Living Hell of Ulli Lommel: B.T.K. KILLER (2005)

Dennis Rader is hands down one of the creepiest serial killers. Active in Kansas from 1974 until his capture in 2005, Rader ticked all of the serial killer boxes from selecting victims at random to sending taunting Zodiac-like communications. What rockets him to the top of the creepy list are the photos that he took of himself in various stages of self bondage. Seriously, Google “Dennis Rader” + “bondage photos” just to see them. Rob Zombie wishes he could capture something as horrifying as this church-going, Boy Scout-leading pillar of the community. It also reinforces what I consider the most terrifying thing ever in that we can never truly know what is going on in someone’s head. Dennis Rader is also hands down one of the dumbest serial killers. Why? Outside of asking police “can you trace a floppy disk” leading to his capture, this dumbass decided to get arrested right when Ulli Lommel was starting his serial killer biopics. You just know Lommel was giddy when he heard of Rader’s arrest. "One more scheck von Lionsgate!” Nice job, Dennis! Thanks for making this worse for all of us. 

The film opens with a topless woman chained to a dirty mattress. A naked man places real dead animal parts over her body before allowing a dog to eat the pieces and presumably chow down on the victim. You know, just like Rader did, right? But wait! This is all just a dream of news anchor Laci Peterson (Danielle Petty, who wisely uses the pseudonym “Ivy Elfstrom”). Yes, I just knew Lommel wouldn’t screw up the details of Rader’s murders. Haha, just kidding. We’ll get plenty of true story screw ups down the line. Laci arrives at her job and, much to my shock, Lommel shoots in an actual newsroom soundstage. She is told that B.T.K. has sent in a new letter that arrived at 6:21am. “The same time as my dream,” she says. Don’t worry, none of that will matter (get used to that). Laci is hesitant to cover the serial killer, but her slimy producer says the public craves the B.T.K. killer “just like the Christians need the Devil.” As Laci delivers the latest news, we see Dennis Rader (Eric Gerleman) and his wife (the ubiquitous Nola Roeper) watching the news. She can’t believe this is happening again and he bemoans the cops and says “they didn’t want me to help.” Shockingly, the guy playing Rader looks a bit like him. Well, he’s bald, wearing glasses and has a mustache. If you are floored that Lommel and his team got a fact right, just wait a few seconds. 

Cut to March 1974 and we see a younger Rader (Gerard Griesbaum) working as a dog catcher (a job he never had until the 1990s) and scribbling in his notebook. The patented voiceover tells of his desire to kill for sexual thrills and that he will “bind them, torture them, kill them” regarding his victims. The fact that Lommel didn’t screw up what B.T.K. stood for is actually blowing my mind. Of course, this is all for naught since his 1970s Rader sports long hair pulled back in a ponytail, which is certainly a look that the conservative Rader never, ever sported. To make matters worse, he later talks to his two sons, when in reality Rader has a son and daughter. We then get Rader’s first murder. B.T.K.’s first crime involved killing a family of four, so, naturally, Lommel has Rader attacking a lone woman named Nancy. The scene involves him torturing her by shoving rats in her face while crying he isn’t getting any national publicity. Wait…why would he have any attention when he hasn’t even committed his first murder yet!? Lord help the lazy college student who did a paper on B.T.K. and rented this for reference. It should be noted that this section shows Lommel adding two new filmmaking techniques to his serial killer oeuvre. First, he dazzles with an editing bit where he will show the same line FOUR times: once normal, once upside down, once reversed, and once sideways. Fuck my life. Second, he does something so goddamn disgusting, infuriating, and morally bankrupt that I’m not going to discuss it until the second murder in the film (where it is highlighted the best/worst). Cut back to 2004 where we see Rader and his wife in church. I have to admit the threadbare church set did give me a slight laugh as it is just a couch with some crosses thrown on the wall. 

Rader reads a psalm before the priest mentions that B.T.K. has returned as reported by congregation member Laci Peterson. Ah, so there is the connection! Don’t worry, none of that will matter. Lommel uses this moment to transition back to June 1974 with the younger Rader and family in church. Amazingly, the decor hasn’t changed in 30 years and Ulli does a cowboy hatless cameo as a priest. We then see Rader stalking his next victim, a psychiatrist named Dolores (emelle; yes, just emelle and lowercase as her IMDb bio demands). Rader leers through her office door as she is shown taking notes and cracking peanuts. You know, like psychiatrists often do. Because normal stuff like scene transitions or character interactions are verboten to Lommel, the scene cuts from Rader outside to inside her office. Oh, did I forget to mention there is now a REAL skinned cow’s head on her desk that she completely is nonchalant about? Seriously! Rader tells her that her name Dolores comes from “dolor” in Latin which means pain and then begins to torture her while asking, “Have you ever been to a slaughterhouse?” This leads me to the vile directorial decision I mentioned in the previous paragraph. Yes, Herr Lommel has embraced his inner Nazi and decided to show REAL footage of animals being killed in a slaughterhouse during all of his murders. Given his use of real autopsy footage and pics of dead fetuses in the previous features, this horrid decision should hardly surprise, but goddamn I don’t need this shit. Seriously, if I had a time machine, I would go back to stop Ulli Lommel. Or, at the very least, stop myself from suggesting this terrible video mission. I don’t want to dwell on the negative (which is a lot), so let me just present this screenshot of the exterior of the psychiatrist’s office, which offers so many “WTF is going on here?” objects in one frame: 

We're then back to 2004 to one of the most baffling things I’ve seen in a Lommel serial killer flick so far. Laci has received a new letter from B.T.K. asking, “What’s my name, Laci?” We then cut to her in her bedroom with Eric. Who is Eric? No idea as he is never mentioned before or seen again after this. We can only assume he is Laci’s boyfriend. Anyway, she woos him by saying about her bedroom, “I know it’s modest compared to your mansion.” Now is as good a time to mention this but all of the sets in this look like they were filmed in a furniture store. In fact, if you look closely behind Laci in some of these shots, you can make out what appears to be another bed display. WTF? Cut back January 1975 and the Rader family is having dinner with a family friend. Rader revels in hearing one of his sons tell the story of Boy Scouts of America founder William Dickson Boyce while also fantasizing about strangling their guest. We then trudge along to our next murder as Rader attacks Miss Hedge. After restraining her, he torments her with his basket full of scorpions, a tarantula, a snake and worms. A news report then says her husband was arrested as a B.T.K. suspect and that there are nine confirmed victims. NINE!?! A quick search shows Rader had only killed five people by this time. As I say in every Lommel review, if only the filmmakers had access to some type of machine that could spit out the correct info for them. 

