CITY KILLER is one of those eventful little TV movies that America did so well back in the 1970s and 1980s. Long forgotten, of course, yet with a novel premise and plenty of decent moments, this is the sort of film that deserves reappraisal by modern movie fans.
The story is simple: pretty Heather Locklear is at the mercy of a sinister stalker, played to the sweaty hilt by Terence Knox. Knox is far from an ordinary film villain along the lines of other stalkers like Richard Thomas or Patrick Bergin, though; instead, he's a lunatic bomb who thinks of nothing else than demolishing a number of high-rise tower blocks in downtown USA! Cue lots of stock footage of real-life demolitions mixed with footage of people desperate to escape.
It's a crazy premise and yet one that works well due to the police procedural focus and the willingness of those involved to take the premise seriously. Locklear is a more than adequate as a woman at her wits' end, and there are interesting performances from character actors like Peter Mark Richman and Gerald McRaney as the cops assigned to protect her. Knox, meanwhile, is a hoot.
