Nightstalker

This is a pretty monotonous and factually inaccurate portrait of Richard Ramirez, a.k.a. The Night Stalker, the serial killer and self-proclaimed Satanist who terrorised Los Angeles and San Francisco in the mid-1980s. It offers little characterisation, next to no story, no suspense and lots of badly executed violence. Most of the short running time is filled with Richard's repetitious bad-beat-poetry voice-over of a soundtrack ('She was my dark Princess. Dark like hell. Darker than night, my Satanic queen, she was so dark..' etc) plus endless close-ups of him sucking suggestively on a lollipop.

What the film does have going for it is difference - the style and delivery are significantly unlike those of the majority of straight to DVD horror films. This doesn't save it from being a real chore to sit through, but seems worth commenting on in these times when so many films are bad in exactly the same way as each other.

The grainy video cinematography and no-budget location shooting give the film a gritty sense of place. Richard's voice-over seems designed to fill the void where a recording of the outdoor location sound would normally be. It looks like they only bothered to record sound when it wouldn't be blotted out by traffic and the din of the world - i.e. mostly when they were indoors.

This is actually a pretty good film for the actors when they are able to snatch any screen time away from Richard and his lollipops. It looks like the performers were allowed to improvise nearly all of their conversations. When this works, it gives the scenes a ring of non-movie reality. Of course when it doesn't, the actors end up riffing the same ideas repeatedly.

The Night Stalker was called the Night Stalker because he attacked people at night. Well, he goes in for a lot of daytime attacks in this film. Very few of the crimes match up to the real case history, the scene in which he is apprehended is abysmally directed, you never see how he gets into any of the victims' houses, and there is no real illumination of the man, either real or imaginary. I would have settled for either.

I didn't stop watching this film, but I wouldn't recommend that you start. It's also not a good sign that the film's opening and closing credits take up one eighth of the running time ... but then again, the actors in this film did get a very good deal. They got to improvise, and everyone's name was displayed twice.

Nothing good about it. No story line and bad acting.

The main actor and his affinity for Lollipops is quite unnerving.

I have been obsessed with Richard Ramirez from the time his story came out. I was a teenager in the 80s when the world learned of his killings. I have read every book and watched everything that involved him. I know as much about him as a person can. This movie veers off the story line of Richards life completely. The actor tries but only as much as the script allows him. I felt bad for him trying to carry this movie alone but he's only allowed to do what the writer wants or let someone else have the job. Richard was not like this movie in any way. I don't know where this person came up with all this but it was not following Richard Ramirez. Do yourself a favor and skip this. Lou Diamond Phillips does a very convincing job as Richard. No one will ever be like Richard but he's as good as we have now. I have never heard of Richard sucking on blow pops constantly what about breaking into houses at night and raping women ? This movie is a joke. He came out at night stole cars took drugs and killed people he didn't follow girls in parks. I wish I could make a movie and when I called it the Nightstalker people would know I had done my homework on the man.

Jesus not another Ulli Lommel 'movie' (takes a long sigh and sucks it up) OK this one is based on the Night Stalker Killer from the 1980's and of course when I say 'based' I mean little to not at all. God, it's Ulli after all.

Richard Ramirez goes about the movie killing random people when he's not thinking random gibberish talks that would be at home with any typical Goth poser from junior high. And that's the whole movie folks. There I saved you from the mind-numbing effect of this excrement in celluloid form.

What you want more? OK fine it might make the film go faster if you were to drink every time the word Satan is uttered, that or make sure you have one of GOB's forget-me-nots handy.