After a former spouse cheated on him, Tom Russo ("Asbestos Felt") is paranoid and overprotective about his new wife, Leeza (Courtney Lercara). After his "best friend" comes over for dinner, Tom worries that he's putting the moves on Leeza. Things go from bad to worse when not only does Tom receive a 40% pay cut, but he discovers Leeza's diary/little black book, apparently detailing her rendezvous with countless men. In Tom's view, there is only one solution to his troubles--to go on a killing spree.
The primary reason you might want to watch Killing Spree, if not just because you want to see every horror film ever made, is to see what no budget independent filmmakers can do with the right attitude and some understanding and cooperative friends/colleagues. While Killing Spree certainly isn't a good film, and it's nowhere near the cream of the crop for such no budget productions, it is passable, and admirable for writer/director Tim Ritter's fortitude, passion and commitment to making genre films.
When reviewing films of this caliber, I make adjustments in the way I score due to inherent limitations of budget. Basically, if a flaw is something that cannot be avoided with the resources at hand, I do not subtract points for it. For example, the Russo home in Killing Spree isn't really an ideal setting, and I'm not sure the stark white walls work as a background for many scenes. But this isn't something I subtract points for, as it's easy to realize that at this level, you have to be happy that someone has a house you can use, and they're graciously allowing you to take it over for a number of days to film. You can't expect them to allow you to repaint their walls, destroy walls or carpeting, and so on.
However, Killing Spree has a number of flaws that it shouldn't have. The script is basically just an excuse for sex and death scenes. It's strictly by the numbers and very predictable--almost like a porno "script". There's no reason to not bother making a more interesting story. Ritter actually writes a few lines of interesting dialogue, but much more could be done.
And the sex scenes barely qualify. Even at a no budget level, you at least have to find actors willing to convincingly feign sex. And one should be able to find actors who'll do some gratuitous nudity. The lack of Z-grade horror skin and passion doesn't help the film, especially as it's a major focus of the story.
That leaves us with the horror. Typical for this type of film, the focus of the horror material tends to be on gore. That's because less visceral, more atmospheric horror takes a lot of artistry, especially without extensive resources for film stocks and processing, lighting, sets, an abundance of time for shooting and editing, and so on. But good gore isn't exactly easy to do either. Killing Spree's gore scenes run the gamut from rock-bottom bad to fairly skillful. Ritter doesn't build suspense very effectively in any scene, but Joel Harlow and Mark Pederson do occasionally admirable work when it comes to special makeup effects.
There are other problems, too. Perry Monroe's music is mostly amateur sounding. Although it is occasionally competent when Monroe emphasizes minimalism, whenever he tries to become more melodic, it's mostly rudimentary arpeggios, too-obvious synthesizer pitch shifts and very generic production music. The timing on Robert Williams editing is frequently off, especially in the earlier scenes of the film. This isn't helped by the fact that Ritter appears to shoot "coverage" without the actors running through the scene repeatedly while the camera captures different perspectives. Instead, he seems to set an actor up for reaction shots where they're not really reacting to anything. It doesn't help the performances, which come across as much more artificial. Williams and Ritter also have a tendency to let shots establishing mundane actions linger.
However, Ritter does do some things right that many directors at this level miss or overlook. He at least makes an attempt to shoot coverage. He has a good sense of blocking and framing. He occasionally finds interesting perspectives for camera placement. He occasionally uses lighting artistically. His location shots are good and varied. He can effectively convey an action scene (and should have done much more of this, as the few in the film are pretty good). He mostly gets decent performances out his amateur cast. He has an interesting sense of humor (which I wish would come out more in films like this)--for example, at one point there's a zombie who jumps in front of an actor and says, "Boo!" He is inventive--the death scenes are usually amusingly creative.
Of course you should lower your expectations when approaching fare like Killing Spree. This is an average Z-grade horror flick; much better than something like Insaniac (2002), but not near as good as something like Silo Killer (2002).
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