All-American Murder (1991).
“It was the look of a man whose soul had been raped.”
Directed by Anson Williams
Written by Barry Sandler
Starring Charlie Schlatter, Christopher Walken, Josie Bissett, and an inept police force
The Stage.
“Not sure if people are going to understand how much he likes snakes unless we literally paint on on him.”
Artie likes snakes, fire, and drawing. Someone burned his dorm room and it was pinned on him, so he’s kicked out of school. Luckily, his powerful father has given him one more chance, and ships him to the prestigious Fairfield Academy, where he fucks the Dean’s wife and meets Tally, the love of his life, all on his first day. Unfortunately for Artie, someone burns the girl of his dreams alive and frames him for the murder, giving him and Christopher Walken a limited amount of time to uncover who the real killer is at a school where no one is who they seem to be.
The Review.
Early 90’s Josie Bissett was…*chef’s kiss*
All-American Murder feels like a little ode to the Italian Giallo film; it’s got all of the stereotypes: inane plot twists, plenty of red herrings, ladies in distress, and a killer pair of black gloves murdering people that you don’t see attached to an actual body until the final moments of the film. Alas, not all love letters are good love letters.
This isn’t in the bottom rung of Vinegar Syndrome titles but what keeps it a cut above crap like Rush Week and The Cellar is the tête-à-tête between Artie and Detective Decker. Charlie Schlatter, who plays Artie, has plenty of charisma and that was essential to this film because he has to deliver some of the stupidest dialogue I’ve ever heard uttered on the silver screen. Lines like, “You’re one sly banana” left me in a state of confusion normally reserved for 17th century farmers learning about Bitcoin. We’re led to believe he’s some kind of social misfit just because he wears shorts and a beret and sports the Raising Arizona Nic Cage hairdo, but he has the personality that suggests that he’d be one of the more popular class clowns in any other late 80’s/early 90’s teen comedy. He’s less like a Bender or an Allison Reynolds and more like Ducky. Painting him as some outcast loser was certainly unearned.
Basically the face I made whenever Walken read one of his lines from this screenplay.
The back and forth between Artie and Walken’s Decker was actually pretty fun considering the words they’re saying aren’t half as smart and quippy as the screenplay thinks it is. Christopher Walken is just doing Christopher Walken, a fast talking, edgy cop who doesn’t appear to be very good at his job but everyone in the movie thinks he’s some kind of fucking Perry Mason. The first time we get to see him on-screen, he arrives at a hostage negotiation in which a man has the knife to the neck of a pregnant woman, and he goes off-script to agitate the man, putting her and her babies lives in danger. Josie Bissett plays Tally, the woman murdered to kick everything off. She was absolutely wonderful in a small role as the charming and beautiful All-American picture of perfection.
The middle of the film is a bit of a snoozer as Artie starts realizing that many people could have been the murderer, who just happens to be two steps ahead with each destination. The police force is zero help and seems to treat the campus’s chaos with the same speed and sleuthing skill as the rent-a-cop currently sleeping somewhere in his car in the middle of your closest Dollar Tree shopping center parking lot. The last third of the film is when things ramp up quite a bit. The kills are all pretty lame save for one poor sap who gets an inexplicably insane death in which the killer enters the room where the man is working out, rigs him up Saw style so that he cannot free his hands, and drops a grenade into his pants. Why does the killer have access to a live grenade? We don’t know. Why couldn’t the killer just strangle him? Again, who knows. It was inventive though, I’ll give it that. The reason the mystery killer is butchering people is complete stupidity, but in a movie filled with stupid, you’ll already be numbed by dumb once it’s revealed.
How did he fit this monstrosity in his little Volkswagon and what the hell does he expect her to do with it?
From a filmmaking aspect, there’s nothing special in All-American Murder. Scenes are filmed in a very close, claustrophobic fashion and the editing is a mess, which are both pretty typical of lower budget straight to Blockbuster early 90’s flicks. This was the directorial debut from Anson Williams, more well known as Pretty Boy Potsie Weber on Happy Days and written by Barry Sandler, and you know how I feel about the last name Sandler.
The End.
All-American Murder has a strong enough lead that it becomes watchable, despite how stupid everything is. The dialogue feels like it belongs in a different film, the twists that the movie starts tossing at you non-stop make no sense, and you’ll figure out who the killer is in no time. Fortunately, it’s just fun enough that it just floats a little bit higher than the crap you’ll sometimes find at the bottom of your monthly Vinegar Syndrome package.
The disc looks great, again cleaned up to perfection by the VS crew scanning and restoring in 2k from the 35mm interpositive. We get a commentary track with The Hysteria Continues! which I have not yet listened to, an interview with Charlie Schlatter called “Being on a Team” (for some reason…) and “A Valuable Experience”, an interview with the cinematographer Geoffrey Schaaf.
