Nightstalker (2009)

Sadly Over-hyped

Don't Believe the Hype

Blistering performances.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Nothing good about it. No story line and bad acting.

And if you check the date of my comment, you will know WHICH headline I'm talking about. If more of the people of Tucson had just taken the time to see this vital film about current American affairs in the year it's been out, it is possible many lives would have been saved. Prescient NIGHT STALKER director Lommel ends his version of "Richard's" killing spree with a gang of 11 male vigilantes permanently disabling him in an alley. Prior to this climax, Lommel portrays Richard with all the classic symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia. None of the countless people the movie shows shirking away from Richard on the sidewalk as he mutters away take any steps to refer him to the proper mental health authorities (Richard obviously would come under the Medicaid umbrella; most western states in the U.S. have eliminated their mental health services for Medicaid sufferers in recent years, if they ever had them to begin with). All of this week's endless news reporting estimate there are up to 6.14 MILLION people in the U.S. with Richard and you-know-who's condition. We are told only a "tiny fraction" are able-bodied people who actually commit crimes like Richard's ("at least 16 dead," according to this flick's postscript). However, no one can predict WHICH ONE of these millions will "suddenly snap" next, get a gun, and become the next notorious nut job. But director Lommel bravely posits in NIGHT STALKER that even ONE Richard is one more than a society "protected" by bumbling, namby-pamby law enforcement should tolerate, which is WHY Lommel has the vigilante mob do in Richard simply for muttering on the sidewalk. After all, the mob's collective intelligence realizes that taxes are high enough, and it would literally cost several trillion dollars to construct secure but humane holding facilities for these 6.14 million individuals run by high-priced professionals (at an acceptable staff-patient ratio), as well as to train and pay countless more social workers enough to do a conscientious job of running interference for any Richards released back into society on electronic tethers. After all, mental health demographers are talking about 1 in every 50 Americans. Obviously, given the U.S. economy, the choices are 1)the present system of expecting and accepting an increasing number of serial killers such as Richard and people like this week's mass murderer, 2)bankrupting the U.S. treasury to neutralize the threat humanely, or 3)Lommel's mob justice (which sweeps up and kills dozens who fit the "schizo-in-the-headlines" profile every time one of these tragedies occurs). Option #2 might be accomplished by eliminating the space program, agriculture subsidies, selling the national parks to Disney and other recreation pros, and restricting a down-sized U.S. military to U.S. territory and waters (unless these actually are attacked). Anyone who disagrees ought to at least view Lommel's film, since outsiders sometimes can put their finger's on a society's main problem (and the best solution to it).

This is a pretty monotonous and factually inaccurate portrait of Richard Ramirez, a.k.a. The Night Stalker, the serial killer and self-proclaimed Satanist who terrorised Los Angeles and San Francisco in the mid-1980s. It offers little characterisation, next to no story, no suspense and lots of badly executed violence. Most of the short running time is filled with Richard's repetitious bad-beat-poetry voice-over of a soundtrack ('She was my dark Princess. Dark like hell. Darker than night, my Satanic queen, she was so dark..' etc) plus endless close-ups of him sucking suggestively on a lollipop.What the film does have going for it is difference - the style and delivery are significantly unlike those of the majority of straight to DVD horror films. This doesn't save it from being a real chore to sit through, but seems worth commenting on in these times when so many films are bad in exactly the same way as each other.The grainy video cinematography and no-budget location shooting give the film a gritty sense of place. Richard's voice-over seems designed to fill the void where a recording of the outdoor location sound would normally be. It looks like they only bothered to record sound when it wouldn't be blotted out by traffic and the din of the world - i.e. mostly when they were indoors.This is actually a pretty good film for the actors when they are able to snatch any screen time away from Richard and his lollipops. It looks like the performers were allowed to improvise nearly all of their conversations. When this works, it gives the scenes a ring of non-movie reality. Of course when it doesn't, the actors end up riffing the same ideas repeatedly.The Night Stalker was called the Night Stalker because he attacked people at night. Well, he goes in for a lot of daytime attacks in this film. Very few of the crimes match up to the real case history, the scene in which he is apprehended is abysmally directed, you never see how he gets into any of the victims' houses, and there is no real illumination of the man, either real or imaginary. I would have settled for either.I didn't stop watching this film, but I wouldn't recommend that you start. It's also not a good sign that the film's opening and closing credits take up one eighth of the running time ... but then again, the actors in this film did get a very good deal. They got to improvise, and everyone's name was displayed twice.

Nightstalker (2009) * 1/2 (out of 4) Lommel's ongoing saga of doing a film about every famous serial killer continues with this look at the Night Stalker who haunted California during the 1980's and is still sitting on Death Row there today. Adolph Cortez does a decent job at playing the nutcase who walks around stalking men and women while playing with a sucker in his mouth. We learn this is due to a deal with Satan and because he saw his uncle shoot his aunt. Whatever the case, this is the eleventh film in this series that I've seen and while this one here is among the better ones, I still can't help but get bored because we've seen this thing one time too many. Once again we get a crazy guy walking around and talking to himself. Lommel has used this same set up during several of this serial killer pictures and I really wish he would at least try to do something different with it because all of the eleven films just bleed together to the point where I really couldn't tell one from another. I doubt many people outside myself are going to bother going through everyone of these films but those who do attempt it are going to have deja vu all over the place. Once again this is done on video and once again the budget is extremely low even though this one here features more blood than any of the previous ones. The gunshots are extremely fake looking but I guess the producers tried to make up for this by using a gallon of blood on each shot. The film starts off mildly entertaining but it quickly gets tiresome as we have to keep watching the same thing happen over and over.