Mercifully, the film wraps up by jumping back to 2005 and the news producer is hassling Laci for not wanting to give in to B.T.K.'s demand to read his poetry on air. This is my favorite bit because a) the producer recoils in fear when Laci utters the work “fuck” to him and b) he later says, “You have a show to do at 6, which starts in 12 minutes.” Above his head is a clock that looks like it reads 10:45 clock. Laci does her report and Rader is watching. I about died when she says they won’t give into his demands and Lommel cranks up a soft rock piano-heavy love ballad, suggesting Rader’s heart is broken. Sample lyrics: 

Put aside these sad, unhappy endings 

Tear me from the world that’s gone and turned its back on you 

Who knows what tomorrow is beginning 

All I really know is that I want to be with you 

We get one more flashback to 1979 as Rader attacks a lady in a warehouse. Rader pulls out raw meat, tells her it is “the smell of death” and covers her face with the raw meat. This scene really bothered me, but probably not as Lommel intended. The idea of this poor actress having raw meat shoved in her mouth made me fear her getting E. coli. There is a lot of raw meat utilized in this scene and I’m sure safety precautions weren’t even a consideration. Our last onscreen text says it is now March 2005 and “One Fatal Mistake.” This is doubly hilarious because the filmmakers are referring to Rader sending the police a disc that helped identify him, but also because, as expected, Lommel gets the arrest date wrong since the real Rader was apprehended on February 25, 2005. Hell, at this point I guess I should be happy they got the right year. One Rebecca Schwarz is usually credited with doing research in these films, so let’s toss some virtual tomatoes her way. Unless, of course, that name is just another Ulli pseudonym. 

Jeez, what can I say about this film that I haven’t said above? It is trash. Total trash. Even if we didn’t have the horrible animal scenes, I’d still rank it in my top 3 worst films. I mean Lommel shoots in his “studio” (aka furniture warehouse) and routinely captures the tops of his “sets” or the random stuff piled up in the background. I did get one laugh where Rader restrained a victim and his mumbling is rendered hard to hear by the music soundtrack. I watched it again with the subtitles on and I see the subtitler just gave up (see pic). I feel you, bro. Anyway, we haven’t mentioned it yet, but several of these films feature audio commentaries by Lommel on them. I decided to check this one for two reasons. One to see how quickly Lommel namedrops Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Two to see how quickly something utterly pretentious is spewed forth. That thump you hear around the 5 minute mark is Fassbinder getting his name dropped. Naturally, Lommel does it in a way that makes himself look better, stating he made ten movies in fourteen months while the best his old director Fassbinder could do was four in a year. The pretension arrives just a few minutes after that as Lommel mentions this film was shot in a way to mimic reality TV shows. Producer Jeff Frentzen then hits a head-stuck-up-his-own-ass home run by saying their pioneering style on these films was “moving beyond what is already known.” Annnnnnnnnnnnnd eject! Nope, sorry, can’t do it. I’m out.

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Living Hell of Ulli Lommel: CURSE OF THE ZODIAC (2007)

Did I declare Lommel's THE BLACK DAHLIA (2006) to be the worst film ever? I'm beginning to think it was his life's ambition is to prove me wrong with every successive movie. "Oh, you think that was bad, motherfucker? Check this out!" You can hear his voice rising from his grave, too, right? It's not just me. Because of the rampant suck-sess of Ulli Lommel's ZODIAC KILLER (2005) and the box office flop of the solid David Fincher film ZODIAC (2007), what could make Lionsgate happier than a sequel(ish)? Yes, contrary to the normal definitions of sanity and reason, a very small segment of the human population actually wanted Ulli Lommel to make another Zodiac movie. It boggles the mind, but apparently not the off-shore bank account.

If you've had the misfortune to see BOOGEYMAN II (1983), you'd be forgiven to think that in 2007 Ulli Lommel would add even a hint of the first film into his sequel, even if it means inserting footage from the original to pad out the running time. Ha! Continuity is for suckers, man! Yep, this sequel has literally nothing to do with the original, except for the fact that the killer says his name is "Zodiac," as in like "Smith, Zodiac Smith". And for the record, nobody in the movie wears a hoodie, nobody has a glowing eye and San Francisco is not upside-down. Well, not in the movie anyway.

Astonishingly, this outing is set and shot (on what appears to be a cell phone) in San Francisco instead of L.A. as the previous one was! Amazing! Of course, that's where the innovations end and we have another meandering, repetitive, adlibfest. That's actually not true. Now we have a bald guy (Jack Quinn) with zodiac tattoos on the back of his neck, wearing big puffy black gloves, wandering around the streets of SF while a non-stop stream of consciousness internal monologue drones over the audio track with heavy reverb. While he wanders around, thinking stuff unfit for a family newspaper, a waifish young woman (Cassandra Church, who could easily be cast in a Shelly Duval biopic) has nightmare visions of the Zodiac killing his victims. She does this between arguments with her narcissistic boyfriend (Lee Mercer). The arguments... So. Many. Arguments. To be clear, these "visions" are typically in no way differentiated at all from the "style" of rest of the movie. These things just start happening with absolutely no context whatsoever, except sometimes they cut to shots of this Skinny Girl asleep in bed or on the sofa. Just sort of whatever Ulli felt like doing at the time. Don't disrespect his art!

Since the real life Zodiac Killer attacked three couples (five of the six were murdered) during his short run in the late '60s, Ulli decides to have his usual non-actors adlib scenes of couples arguing while the killer wanders the streets, thinking his thoughts and making phone calls to an alleged police detective who he only refers to as "Fat Fuck" or "Fat Ass" because Ulli doesn't have the patience to script dialogue, so why even bother with character names? This is practically the entire movie. I'm sure Ulli considered himself an experimental artist, but this is so incredibly lazy, sloppy and bereft of talent that is pretty much unwatchable and at one point, I'm not making this up, it prompted my fight or flight response and took all of my willpower not to eject the DVD and hurl it like a frisbee out of my front door.

