Slick and gritty adaption of the novel "Blood on the Moon" with a deranged killer chopping up victims and leaving them hanging from ceilings. This book was written at the height of the serial killer craze in the mid 1980s with the killer being in essence a superman who can professionally bug apartments, break into any structure he wishes, has advanced knowledge of electronics, is super strong, and can stalk your victims for weeks without detection, run a business and be completely psychotic at the same time. This cliche doesn't exist. The problem with the film adaption is the motivation of the killer. Supposedly he kills because of revenge for the abandonment of a poet's clique bookish friends in high school when the poet got raped by a couple of creeps. The killer kills innocent types who reminded him of the high school girls that abandoned his unrequited high school love. But this just doesn't make much sense. It's not enough motivation for this madness of this killer. In the book, the killer was the one who was assaulted and raped by two thugs who later became a cop and male hustler running sex and prostution rings The book hints that this plunged him into madness because after being raped he felt inadequate sexually to approach a female so therefore kills woman to save them from sin. Murky? You bet. So, the adaption and the book both have problems with the killer's motivation to kill. What the film does well is to bring Woods character to life. It is a great performance. Also, a lot of great LA locations. Definitely give it a view, but with further development of the killer's psyche, it could have been great.
Cop
(1988)
Almost a great film but needed more insight into the killer's psyche.
13 April 2022
Warning: Spoilers