Directed by: Dennis Donnelly
Starring: Cameron Mitchell | Wesley Eure | Kelly Nichols
Rating: TWO out of FIVE nail guns
“Bit by bit… he carved a nightmare.“
It opens with a toolbox. A man in black leather gloves. Heavy breathing. A woman masturbating in her apartment. We’re not even pretending to have class here.
For the first thirty minutes, it’s pure carnality disguised as slasher cinema. Women undress. The camera lingers. The killer’s toolbox rattles. It’s less about death than intrusion. The ski-masked gaze doing most of the killing. Every murder feels like a wet dream filmed through a peephole.
The man behind the mask? A building superintendent. A voyeur with a work order. His tenants are young, lonely, and doomed. He stalks them through the halls of a sun-bleached L.A. apartment complex that feels like Melrose Place before the Botox.
Then it shifts. He keeps one girl alive. Ties her to a bed. Speaks to her in scripture. We start to realize it isn’t about lust. It’s about control, or the lack thereof. But the film can’t decide if it’s punishing desire or worshiping it. Neither can I.
Meanwhile, two teenage boys start pretending to be a pair of discount Hardy Boys, bumbling through the wreckage of grown-up horror. One turns out to be the killer’s nephew. Blood runs in the family. He kills his friend, kills his uncle, and tries to take what’s left of the girl’s innocence. She kills him too. That’s the real twist. Survival masquerading as closure.
The movie ends with her stumbling into an empty twilight parking lot. Barefoot. Bruised. Dripping in someone else’s sin. The screen insists this was based on a true story, like that somehow makes it okay.
