A fairly shlocky attempt to cash in on the Manson family infamy (an ignoble endeavor, even by Hollywood standards) this film rises above the garbage level when it focuses on the boredom and monotony and sheer awfulness of teenage life in a small, Southwestern city. It is then that director Barry Shear manages to get at how a very creepy, twenty three year old, third rate sociopath like Skipper could appeal to high school girls and a few of their male colleagues. I also liked some of the performances, especially Barbara Bel Geddes as Skipper's enabler mom who runs a dodgy old folks home for dads, Ed Asner as an irrelevantly tough neighbor dad to one of Skipper's victims (lots of heavy, ineffectual father symbolism in this film) and Eddie Firestone as a cynically sinister lawyer. And Robert F. Lyons is very effective in making you want to take a hot mineral bath after spending a hundred minutes with his weak, sneering superciliousness. On the low end of the acting spectrum I found Belinda Montgomery and Richard Thomas way too over the top. The scenes where they are prominently featured are the weakest in the film, both dull and melodramatic. And the dialogue, as a previous reviewer has noted, is quite sucky. Perhaps one example will suffice, when Montgomery's character, a soon to be victim, tells Skipper, "Even though you're about to kill me I still love you." Wonder what went through scenarists Dennis Murphy and/or Joel Oliansky's minds as they wrote stuff like that? Or perhaps to be able to write stuff like that the mind must be inoperative? Solid C.
Review of The Todd Killings
