Hollywood Strangler Meets the Skid Row Slasher, The (1979)
** (out of 4)
From the man who brought you THE INCREDIBLY STRANGE CREATURES WHO STOPPED LIVING AND BECAME MIXED-UP ZOMBIES comes another film with a rather interesting title. What we basically have is a nutty guy (Pierre Agostino) who hires cheap women to take photos of them but what he really wants is to strangle them, which he does plenty of. We also have the "Skid Row Slasher" who is a mystery person stalking the streets and stabbing homeless men in the neck. For those interested, the Hollywood Strangler has a lot more victims here and I'd say he has about a 3-to-1 advantage, which I'm going to guess is due to the budget reasons. I guess it was a lot cheaper to hire some woman to get naked than it was setting up a special effect where an actor had to spit out blood after being stabbed. So, is this a good movie? Not at all but when you compare it to other Steckler movies I have no problem saying this comes off as a masterpiece. The budget was so low that Steckler actually shot the film silent and later went back and added narration. Some of the dialogue is downright hilarious due to the various things the killer says. The highlight has to be a scene where he suffocates a woman with a pillow while asking if she's seen the Doris Day flick PILLOW TALK. Those who enjoy the sleazy cinema will be pleased to see a wide range of trashy posters hanging up in the various sets. These posters include TEENAGE MASSAGE PARLOR and several other films and we even get a lot of great shots from the sleazier areas of Los Angeles where there's apparently a porn theater showing DEEP THROAT around every corner or a place selling dirty magazines. Seeing these now gone places is a tad bit interesting and especially if you're interested in those type of grindhouse flicks. The film has very little story as all we get is one scene after another of women taking their clothes off and being strangled. Every once in a while we see a homeless man get slashed and that's pretty much it, although the director does go off the deep end towards the end and adds a love story. The identity of the Skid Row Slasher is meant to be a mystery but anyone should figure it out. The amount of sleaze going on in this film is pretty high as there's countless nudity and blood and it's almost enough to make the film worth sitting through. If you're offended by this type of material then it's best you stay away but those looking for cheap entertainment should get a few kicks out of this thing but even at under 70-minutes the thing goes on way too long.