While wandering the streets of San Francisco, Zodiac calls up Fat Fuck, Zodiac (voiced by Ulli, under the pseudonym Rick Van Cleef) taunts Fat Fuck (Jon E. Nimetz) telling him that he is going to kill a prostitute in the "North Eastern part of the city," which, if you actually lived in SF, would be referred to by it's district nickname, like "North Beach" or "The FiDi" (Financial District). Fat says nothing and just listens and smokes. Zod then walks around some more and we hear his stream of consciousness thoughts via VO that just never end. While scoping out his first victim, we hear him ramble "Hey, little bitch, it's me, the Z-man. Can you feel me? Can you touch me? Do you know my name? It's Zodiac. Z. O. D. I. A. C." Words fail me to describe how monotonous (literally) and dull this is. I could go out on the street and hear this kind of ranting, why am I watching this in a movie?

A presumed pimp and hooker are ad-lib arguing while our Skinny Girl watches them in something that I guess is supposed to be horror, but looks more like total disbelief. Much like the audience, I assume. Maybe she's reacting to the improved dialogue as the hooker yells "You're at ten o'clock! I'm at 2am, baby! I am four hours beyond... your ass!" This extended scene of arguing ends, possibly because the non-actors couldn't think of anything else to say and Zodiac shoots the prostitute in a public toilet, even though the argument was taking place in a garishly decorated home and the girl is never shown entering a public restroom! It appears that Ulli dressed up a public restroom to look like a kitchen, with a rack of dishes on the sink! Why? I don't know! It's just bizarre. To be honest, the dishes in a public toilet is easily the most disturbing thing in a movie about a magically teleporting serial killer.

After more Zodiac wandering and ranting, we finally discover that the Skinny Girl is having dreams about the Zodiac killing people. We find this out because she's having an improv argument with her unsupportive boyfriend which makes Skinny Girl wander around the streets of SF while Zodiac follows her thinking "hey bitch, I love ya face, I love your ass, I love your legs, bitch!" Deciding to get even more "artistic", Ulli has a couple adlib arguing (about going to a family reunion) and intercuts it with Zodiac taunting Fat Fuck on the phone while Skinny Girl has a vision of Zodiac shooting the previously arguing girl. This abruptly leads to Skinny Girl suddenly being in Fat Fuck's tiny room and telling him about her visions, and in response, Fat huffs and puffs on a cigarette, sighs heavily, sucks air through his teeth and manages to mutter things like "I'm confused". Honestly, I have no idea where Ulli finds these people, but this guy (who went on to appear in Lommel's BASELINE KILLER in 2008) can't do improv to save his life. Watching him struggle like a fish on a hook, desperately trying to come up with something to say for several minutes, is pure torture in and of itself.

We eventually get to a scene in which the other worst actor ever is playing a piano, talking in falsetto to an Asian girl about his problematic childhood, while Zodiac muses "I love a steak, medium-rare, but this fuckin' fag piano fag (sic) is gonna have his ass fried. Once I'm done with him, he'll be praying that he never played the piano in the first place." As a break from this grueling lack of talent, we get to see the Skinny Girl taking a street car ride while her internal monologue drones over the soundtrack, followed by yet another arguing couple, more montages of the city, faces, corpses and bridges, all in black-white-green and color.

One of the funniest bits occurs when Ulli tries to do a jump-scare and utterly fails. Ulli attempts a nightmare sequence, which is mostly just nightvision shots of Skinny Girl looking into the camera, and caps it off with a shot of Skinny Girl sitting on the edge of her bed and a pair of hands grabbing her shoulders from behind while, off-camera, Ulli yells "raaaah!" like a little kid. This was easily the most entertaining moment in the film, which admittedly isn't much. And then we are right back to Couples Improv Argument Theater. To his credit, Ulli does decide to make one of the couples sequences non-argumentative. This blessed relief is broken by yet another incredibly long internal monologue from Zodiac, which, in order for you to understand how bad this is, I will transcribe in part here: "You little hippy girl, fag lovin' hippy chick. What am I going to do with you? What do you want me to do with you? Do you want me to slice you up into pieces? You want me to carve out your heart? Your liver? Your kidneys? You want me to slice up your ass, hippy girl? Is that what you want? Do you like my place?" (note that this is shot on the street) "I don't have guests over here usually. I don't get people high, I hate drugs, I hate sex, and I hate that goddamned rock and roll, especially that British Invasion that made our kids sick to the stomach (sic), has influenced them all in a terrible way. Eh, hippy girl? Do you like The Beatles? Do you like The Stones? Do you like David Bowie? All these British fags? Hey hippy girl, are you a fag? You got a penis? Show me you got a penis, you got a penis, don't you? You're a fag with a penis, hippy girl." And so on. Clearly, at the ripe old age of 73, Ulli is still working out some deeply personal issues. 

I've been going on about how horrible the improv is, but one of the best bits comes when, after yet another couples argument, in a public restroom, a girl breaks up with her boyfriend because he won't move to L.A. with her (smart guy) and is adjusting her lipstick in the mirror and says "Left in the fucking men's room again. Same old story." What? Really? Damn, and I thought my social life sucked. Hey, I'll take whatever tiny moments of joy that this movie can provide. Another "great" moment is when Fat Fuck goes to a party where everyone is doing "drugs" (that's a candy bracelet!) and gets picked up by a hooker. Fat brings her to his pad and when she says "what do you want?" he says "a cigarette". Yes, he actually breaks off his tryst to go get a cigarette, which will take "10 minutes" (!?), leaving her on the sofa. The Zodiac has been following them with his usual internal monologue and somehow this prompts the hooker to climb up to a small window near the celling (accidentally tearing down the curtains), stick her face right in it and somehow Zodiac reaches in the now missing window, holds the gun in her mouth for ages and then shoots her, causing her head to lay facing the opposite direction in a completely different window! Fat returns and is bizarrely disappointed, softly sighing "fuuuuuck," as if he just accidentally dropped a nickel in a storm drain.

