By Richard Winters
My Rating: 2 out of 10
4-Word Review: Detective tracks down killer.
Inspired by the Ted Bundy case the film centers around Danny (John Karlen) a middle-aged man with mommy issues who wears different disguises in order to entice young women into his rundown old van where he then promptly assaults and kills them. Vince (James Luisi) is the police detective who, despite having an affair with Carol (Susan Sullivan), is also a dedicated family man with a teen daughter himself and who spends his waking hours trying to track down this killer that the rest of the cops in his department seem almost ambivalent about.
The film tries to take a different approach from the exploitive nature of other 70’s thrillers by emphasizing more the police work than the actual killings although there’s still moments of nudity and violence. The main problem is that the detective work that gets shown and the clues that he finds isn’t all that interesting and comes along a little too easily. At one point Vince breaks into the suspect’s house without a warrant, but any good defense attorney would have any evidence seized during an illegal search thrown out and a competent cop would know this. I also found it hard to believe that Vince would be the only policeman pursuing the case as I’m sure with the media pressure there’d be a whole department working on it much like in the real Bundy case that even included a network of police departments in several states.
The killings are very routine and ultimately comes-off like the same scene get replayed over-and-over again with each new victim that comes along. It seemed hard to believe that any rational person would want to get into such a junky van driven by such a creepy-looking guy anyways. Bundy at least was handsome and in many cases feigned a disability like pretending he had sprained his arm and wearing a sling, which would then make his intended victims feel more at ease, but the guy here doesn’t do any of that. The ultimate explanation for what motivates him to do what he does is straight out of the Norman Bates book of psychology and is cliched as hell. With the real Bundy it was much more complicated and to some extent no convenient explanation at all other than he may have simply been ‘wired wrong’ from birth.
The film’s only bright spot is Susan Sullivan, who looks quite beautiful here, but even she ended up getting on my nerves when her character stupidly forgets to lock her front door allowing the killer to easily walk right into her apartment. What kind of idiot, knowing that she is a mark for the killer and fully aware that he knows where she lives, would forget to do this?
Overall this is just a sleazy excuse for entertainment that is no better than the myriad of other grade-B schlock out there and in some ways is even worse because it pretends to take a more elevated approach to the potentially exploitive material, but it really doesn’t and it’s also painfully predictable at every turn.
Alternate Titles: The Dark Ride, The Sports Killer
My Rating: 2 out of 10
Released: August 7, 1978
Runtime: 1 Hour 25 Minutes
Rated R
Director: Jeremy Hoenack
Studio: Intercontinental Releasing Corporation
Available: DVD
Scopophilia 