cried wolf".
Filmmaker David Winning, in his second feature assignment, has a plot that becomes increasingly far-fetched as Ironside's complicated schemes keep going awry. Pyper-Ferguson teams up with his brother's girlfriend, lovely American thesp Krista Errickson, and of course a romance develops.
Storyline resolves itself with Pyper-Ferguson turning Walsh and Ironside against each other. The symmetry of brothers versus brothers is not fully developed since Austin's role is minor.
Though the film is set in the U. S., its Calgary area locations are attractive, including a cliffhanger finale above surging water rapids. Cast is okay.
"Killer Image" is a well-made Canadian suspense feature debut that has inexplicably opened at year's end in Los Angeles to qualify for Oscar consideration. Its natural home is home video, where Paramount Home Video released it this past summer.
M. Emmet Walsh toplines as a corrupt senator whose brother, perennial screen baddie Michael Ironside, is shown dumping a body in the film's opening.
Incriminating photos of Walsh with a prostitute, snapped by Paul Austin, cost the shutterbug his life. Austin's brother Max (John Pyper-Ferguson) is out to set things right, but Ironside frames him for the murder of another hooker and discredits him with the police as a "boy who cried wolf".
Filmmaker David Winning, in his second feature assignment, has a plot that becomes increasingly far-fetched as Ironside's complicated schemes keep going awry. Pyper-Ferguson teams up with his brother's girlfriend, lovely American thesp Krista Errickson, and of course a romance develops.
Storyline resolves itself with Pyper-Ferguson turning Walsh and Ironside against each other. The symmetry of brothers versus brothers is not fully developed since Austin's role is minor.
Though the film is set in the U. S., its Calgary area locations are attractive, including a cliffhanger finale above surging water rapids. Cast is okay.
- lor_
- Aug 7, 2023