Nightkiller

Claudio Fragasso is an oddly important figure in Italian filmmaking. What his films represent in his country's cinematic industry in some sense overshadow his actual role in. His film Troll 2 is a cult obssession and often viewed as the pinnacle of a crisis in Italian cinema and exemplary of the accumulated gimmicks and cost cutting procedures that had been introduced by an industry barely limping forward since the early 1980s.

Nightkiller is an odd film. I have no evidence to back it up (other than general trends in Italian exploitation cinema), but it seems like the script was intended as a psychological thriller, with certain superficial elements changed so as to capitalize on the success of the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. It is the only way I can explain the incongruity of a realistic (at least by Fragasso standards) story of a murdering rapist and the amnesic woman he's stalking, with the fog and expressionist shadow scenes of a Freddy Krueger look-alike ramming his claws through a series of arbitrary victims (in the same manner, every time).

Literally the Same Way...

Every Time

Granted, there are scenes showing the (night?) killer taking off his mask, but much like Friday the Thirteenth Part V this is a film that wants to have its cake and it eat it too. If the killer is simply someone in a mask, how is he able to punch through people with his (apparently rubber) claws and how is he able to summon the fog? To be fair, the "fog" I'm referring to could easily be the grain and bad compression from the vhs to DVD transfer. More on that later.

I think I would have enjoyed the film more if he had simply tried to plagiarize Nightmare on Elm Street. He is much more successful with supernatural material, and his often bizarre understanding of American film comes through in even his most derivative pictures. The Fragasso penned Hell of the Living Dead is a perfect example of the this.

I don't intend to attack his filmmaking or insult Fragasso. I actually think his work is impressive in its own odd way. Troll 2 remains one of my favorite films, and one that I can watch repeatedly. He has very odd sensibilities and I think that if he spent more of his time as a director working on horror films, he might have released a few more whacked out classics. Films like Nightkiller are perhaps not as interesting because he's working with more serious material.

Another issue with the film in its current form is that the only available copy comes from a terrible vhs dub. I personally would liked to have seen a decent dvd copy of the film, or even a vhs that looks slightly less noisy and washed out. The burnt in subtitles, do not improve the experience.

-Ryan