Director Tim Ritter’s first film was 1986’s TRUTH OR DARE? It was a crazed, gory, silly monument to the spirit of low-budget and if you’ve seen it, with its vibrating copper mask and chain sawed little leaguers, then you have at least an idea of what might be in store for you in KILLING SPREE.

Asbestos Felt plays Tom Russo, a man tormented by constant paranoid fantasies about his new bride’s (imagined) infidelities. Tom had been cheated on before in a previous marriage and it left him a little more damaged then anyone probably realized. Now he’s taken the vows once again with Lezza (Courtney Lercara); she’s young and beautiful so all those old trust issues start surfacing in a big way. He has nightmares about Lezza’s head turning into a big-ass pair of lips that she wraps around the head (the big one) of a good friend of theirs. Yes, there is a “payoff.” Surreal? Sure. Imaginative? You bet. Goofy? As all frickin’ get out. But that’s only the beginning.

Finding what he believes is pretty strong evidence that Lezza is having an affair with his best friend, Tom takes off for the beach to think. Instead, he assaults nearly everybody who gets anywhere near him. Arriving back home he gets a surprise visit from his best friend and the young girl that he’s banging. When his female guest wants to use the bathroom, he follows her upstairs so that he can rip her fake-looking, bloodless head from her body and beat his good friend to death with it. That evidence I mentioned, it’s a sort of diary that Tom fell across which apparently details his wife’s sexual escapades with other men. The electrician stopped by earlier in the day so it’s time to have another look at the diary. It says what Tom was afraid it would say; she jumped him, too. Time to have a little talk with the electrician. Tom sets it up so that he’s alone at the house the next day; he calls the guy back claiming that there are still some problems with the wiring. Moments after the electrician arrives at the house, he suffers a “fan-blade” scalping. Seems like it would have been easier to just kill the guy rather than go to all the trouble of building and installing a modified-for-murder ceiling fan, but then I guess we wouldn’t have had all those great scenes of Tom building it. Yeah. The television goes out that night so Lezza needs to call in the TV repair guy while Tom’s at work. Not only that but a horn-ball delivery guy stops by while Lezza is taking a shower. Hold on, there’s more…the lawn care guy also shows up: “Like, hey babe, like, I’m from Mowerman Lawn Care, ya’ know?” Personally, I couldn’t wait for this dork to buy the farm. Anyway, when Tom gets home there is a lot of hot new stuff to read in the secret little book his wife’s been keeping.

Due to a recent pay-cut that Tom recently had forced on him, he now needs to take on a night job. Not only that, he’s got three adulterers to slaughter! “That bitch! She doesn’t know how much work is involved in taking care of three in one day!” He insists that Lezza go and stay with her Mom for awhile since his presence at home will be negligible anyway, at least until he gets the finances sorted out. It goes without saying that the mass-murder has to come before Tom is able to focus on work of any kind so… the Martial-Arts expert/TV repairman shows up first. A minor confrontation and a couple of hours later, he wakes up gagged and bound in the basement with Tom laughing in his face…

The rest of KILLING SPREE is a barrage of chainsaw gut removals, electrocuted intestines, lawnmower-fu, screwdriver in the head, hammy overacting, bad synthesizer music, disembodied heads biting Tom’s giggle-berries and zombies attacking. The standout kill scene is definitely the hammer murder of a nosy old neighbor lady. She tells Tom that if he kills her husband for her, she won’t report what he’s doing. He jams the hammer claw into her face and rips her jaw off. He lies down next to her body afterwards and plays with the loose slop that used to be the inside of her face. The single most disturbing thing about KILLING SPREE has got to be Asbestos Felt’s rapping during the music in the closing credits. “Delivery dude tried to pick up my wife, screwdriver in the head – had to take his life!” Yikes! Yeah, it’s a bad movie; actors don’t seem to sure about their lines sometimes but keep going anyway. Special Effects range from ridiculously bad to acceptable and sitting through the “dramatic” scenes can be as uncomfortable as wiping your ass with a belt sander. There is a little to like, though. It has some energy and you can tell they were trying to be creative in terms of camera-work and kill scenes. The zombies are a happy surprise but are mostly misused for attempts at black comedy. KILLING SPREE never quite achieves the feel of a beer-and-buddies-party-flick-winner like TRUTH OR DARE? (I.E. Bad movie – good times) no matter how hard it may be trying. It’s bound to be appreciated by low budget enthusiasts and maybe the undiscriminating gore-hound, probably not by anyone else. One of the main F/X guys on this, Joel Harlow, has gone on to do some pretty impressive projects, leaving his personal signature on things like THE TOXIC AVENGER PART II and A.I. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE.

The DVD looks and sounds good enough; nothing exceptional on either front really but it sure is loaded. Tim Ritter handles the first of two commentaries and he goes out of his way to offer insightful information and anecdotes about his work. Tim comes across as good people and it was more fun listening to him than it was watching the movie. He went through an awful lot to get this thing made and you’ve just gotta respect that… no matter what you think of the final result. The other commentary has star and would-be rapper Asbestos Felt, Joel D. Wynkoop and R.M. Hoopes (he’s the quiet one on the commentary). The first thing you’ll notice about this track is the fact that they seem to be seeing and reacting to everything just a little bit before you, which grates on the nerves some over time. Aside from that they spend an awful lot of time just sort of rambling over each other. Joel seems to be sitting in the very back of the room somewhere so he usually sounds like he is talking from the other side of a tunnel. Very quickly, it becomes obvious why the commentaries were recorded separately. It might be a fun listen if you approach it with the right state of mind. Might be… There’s an 87-minute documentary called BLINDED BY THE BLOOD: BEHIND THE SCENES OF KILLING SPREE. Tim Ritter narrates it and there is a special appearance by Debbie Rochon at the open, which is a good thing. It’s generally pretty interesting and features news footage, interviews, behind-the-scenes F/X stuff, TV interviews and clips from other projects. The final two extras are an investor reel shot it 1986 and a video test shoot from 1987.