Search - Playgirl Killer on DVD

"Don't Move! Don't Move!"

andy7 | Los Angeles, CA United States | 04/13/2003

(4 out of 5 stars)

"In the 60's there was a brief spate of films depicting crazed artists that excelled at murdering women ("Track of the Vampire","Color Me Blood Red", etc).
William Kerwin (aka Thomas Sweetwood) takes a break from the Herschell Gordon Lewis movies to star in this classic tale of a handsome, talented artist who gets hired to be a handyman at a spoiled, rich girl's estate.
Unfortunately, Kerwin only likes girls for murdering. Needless to say, they're all foxy and are ready to jump him at the drop of a hat . He asks them to pose for him instead and then goes ballistic whenever they fidget! His face twitches uncontrollably and he stammers "Don't move! Don't move!" He kills them all (one scene with a harpoon gun) and wails "I told you not to move!"
Filmed in gorgeous Montreal, Canada on a Herschell-friendly budget, this movie has a brief appearance by Neil Sedaka in a small bathing suit, which may very well be the most frightening image in the movie.
The DVD transfer is excellent, surprisingly so given the budget and the age of the film. So when can we expect a DVD of the splendid "Nightmare In Wax"?"

Wonky old trash

A. Griffiths | London | 05/27/2008

(2 out of 5 stars)

"This is almost a hoot. Done right it could have been a cult classic. "Playgirl Killer" is a low brow and low budget thriller with enough cheesy moments to keep you entertained even when it's story sags (which it does often). The slim plot involves a crazed artist who feels drawn to murder his models whenever they are incapable of keeping still. Which seems to be all the time. The film doesn't really cover much more ground than this, it starts at some arbitrary point, charts the killers progress for a few days, and ends when he reaches a timely and "ironic" downfall.

However there are some real laughs to be had along the way, because, if nothing else, "Playgirl Killer" is a really bad film. Although competently filmed, you couldn't really say that the director had any particular flair, and some of the acting is really dreadful - although it doesn't reach the lows seen in the HG Lewis gore epics from the same period. The film starts off with a murder, which is actually the only moment of graphic violence in the whole movie, and from that point we meet some swinging teens, watch them dance, flirt and attend a music show, all of which is entirely pointless. After about half on hour of this, the crazed artist manages to get himself into the home of one of them, a particularly annoying girl called Arlene who has the worst approach to flirting ever seen. The film spends many long moments showing Arlene walk around in a swimsuit or change clothes very awkwardly (there is no nudity in the film at all so it's all kind of pointless), untill the killer finally gets to the point where he can stand no more (like the audience) and murders her.

From this point on, the film starts to get funnier as a succession of dopey gals somehow turn up and get the same treatment. My favourite victim is a really wooden starlet who turns up in what seems to be an old lady's Sunday outfit to answer a newspaper ad for home help. She can't act at all, and the 15 minutes or so in which she appears on screen are the most hilarious of the entire film (not least because of her jaw-droppingly ugly underwear in the supposedly "sexy" scene when she changes for a swim).

There's a weak attempt to inject mystery into the proceedings as the artist confesses to a strange dream that may be influencing his behaviour, but it never amounts to much. Even the promised rage at models moving while he's drawing never leads directly to their murder, he just gets angry, and then maybe kills them hours or even days later when it seems convenient to him. He doesn't even try to sketch the job applicant girl at all, but he still murders her, so the logic is all over the place.

To sum up, this is just a load of daft eye candy about a mad artist and some girls that he menaces ad kills. All the girls are annoying in the extreme, and while none of them are really ugly, they don't warrant the amount of footage devoted to recording them prancing about and putting different nightgowns on, which is what Arlene seems to do ALL the time, in fact the pointless shots of her in particular probably account for about 50% of the film's entire running time. Sadly because of the lack of any gore, "Playgirl Killer" comes across as a kind of HG Lewis wannabe without any of the excess - no gore, no nudity just bad acting and long sequences of padding. Just about good enough for die-hard "bad movie" lovers, but very unlikely to maintain the interest of a wider audience. Also suffers from a really, REALLY terrible sleeve on this DVD release, I mean this modern glamour girl image with a knife hastily photo-shopped into her hand doesn't even match the content (the models are not the murderers here)...I just wish people who peddled this stuff would treat their audience with respect and use some of the films genuine period advertising."