Killing Spree

"Why yes, sex is a large part of the cable repair business. In fact, it's the main part. Can we do it yet?"

The next day, Tom goes to the bar again and calls in sick to work. Stewmaster's secretary takes the call. That's right, Tom not only works with a guy named Stewmaster, he actually has to report to a guy names Stewmaster. And yet, no stew! What is wrong with this movie? While Tom is at the bar, Leeza has a full day. And by "full" I mean "of penetration." First the TV repairman stops by, a visit which is tastefully filmed from an angle between Leeza's legs. Later she goes to take a shower and is interrupted by a fat Mexican UPS deliveryman in a pink straw cowboy hat. Finally, when Leeza goes out in the backyard in a bathing suit to work on her tan, a bloated surfer wannabe whose dialogue makes Angel look witty and articulate comes by to cut the grass. That night, Tom finds the black book again (cue the red light). There he reads about all three men plowing his wife. The TV repairman impresses Leeza with his karate skills, then impresses the gorillas in the audience with his copious back hair. Once the deliveryman gets inside the house, he picks up a peculiar speech impediment - he has an irresistible urge to provide himself with sound effects. He follows every phrase that comes out of his mouth with whale-like sounds for no particular reason. Leeza invites him into the shower with her. He strips down to nothing but his stupid freaking hat. His back fat jiggles like a sack full of pudding whenever he moves. As for the lawn guy, he rubs lotion on Leeza's legs, then invited her back to his "bitchin' bachelor pad," A.K.A. his van.

No matter how you look at it, this is not a sign of a well-adjusted individual.

Something about his wife having sex with three different men in one day doesn't sit well with Tom. He screams at Leeza, but not about her massive sluttitude. Instead, he goes psycho over the bills that are piling up, and demand that she go to stay with her mother until their financial troubles are over. She leaves in a taxi the next morning, like he asks. That particular morning happens to take place in the late afternoon, but hey, that's daylight savings for you. The TV repairman comes back with the fixed set and immediately asks Tom if his wife is around. Real subtle, there, backfur. At least he didn't say, "Gee, is your wife home, because I'd like to put my penis in her again." Tom asks for a karate demonstration, during which he breaks a bottle over the repairman's head, knocking him out. When the guy wakes up, he finds himself tied up with his hands over his head in the basement. Laughing like a hyena on crack, Tom slices him up with a chainsaw, then pulls out a section of his intestines and attaches it to a battery, electrocuting him. On the list of all time shittiest ways to die, that's up there. It's no death by butter, but it's pretty bad. Tom places a call to UPS, asking them to pick up a package at his house. Again, since this movie takes place in a magical world of fairies, elves, and same-day service, they do. He also calls the lawn service to get them to send the lawn guy back. Everything is falling into place, thanks to coincidences that would never possibly happen in real life.

Shortly thereafter, while Tom is burying the body in the backyard, the lawn guy shows up. Tom knocks him out with a shovel, then buries him standing up in the yard, with his head and hand above ground. Tom takes three solid minutes to unlace his boot so he can stick his sock in the guy's mouth, then uses the lawn guy's own lawnmower to chop of his hands and the side of his head. We cut to Tom standing on a ladder, doing something on the roof that involves a screwdriver. Your guess is as good as mine. The deliveryman comes into the backyard to see why no one is answering the door. Tom drops the screwdriver through the top of his skull. I know Tom is standing on a ladder and all, but he's really not that far above the deliveryman, and that screwdriver digs right in. I guess all those years of wearing that moronic hat made the top part of his skull all squishy. Tom magically manages to fit the deliveryman's entire body into one garbage bag, or so tricky camera shots (i.e., pointing the camera somewhere else) would have us believe, then sticks the bag inside a barrel and lights it on fire. It's the perfect crime, except... what's that oddly familiar music?

Bwat - bwat - bwat -bwat -BWAAAAAAAAAAT - bwat! Bwat bwat bwat!

That's right, it's Mrs. Palmer! She watches the whole thing through a whole in the fence. The problem, though, is that her location is really inconsistent. We see her on the outside of the fence making stupid faces, then she's next to the house, examining a bucket of blood that Tom left out for the garbage men to pick up. She clearly walks around the fence and into the backyard, but in the next shot she's outside the fence again. She is one sneaky old woman, let me tell you. She comes into the backyard again and demands to know what Tom is doing. He claims he's burning old clothes. She berates him for burning clothes when people are running around naked in Africa, then calls him a demon-worshipping hippie. Finally she accuses him of killing all those people, but offers him a deal - he kills her husband and she won't tell anyone what he's done. Instead, Tom jams a claw hammer under her chin and rips off her face. Then, just for posterity, he puts on her glasses. You know, somewhere along the line, this movie lost its class. He sticks her body in a trash bag and hides it in the guest room, right out in the open. It's the least obvious place!

