Nightstalker (2009)

Load of rubbish!!

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

As historically inaccurate as this was about the 1980's. I thought Adolph Cortez did as good an acting job as he could considering the script was filled with tons of inner monologues either about Richard hating people or loving his "dark princess". flashback scenes of Richard's uncle talking about his Vietnam kills are misplaced because he was far to old to have been in that war. Elissa Dowling who played the semi girlfriend had some decent talking scenes about power and belief. one big problem thru the movie is kills being off screen and lasting mere seconds yet after invisible kills we see victims looking very bloody. the positives here tons of cursing voice overs and decent gore along with nice sounding instrumental Cuban? music played in opening and closing credits. the negatives Richard commits most of his crimes in broad daylight despite being nicknamed "the Night stalker". to much time was spent with Richard walking thru the streets of Los Angeles sucking on a lollipop. in closing this was a bad movie semi based on true events yet it is heavily rewatchable if you love inner monologue and gore

Another graduate student production shot on video. Very tireless and one of those 'when will this end' type of film. View the first chapter. Then the last chapter. You missed nothing. Except 10 minutes of your time. A psycho drama about Rodriguez the stalker in LA that tries to relate it to his early childhood upbringing and the usual satanic abuse. You learn nothing here, except over acting, poor special effects, lack luster direction, and a hastily written script. But realizing that you might learn something. The killer seems to be doing the same thing every time with 'explaing' of his psychosis through flashbacks of his early childhood and how his father killed a few women in front of him causing a traumatic influence on his behavior. Not very original and poorly executed. A few hot babes tho. And one that doesn't seem to mind being followed by a psycho killer. I mean really. She did have a hot outfit on tho, I'll give her that. Didn't she get the message when she saw him sucking on lollipops all day. Get a clue.

And if you check the date of my comment, you will know WHICH headline I'm talking about. If more of the people of Tucson had just taken the time to see this vital film about current American affairs in the year it's been out, it is possible many lives would have been saved. Prescient NIGHT STALKER director Lommel ends his version of "Richard's" killing spree with a gang of 11 male vigilantes permanently disabling him in an alley. Prior to this climax, Lommel portrays Richard with all the classic symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia. None of the countless people the movie shows shirking away from Richard on the sidewalk as he mutters away take any steps to refer him to the proper mental health authorities (Richard obviously would come under the Medicaid umbrella; most western states in the U.S. have eliminated their mental health services for Medicaid sufferers in recent years, if they ever had them to begin with). All of this week's endless news reporting estimate there are up to 6.14 MILLION people in the U.S. with Richard and you-know-who's condition. We are told only a "tiny fraction" are able-bodied people who actually commit crimes like Richard's ("at least 16 dead," according to this flick's postscript). However, no one can predict WHICH ONE of these millions will "suddenly snap" next, get a gun, and become the next notorious nut job. But director Lommel bravely posits in NIGHT STALKER that even ONE Richard is one more than a society "protected" by bumbling, namby-pamby law enforcement should tolerate, which is WHY Lommel has the vigilante mob do in Richard simply for muttering on the sidewalk. After all, the mob's collective intelligence realizes that taxes are high enough, and it would literally cost several trillion dollars to construct secure but humane holding facilities for these 6.14 million individuals run by high-priced professionals (at an acceptable staff-patient ratio), as well as to train and pay countless more social workers enough to do a conscientious job of running interference for any Richards released back into society on electronic tethers. After all, mental health demographers are talking about 1 in every 50 Americans. Obviously, given the U.S. economy, the choices are 1)the present system of expecting and accepting an increasing number of serial killers such as Richard and people like this week's mass murderer, 2)bankrupting the U.S. treasury to neutralize the threat humanely, or 3)Lommel's mob justice (which sweeps up and kills dozens who fit the "schizo-in-the-headlines" profile every time one of these tragedies occurs). Option #2 might be accomplished by eliminating the space program, agriculture subsidies, selling the national parks to Disney and other recreation pros, and restricting a down-sized U.S. military to U.S. territory and waters (unless these actually are attacked). Anyone who disagrees ought to at least view Lommel's film, since outsiders sometimes can put their finger's on a society's main problem (and the best solution to it).

Nightstalker (2009) * 1/2 (out of 4) Lommel's ongoing saga of doing a film about every famous serial killer continues with this look at the Night Stalker who haunted California during the 1980's and is still sitting on Death Row there today. Adolph Cortez does a decent job at playing the nutcase who walks around stalking men and women while playing with a sucker in his mouth. We learn this is due to a deal with Satan and because he saw his uncle shoot his aunt. Whatever the case, this is the eleventh film in this series that I've seen and while this one here is among the better ones, I still can't help but get bored because we've seen this thing one time too many. Once again we get a crazy guy walking around and talking to himself. Lommel has used this same set up during several of this serial killer pictures and I really wish he would at least try to do something different with it because all of the eleven films just bleed together to the point where I really couldn't tell one from another. I doubt many people outside myself are going to bother going through everyone of these films but those who do attempt it are going to have deja vu all over the place. Once again this is done on video and once again the budget is extremely low even though this one here features more blood than any of the previous ones. The gunshots are extremely fake looking but I guess the producers tried to make up for this by using a gallon of blood on each shot. The film starts off mildly entertaining but it quickly gets tiresome as we have to keep watching the same thing happen over and over.