Nightstalker

This is not going down as one of the all-time greats. Hey, I was just looking for a Danny Trejo fix until Machete comes out. He played a don't-give-a-damn cop here that was not as raw as I usually see him.

His partner, before she transferred to Homicide, was the ever luscious Roselyn Sanchez, who plays Elena on "Without a Trace." She is the feature of this movie, except for, of course Nightstalker and his ever-present buddy, Demon. I only mention them in passing as they are the main characters. They really don't do much. Everything is pretty much off-camera here and the movie deserved no more that a PG-13 rating for the violence. There was no sexuality, despite the MPAA claim. I doubt they even watched it as they would be immediately put off by the Death Metal music and the absolutely irritating camera work that was supposed to show what the Nightstalker was seeing and feeling as he operated high on crack. I suppose that was the intention; it was just plain irritating. Maybe they though the Satanic symbols were too much for the little ones, and they didn't want to be accused of offending someone's religion. Who knows? I got my Trejo fix, and got to see Sanchez (always fully clothed), so who cares.

Danny Trejo was a co-producer of this film. Tood bad he didn't remember his other 138 films and give us more reason to watch.

Nightstalker is a waste of time and money. For starters, it's not even about Richard Ramirez. The main character of the film is a female detective on the hunt for the nightstalker. The other killer films Dahmer, Ted Bundy, Gacy, etc., all have their fair share of fictionalized events but Nightstalker is the most inaccurate of them all. The film dosn't even get his capture right. Instead of getting beat down by an angry mob, which is what really happened, he is arrested by the fictional detective after a shootout. Also, maybe I'm blind but the actor who played Ramirez looked to be white, not hispanic. Dahmer and Ted Bundy, despite their own flaws, are far superior to this piece of trash.

This movie was rented because I was interested to learn about the L.A. serial killer Robert Ramirez. Instead I suffered a terrible brain-busting headache. The movie was poorly made. It was more like a music video rather than a movie.

Every couple of minutes, the shots would flood with hundreds of images and

speed metal making the viewer confused and annoyed. I watched about ten

minutes of this movie before I stopped it. There was no way in hell a movie with a speed metal soundtrack is worthy of my time.

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".

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