After more wandering around the streets, Zodiac calls up Fat and yells at him to "read the book", which *bampf* appears on his desk.  It's the magic of movie convenience; *bampf* people just suddenly appear places and stuff happens. Like I said, continuity is for suckers. Zodiac's book is a photo album with sheets of paper covered in cyphers inserted in the cardboard pages. As Fat flips through the pages, Zodiac appears behind him and shoots him in the back of the head. We get a few epilogue cards saying that the killer was never caught and then *bampf* Skinny Girl appears in Fat's room, sees the bloody book and closes it. What a stunning visual metaphor. It means that I can stop watching this crap. Just a few of Ulli Lommel's serial killer fantasies is enough to kill more brain cells than a life-time of Whippet hits.

Opening with Ulli's now patented rapid montage of B&W and color close-ups of faces, corpses, city landmarks, etc, in a desperate grab for artistic pretention, we get a few prologue cards giving a brief, vague rundown of the Zodiac case. Previously I have accused Lommel of not giving even a single shit about any sort of historical accuracy. I could have made the argument that he's just an idiot who couldn't be bothered to open a book (or a wiki page). If this had been made by a younger person, ignorance would have been a safe bet, but this guy has been around long enough, he knows the history, he knows how to make a film, he just does not care. Which, if there was any justice in the world, it would say on his tombstone.

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Living Hell of Ulli Lommel: KILLER PICKTON (2006)

The other day something odd hit me about our Ulli Lommel hell marathon. During the first four reviews, Tom ended up getting two titles where Lommel does terrible fanfic about the title characters, whereas I got standard serial killer biopics that stumble from one murder to the next. The odd part is when we started this project we picked these titles totally at random. Tom said, “I’ll tackle THE ZODIAC KILLER” and I said, “Okay, I’ll snag GREEN RIVER KILLER.” Honestly, I’m not sure who got the better end of the deal as it is like being told you are going to have your toes snipped off by garden shears or scissors. Either way, you suffer. It is even odder that I picked the story of Robert William “Willy” Pickton to follow Gary Leon Ridgway. The Canadian Pickton is said to have killed 49 victims while the American Ridgway was charged with killing 49 victims. The cases are so similar, right down to the police not doing their best since a majority of the victims were prostitutes. Heck, the two killers were arrested within three months of each other. The universe has a plan. Unfortunately, watching these movies is part of it. 

The film opens with some on screen text stating that the Canadian Government has banned all information on Pickton and how it is an affront to our freedom of expression. Damn, Ulli already back on his bullshit. It is also a rather dubious claim since everyone knows about him, but we will get into that a bit later. We get the “film” off properly with a girl’s corpse being fed into a woodchipper and some rather twisted shots of Pickton (producer Jeff Frentzen, who also convinced his parents to use their house) terrorizing a prostitute with a severed pig’s head while oinking. I feel your pain, girl. We then cut to Pickton in custody and talking with authorities. This allows Lommel to unveil his patented “voice over does the heavy lifting” routine as various questions are asked. It is revealed that Pickton started picking up and killing girls in the early 1980s and that he was D.S.A.F.. When asked what the acronym means, one person replies, “Doing society a favor.” This is visualized by showing Pickton put a woman’s body in a garbage can and hauling it out to his woodchipper. Viewers should get used to this montage as they’ll be seeing it A LOT. We then get an extended scene of Pickton preparing some ground meat. This scene just goes on and on and on. The voiceover mentions Pickton and his siblings inherited their family’s multi-million dollar farm. The next scene has Pickton sitting with his brother and sister for a meal, allowing for the film’s lone highlight to appear early on. As his siblings chow down on what we assume are human-infused sausages, Lommel cuts to Pickton’s plate and, I kid you not, it has one large raw carrot and two pieces of asparagus on it. Seriously. Here is my early Christmas present to you: 

The sister then comments that the family business is preparing to sell their sausages nationwide in supermarkets. While there are rumors Pickton did serve human meat to people, I doubt it was on this grand scale. Pickton then wanders around the family farm before settling down to listen to some tapes of himself torturing victims. Another monotonous voice over has him delivering the worst spoken word poetry ever as he says, “Women, dirt. Women, scum. Women, bitch. Women, cunt. Women, death. Women, burn. Women, hell.” Jesus, what’s his Andrew Tate subscriber number? As with the woodchipper montage, viewers should get used to this audio clip as they’ll be hearing it A LOT. 

That seems to be quite a bit of set up for a Lommel serial killer biopic, so he finally settles into Lionsgate’s preferred “kill after kill” routine. The next victim is shown being picked up at a bus stop and is taken back to Pickton’s sister’s house. He gives her a spiked drink, which hits her within ten seconds of taking her first sip. Damn, I wish I had some of that while watching all of these Lommel flicks! Shockingly, we get a deviation from the plan as a cleaning lady arrives and Pickton just lets her in. The ubiquitous voiceover mentions the cleaner reported the strange incident, but the authorities didn’t care. We then get the patented garbage can scene before he puts the victim’s hand in a meat grinder. 

We then cut to the brother and sister discussing their brother’s issues. The sister responds by saying, “Lord knows he has a right to enjoy himself. Always so withdrawn and lonely.” In rather quick succession, we get more murder montages with each girl being picked up at the exact same bus stop location. Sharp-eyed viewers will catch this Canadian set location with Boston, Massachusetts advertising on it (see pic below). I’m sure if Ulli was around he would argue the utilization of the same location was to show the banality of Pickton’s actions or some bullshit. The next victim is taken to his house and fed booze and pills. When she is barely conscious, Pickton forces her to eat pills off each stair of the staircase. It is here that Lommel commits a rather disgusting bit as the voiceover says the victim was pregnant and bits of the fetus were found in Pickton’s freezer. Not content to rely on such vile mental imagery, Lommel then cuts to two shots of real aborted fetuses on screen. Seriously, fuck off. Enter the garbage can and woodchipper. The next victim is taken to the house and has her face shoved into a pile of cocaine before being chased around the property and killed. Shockingly, Lommel doesn’t reuse the woodchipper scene and instead has Pickton bury her alive and then stab the dirt. The scene ends with Pickton planting a cross on the grave and saying, “I piss on your grave, bitch.” So, Ulli, tell me about your mother. 

