Nightstalker starts in 'Los Angeles 1985' where one fateful night a man (Bret Roberts) has a bad foot fetish experience with a prostitute named Cherry (Roxanne Day) so he decides to don some black leather gloves & kill a couple of Hispanic people in they're own home. The next morning & Hispanic cops Officer's Gabriella Martinez (Roselyn Sanchez) & Frank Luis (Danny Trejo) are called to the house when relatives become worried, the two Officer's enter the house & find the mutilated & violated corpses. The killer seems to target the Hispanic community in Los Angeles & as more of them are brutally murdered Officer Martinez is promoted to homicide detective, more to appease to & calm the Hispanic community down than for her actual detective skills but what she doesn't know won't hurt her, right? The senseless & brutal murders continue, can Martinez make a useful contribution to the case & prove her male counterparts wrong? I'll give you three guesses & the first two don't count... (not that you'll need them anyway!)
Written, co-produced & directed by Chris Fisher Nightstalker is the latest in a long line of low budget crap that I've sat through recently, honestly sometimes I wonder why I even bother I really do. Anyway, never let it be said I don't give a film a chance & I did at least make it all way through it. Even though his name is never mentioned Nightstalker is apparently based on the crimes of serial killer Robert Ramirez who killed members of the Los Angeles Hispanic community back in the 80's, having lived in England all my life I have never heard of Ramirez or his crimes so I really can't say how accurately this depicts them. The script throws in a bald headed demon that 'tells' the nightstalker to kill, the fictional cop Martinez to try & have a central character & add a few melodramatics to the proceedings & by all accounts has very little to do with the real Ramirez & has no real regard or intent for factual recreation. I can understand filmmakers wanting to change a few things around & spice things up a bit but in this case Nightstalker just comes across like a really bad cheapo low budget horror. It moves along at a fair pace & I didn't fall asleep (it was quite late too) so I have to give it that but overall I can't exactly heap praise on Nightstalker as it's simply not very good & ultimately that's the bottom line I'm afraid. I also take offence at the notion that he killed because of his foot fetish, even if it was unintentional they show him acting out a fantasy with a prostitute just before he kills his first victims which clearly sends some sort of message out, doesn't it?
Director Fisher turns in one of the most annoying film to watch I've sat through, his use of gimmicky editing & MTV style editing & manipulation is irritating to say the least. From stupid time-lapse photography, fast forward, hi-speed, low-speed, blurriness, jerky hand held camera shots & constant drab low level lighting set to the most awful rock tracks you have a film which may literally give it's audience a head ache. These annoying flashy sequences are really unnecessary as proved by the fact the films most effective scene is when these processes aren't used. Forget about any decent violence, a few blood stained murder scenes & a couple of eyeballs in a box, that's it.
Technically Nightstalker is OK apart from those annoying editing tricks, according to the IMDb Nightstalker was edited in the editor's living room & that it was shot in a mere 16 days. Neither of these revelations come as any real surprise to me & 16 days? What took them so long!? The acting was OK but did anyone else notice Trejo's moustache? The one side is fine but one half of the other half was shaved off, he literally only had three quarters of his moustache! Is this a fashion thing? Pay close attention when he & Sanchez are talking outside her house near the end, you'll see what I mean...
Nightstalker is a pretty bad film when all said & done, it's as simple & straight forward as that. There are much better films out there although as I said at least it kept me watching to the bitter end which is something I suppose.
Written, co-produced & directed by Chris Fisher Nightstalker is the latest in a long line of low budget crap that I've sat through recently, honestly sometimes I wonder why I even bother I really do. Anyway, never let it be said I don't give a film a chance & I did at least make it all way through it. Even though his name is never mentioned Nightstalker is apparently based on the crimes of serial killer Robert Ramirez who killed members of the Los Angeles Hispanic community back in the 80's, having lived in England all my life I have never heard of Ramirez or his crimes so I really can't say how accurately this depicts them. The script throws in a bald headed demon that 'tells' the nightstalker to kill, the fictional cop Martinez to try & have a central character & add a few melodramatics to the proceedings & by all accounts has very little to do with the real Ramirez & has no real regard or intent for factual recreation. I can understand filmmakers wanting to change a few things around & spice things up a bit but in this case Nightstalker just comes across like a really bad cheapo low budget horror. It moves along at a fair pace & I didn't fall asleep (it was quite late too) so I have to give it that but overall I can't exactly heap praise on Nightstalker as it's simply not very good & ultimately that's the bottom line I'm afraid. I also take offence at the notion that he killed because of his foot fetish, even if it was unintentional they show him acting out a fantasy with a prostitute just before he kills his first victims which clearly sends some sort of message out, doesn't it?
Director Fisher turns in one of the most annoying film to watch I've sat through, his use of gimmicky editing & MTV style editing & manipulation is irritating to say the least. From stupid time-lapse photography, fast forward, hi-speed, low-speed, blurriness, jerky hand held camera shots & constant drab low level lighting set to the most awful rock tracks you have a film which may literally give it's audience a head ache. These annoying flashy sequences are really unnecessary as proved by the fact the films most effective scene is when these processes aren't used. Forget about any decent violence, a few blood stained murder scenes & a couple of eyeballs in a box, that's it.
Technically Nightstalker is OK apart from those annoying editing tricks, according to the IMDb Nightstalker was edited in the editor's living room & that it was shot in a mere 16 days. Neither of these revelations come as any real surprise to me & 16 days? What took them so long!? The acting was OK but did anyone else notice Trejo's moustache? The one side is fine but one half of the other half was shaved off, he literally only had three quarters of his moustache! Is this a fashion thing? Pay close attention when he & Sanchez are talking outside her house near the end, you'll see what I mean...
Nightstalker is a pretty bad film when all said & done, it's as simple & straight forward as that. There are much better films out there although as I said at least it kept me watching to the bitter end which is something I suppose.