"The Minstrel Killer" Finally, a Michael Fredianelli film I can show my grandparents, my children, and a few lonely friends at the shelter. This epic work of horror (or more precisely, shocks-ploitation) from Wild Dogs Productions lives up to its box art testimonial: "Full of atrocities!" but surprisingly boasts a complex script with 3-dimensional characters (excluding hillbillies and cannibals) who surpass the deviants commonly found in most grindhouse flicks. Fredianelli, as racist cop Tex Holland, may not look like Stuart Whitman, but his internal conflicts with an unfaithful wife and a black partner manage to unfold compellingly amidst the plot contrivances of your average slasher-on-the-warpath scenario. Narrative can be put aside to concentrate on the acting and the editing; the movie's best assets. These impress, as well as Aaron Stielstra's lush, demented score which alternates between William Lustig/John Carpenter stabs and stingers to full blown compositions--be they acoustic ballads or one blues piece that serenades bloated pigs making love. Also commendable is the fantastic chicken performances that take place during the movie's most memorable bimbo homicide. David Brashear's camera-work is such an improvement over past Wild Dogs projects, the film, quite simply, resembles something akin to a 70s Jack Starrett movie, lending to the film's encouragement to take a shower after watching. Only the movie's outstanding shootout in a hillbilly camp would suffer being viewed on a sagging, vandalized drive-in screen. Top acting honors must be paid to Fredianelli, playing a complicated character with a fraction of decency suffocated by prejudice, an excellent Anthony Spears, as the lone, doomed detective of color with more intelligence and guts than the entire supporting cast, and Aaron Stielstra and Brendan Murphy, who capture the sad, scatological character of southwestern white trash so well as to be documentary subjects. Vanessa Celso's troubled and sympathetic wife character elicited as many tears from the grindhouse audience I saw the film with as she did drunken catcalls to take her clothes off. A notable accomplishment. Definitely the best Fredianelli movie since "Psycho Freak-Out". Isaac Wade's methamphetamine-addicted Father Hillbilly (his character defect evidenced by a constant nasal condition) also delivers the movie's best and most poetic line: "He ain't interested in that dirty old hand." Superb locations abound, yet, unfortunately, they can't redeem the film's early hillbilly performances that suffer from dreadful (and eternal) over-acting reminiscent of a bad "Hee-Haw" sketch. As the profound Down Under movie critic Jenesis stated about another recent genre flick, "See Naples...Then Die"--of which this movie shares much the same cast: "imminently re-watchable". Rated R.
