DVD Release
Amateur Porn Star Killer (2004)
R0 / NTSC DVD
Cinema Epoch / 2007
Directed by: Shane Ryan
Written by: Shane Ryan & Michiko Jimenez
Cast: Shane Ryan & Michiko Jimenez
Review by James Garfield
You mean there are professional porn star killers? No, the syntactically ambiguous title– is it an amateur porn star who kills, or a killer of amateur porn stars? –refers to one or both of the two main characters, who are amateurs and porn stars (one of them unwillingly), but only one of whom is a killer. Brandon (Shane Ryan) picks up Stacy (Michiko Jimenez) one late night and takes her back to a motel room, videotaping the action all the while. For a long time, Stacy sits on the bed while Brandon attempts to coax her out of her clothes. After she finally complies, she reveals that she is only thirteen, not eighteen as she previously claimed. This doesn’t deter the man behind the camera, who molests her while she feebly submits, obviously too intimidated to resist. Eventually Brandon attempts to smother her with a pillow and, failing that, just beats her to death.
It sounds shocking, but thanks to the stylistic attempt to be both realistic and cinematic, I emerged from viewing the film almost completely undisturbed. Maybe I’m just jaded, but pseudo-verite horror seems to have lost whatever effectiveness it had since the days of Cannibal Holocaust. Brandon obviously used some very low-end camera equipment, as for most of the film the image constantly jumps and jitters. Not as bad as The Blair Witch Project, but susceptible viewers may wind up with a headache, if not motion sickness. The improvised performances aren’t bad, and would be even better if we could hear what they’re saying most of the time—the actors tend to mumble a lot. There are long stretches of dead space, filled with silence and/or mumbling, which serve to bore rather than to increase tension. The intent was obviously to make something that looks like it would be just the sort of raw video a killer would make of one of his “conquests”, but then cinematic flourishes occur—ambient music on the soundtrack, occasional subtitles of the dialogue that whoosh onto the screen, and intermittent superimposed footage of Brandon with one of his other victims—that jerk us out of the “reality” of the situation.
I suppose a bright-side reviewer could call this a latter-day Andy Warhol film, although Warhol’s minimalist exercises were occasionally redeemed by the genuinely fascinating personalities he cast. Here, the aesthetics of boredom remove any entertainment value or disturbing quality the film potentially could have had. Amateur Porn Star Killer may best serve as motivation for apprehensive aspiring filmmakers: “If they made something that cheap and unexciting, and got fairly decent distribution, what’s my excuse?” (Having a classic sleaze title like Amateur Porn Star Killer undoubtedly helped.)
