My review was written in June 1987 after watching the movie on Prism video cassette.
"Murder Lust", a B-feature originally titled "Mass Murderer" during production two years ago, takes a rather interesting premise (i.e., treating a deranged serial kill sympathetically) and wastes it via poor production values and execrable acting. Filmmaker Donald Jonesco-directed (with Mikel Angel) the more successful black comedy version of this theme, "The Love Butcher", a decade ago.
Eli Rich, a stone-faced thesp, portrays Steve Belmont, a seemingly okay guy who works as a security guard and does Sunday School volunteer work as a teacher. Twist is he covers up his impotence with women by picking up prostitutes, strangling them and throwing the bodies down a ravine out in the desert.
Besides his psychosis, Steve is burdened with numerous other problems: falling behind in his rent, losing his job when he's nasty to a woman, harassed by his mean cousin (Dennis Gannon) who hires him as a janitor in his store, etc. He's also trying to get away with faking his nonexistent college degrees to land a cushy job running an adolescent crisis unit at the Sunday school, which his girlfriend (Rochelle Taylor) rightly figures could be a focal point for the serial killer to seek out victims.
He's pushed over the edge when she gets the crisis unit's funding delayed until the killer is apprehended, putting Steve into a Catch-22 situation since he's the killer.
Painting such a monster as an outwardly kindly, community service-oriented chap is an effective story ploy, most tellingly esayed by Richard Attenborough in "10 Rillington Place". Here topline Rich is woefully inadequate, reading most of his lines as if reciting the phone book. Supporting cast, including several of the crew members in dual assignments, is nondescript. Tech credits are threadbare, not helped by a shrill synthesized musical score by writer-producer James Lane.
