Sweet Kill

Writer-director Curtis Hanson's (L.A. Confidential) 1973 debut is a moody low-budget thriller about impotent high school gym teacher Eddie Collins (onetime Hollywood heartthrob Tab Hunter), who can only be aroused by the corpses of young women (the result, flashbacks suggest, of painful memories of his promiscuous mother). Eddie sets off on a killing spree that eventually includes not only those unlucky girls who enter his orbit but also those who suspect him for the crimes. The aging Hunter is surprisingly effective in a role that takes advantage of his craggy, if weathered, good looks while forcing him to plumb deeper emotional levels, but the rest of the cast is amateurish, and the film suffers from poverty-row production values. To make matters worse, producer Roger Corman inserted new footage, mostly featuring ludicrously gratuitous nudity, to make it more saleable as exploitation fare (it's this version—called The Arousers—that is actually on this DVD, although it is being advertised under Hanson's original title). A crudely-made, Psycho-inspired flick tailor-made for drive-ins during the ‘70s, Sweet Kill gave Hunter a welcome opportunity to prove that he could really act (though he's admittedly no Olivier, or Anthony Perkins), and marked the arrival of an important American director—even if Hanson was reportedly unhappy over what Corman did with his film. A strong optional purchase. (F. Swietek)