This carnage is juxtaposed with some bizarre scenes trying to somehow establish Pickton had a good side when he wasn’t grinding up women into hogslop. We see him encounter three hiking teenagers and he helps one of them with a spider bite. We see him pet his dog. We also see him read the Bible with a prostitute in a hotel. This girl escapes him as he gently falls asleep and she places a big ol’ cross on his chest. Later, his sister asks him about the fresh grave she spotted on the property and Pickton says he buried his dog Hogan. She says she just saw the dog and he says, “Oh, it must have, um, been another dog then.” Damn, no wonder this dude outsmarted the cops for two decades. He’s a freakin’ criminal mastermind. Ah crap, I forgot to mention that ol’ Ulli has Pickton constantly having dreams of a woman recording a man who seems to be dying. This all culminates with Pickton revealing that he hates his mother because she recorded his father dying and forced him to watch. Uh, yeah.

Amazingly, as the film wraps up we actually get something interesting inserted into this cadaver cavalcade. Pickton picks up Annie (Heidi Rhodes) at the bus stop, of course, and they go back to his sister’s house. Sitting outside in the woods, Annie says to him, “How is your attic? You must have a nice attic.” Now I’ll admit this nonsensical dialogue got a huge laugh out of me, but it actually leads to the film’s most interesting part. Annie mentions as a child her best friend was the ghost of a war veteran in her attic and her conversations with him were “the last time the world felt whole. The last time I felt promising, I was in the attic.” Annie and Pickton hang out in the attic, take drugs, and then walk around the property before she asks, “What do you want to do now?” He replies, “I want to kill. I always do.” Back at the house, she reads him some Edgar Allan Poe before asking him how many people he has killed. Stoic in her realization she will die, she simply says, “Can you put me to sleep first?” This whole section is actually engaging and offers a tiny dramatic window in what would compel a broken person to end up in this monster’s hands. I suspect the dialogue was all improvised and both actors - particularly Rhodes - play it really well. Alas, this ten minutes is too good to last and soon we are back to hauling the garbage can. The film ends with Pickton’s brother finding him in the barn with the can and the police saying they received an anonymous call to report him. On screen text states he was arrested on February 22, 2002, which is actually correct. I’d totally be overcome with joy that Lommel and crew got an arrest date right…had they not gotten it completely wrong in a faux newspaper shown earlier in the film! Make sure to read the text here too:

I’ll be honest when I say I seriously considered copying-and-pasting my earlier GREEN RIVER KILLER review to save myself some work (and sanity), especially since Lommel seems to have pretty much done the same thing. KILLER PICKTON is bottom of the barrel (garbage can?) stuff. Rather than sticking to any facts, Lommel is again doing his freeform jazz interpretation of reality. Lommel has all of the characters call him “Billy” instead of “Willy” like in real life. These films are so slapdash that I seriously wondered if that was a clever way to avoid being sued or just another screw up by Lommel and his team. Most likely the latter. Nowhere is this tenuous relationship with truth more on display than in the “subplot” of Pickton hating his mother and worshiping his father (again, footage most likely stolen from another Lommel project). I just did the tiniest bit of research on Pickton and the prevailing fact is he loved his mother and hated his abusive father. Leave it to Lommel to screw that up. Hell, can I really be surprised when their onscreen Pickton looks like a first year English Lit professor while the real life Pickton looked like Ed Harris on a meth bender: 

This brings me to my “more about that later” mention. In a rare bit of showmanship, Lommel tried to create some kind of controversy about this film with his planned release. Courting the press, he claimed his film was too controversial and he was pulling it. As he told The Globe and Mail in 2006: 

"It was supposed to be released in Australia next month, but I pulled the film," director Ulli Lommel said yesterday in an interview. "It will be on hold until [Mr.] Pickton is judged and then we'll see." Mr. Lommel also said he has abandoned plans to have the film distributed in Canada. "It cost me a lot of money, but I decided that it was the right thing, out of respect for the Canadian court and the victims. "I like Canada very much; I like Canadians. They are not as brainwashed as most of us, and I've always been treated really nice when I visited Canada," the German-born director said. 

What a bunch of irritating nonsense, especially for any Canadian officials who had to mentally devote a second to thinking about this film. Naturally, no one cared about his piece of shit film, but he tries to turn it into some kind of valiant and persecuted thing. What happened to the big, bad Ulli who moaned about “freedom of expression” in the opening credits? I’m sure if Lommel were around in the #metoo era he’d cancel himself and then run around screeching about how everyone was trying to cancel him. That lame attempt at “controversy” coupled with the shoddy filmmaking on display had me rocking on my couch saying, “Lommel, dirt. Lommel, scum. Lommel, bitch. Lommel, cunt. Lommel, death. Lommel, burn. Lommel, hell.”

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Living Hell of Ulli Lommel: THE BLACK DAHLIA (2006)

I know, I know. I declared THE ZODIAC KILLER (2005) something like "the worst movie ever", but I am here to tell you that I was wrong. I honestly had no idea how sharp the drop would be. Naively I thought, "hey, after a successful string of serial killer cheapies, Ulli may be inspired to invest more thought and creativity into the next one!" Yeah, yeah, I hear you laughing, but holy shit this movie is rough. Lionsgate knew what they wanted from a movie, as Will indicated in his coverage of GREEN RIVER KILLER (2005), Ulli associate Jeff Frentzen said in an interview: "Lionsgate was happy with the episodic 'kill scene after kill scene' approach and wanted more of that." With BLACK DAHLIA, Ulli served at his sugar daddy's command.

As I'm sure everyone knows, Elizabeth Short was a 22 year old woman, originally from Boston, who moved around quite a bit, but in 1946 settled in Los Angeles, reportedly with the intent to become an actress. Six months later, in 1947, Short's naked body was found in a vacant lot, cut in half at the waist. The cut was done surgically and the body cleaned with gasoline. There are a staggering amount of details in the case, with an equally staggering lack of answers, leading to a wealth of speculative fiction and speculative fiction masquerading as non-fiction. Of course, none of this matters to Ulli Lommel. He's got a buck to make!

