DVD Artwork
Before I start ripping Ulli Lommel’s “movie,” BTK Killer, the bleeding asshole it so richly deserves, let me give a funny bit of personal information about the creation of this review. I attempted to watch this thing nine times. Nine fucking times. No emergencies came up that prevented me from finishing it. I didn’t get an important phone call in the middle. I was just bored. One time, the dryer went off and I just started folding clothes. Once I was having some kind of twisted fantasy about Kitty Pryde. You know how it goes. My mind just kind of drifted off.
So on a rainy Friday afternoon, I figured I would give it another shot. I have owed this review to Joe Horror for over two weeks. However, I now believe Joe Horror owes me at least a bottle of Jagermeister. This was absolute murderous hell to watch. In fact, you readers owe me a debt of gratitude. Once again, I am about to save all of you from a very bad movie. Heed my warning. Don’t let my sacrifice be for naught.
BTK Killer starts with a nightmare. There’s cattle mutilation, a cow tongue licking a white-thonged tunnel of love. A cow brain sits on a naked woman’s stomach. A dog enters the room and begins eating its way through the woman’s skin. It is the dream of news anchor Lacey Peterson, (Ivy Elfstrom), who has been reporting on the return of the BTK Killer. BTK has singled her out and is sending her little love-letters, such as, “I will bind your hands, eat your flesh, blah blah blah.” It sounds like an amateur BSDM/Goth chat room.
Watching the report is the man himself, Dennis Rader (Gerard Griesbaum), sitting with his wife, who is understandably nervous. After he comforts her, he begins reminiscing on all the killing he’s done, so we flashback to Wichita, Kansas, 1974. The most hilarious I’m-trying-to-be-evil voiceover ever tells us that he won’t change his M.O.—Bind them, Torture them and Kill them.
His first victim gets to meet Rader and his box of rats. After she refuses to disclose the location of her car keys, he chains her wrists together and gags her. Rader keeps telling the lady to relax. She informs him that she knows who he is. He’s the dog catcher. She realizes that Rader is the BTK Killer, because she saw the story on the local news. Rader wonders how many people he has to kill before the national news picks up the story. Best line from this scene: “Show some respect! Tell the rat you like him.” What a great pick-up line that is, huh? “Hey, babe. Tell my rat you like him. Respect my rat.”
We go back to 2004, and we learn that Rader is a lay minister for the world’s smallest Catholic Church: six people and a couch in a room with white mini-blinds. Isn’t that ironic? Don’t you think? Imagine someone being driven mad by religion. Best line from this scene: “Father, can I read something from One Corinthians?”
And that’s pretty much the extent of BTK Killer, back and forth from the past to the present as the story of Dennis Rader unfolds. Oh, we do get slaughterhouse footage. I forgot about that. The only real gore in this movie is of animals being killed. Lommel may be trying to draw a comparison between doomed cattle and the killer’s victims, but he’s not quite skilled enough to do it. What we end up with is, and I’m being generous here, an homage to Mondo Cane and PETA commercials.
Rader brings a severed cow head into the home of his second victim. She really doesn’t seem to mind. It doesn’t even faze her. Same thing as before. Rader rambles on nonsensically about what he’s doing, what he’s going to do and why he’s doing it. You know what? We don’t care. Best line from this scene: “I’m the BTK, and I’m the last person you’ll ever see!”
Based on, inspired by or named after true events, BTK Killer is a perfect fit for the oeuvre of Ulli Lommel. It is absolute crap on a crap cracker. I can’t account for the accuracy of the script and how it relates to the real BTK Killer, who kept Kansas in fear for years. I don’t keep up with that stuff. My job is to tell you about the movie.
This movie is shot on video, which gives the entire flick the feel of one of those old ghost story television shows with Patrick MacNee. It’s too bright and oversaturated to give any real sensation of fear. And Lommel must have really gotten a great deal on that slaughterhouse footage because he uses it like crazy. Every ten minutes, we see the cow.
It’s like Twister: “Look, there’s a cow being killed! Oooh, there’s another one!”
“I think that’s the same cow.”
It is the same cow.
It’s also enjoyable to watch Rader break into the same house over and over again. A little furniture change for a new set-up, but the sameness is obvious.
Griesbaum as the young Dennis Rader looks frighteningly like a mid-‘90’s Eddie Vedder. He’s not really a bad actor, but when he starts screeching out his ridiculous speeches during the killings, it’s hard not to laugh (my favorite line, about earthworms: “They eat garbage! You make garbage! They don’t make garbage! They eat your garbage!”). He also says the letters “BTK” so often it sounds like a Burger King commercial for the new BTK Broiler. No one else in the movie made much of an impression on me.
Lommel is consistent in his work. His standards are low, his production values are bare-bones, his scripts wouldn’t fly in a mental hospital talent show and his recent wave of serial killer movies isn’t even good enough to be considered decent exploitation. This is bottom of the barrel, unenjoyable, irredeemable work.
I was able to stomach BTK Killer better than Lommel’s last outing, Green River Killer, but you must understand that doesn’t mean it’s good. Far from it. It is mind-numbingly bad.
There. I’m finished. And I’m angry and I need to take a shower to get rid of the stink of that movie. I wish something had distracted me. But I do this for you people. Even when I am forced to degrade myself by watching things like BTK Killer, I am proud to serve.