Meanwhile, Leeza is at the office of Romping Romance magazine, which has just bought five of her erotic short stories for fifteen hundred bucks, which is apparently enough to solve all of their money troubles. The copyrighter at the magazine, appropriately names Jerkins, tries to hit on her, but Leeza swears that despite her stories, she is faithful to her husband. Uh oh! Looks like an obvious plot twist! She hurries home in a taxi, anxious to tell Tom the good news.

Zombie-Ben is just upset that he got killed by having a head thrown at him. I'd be upset, too.

Back at the house, Tom hears a knock at the door. He opens it, not even thinking to check if it's brain-eating zombies. Wouldn't you know it, it is! Ben is back as a zombie, accompanied by Angel's plastic zombie head. Ben explains that it wasn't their time to die, and they can't rest until Tom pays. Ben lobs Angel's head at his former best friend. She bites his crotch and holds on for dear life. Like I said, I hate Angel. Tom manages to pry her off and tosses her head in the trash. Ben advances on him, but Tom pulls off one of his arms. This doesn't really seem to bother Ben, she just uses the arm to smack Tom around a little. Zombie or not, there is little more badass on this planet than using your own dismembered limb to beat somebody. I just want to give credit where credit is due. Leeza arrives in a taxi, but she doesn't even make it to the door before the zombie-deliveryman, now burnt to a crisp and played by a different actor, leaps into her path and mutters the most halfassed "boo" imaginable. Leeza's reaction: absolutely nothing. I can't say I blame her. It's clear from his "boo" that this zombie's heart just isn't in it. The zombie-deliveryman drags Leeza inside while the zombie-TV repairman and zombie-lawn guy dig themselves out of the ground. Tom hides in the guest room, where Zombie-Mrs. Palmer tries to come back from the dead, but Tom pokes her with a broom, then strangles her until she shuts up. I've personally never faced a zombie before, so I have to assume that would work.

"Hey guys, let's do the Monster Mash. Come on, it'll be a graveyard smash, I promise!"

Tom runs out and pulls Leeza away from the zombie-deliveryman, who wasn't really doing anything to her, and the two of them run to the safety of the attic. Tom accuses her of sleeping with all of those guys, but she tells him that the black book was nothing but rough drafts of her stories for Romping Romance, so all of those people were innocent. Okay, now here's the problem I have with this: the male zombies came back to life because they were murdered for a crime they didn't commit. Sure, fine, whatever. But what about Mrs. Palmer and Angel? Tom never thought that they slept with his wife, he just killed them for shits and giggles. That wasn't injustice, it was just Tom being a dick. By that logic, anyone who is ever murdered under any circumstances should get to come back as a zombie and kill their killer. Jesus, Tim Ritter, you really dropped the ball on that one, logistically speaking. Well, anyway, the zombies can't get into the attic, but Tom forgot about the zombie-electrician, whose body he left up there! He's not exactly threatening, but he is there. Actually, I think Tom and Leeza together could probably take him. In any event, the zombies bicker over who should get to kill Tom until Zombie-Ben comes up with the rather equitable idea of making Tom kill Leeza in front of all of them. Tom pretends to agree to the idea, but leans in close to Leeza and whispers a horribly dubbed plan to escape once they reach the living room. The zombies escort Tom and Leeza to the living room, where Tom promptly forgets his brilliant escape plan and instead kills himself by slitting his throat with a hacksaw. Nice plan, there, jackass.

The zombies are satisfied with this turn of events, and they all go out the back door and leap into a single grave in the backyard. Well, all of them except for Angel's head. She's still in the trash. Confused and shaken up, or so I assume since she has absolutely no ability to emote whatsoever, Leeza stumbles out onto the front steps. Suddenly, a Zombie-Tom bursts through the boards beneath her and wiggles his fingers semi-menacingly. The end credits start to roll, scored by a godawful song that recaps every moment of the plot, including the specific method of each murder. I assume Tim Ritter wrote that, as well. I assume Tim Ritter should never be allowed to write anything ever again.

"Killing Spree" is a solid attempt at a horror movie that is marred somewhat by the fact that it makes absolutely no sense. Zombie logic aside, there is not a single character who has a rational moment in the entire movie. Tom never confronts Leeza about what he found in her black book. Leeza never tells Tom that she's writing smut about his best friend, as well as every other man who comes to the house. Leeza never suspects anything, even when Tom is constantly cleaning and Ben disappears. And what the hell was up with Stewmaster? The sound was another huge problem. Half the dialogue was lost to clipping or poor microphone usage, and the other half was bad enough to make me long for the clipping. When there was music in the movie, it was ludicrously bad synthesizer crap that made a Polonia score seem classy and appropriate. Most of the score wasn't even melodic. It sounded like a toddler was allowed to bang the keys at random. However, I do have to give points to Asbestos Felt for having a huge range of intensely entertaining facial expressions, even if most of them have no place in civilized society. Man, Asbestos Felt. That name kicks ass. It's way better than Stewmaster.

– Ben "Greasnin" Platt