In a moment that is literally irony defined, Lommel opens with a quote from the Geneva Convention stating that acts of cruel treatment and torture are prohibited. I guess that only applies to wartime. In peacetime, Ulli Lommel is able to inflict the most heinous of atrocities on unsuspecting (or in my case, suspecting) viewers. This leads to the credits droning on for as much time a Lommel can chew up with B&W and color montages of tight shots of a woman, presumably the Dahlia herself, Elizabeth Short (Danielle Petty), laughing up a storm while being taunted by an off-screen person (De Palma?) with various tools. Maybe she's just a visual representation of Ulli Lommel on his way to the bank. Finally as the credits peter out, the off screen person rubs a hacksaw across her stomach and she is instantly dead. Or maybe not, since the blood that is squirting on her face make her flinch, not once, but three times. No second takes! De Palma's movie is almost out!

While giggling (in what is supposed to be a crazy/creepy way) a girl in a school uniform and twintails writes some stupid shit in a book marked "666" (going on to appear in 2007's THE TOMB) about how the Black Dahlia represents the number 666. What does this have to do with the movie or the actual story of the infamous unsolved murder? Not a damn thing! And you should know better than to ask. This is an Ulli Lommel flick! Meaning, facts and logic are just things that society imposes on you to keep you down, man!

As it turns out, Kate (repeat Lommel offender Elissa Dowling), is an extremely grating proto-Margot Robbie Harley Quinn type, who has a forced "psycho" laugh that is reminiscent of Flipper and behaves like she's seven years old. So cool, right? Living with an old man named McCoon (Johnny Holiday), and so obsessed with the Black Dahlia is she, that she sets up fake auditions for aspiring actresses in an abandoned prison using on-line ads that are unlike anything that ever existed on the internet and computer printed signs scotch taped to the prison entrance. I know that a lot of people do a lot of things to get into showbusiness, but you'd think a piece of paper taped to an abandoned prison might be a bit of a red flag.

This is all a set-up to get aspiring actresses to come and audition in a prison cell with two flabby, mute dudes in costumes that appear to be items salvaged out of the Goodwill's dumpster. Apparently this bait n' switch works, as after luring in her first actress, she is tied down, sliced, stabbed and eventually dismembered. I know what you are thinking, you're thinking "hey, this means at least it's got some gore effects," right? Wrong! You forget who we are talking about here. This is Ulli Lommel and he ain't going to spend no damn money on effects when it could go into his pocket! Yep, it's mostly a lot of screaming, shakey-cam, smash-cuts and a few ounces of cheap stage blood splashed around and Kate jumping up and down, "crazy" laughing like she's trying to emulate the characters in a Rob Zombie movie. Joy. Because Ulli has to make his usual allusions of the military being the same as serial killers, we get strobe edits of Kate, in a camo fatigue t-shirt and cap, marching in place and doing push-ups edited in. It's every bit as fun as it sounds.

Of course this leads to Kate and her boys to leave cling-film wrapped body parts in an alley for the cops to find. Apparently there isn't much for LAPD's homicide department to do, so there are no less than six plainclothes detectives on the case, including the Police Captain (producer of all of these serial killer quickies, Nola Roeper) who shows up in order to ramble about how great it is to have bangers and mash for breakfast and how she met some guru who did nothing but sip water and look at the sun all day. If that is Ulli being autobiographical, this movie suddenly makes sense. At one point, in a later, nearly identical discovery scene, one of the detectives actually says that this "has the same M.O. as the Hillside Strangler!" WHAT?! Ulli drops the mic and exits stage left. The M.O. of the serial killer is in the fucking name, man! Hillside Strangler means that people were strangled in the Hillside area! It's not that hard! I mean, there's not giving a shit, and then there is mindblowing, next-level not giving a shit. Ulli does not skimp on this.

The movie is mostly just these two sequences, casting call murders and cops talking, repeated over and over. Kate lures in an actress, the boys kill her, they dance to old music, dump the body parts in an alley, cut to the cops standing around a bunch of cellophane-wrapped body parts mumbling about nothing. Presumably the body parts are wrapped so that we can't see that they are the same couple of Spirit Store pieces and a Sunday roast. In order to pad out the movie's running time, Lommel uses black and white inserts of Short laughing during very small parties in a very small rooms with an uncredited Tony Bennett on the soundtrack. This is an odd choice as Tony Bennett returned from WWII in 1946, but didn't have any recorded music until 1949. Oh wait, this Ulli Lommel is we're talking about here. No fucks are given or implied.

Also breaking up the monotony is one of the most rapidly promoted cops in history, 20 year old Kevin (no idea who this guy is, the credits don't list character names). Kevin, like all kids of his generation goes on the internet to find things out. He finds out that the oldest living suspect in the Black Dahlia case is this a fossil named McCoon, a producer who was going to cast Short in a movie before she died. So his hunch tells him that this guy - again, the only living guy who was ever on a suspect list of over 600 people - is, extremely conveniently, the killer. Because he is a cop, he gets McCoon's address and just knocks on his door. Pretending to be a Black Dahlia obsessed fan, he talks to McCoon and Kate (their relationship is never established or even hinted at) about McCoon's memories of the case in bland, vague way that feels, like all of the dialogue, flatly improvised. Thankfully, Ulli isn't one of those pretentious SOV movie guys who thinks that their POS is profound because it runs three hours long. Oh, don't get me wrong, he's pretentious, but not that kind of pretentious. Credit where due, I guess.

Kevin's internet sleuthing leads him to find a casting call for Black Dahlia auditions and decides to go to the suspected serial killer's lair without any back-up. There's a reason kids aren't promoted to detective right out of high school. Again, very conveniently, Kate gets McCoon to shuffle over to the prison on the double to meet this dead ringer for The Black Dahlia. Even though Kevin has a gun and the drop on the room full of the killers, he manages to bungle the whole thing, get tied down and is slightly tortured while his passed-out drunk partner finds out where he is via a beeper message. McDrunk drunk-drives / stumbles his way to the scene of the crime... so that he can bust the criminals. I have no idea what Ulli was going for here. The alleged partner is some detective who is always shown on the sidelines of the police alleyway sequences drinking from a hip flask. At the end of the movie, he chugs an entire bottle before vomiting and passing out on the street and being awoken by his beeper which gives him the address to find Kevin. I assume this just another one of Ulli's flailing, shallow attacks on authority, done with all of the finesse of a "Fuck the Police" sticker. Don't get me wrong, the real life cops on most of these serial killer cases give about as much of a shit about police work as Ulli does about making movies, but still. The drunken detective arrives with backup and arrests everyone. "But what about Detective Kevin," I hear you cry! Uhhh, he's dead... maybe? As the arrests are being made, Ulli intercuts b&w and color strobe shots of Kevin embracing the last actress who was auditioning for Black Dahlia and there's a shot of a cemetery thrown in, then McDrunk checks Kevin's pulse and the credits roll. Maybe Ulli was thinking sequel, or maybe he was trying desperately to be artistically ambiguous. Neither happen.

