Tracks of a Killer (1996 Video)
5/10
It must be the the cold air up there that does it!
4 November 2006
Warning: Spoilers
**SPOILERS** Extreme and outrageously overacted psycho on the loose film that that has to do with the junior executive Patrick Husman, Wolf Larson, of a multi-million if not billion dollar cooperation. Patrick feels that he's being jerked around by the cooperation's president as well as his mentor the highly successful pull yourself up from the bootstraps and easy going ahhh shucks and folksy David Hawkner, James Brolin.

Mad that his promotion to be president has been delayed another five years when David is voted by the company board to continue his leadership Patrick plans, he's not just quit sure how, to fix his boss so that he'll never be able to work, or be president, again. The opportunity comes sooner then he thinks with a planned trip to David's winter cabin. It's there where Daid plans to put young Patrick through the ringer to see if he's got what it takes. Patrick out in the wild with both David's and his wife Clair Hawkner & Bella Hausman, played by Kelly LaBrock & Courteny Taylor, on his own secretly plans to do in David.

Sabotaging David's snowmobile Patrick hopes that he'll break his neck when he rides it only to have both Clair and Bella jump on the vehicle and end up crashing in the snow. With Clair badly hurt but alive it turns out that Patrick's old lady Bella got the worst of it snapping her spine in the accident, purposely engineered by her creepy husband Patrick, and killing herself.

With Clair in bad shape and David not being able to get in touch via short-wave radio with the nearest ranger station some 100 miles away he decides to take off on his snowmobile himself to get help. What David didn't know is that the now stir crazy and dangerous Patrick had sabotaged both his short-wave by ripping out the connectors and snowmobile by filling his spear gas tank with water.

With David away Patrick begins to play with poor and injured Clair's mind and later body by torturing both of them. Clair gets wise to Patrick at what he's up to when she secretly hears him calling the ranger at the nearest ranger station a guy named MacReady, George Tosliatos,on the "broken" short-wave impersonating David and telling him that all's well. Knowing that she's in danger Clair gets a gun hidden in the cabin to protect herself but can't get her hands on any bullets. The remainder of the film turns out to be a bizarre cat and mouse game between Clair & Patrick with each one taking control of the situation and then playfully torturing each other, I guess just to pass the time away. It's then out of nowhere ranger MacReady who smelled a rat, when he talked to Patrick on the short-wave and didn't get the sign-off code from him, unexpectedly pops up out of the blue.

Finding Patrick tied up, it was Clair's turn to play victimizer and him victim, the foolish ranger MacReady frees him not knowing that he, not Clair, is the one who lost his marbles. With Clair suddenly coming on the scene, to continue her torture of the tied up fruitcake, Patrick now free and as crazy as ever chase both her and MacReady out of the cabin with MacReady runs to get his snowmobile to check out, together with Clair, of the place. Patrick getting a hold of Clair's gun and a box full of bullets blows MacReady away together with his snowmobile and shoots and wounds the fleeing Clair.

The movie get's ever more insane with what seemed like the dead and buried MacReady later coming back from the dead, and looking like he just fell head-first into an oil spill, and again getting shot, this time for keeps, by a now totally out of his bird Patrick. The ending has David, who despite being hopelessly lost in the woods, coming back to save Clair from the now murderous and hopelessly deranged Partick. With what looked like an armored personal carrier and a squad of heavily armed rangers David & Co. finally blew the crazed lunatic away.

Run of the mill thriller with both James Brolin and Kelly LaBrock, Courtney Taylor was killed off almost as soon as we were introduced to her in the film, overshadowed by the wild obnoxious and in your face Wolf Larson as the cute and lovable psycho killer Patrick Hausman. I could just imagine him, Patrick, taking over David's company which David had planned all along; he would have driven almost everyone in it to drink quit or kill themselves.
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