It’s Badlands meets Bloodsucking Freaks in a non-stop trip down a highway paved with violated corpses in the indie nasty feature Sunset Strip Killers, directed by the neo-grindhouse maestro Chad Ferrin from a script by Timothy Croteau and Chuck Parello. As the year 1980 descends upon Los Angeles, nurse Carol Bundy (Susan Priver) is begging her landlord, Jack Murray (Brian Foyster), and Jeanette (Silvia Spross), his old lady, for all the savings they conned her out of when they pretended there was a cancer scare. Kicked out onto the street, she ends up running into Doug Clark (Max E. Williams), who does sound engineering on everything from rock to porn.
Doug takes Carol on a date to a porn set, where she meets John Holmes (Elli Rahn), Georgina Spelvin (Channy Crossfire), and Ron Jeremy (Joe Castro). Doug turns Carol into his S&M slave, forcing her to tolerate him screwing other strange women if he pleases. Carol is humiliated but swore an oath to do as her master pleases. After lots of emotional and sexual abuse, Carol is plunged into Doug’s darkest secret: that he likes to murder random women and later visit the bodies. Carol lets Doug know that she loves him so much that she wants to murder women for his pleasure…
This is greasy in the best way. The extremity of the sleaze sizzles over a black iron griddle of evil. Sunset Strip Killers brings up sensations from the depths of Hell, all packed up in a to-go bag. This movie is very salty and bad for your health, as these are blood-soaked, empty calories for your brain. And yes, it is a double bacon cheese double murderer special; perfect for late-night consumption. I can tell this description is already attracting the right subterranean entertainment crowd. Come closer and take a look, friends.
“… Doug takes Carol on a date to a porn set, where she meets John Holmes …”
In a highly effective move, Ferrin focuses the high-intensity exploitation on the killers as opposed to the victims. Instead of milking drawn-out victims’ deaths, most of the victims are killed off quickly through a bloody gunshot. The exploitation of the killer’s reactions and routines makes the quick kill scenes all the more chilling. Ferrin makes the audience swim with the sharks; the viewer can almost smell the sweat and decomposition that the murderers live in.
But, in true exploitation tradition, there is a lot of nasty fun to be had. One aspect that will have everyone on the planet’s amusement is the unavoidable resemblance due to hairstyles between Williams and a world-famous chef on TV. You will laugh so hard in places that your throat will be RAW! The biggest inappropriate payoff of Sunset Strip Killers is that Ferrin includes one of the most wonderful decapitations ever seen in a grindhouse movie.
The special effects used are stomach-turning in the best possible terms. The rubbery texture of the way the neck gives way takes the sequence to a level of brutality not seen since the guillotine. All longtime splatter fans, and anyone with a taste for the art of the ouch, will love this movie. It’s far from the first time the grindhouse method has been used to tell a true crime story, but Sunset Strip Killers is truly one of the most ferocious real-life horror pictures unleashed yet.
"…truly one of the most ferocious real life horror pictures unleashed yet."