Lommel has many pretentions of grandeur with TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (1974) and SEVEN (1995) style blown-out brightness, strobing, smash edits, oblique angles, etc. All of this is completely undercut by the utter lack of substance or talent. You could make a movie that is all style and no substance, it's an oft relied on trait in the world of horror movies, but you need to have a cinematic visual style, not a video camera pastiche. It also helps to at least have some sort of grasp of the subject matter. Honestly, if Ulli had made the monumental effort to try to do the entire thing as a black and white period piece (which he still would have gotten wrong) and actually tried telling the story of the Black Dahlia, I might have to give him a little credit, but he just does not care.

Even though I have no evidence to back this up, I'm guessing that Ulli Lommel read about DePalma optioning the 1987 James Ellroy novel "The Black Dahlia" and decided to cash in on the name since, hey, it's a news story and he doesn't even have to use any of the actual people and facts, so it won't cost him a dime! In a sick, perverted way, I kind of have to admire the cold-blooded avarice that drives his "filmmaking" career. De Palma's BLACK DAHLIA was first released to theaters in August of 2006 in Japan. Lommel's BLACK DAHLIA was dumped to video in October of 2006. Since Ulli's movie appears to have been shot in about a week, it is entirely possible that he may have decided to cash in after the promotional material for De Palma's film started. Either way, his goal was to cash in on the free publicity and it worked so well that he managed to reel in suckers who actually thought that they were renting the theatrical film! Say what you want about the De Palma film, but even though it sucks, it comes nowhere near the absolute abyssal depths of cynical, consumer-gouging movie making as Ulli Lomell's mindless rotgut.

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Living Hell of Ulli Lommel: GREEN RIVER KILLER (2005)

It all started with a simple email from Tom titled “Seen this one?” In the message was a link to Ulli Lommel’s NIGHTSTALKER (2007). I replied that - shockingly - I had not seen this film but I was aware of it and Lommel’s serial killer movie spree that took place from 2005-2010. Sadly, the next day I sealed my fate when I wrote Tom again and said we should totally use Lommel’s late career resurgence as the theme for some October reviews. Your honor, I plead insanity. Even though I knew how far Lommel had fallen as I was still recovering from being burned by RETURN OF THE BOOGEYMAN (1994) and THE TOMB (2007), I honestly didn’t know it was going to be this bad. Yes, just like hell, there are levels to this shit and we’re hanging out at the final one. Don’t believe me? Well, allow me to explain.  

The story of the Green River Killer Gary Leon Ridgway is pretty damn abhorrent. Beginning in the early 1980s, Ridgway began killing prostitutes indiscriminately in the Seattle and Tacoma, Washington area. A majority disappeared from the sleazy “SeaTac strip” near the airport where prostitution was rampant. His killing was so out of control that sometimes he abducted and killed women on back-to-back nights. Equally horrifying to Ridgway’s crimes was some rather egregious police work involving the killings. Ridgway was known to the cops very early due to getting aggressive with prostitutes. Hell, one time he drove away with a victim and she never returned. The victim’s friends and family located his truck and notified the police. Guess what? They let him go. Even more outrageous is that he was semi-cleared because he passed a polygraph test. Yes, you know the lie detector thing that is so unreliable it isn’t admissible in court. And then you find out stuff like the lone cop handling it as a “cold case” in the early 90s wanted to test Ridgway’s hair and basically being told, “Eh, that was so long ago, why bother?” while Ridgway was still killing. While he eventually pleaded guilty to murdering 49 victims, the number of victims is estimated to be over 70 and, if you believe him (and the cops certainly do), the majority of his killing took place between 1982 and 1984. That is preposterous and only helps the police timeline for when they cared. The only thing that could make this horrible situation worse would be a filmmaker who plays fast and loose with the truth making a film purporting to tell the true story. Enter Ulli Lommel. 

The film opens with shots of a green river next to a sign that says “Green River” on it. To be honest, I’m shocked Lommel and his team got this part right. As if a cheap direct-to-video flick about a serial killer wasn’t exploitative enough, Lommel crafts his opening with his Gary Leon Ridgway (George Kiseleff) laying around while audio from a real Ridgway interrogation is interspersed with random footage from real autopsies. Jeez, I’m only five minutes in and already feeling nauseous. We then cut to 1981 and Ridgway enters a bar. To accurately establish the very specific time period we just saw seconds earlier, Lommel manages to catch two anachronistic products (a Rollercoaster Tycoon pinball game and House of the Dead arcade game) in various shots. And to establish this is truly set in the Pacific Northwest, the place is plastered with Philadelphia Eagles memorabilia. This is gonna be rough. Anyway, Ridgway brings the prostitute home while his son Kevin is there. Shockingly, this is a true fact although the filmmakers stumble since Ridgway’s son was named Matthew. Ridgway takes her into the bedroom and demands she take a shower. When she questions his intentions, he whips out a gun and points it at her face. Her completely natural reaction is to say she needs another hundred dollars for her time. Lommel’s completely natural reaction is to show a close up of a modern $100 bill. After she takes her shower in front of the leering Ridgway, she sets the romantic mood before the deed by saying, “I have to take a shit first.” Honestly, the scariest bit in this scene is the toilet paper roll is upside down. Truly terrifying stuff. Once on the bed, he makes her suck the gun barrel, the two have sex and Ridgway strangles her. He then proceeds to dispose of her body.

