VIDEO MURDERS
As bad as The Pit and almost as funny
Easily the worst-edited movie I've ever seen, Video Murders is a must-see for fans of truly awful movies.
It's not just editing. The microphone fails to pick up some dialogue (but you can tell it's not a tape problem, since the music keeps right on going). Crowd noises cut out for no apparent reason. And you've got to see the hair on the singer of this unspeakably bad 80's band about 30 minutes into this one.
There's a sicko named David Lee Shepherd out there, luring hookers into his hotel room so he can videotape himself strangling them. The cops try to find him.
Not that the cops are doing a very good job. They have his name. Since they know exactly which David Lee Shepherd they're looking for, you'd think they'd have his picture. You'd also think they'd know that he's driving a blue van the size of that planet-eating Doomsday Machine in that old Star Trek episode. Needless to say, they're at their wits' end.
I also like how they come across information that hookers have been killed in Seattle and San Francisco...and this takes place somewhere between Las Vegas and Miami...so they conclude there must be a serial killer at work! (as if the US doesn't lose some thirty million hookers a week)
Not that the cast is any smarter than the cops. One would- be victim - who must have been unimaginably lonely to have hit on the killer in the bar as persistently as she did - is being chased by the killer, and as she's about to go into a food market for protection (yes, it's open - she opens the door), she sees a newspaper with a drawing of the killer on the front. So what does she do? If you guessed that she went into the food market to use the phone, perhaps you're not cynical enough to enjoy a movie like this. No, she actually runs around looking for a PAY phone.
The dialogue's a hoot too, like when one cop is trying to put himself in the killer's head: "I can either run, or I can hide...so if I don't run, I must hide!"
One last rip into this movie's hilarious stupidity. The movie concludes with a "climactic" car chase in which the entire PD seems to be chasing this guy. At one point, it looks like they've boxed him in - if those cars forming the barricade at the end of the block stay where they are, the cops have got their man! So what does the officer in charge do?
He orders the cars at the barricade to back off, because if they let this guy through, they'll have him right where they want him.
And thus begins a chase which impossibly presupposes about a dozen arbitrary turns and detours, finally concluding when the killer is forced to stop. Then they chase him for a while on foot.
You can almost hear Chief Wiggum say "That's good work, boys!"
Hysterically awful. Not to be missed if you're a fan of so-bad-it's-funny.