User Reviews

"Murderlust" tells the story of a Sunday school teacher with an evil side, murdering prostitutes and teenagers in the night-time and burying their bodies in the desert.

What may sound like an amazingly short summary of the plot, is actually more or less all the plot has to offer. Of course there are some further characters introduced and we get to know a bit more about the personality of the killer in general, but even the further characters stay flat and don't really add much tension to the film. Otherwise it is, let's say, solid, it doesn't make any grave mistakes, the pictures it provides are of reasonable quality and the acting is not a catastrophe. But just taking "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" and adapting it for a modern American audience isn't unfortunately enough to create a movie worth watching.

With a little more sensitivity for the characters and the hunt of the killer, this could have become quite a decent film. As it is, there are several others who tell similar stories better and with more tension.

MURDERLUST is a very low budget slasher movie of the 1980s that feels a little like a cheap variant of HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER. It's an entirely unprofessional production, but like a lot of the no-budget films of yesteryear, the lack of professionalism gives it a mildly gritty and realistic atmosphere.

The main character is a friendly school teacher by day and a depraved killer by night, with a fine line in strangling young women. Scenes of him going around and choosing his victims are quite creepy in a MANIAC kind of way and the performances tend towards naturalism rather than being barnstorming. However, the pacing is pretty slow and the film does suffer from a fair amount of padding.

Mild-mannered Steve Belmont (a solid and credible performance by Eli Roth) lives a double life: He volunteers as a teacher at a Christian church on Sundays and works a crummy job as a security guard in the daytime, but at night and during his off hours he's a vicious misogynistic serial killer with a nasty penchant for murdering young prostitutes.

Director Donald M. Jones, working from a compelling script by James C. Lane, relates the absorbing story at a deliberate pace, grounds the premise in a believably sordid workaday reality (Belmont has trouble paying the rent on his apartment and can't hold a decent job for very long due to habitual tardiness and constant drinking), and neatly addresses the tremendous pressure inherent in having a dual existence, with Belmont's public and private lives eventually colliding together with the expected catastrophic results. Moreover, Jones deserves extra points for presenting the violence in a manner that's fairly brutal and realistic, but never too gory or excessive. This film further benefits from sound acting from Rochelle Taylor as the sweet Cheryl, Dennis Gannon as pesky fed-up cousin Neil, and Lisa Nichols as teen troublemaker Debra. James Mattison's reasonably polished cinematography gives this movie a surprisingly sizable amount of visual finesse. Lane's shivery synthesizer score does the flesh-crawling trick. Worth a watch.

Looks like Steven Buscemi, or Dennis Radar, is our killer in this.

This diamond in the rough is low budget.

Radar propositions the lady in red who's paid ten bucks in cash for ten-minutes work. That's a buck a minute.

Taking no for an answer, Radar persuades her to go to his abode around the corner.

He's exposed as impotent, and humiliated in the process, which fuels his rage resulting in her dying in only a second.

I've heard that to strangle someone takes anywhere from 7-minutes to 18. And it drains all your strength. (Gacy's words, not mine.)

Leading two lives, the killer in this is a religious school teacher by day, and a serial killer by night and day as well on the flipside.

I despise self-righteous, do-gooders, like this guy. (I'm looking at you Dennis Radar.)

But, the movie's got it down pat how plain these scumbags appear on the surface.

Love the sinister Atari score, too.

Even the van he drives is classic Highway Killer material.

It's clever how he disposes of them out in the Mojave Desert and leaving the elements and night creatures to mop up.

Do you wanna know why these serial killers are so plain; generic, and undetectable in real life? Because they don't have a creepy score playing while they walk around among us. Their lives must be so empty & hollow.

Just imagine for one second 'Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer' driving around doing his business in that movie, minus that creepy score, and replace it with Row, row, row your boat.

Wait a minute... The Scorpion Killer used that, with chilling effect, in 'Dirty Harry.' "I'll kill all your mothers! Sing, damn you! It's Callahan!"

I retract this analogy.

You get the point though.

Accusations are leveled against Radar left, right, and center, but the master manipulator that he is sweet-talks his way out of any situation.

It's this dominance over their victims that give them a sense of power. The Zodiac mentioned this when he talked about collecting souls. They must be under the impression that their victims become part of them which makes them stronger like what's-his-name from 'Mortal Kombat.'

The chances are good that both Dahmer and Radar watched this movie.

This guy just sales pitched a Dahmer line to one of his victims using that photography opportunity.

Can't anyone see through this guy's Christian charade? Namely, his cousin, who looks like Eddie Redmayne.

What's-his-name's impotence just played a part again so he rebukes his new girlfriend and turns the tables on her like the selfish twit that he is. Open your eyes, lady.

This guy is a more realistic killer than a face biting, flesh eating, Hannibal Lecter, because he's so ordinary and unsuspecting. (It's more a Dennis Radar storyline.)

Movie ends with no resolution.

It appears they were originally going to cut to the end credits as the lady drove off and the aerial view rose higher and higher.

But, a late inclusion scene sees the killer lying flat on his back staring up at the sky.

It's left up to the viewer to draw their own conclusion.

He's still out there, left to his own devices, with no chapter conclusion in my opinion, so it must be assumed that this movie killer is still active.

Where's part 2?

This was the second time I watched 'Murderlust.' If I recall correctly the first time I hated it. But this time every minute was captivating and held my interest as the movie captured how natural and ordinary real serial killers truly are and how easy they blend in without suspicion.

'Murderlust' is a handbook manual into the mind of one of these creeps.