Okay, so far so routine, but this is a Ulli Lommel serial killer biopic, so we can assume some “alternative facts” will be coming our way. Sure enough, as Ridgway disposes of his victim we get a voice over where he talks about his buddy named Boris, who was killed on Thanksgiving in 1979. WHAT?! Where the hell does this come from and what does it mean? We’ll find out…I think. We then meet Detective Dawson (Ron Robbins) and Lieutenant Cole (Christian Behm, a frequent Lommel collaborator who also edits these films), two cops who are on the case in an office that looks like the backroom at a car garage. They talk about the missing girls and mention bar owner Mona might know something. Meanwhile, Ridgway is being harassed by his co-workers at a warehouse. His two dimwitted co-workers joke about how everyone is calling him “Green River Gary” because of how much time he spends down by the river. Ridgway just stands there immobile, much like this movie. We then get a scene of Ridgway in bed with his second wife acting frigid toward him. In the first of two chuckles I got from this film, his wife complains that Gary doesn’t make enough money and he crosses his arms like a toddler and grumpily turns over to his side to avoid her. Trust me, it isn’t worth the pain for that one genuine laugh. 

Ridgway returns to the out of time bar to pick up another prostitute. They go to her RV in order to do the deed and Lommel once again shows his eye for 1980s period detail by leaving a big ass CD player in the shot. After Ridgway sucks her toes (gah!) with a terrible ballad blasting on the soundtrack, he strangles her and then drives her body out to his favorite dumping ground. Meanwhile, our intrepid police are interviewing Mona (Nola Roeper, another Lommel ensemble member/collaborator/victim) and she mentions how odd Ridgway is. No, nothing about him leaving with a girl who ended up missing, just that he was odd. In the next scene, Ridgway is visited by the two cops at his job and they show him photos of a victim who is named Gina Bellweather. Dawson actually says the name twice to make the audience know. That is not the name of a real Green River victim, but important as I will explain later. After the cops leave, Ridgway beats up his two co-workers while screaming “what’s my name?” because…well, because. He then has another dream about Boris.

Around the 50 minute mark we finally get some kind of explanation about this Boris bullshit. After saying he would “maybe suffocate a cat once and a while” and that he stabbed a toddler when he was 16-years-old (an actual legit fact), Ridgway gives us another voiceover where he explains that Boris taught him how to kill. Uh, okay. We then get lots of footage of Boris leaving a bar with two women and voyeuristic shots of them engaging in sex games that are shot through a window. Uh, okay again. We then get another bar victim pickup that Ridgway takes back to his house. She expresses that she is uncomfortable doing the deed in the bedroom because she finds a picture of his wife. In the film's second big laugh, she says, “Do you want to do it in the kitchen? We could do the dishes.” Alas, no dishes are to be done as Ridgway’s wife and son come home. Proving to be as deft on her feet as in the sheets, the prostitute quickly improvises and says, “I’m Gary’s cousin Louise.” What is this unicorn? A prostitute with a conscience, desire to do household chores, and quick on her feet? Ridgway takes her to an empty warehouse and kills her. Oh damn, I actually recognize this place as the main location from THE TOMB (2007). Sadly, we get another Boris dream/flashback. In this one it reveals that Ridgway was concerned about Boris so he decided to kill him. It was during Boris’ long, drawn out death as he craaaaaaaaawls over the floor that I realized the purpose of this subplot. It was just Lommel reverting back to his BOOGEYMAN II (1983) habits and using footage to pad out the running time of the film. I’d wager it is another Lommel production, but I’m not the slightest bit interested in digging to find out. 

Smash cut to the date March 12, 2001 being typed up on the screen. Must be a pretty significant date in the Green River Killer investigation in order to put that specific day up on screen, right? Nah. Lommel doesn't play by the rules, so heaven forbid he learn that Ridgway was arrested on November 30, 2001. By the way, around this time I actually started to marvel that Lommel hadn’t cast himself in a role in this one. Just as it entered my mind, guess who shows up to read Ridgway his rights? ULLI! Of course it was our German cinema cowboy who took him down. The film wraps up with footage of an older Ridgway (for some reason they make him look like Robert Shaw) in cuffs leading Lommel to crime scenes mixed with stock footage of DNA machines as on screen text mentions Ridgway’s DNA being matched. Oh yeah, remember Gina Bellweather from earlier? The onscreen text refers to her as Regina Bellwith in this finale. Nothing better to prove the pointlessness of this film than the filmmakers mangling a name of a character they created. If they can’t bother enough to care, why would the audience? 

Screw Lionsgate. No, seriously, screw Lionsgate. Things didn’t have to be like this. The company was flush with cash thanks to the buzzsaw box office success of SAW (2004) and SAW II (2005). And, hell, they were even experiencing award success around this time with HOTEL RWANDA (2004) and “Best Picture” winner CRASH (2004). The last thing they needed to be doing was hanging out with the reprobates in the alley. However, they just couldn’t escape the overwhelming desire to fleece the rubes via the tubes. I guess we shouldn’t be surprised they hooked up with Ulli Lommel. After all, they were releasing the early exploitation efforts of fellow German trash auteur Uwe Boll around the same time with HOUSE OF THE DEAD (2003) (via their Artisan arm) and ALONE IN THE DARK (2004). As Tom outlined in his ZODIAC KILLER (2005) review, serial killer cinema was flying off the Blockbuster shelves and Ulli’s attempts to convey some kind of story with his Zodiac interpretation hooked enough viewers that the company jumped on the idea faster than Guillermo del Toro abandons film projects. Look I’m not trying to “slut shame” this company as exploitation is the name of the game, but at least show some standards.

Reading Tom’s review, I was blown away that he actually got Ulli attempting something that might be construed as a plot. With his next feature, Lommel abandoned all pretense and opted for just a series of scenes of random killings linked together by terrible voice overs. As Ulli’s producer/partner-in-crime Jeff Frentzen said in an interview, “Lionsgate was happy with the episodic ‘kill scene after kill scene’ approach and wanted more of that.” Well, they definitely got that. This is pretty much the same scene repeated over 80 minutes as Ulli’s Ridgway goes to a bar, dances, picks up a prostitute, kills her, and then dreams about Boris. Rinse-and-repeat. As the incongruity outlined above shows, Lommel didn’t give a damn about anything like facts. Hell, he starts the film in 1981 even though Ridgway said his first murder didn’t happen until July 1982. If only Lommel had access to some kind of machine that could tell him that. That ineptitude coupled with some ugly video cinematography, some truly horrendous editing (they loooooove to overlay shots; see example below), and real autopsy footage results in a truly uncomfortable experience. I’d love to meet the Lionsgate exec who greenlit all of these and force them to watch these films because you know they never did. I’d also punch them in the gut. Hard.

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