555

My review was written in February 1989 after watching the show on King video cassette.

Aimed squarely at the gore market, "555" is a competent video thriller made in Chicago.

Storyline, in the vein of '50s B pictures, has a serial killer operating by the lakeside who preys on couples, decapitating the man while mutilating and sexually assaulting the woman.

Mara-Lynn Bastian is the feisty reporter on the case, with various police and other officials as possible suspects. Jeffrey Lyle Segal and Maureen Kalagian's special makeup effects are interesting, and duly repeated at the end as "highlights".

Acting is a bit stiff while Lamar Bloodworth's video camera captures vivid-looking bloodletting presumably for hardcore fetishists.

Absolutely horrid shot-on-video slasher effort which has absolutely nothing to make you want to not destroy it on sight. A true snoozer with a painful pace, weak "gore" which is pretty much girls getting blood splashed on them (from the *offscreen* kills of their boyfriends), ugly nude women, and acting so horrid it isn't even funny. Nothing can save this film from it's incredibly boring and awful status, even the decapitation pictured on the video box (even though it looks cool). There are no redeeming factors here. It's not even so bad it's good... It's that boring. Skip it or feel the pain.

Shot on video, this mystery serial killer would seem pretty typical of the '80s slasher genre, except for the cheap sets and the horrendous acting and bad writing. And I do mean seriously bad, but strangely enough that's what adds the charm to this little ditty. And, of course, its got sex and nudity and graphic bloody killings and even an attempt at a twist ending,(like anybody cares who the killer is)....

Well well, I had seen a lot of reviews on this one, and a lot of promo always showing the decapitation scene. But this flick is a tough one. And I mean it by all ways. It's hard to find a copy, because it was a low budget independent release and because MPAA was on the hunt for every copy on VHS, it came out unrated but it had to be rated for the MPAA. So copies disappeared into the underground scene. All people involved in this flick never did anything else in the biz. So it made this flick unique. VHS copies almost never pop up on ebay or other sites and if they do you will pay over a 100$ to get one. But due US connections I was able to catch a release on DVD sold worldwide. Limited but it was to be a sort of official one. Now and then there are still some screenings of this splatterfest. But is it worth all the hype surrounding it? As said earlier, it is a tough one to catch but also to sit through. There are gory killings, there is necrophilia, there is nudity but there is also a lot of talking between the coppers. And to be honest, if you would like to see the movie in 5 minutes watch the ending, it's a flashback in the killer's mind. The blood flows and indeed it's a splatterfest but not the full 80 minutes, splatter galore for 10 minutes. The quality of the movie is okay, sound okay, no hiss, colors okay, black is black and not blue as in many low budgets. It's okay to watch it but you never will be frightened but it's one to watch with your friends having a beer and a pizza I guess. 555, naaaaaaaaaaaaaaah 333.

555 is one of the best SOV movies I have ever seen. It's very gory and violent and there are a couple of scenes that are almost unbearable to watch (like when the killer is rapeing a dead girl and when it gets a close up of the knife going into a young girl). The movie trys to be violent and gory and it really is. The acting isn't exactly the greatest, either. This isn't a movie for the little ones nor for the people who are weak in the stomach to unsettling things.

2 out of 4 stars.

Contains adult language, adult content, extreme violence, and sexual situations.