One year before he nearly shot an eye out in A Christmas Story, Ralph Billingsley deliberately attempted it in Death Valley — just not his own peepers. The tyke’s target is an economically depressed waiter named Hal (Stephen McHattie, Pontypool), whose slaughter of three tourists in an RV can be tied back to him, thanks to a frog pendant the curious boy pilfered from the scene of the crime.
Billingsley’s Billy leaves New York City for an Arizona vacation with his divorced mom (Catherine Hicks, Child’s Play) and her new beau (Paul Le Mat, Melvin and Howard), a land developer for whom cowboy gear is work clothes. While at an abandoned gold mine, Billy pokes his nose where he shouldn’t, thereby earning himself the top spot on Hal’s list of precocious kids to kill today.
Directed by Dick Richards (1986’s Heat) with a dearth of visual flair, Death Valley is a rather routine thriller of the psycho-on-the-loose variety. Thank goodness Richards cast Billingsley, because the boy’s natural presence is the film’s saving grace.
There’s so little to the story — all 87 minutes of it, including credits — that screenwriter Richard Rothstein (Universal Soldier) includes a rather lengthy scene with the sole purpose of underlining how fat the fat babysitter (Mary Steelsmith, H.O.T.S.) is: She’s so fat she eats a whole chocolate bar, then inhales an entire bag of Fritos, then goes out for a banana split, only to meet her doom by being lured into the shadows by a soda machine that spits out an irresistible free pop. It’s like a chunk of cheese upon a mouse trap, and it’s needless, embarrassing, cruel, demeaning and, oddly, the movie’s only note of nastiness. —Rod Lott