The Antwerp Killer

This movie is considered to be the worst Flemish/Belgian movie ever. Back in the 80's no movies were made without money from the government. An 18-year old film student -Luc Veldeman- from Antwerp however, was convinced he could do it. For some reason he was able to create a huge hype around the movie, probably because -to my knowledge- it would be the first Belgian horror movie. Big brands like Marlboro, Coca-Cola,... started throwing money at the young director.

The premiere was planned at the film festival of Knokke-Heist, organized by the -at that time- also very young Jan Verheyen. (This was the festival where Evil Dead had premiered the year before by the way) The minister of Cultural Affairs was ready to give a speech about how this was a moment in time for Belgian cinema, since the movie was made independently.

When the festival came closer and closer, Verheyen started to ask the director for some footage but Veldeman always refused, stating that they were still editing the film but "almost done". At the evening of the premiere Veldman comes storming in with only two movie reels (this explains the 50 minutes of course), stating that the rest of the reels would arrive later =D , but they never did indeed. Verheyen took the cash register with him and fled, as did the minister.

Aaand the rest is history. Veldeman's father was so enraged by the embarrassment that he tracked down almost every copy and destroyed it. It was not around for years but someone recently uploaded it to youtube.

The movie : the worst thing you can ever think of, I think no extra lights were used, there's no storyline, acting is terrible... but funny if you're into "ironic" movie watching.

At 1.38 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sO9v8HEdczI you can see Veldeman. (explains a lot) Movie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRTtQlVkIKQ

The Antwerp Killer is more infamous for the story than the movie itself. Its only 50 minutes because the director only had 2 rolls of film and because of that this movie isn't finished at all. Not even close.

So the opening credits are Chariots Of Pumpkins from Halloween 3 and so are the end credits. More Halloween 3 music is used when the killer kills someone. Music from The Thing is used too.

The actual soundtrack is generally seen as the only redeeming factor of the movie. In my opinion it gives this movie a creepy atmosphere. A theme made by the composers own synthesiser that makes the movie worthwhile.

So does this movie have an ending? Well no. It kinda just stops after the killer shoots someone. It feels like the movie should carry on but it doesn't. It's not finished and it never will be.

The backstory to "The Antwerp Killer" is actually much more interesting than the movie itself. It was made by Luc Veldeman, an 18-year-old kid with a silver tongue and no filmmaking skills whatsoever. Somehow he convinced the Ostend film festival to book his clearly unfinished and clearly unwatchable movie, then he quickly disappeared with the money he got and was never seen again. He's like D.B. Cooper, only instead of jumping out of a plane he just made a horrible movie.

You know you can't expect much from your viewing experience when the first scene is a girl getting knifed... without a knife. Apparently the crew didn't have one, as kitchen knives are so hard to come by. So they left everything to the power of suggestion. We mostly just see the aftermath: a girl laying in a surprisingly well-lit alley, pushing on her stomach as hard as she can. Reason for that last thing: her blood packet didn't work, so she had to push the fake blood out. Professionalism at work here!

This movie, which clocks in at a measly 51 minutes, doesn't have a beginning or an ending. It's just a depressing pile of middle where pretty much anything can happen. The closest thing we get to a main character is the police detective, but instead of investigating the murders he spends most of the time figuring out the name of a little kid that lost her mother AND trying to stop a drug deal in the harbor. How does he know there's a drug deal going on in the harbor... it said so in the newspaper. You'd think gangsters would find a different location once their drug deals are announced in the media, but thinking isn't this movie's strong suit.

The Antwerp killer himself is essentially an afterthought in this movie, and his plot is never resolved. He's not caught, we don't learn a motive, the movie just ends randomly because the production probably just ran out of film. I don't think anybody who's ever watched this dreck ever complained about it being too short, but some kind of resolution certainly would have been nice.

The best thing about this movie is the soundtrack, mainly because it's blatantly stolen from Hollywood movies. There's one scene where our killer attacks and I was sure I heard the soundtrack before. Then of all sudden I heard "Mr.Sandman" mixed in with the music. That made some kind of sense for "Halloween", the movie this track was clearly copied from, but it's just baffling here. The guy who played the detective actually wrote a soundtrack, but it was thrown aside at the last minute for music Veldeman clearly didn't have the rights to. Ow, the things you could get away with before the Internet was around...

When in 1983 The Antwerp Killer came out it was one of those flicks that rather had some good promotion. It was shown on the Knokke Heist film festival which was organised by nowadays popular director Jan Verheyen. Not only that, on the national television called BRT there was even a fragment shown in Premiere, a program about national and international flicks. But at the film festival they programmed this flick due the title and didn't seen it in preview and from there on things went rather wrong with The Antwerp Killer. The reel with the flick came too late to even then had a fast showing to the jury so they had to show it to journalist and audience without knowing what it was all about. People really laughed it out when shown and the critics called it the worse Belgain flick ever.

