***SPOILERS*** Pink Gresham, Bill Smitrovich, wasn't exactly a model citizen or loving husband he was a down-right lowlife scoundrel.
Abusing and flaunting his infidelities in front of his long-suffering wife Maggie, Kathy Baker, and his two children as well as ripping off those who worked at the Parrish Mill, where Pink was the manager, of their hard-earned pay the fact that he ended up hacked to death hanging upside down at the smoke-shed on his property was no surprise to anyone. The surprise was how under the circumstances and who committed it, Pink's murder! even more sinister the real reason behind it.
A movie that takes you to places thats, as far as I know, never gone before in a horror movie and ends up with the unleashing of the dogs of hell that put a gory end to the devil incarnate who was responsible of the murderous acts in the film.
Maggie finding her husband Pink murdered is in a panic as she runs to her only neighbor Vinia, Rhetta Hughes, on the almost deserted island in W. Virginia that she lives on for help. Only to be told that there's nothing she, Vinia, could do with a pack of vicious dogs running loose on the island that already killed one of her children. Back at the house Maggie is startled to find a stranger knocking on her door looking for her husband to get work at the Parrish Mill.
The stranger Baston Morris, Peter Weller, comes across as a strange and somewhat innocent person at first. But before Maggie can compose herself from the shock of Pinks death he, Baston, lets out the fact that he indeed murdered her husband. Terrified of the creepy Baston and what he can do to her Maggie is trapped with nowhere to go for help and a prisoner in her own home. Then something happens that is so startling, by what Baston told her about Pink that it turns Maggie's fear and panic of him into sympathy and even has her falling in love with him! To where when her Brother Sheb, John Glover, a local preacher came with the sheriff, to see if everything was all right with her and Pink She hides Baston in her bedroom. Protecting him for being arrested by the local police for her husbands murder! little did Maggie know what the truth was about Baston and that truth instead of setting Maggie free was going to free her of her life and the lives of her two children in what Baston's sick mind had in store for her and them.
Very good debut by director David Saperstein who gives the movie a very professional look. But it's the eerie and rural Dr.Jekyll and Mr. Hyde performance of actor Peter Weller as Baston Morris that really pushes the movie "A Killing Affair" to the front of the line. Makng it one of the most scary and effective, as well as unknown, horror films of the 1980's. Weller in his portrayal of the dangerous as well as at the same time almost likable Baston shows that evil can come to us in almost any kind of package or appearance.
