Director/writer Christopher Krueger rolls out a low-rent, high style neo-noir film in Killer Looks. Private Detective Charles Gunn (Vaughn Green) takes on a beautiful female partner named Alex (Katherine Flannery) to chase down a murder suspect. Gunn is old and soft, where Alex is young, hot, and 100% badass when it comes to hand to hand combat. She’s also quick with the clever puns and wisecracks.
It soon becomes crystal clear that the flimsy murder mystery narrative is a side-quest. This movie is about hot models, and there are plenty of them, occasionally topless. Alex winds up posing semi-nude in order to get information about the case. Despite her objections, she also masquerades as an escort to dig even deeper. The gags and goofs come a mile a minute. We see Green in drag, and jazzercise videos in the making, just to name a couple of the numerous sleazy set pieces.
“… it’s about hot models, occasionally topless…”
As Alex, Flannery takes the P.I. gig seriously, where Green’s Gunn is a screwball foil for the dirty jokes. Neither of them demonstrate much in the way of acting chops, but serious dramatic skill is not called for here. She’s the only one keeping any semblance of a murder mystery alive. Make no mistake, this is a show about boobs with a b-plot mystery. There are peeping toms, leering photographers, deranged killers, and sexist tropes of all shapes, sizes, and varieties. Politically correct, this film is not. Killer Looks falls into roughly the same category of Kitsch as the skeleton detective in Pro Bono 2: Maltese Falcon. When the film moves out of thirst trap mode and starts to focus on resolving the murder mystery, it runs out of gas. Mercifully, this is only the last 15 minutes or so.
In the denouement wrap-up scene Krueger provides an homage to 60’s TV show The Avengers: “… Alex wears a catsuit in homage to Diana Rigg’s character Mrs Peel.” There’s also a hint that the duo of Alex and Gunn could return in future adventures. If you can overlook the outdated take on women, Killer Looks is a light, goofy, neo-noir with a 90s vibe that doesn’t take itself too seriously. The saving grace is that Alex can beat Gunn’s (and everyone else’s) ass and he knows it. On the other hand, the film doesn’t claim to be anything other than what it is… a throwback to the early, adolescent “scrambled cinemax glimpse of nudity” movie days of our misspent youth.
"…Boob-centric neo-noir with a 90s vibe that doesn't take itself too seriously "
