|
 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. |