The director Luc Veldeman didn't had any problem with that fact but his father as rumours go was mad as hell and drove out to destroy every copy he could find. And so within weeks The Antwerp Killer vanished from the earth. Of course some geeks back then copied the flick from rental shops but even then it was hard to see this flick. From 1984 it became one of the most searched flicks coming out of Belgian and the request is still out nowadays to have proper release. But so far no good. I searched for years on every site possible and flea market to find a copy of it. Even when the VHS rental shops went out of business I went out for the hunt, you never know but oktober 2013 my hunt became real, I just watched The Antwerp Killer.

And I must admit that this is a must see. Only clocking in at 50 minutes it's worth that time of your life. This is really bad, this is pure cult, pure Z-flick with no budget at all and be aware that within those 50 minutes you will see for a few minutes rooftops from Antwerp and towards the end you will have a flashback with the best of The Antwerp Killer. So in fact the movie itself only takes 35 minutes if you count that part out. But just watch the scene at the docks how overacted that was and the clothing from the mob, unbelievable. And the cops came aware of a drug dealing at the docks from the newspapers headlines, go figure that one out.

Even the killings themselves are laughable. You can see that one stab with a knife was done with the victim pushing on some kind of balloon filled with 'blood'. Once on the ground not having proper lighting she moves with her face towards the camera to reveal some blood coming out of her mouth. The dream sequence of the girl in bed when the killer enters her apartment is also a must see. What went on in this flick I don't know, how they new who the killer was and why they shoot towards a girl I don't know.

Worth mentioning was the fact that Herbert Flack, famous Belgian thespian, was involved somehow with The Antwerp Killer but nothing can be found on the net about that and Flack himself never answers the question. But who was embarrassed was Michel Follet a famous presenter at the BRT of Cinemanie from 81 until 86. He still can be heard at JOEfm but don't ask the man about this flick.

And what about the score used, did The Thing ring a bell? Or Halloween? What we do have is some new wave music at a local pub from Cocteau Twins and some Killing Joke graffiti, also worth spotting is the shopping era of Antwerp back then.

After the official release of De Aardwolf (1984) people are waiting that Luc Veldeman will agree to make finally an official release of this cult flick. But for this moment, none of this will happen and still the hunt is on for so many collectors around the world.

Gore 0/5 Nudity 0/5 Effects 0/5 Story 0/5 Comedy 0/5

It's not easy to find information on The Antwerp Killer. Maybe all those involved hoped memories of this film would slowly fade away. Bad luck for them as I managed to find a copy of a film most video stores don't (want to) own. Ever since I found it, many have either desperately asked me to lend it to them (some even reviewed it after viewing - see elsewhere on this page) or even more desperately begged me never to show it. At last another movie where everyone agrees: it's hard to find a bigger turkey. And to prove that point in case you're one of the millions who never saw the film, here are some examples:

* The movie opens with a girl who's stabbed by the killer. As the girl (it would be a stretch to call her 'actress') isn't really stabbed, fake blood is needed to shoot this scene. The fake blood is hidden in a small bag under her blouse and we see her press on her stomach to get the blood out of the bag. Okay, but what about the blood dripping out of her mouth? After all the scene was shot in a pretty dark alley. Oh, no problem, the 'actress' will just turn her head to the camera so we can enjoy the fake blood more. Splendid thinking there!

* In the second scene (the one after the credits - no use speaking of opening or end credits as the same credits are used in the beginning and end of the movie) the young man who discovered the body is arrested for doing something highly suspicious: apparently the people of Antwerp weren't allowed to "walk in dark streets" at night. See, movies always teach you something.

* Especially if a movie have scenes from news bulletins. But because this movie is evidently no-budget, this scene had to be faked and instead we can watch the heroine watch the news. The camera is placed behind the television set and all we see is her watching the news. All we hear is an actor pretending to be a news journalist. But how can this same actor pretend to be the correspondent too (let's not spend our budget on two voice-over actors if one can do the trick)? I'll tell you: by pinching his nose while he's speaking. The effect is staggering and so are the facts: the murdered girl in the news bulletin appears to be 22 in the beginning of the bulletin and 24 at the end. Did anyone ever check the script, I wonder.

* To protect our heroine from the Antwerp Killer, the police decide to lock up her in jail for a few nights. She doesn't like the idea and tries to run away, which leads to possibly the only movie chase INSIDE a police building. That's right, she runs around chairs and tables. Exciting is one description, mind-boggling another.

* There are plenty of horrible but laughable scenes left in this movie, even if it only lasts 51 minutes. And the only reason they got to 51 minutes was by inserting a dream sequence of 7 minutes (using almost all the footage from earlier and later in the movie) and filming 3 minutes of roofs and buildings in Antwerp. Why? To show the killer is somewhere out there. Oh, in that case it makes sense. Ermm.

* One more example of another scene that should be added to movie history is the scene at the docks. Before this scene the police officer is on the phone, talking to his superior and asks if the superior had heard about the 'tip off'. Apparently mobsters were going to sell drugs at the docks. Was the officer informed by underground connections? Nope, he read it on page 1 of the paper. Oh, the good old times when newspapers still told you where mobsters would meet! Then it's time for the scene at the docks. We see how something goes wrong with the transaction (one mobster simply drops the suitcase) and how smooth mobsters are at pulling their guns (one only needed 3 attempts).

"The Antwerp Killer"... let's start lobbying for a DVD release.