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A killer dubbed the Slasher is roaming Queens, NY, slaughtering
women in the most brutal of ways, and leaving notes behind, just to tease
the police. Cops Brown (Jae Mosc) and Stone (Jim Haggerty) are hot on his
trail, but always a few steps behind - which leads to annoying girl
reporter Peri Purcell (L.P.) constantly mocking them on her TV show. The
only real clue our cops have is that the Slasher hates women, and wants to
kill all of them, but quite frankly, that's not much to go on. Eventually,
one woman, Lara (Nicolle Mirabella), manages to get away from the Slasher,
and she soon becomes the police's prime witness - even though she can say
only very little, because the Slasher wore a mask. However, now the
Slasher is furious one of his victims got away, and he threatens to take
his rage out on Lara's family should the police not hand Lara over to him.
The cops of course do no such thing but bring Lara to a safe house - so
the Slasher takes his rage out on Lara's sister (Spike) instead. Eventually,
a prostitute (Maria Bolaris) provides Brown and Stone with the decisive
clue, a lead to a certain Max Donnegan (Norman Pasternak) - who when the
cops first question him proves to be way too slick to have anything pinned
on him. Sure, it could be him, but ... And then the hooker turns up
dead, and Brown and Stone know she was right, so Stone pays Donnegan
another visit while Brown looks after Lara in the safe house, whom he has
since fallen in love with. Confronted by Brown, Donnegan quickly loses
his cool ... so he saws the cop in half. Stone is soon called away from
Lara to investigate Brown's murder, and while he's away, Donnegan gains
access to the safe house and kills Lara. With the last two murders
though, Donnegan has revealed himself to be the murderer, and now it
doesn't take long for police to track him down and arrest him - with the
help of obnoxious reporter Peri Purcell acting as bait, incidently.
Donnegan though is slick to the last: Sure he has killed, but now he
doesn't want to pay the price for it, and instead of the chair, that would
be the expected punishment for his crimes, he decides to plead for
insanity ... and be out again in five or so years, considered healed. So,
when detective Brown is to drive him to the courthouse for his trial ...
he just doesn't do so, instead drives him to a remote spot in the country
where relatives of those Donnegan has killed have gathered, armed with
knives and such, to tear him apart - while detective Brown calmly smokes a
cigarette ... A low-to-no budget thriller that in almost
textbook fashion shows all the vices and virtues of a promising director's
debut feature: On the downside, the technical glitches are manyfold, and
especially the soundtrack is pretty botched up. And the actors are mostly
not up to their task (but at least Norman Pasernak makes a slick villain).
And some of the sets (especially the police station) really suck. But
that said, the technical aspects aside, the film is pretty decent:
Director Jim Haggerty knows how to frame shots, delivers a compact
directorial job, and paces the film well. And while the plot of the film
might not be wholly original, it's at least well-written, it features
several inventive spots, and the characters are mostly well fleshed-out. In
all, no maserpiece, not even a good movie maybe, but one that does show
promise ...
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