Killer’s Delight (1978).
Directed by Jeremy Hoenack
Written by Maralyn Thoma
Starring James Luisi, John Karlen, Susan Sullivan, and a xylophone
The Stage.
Only one blowup doll was harmed during the making of this film.
Sergeant Vince De Carlo is hunting a mysterious serial killer who’s kidnapping and murdering young girls in the San Francisco Bay Area.
The Review.
Serpico and De Carlo, reporting for duty.
Killer’s Delight (aka Sport Killer aka The Dark Ride) is a story based on the real life serial killers Ted Bundy, Edmund Kemper, and the Zodiac Killer. We follow De Carlo, a man torn between his family life and his mistress, as he discovers body after body with zero leads.
It’s easy pickings for the killer, as he picks naive women up in his windowless van like they grow on trees. John Karlen plays the role to perfection in the limited amount of time we actually see him on screen, as the majority of the time the killer is cloaked in shadows like a version of an American giallo film. His method of killing women isn’t shown on screen, but rather through crime scene photos and it’s pretty brutal - he rapes them and snaps their fingers and arms until their bones are popping out, then dumps them in the Northern California wilderness. When two girls are kidnapped at the same time, we finally see him in action and it’s quite effective.
“Sure, there are a bunch of murders happening, but we’ll take our chances.”
The film is pretty procedural and quite plodding, but I appreciated the police work aspect…until they actually track down the killer. After nearly catching him at the local swimming pool from which he snags most of his victims, De Carlo is almost run down by the killer’s van. As the viewer, you’re wondering how that encounter would lead to the serial killer’s downfall - had De Carlo pulled some kind of evidence from the close call? Had he finally outsmarted the man? Nope. He reluctantly heads to a hypnotist and magically remembers the license plate, which he never really saw in that scene to begin with. In a film that felt grounded, this was ludicrous.
The final twenty minutes of the film wraps up the cat and mouse game with an ill-laid trap and the film ends on quite the downer note.
The movie looks nice, it’s shot quite well, and I’m a sucker for San Francisco period pieces. Being from here, it’s always fun to see what the city looked like 50 years ago. The score sounded very out of place, it was annoyingly composed of odd xylophone sounds as if it were snatched straight from a Scooby Doo episode’s cutting room floor.
The End.
As far as serial killer films go, this one isn’t bad, but it is a little slow. The first half is a rinse-repeat cycle of cops finding dead women without clues before we really get into the plot. The villain thinks of himself as a real smart chap, but his motives and his behavior prove that he’s actually quite dumb. In fact, I think any killer who was caught before the advances in DNA detection had to have been pretty dumb, but that’s a conversation for another day. If you just love serial killer films, this one leaves a lot to be desired, but it’s okay as a grimy 70’s thriller.
The picture looks pretty good and the disc is packed with extras, including a commentary from the director and several interviews.
