Sure, everybody has to take a little crap from the boss sometimes, but for this Circle Jerk roundtable he sent me home with a suitcase filled with explosive diarrhea and then ordered me to fill out a TPS report about it. Unfortunately, we here at the Tomb haven’t unionized yet, so I had no choice but to choke down Night Ripper, Aerobicide and Saw. Well, I suppose I only had to do one of the movies, but … um … I have no idea why I watched all three of them. What a dumbass, huh? But, I watched them, so I might as well rage against them with the power of review.

First up is Night Ripper, an excruciatingly plotless lump that comes painfully close to being an episode of “All My Children” if not for random cameos by a shadowy killer. Filmed entirely by camcorder with production values only slightly better than the videos of guys getting their scrotums punctured with golf clubs on “America’s Funniest Home Videos”, Night Ripper is the gripping story of a photographer, some people he knows and some other people who we don’t know getting killed. Almost all of the murder victims are random people, some of whom we find out later in exposition have a connection to Dave, a mild-mannered photography store owner-operator who we are forced to accept as the movie’s hero. Whilst taking vanity shots one day, Dave falls in love with a non-distinct foreigner who comes from a land where voice inflection and changing facial expression are forbidden. Other characters of note include Dave’s jealous fiancée, his best buddy (played by Larry Thomas, aka the Soup Nazi) and a plaid-draped caricature of a lesbian who, along with her lover, sets the gay and lesbian cause back 100 years – right back where Pat Robertson wants it. I think these characters had names, but they really don’t matter at this point. These characters drift in and out of the plot, leaving nothing but vague footprints in the cat crap-filled sandbox of filmdom.

The real star of the movie, at least for me, was the goofy synth soundtrack, which sounds just like a 9-year-old in mid-epilepsy seizure doing his best Jermaine Jackson impression on an inexpensive Casio. In fact, the cheesy soundtrack is so good, we’re treated to a 2-minute scene of the killer just driving around in a van listening to it. On the bright side, it is so loud is drowns out some of the dialogue, and it’s better than any of the viruses Diane Warren insists on inflicting upon on the world.

Anyway, thanks to a healthy dose of inane exposition, we learn that all the victims are young, hot models. We’re supposed to think the Soup Nazi is the killer, right down to a feigned attraction to Dave’s brain-dead love interest. But that strong blip on my Gaydar tells me the scene where the lesbian confesses to be infatuated with the foreigner – she’s burning my brain! – is too much to ignore. Yes, as if you cared, our killer is a vengeful lesbian who resents the world for frowning on femullets, oversized plaid shirts and k.d. lang. As dreadful as it is getting to the end – a long, dumb chase scene in an understocked mannequin warehouse – the audience is treated to a decently fun Crab People ending in which the knife-wielding lesbian (NOTE: I don’t have anything against lesbians, friends, but this character has no other identifiable qualities other than her extremely overt sexual orientation. Don’t blame me – some of my best girl friends claim to be bisexual in an attempt to get attention) somehow hands a butcher knife to a mannequin and gets stabbed by it. Sadly, Andrew McCarthy is no where in site. Neither are the police or our “hero,” who show up after the killer is dead from mannequin-inflicted stab wound. Folks, this is a bad, bad movie. It’s hard to tell if the moviemakers were trying to make a bad movie – it’s hard to imagine anyone being this inept – or if this just sucks more than anything I’ve ever seen. There is some killing, but there’s a lot more people talking in ‘70s apartments and other soap opera fare. If this was someone trying to make a bad movie, I think there would have been more killing than there was. Whatever’s going on here, it defies actual analytical thought process. All thought is swallowed up or drown out with keyboard music. Sadly, it’s better than the next movie the proprietor of this fine website chose for me, Aerobicide.