Lucker

Belgian film maker Johan Vandewoestijne (one of the producers of Emmanuel Kervyn's gory Rabid Grannies from 1989) wrote and directed this ultra low budget sickie when he was 25 years old. He had obviously seen a lot of those strong and graphic Italian, American and other nasties from the seventies and eighties and wanted to surpass them all with this tale of a necrophiliac psychopath killing women and raping them afterwards. On that strong sicko level, I can't say anything else than he definitely succeeded but otherwise this is nothing but extremely braindead garbage.

A coma patient Lucker (played by a guy named Nick Van Suyt) wakes up in the hospital and kills some people there. It is told that he was seven years in coma after being caught by the police. Once he has waken, he starts his killing spree in the city as he stalks innocent victims, mostly women, in order to first kill them brutally and then make love to their (also) rotten bodies. We follow these acts as there really isn't anything else going on in this so called film.

There aren't any positive or noteworthy things that could be said about Lucker other than those extremely nauseating gore scenes and sadism on display even though I wouldn't mention them "positive" or any merits to make this film rate any higher. This is like the first Violent Shit (1987) movie by German Andreas Schnaas: the killer just walks around, kills and (in Lucker's case) rapes the corpses, and then the circle begins again. Of course imagery and goings-on like this is extremely boring and Lucker features some of the most unnecessary and annoyingly prolonged sequences I've ever seen as we see takes of people walking around or hiding from the killer and these scenes may last even ten minutes! They are there only to make this run a little over an hour so that it could be called a feature film and that's why they are so painfully boring and stupid as they don't have any acceptable reason to their existence.

There are none of the cinematic magic shown in German Jorg Buttgereit's Nekromantik (1987) as that film has a wonderful soundtrack, music and visuals in it to make the illusion almost surreal at times and also the scenes of necrophilia not so disgusting as they aren't even meant to be. But Lucker has nothing so special, it has only the gory murders (which are quite explicit and very misogynistic), one mind blowingly disgusting corpse abusing scene and those mentioned prolonged braindead scenes.

One thing Lucker manages to make stronger than Nekromantik is the above mentioned necrophiliac love making scene which Lucker performs with a corpse he has killed seven days ago. He killed the girl and left him lie on the bed and then waited so that the body would turn into something more interesting (I guess) and then he performs his act, which will make those suffering from weak stomaches or repulsion towards this kind of idea cringe in disgust as I, too, felt almost forced to turn my eyes off the screen filled with such calculated images of perversion. The body he makes love with is covered with something I won't even try to describe here but it is also filled with maggots and worms to make the damn hellish scene as sick as possible. This is something even Buttgereit didn't want to show and why should've he? I don't think Buttgereit's Nekromantik is "sick" at all as it has many things to tell about human nature with its, OK let's admit it, unconventional and also "suspicious" imagery to make the actual "corpse scenes" not so off-putting as they could be and as they are in this Belgium case. I felt something moving upwards in my stomach while watching this one scene in Lucker so no one should even think about watching this if scared of slithery creatures and more importantly repelled by subject matter like this.

Lucker is among the sickest film experiences there is and it's also among the worst. The acting is very mediocre and occasionally irritating, the English dubbing is horrible and very over-the-top "dramatic", and this film in many ways reminds me of the Italian sleaze giallo Giallo a Venezia (1979) by Mario Landi as that film, too, is nothing but one mean spirited film filled with sex, perversion and sadistic violence without any real cinematic merits to raise it a little higher. If the late Italian exploitation king Joe D'Amato had made a child with Landi, that child's film would have probably been something like Lucker. That metaphor gives a clue what kind of an experience will this Belgium trash be. 1/10

This movie is a deformity. We get to see a lunatic/necrophiliac escape from a mental institute and picking up his old, disgusting habits. The only thing that, very remotely, resembles a plot, is that he is going after the one girl that got away before they locked him up. The whole idea leans closely to films like "Maniac" (1980) and "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer" (1986), but "Lucker" is really I-don't-know-how-many-times worse. Bad camera-work, bad acting, bad... oh, crap, bad everything. But it really is sick and disgusting. This, in fact, might be the sickest movie ever made in Belgium. But the gore looks fake (except for the real living, crawling maggots! Ugh!). I shouldn't rate this any higher than 1/10, really. So why 2/10? I'll give you more than one reason. Johan Vandewoestijne made himself immortal by producing the Belgian splatter-classic "Rabid Grannies" (okay, I admit, that doesn't have anything to do with this "Lucker"). He wrote, produced, directed AND edited "Lucker", and that's praiseworthy for a Belgian film, even if it IS trash. And boy, this movie really has one of the sickest scenes showing the act of necrophilia I have ever seen... And did I mention this is Belgian? Anyway, there are enough films out there that can make me proud of that. "Lucker" isn't one of them.

