Three women — er, better make that four — have been disemboweled by an unseen killer in requisite black gloves. Because all of the deceased were models, suspicion falls upon strip-mall photographers Dave (James Hansen, Streets of Death) and Mitch (Larry Thomas, aka Seinfeld’s infamous Soup Nazi). Now, Mitch is creepy AF, but Dave sure seems like a nice guy — you know, for someone who takes boudoir, swimsuit and nudie pics of strange women in the shop’s back room, away from all those nice frames my mom would like.
Although engaged to be married (albeit to a cheating hussy), Dave is smitten when into the store walks Jill, a lovely lady with an indiscriminate European accent and a pressing need for glamour shots for her beau. Uh-oh, doesn’t her posing in a soccer mom-friendly one-piece technically qualify her as a model? Will this innocent sesh of snapshots place Jill on the radar of the titular Night Ripper!? Those questions are as rhetorical as whether this shot-on-video slasher will culminate in a mannequin factory.
Night Ripper! marks the sophomore movie for Victims! writer, director and producer Jeff Hathcock, who clearly has a thing for emphatic punctuation. He also has a thing for showing characters both major and minor getting both in and out of cars both arriving and departing. And yet, Hathcock manages to work in effective misdirection and uniquely staged kill scenes that belie the near-nonexistent budget — enough for Night Ripper! to earn that exclamation point for being entertaining in spite of all its faults, rather than solely because of them.
Believe me, they’re there — none more amusing than a mistress’ post-coital argument with a red herring who won’t leave his wife: “This isn’t love. This is two sweaty bodies fucking a flood lamp!” she cries, then pausing for a delicious four seconds. “And I’m tired of flood lamps!” Seconded. —Rod Lott