A psychopath wearing camouflage with a hunting knife as his weapon, commences in slaying female majorettes across the throat while bathing their bodies in water "purifying their sins". A reluctant county detective is placed on the case with a sheriff who doesn't want his company. A nurse, whose son is the high school janitor and resident idiot with a vent opened up in his supply closet so he can spy on the majorettes removing their clothes in preparation for the showers(..while also taking snapshots of them, for his private collection), hopes to gain a great sum of money from her employer's will..the employer is an invalid, pretty much a vegetable unable to speak due to a stroke that has left her practically a zombie in a wheelchair. The nurse informs the poor woman of her diabolical plans while injecting her with heavy doses of insulin. Meanwhile, a gang of drug-dealing hoodlums selling their dope to underage teens cause problems towards a high school quarterback and his friend(..she's the granddaughter of the invalid the nurse plans to kill, and also a victim-to-be set up for execution due to what she'd receive in the will at the age of 18)which culminates in two tragic shoot-outs leaving quite a many dead. The nurse, thanks to her voyeur son's taking photos of a victim as she's being mutilated by the killer, blackmails the serial killer, wanting him/her to execute her employer's granddaughter to keep their silence.
While I give a lot of love to the "Russo camp" for keeping it real by investing the film with local folks, this film is burdened by the cast's inabilities to adjust to acting in front of the camera. The screenplay is uneasy as the film moves from one scenario to another, with nearly everyone winding up dead. Though, everything ties together somehow, the glue is running and so is the audience for the eject button. I did think the twist regarding the identity of the killer was nifty and the final scene I thought worked really well. The slasher portion of the film I felt was rather clumsily staged and dragged out a bit too long removing the power these are supposed to bring when we are being led through a building murder sequence where the killer is about to strike his prey. The attacks are rather uninspired and typical of the genre. I feel the convoluted uneven story will leave many slasher fans frustrated and the killer's identity is revealed a bit too soon. The shootout belongs in another film(..although, I did enjoy both shootouts I must admit)and feels tacked on..although, the first shootout spoils the nurse's initial plans and shockingly some important characters wind up dead a lot sooner than one would expect. There's some nudity, particularly in the majorettes' locker room. As far as the attacks, most of the violence, except a few throat slicings, is off-screen. Kevin Kindlin, the quarterback who wages war with the nasty bikers, would later return as the lead "vampire" in Russo's flick, "Dark Craving."
While I give a lot of love to the "Russo camp" for keeping it real by investing the film with local folks, this film is burdened by the cast's inabilities to adjust to acting in front of the camera. The screenplay is uneasy as the film moves from one scenario to another, with nearly everyone winding up dead. Though, everything ties together somehow, the glue is running and so is the audience for the eject button. I did think the twist regarding the identity of the killer was nifty and the final scene I thought worked really well. The slasher portion of the film I felt was rather clumsily staged and dragged out a bit too long removing the power these are supposed to bring when we are being led through a building murder sequence where the killer is about to strike his prey. The attacks are rather uninspired and typical of the genre. I feel the convoluted uneven story will leave many slasher fans frustrated and the killer's identity is revealed a bit too soon. The shootout belongs in another film(..although, I did enjoy both shootouts I must admit)and feels tacked on..although, the first shootout spoils the nurse's initial plans and shockingly some important characters wind up dead a lot sooner than one would expect. There's some nudity, particularly in the majorettes' locker room. As far as the attacks, most of the violence, except a few throat slicings, is off-screen. Kevin Kindlin, the quarterback who wages war with the nasty bikers, would later return as the lead "vampire" in Russo's flick, "Dark Craving."