Sorry guys - this one blows. It blows in pretty much every conceivable way. Watching this jackass walk around the psych ward, then the highway, then the city for literally minutes and minutes on end is pretty much like watching paint dry. The kill scenes are not nearly as "rough" or nasty as they're made out to be, and the corpse-bang scene towards the end is far more forgettable than the somewhat similar scene in NEKROMANTIK. Maybe I got a chopped copy or something, I got mine from Visual-Pain, and it seems to be duped from Midnight Video as that logo comes up during the feature. If my copy IS uncut then I'm REALLY disappointed in this one...

The basic story (for anyone who is still interested) is about John Lucker - a psycho and necrophiliac who escapes a mental hospital and goes on a rape/murder spree. His goal seems to be to find an ex-victim that he didn't get to "finish up" with, and to do this by walking around as dully as possible for almost the entire running time of the film...

No offense, but I can't see how anyone could possibly like anything about this film. I like schlocky, exploit/gore films as much as the next guy (hell, probably WAY more than the next guy...) but I gotta draw the line somewhere - and LUCKER is that line. The ONLY 2 redeeming factors that I can find in this film, is that the rape and murder scenes are on par with other exploit-style films (though not NEARLY as rough or unique as you may be lead to believe)...and the guy that plays Lucker is relatively effective - mainly because he's pretty creepy looking and keeps his mouth shut til the last few minutes of the film. I'll give a point for each of those - and that's being generous. If you are thinking about buying this to see some sort of "extreme" gore/exploit film - please take my advice and don't bother...you will be sadly disappointed. 2/10

The year before Jörg Buttgereit's infamous movie Nekromantik shocked viewers with its graphic images of necrophilia, Belgian Johan Vandewoestijne gave fans of sick cinema his opus dedicated to the joys of corpse lovin': Lucker the Necrophagous.

Although Lucker isn't quite as compelling as it's German cousin, due to too many tedious scenes that just don't know when to quit (seemingly endless shots of women screaming; people running around corridors for an eternity, etc.), it does offer a couple of particularly nauseating moments that rival Nekromantik on the disgustometer, and the film should therefore be of some interest to anyone interested in extreme horror.

Vandewoestijne's grimy, low-budget sleaze-fest features Nick Van Suyt as balding serial killer John Lucker, who escapes from a private clinic (with absolutely zero security) in order to track down the woman who narrowly escaped his clutches several years earlier. Whilst attempting to locate this particular victim, nutty John takes time out to do a little killing and raping (in that order) to get himself back into the swing of things.

Lucker is not an easy film to endure: not only is it very violent and thoroughly repellent at times, but it is also an extremely amateurish production that features awful acting (and equally bad dubbing), a dodgy script, some iffy special make-up effects, terrible pacing, and crap editing. In short, it is going to appeal to a very limited audience. However, it is definitely the film to watch if you want to see a fat, hairy-assed guy in mirror shades going at it hammer and tongs with the maggoty, decomposing body of a hooker!!! It is also where you will find an equally charming scene where the titular character gropes and fingers the very same putrescent corpse, before proceeding to lick its disgusting, slimy effluence from his hands.

Those with a hair-trigger gag reflex may want to put down some paper or prepare a bucket before watching.

John Lucker awakes in a hospital bed,from a failed suicide attempt a few years ago and he proceeds to escape only trying to dodge numerous hospital employees until he kills a man that discovers him.Somehow he puts on pants,sneakers, sunglasses and(haha well look at you!) a leather jacket and he kills the dead man's girlfriend. Johan Vandewoestijne's Lucker works as a portrait of a quiet serial killing necrophiliac who stalks women and kills them,made in 1986 just the year before Jorge Buttgereit's excellent Nekromantik.Nick Van Suyt's performance as the creepy,menacing John Lucker makes the film have a gritty feeling and the music builds the tense atmosphere.

Lucker learns one of his last victims is still alive,he becomes angry and starts killing his way towards her,he kills a prostitute and leaves her body for a few days until the sex starts,the sex scene with the corpse is gritty,doesn't look the same from Jorge Buttgereit's Nekromantik,a film that I dearly loved and admired for its work in the life of necrophiliacs.Since Jorge Buttgereit made necrophilia look like a good thing, Johan Vandewoestijne makes it look too good from that finger icky scene,there is plenty of misogyny around.

Lucker is a well crafted horror thriller with Nick Van Suyt's menacing,somewhat quiet performance as John Lucker,the ominous night stalking atmosphere that Johan Vandewoestijne had made.The film and music has a feeling of stark isolation of John Lucker being the only person dead to the world.Although I cant recommend it from not really getting to know John Lucker much,he seems like a guy you become friends with in a bar but doesn't say you're friends since he's too quiet to tell you why he's hanging with you.I would've liked to know why John Lucker became this way or why he's mentally sick and I don't wanna bring up Jorge Buttgereit' film again as an example.oh and one more thing:what's with those series of psychotic attacks?