Director: William Lustig
Year: 1988
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Supernatural Slasher
Plot:
After a strange rash of local killings, a police detective finds that the reports of a cop committing the crimes aren't leading to the forces' scapegoat but rather to a former member thought to be dead and tries to help him clear his name against the true killer on his rampage.
Review:
Overall this one here was quite the fun and exciting offering with a lot to like about it. What really gives this one a lot of its main enjoyment here is the fact that this one does so much of taking the reason for trusting the police force out on duty and warps it into something to be feared, with the main gimmick of the undead policeman still wearing his old uniform bringing in the unlucky victims only to turn the tables on them. The kind of fear and panic this generates is quite fun and impressive here, as the early stalking scenes out on the city streets showing this off make for quite a fun time here as this manages to keep the suspense going of whether or not it's possible to trust the police in uniform here with the identity behind him being quite mysterious and hidden so there's a lot to like here.
Even furthering this is the slow-building angle of this one getting the framed-innocent-officer storyline as part of this one as there's a much bigger amount of deception required here to pull that off and manages to make this quite fun going about this. Not only does that play into the slasher angle here as this makes for a perfect foil to keep the killings going despite being held prisoner the entire time, there's plenty of action in here as these lead into the truly startling and wholly enjoyable mid-section here where he goes to town on the police force and launches a massive attack at the officers there after he's held for questioning, and the rampage is packed with brutal, bloody highlights and tons of fine action in the brawling and stalking to stop him, then gets quite fun as they have to maneuver through the corpses left behind only to make the mistake of being there to take the fall again.
That makes the action even better in the later half, with the appearance at the police headquarters leading to the suspenseful stalking of the policewoman despite being handcuffed to a dead partner, the escape from the trapped supply room in front of the other officers, and finally, the out-of-control car chase through the streets leading back to the docks where the great shoot-out occurs and leads into the thrilling resolution here. There's enough fun here in the back-story for what happened here to keep this going along nicely with a fine series of flashbacks to his true identity and what happened that there's some fine motivation for his actions while making sure that the supernatural aspects throughout here are given some rather nicely-appointed reasoning as the early scenes of the inhuman killer seem appropriate given the later revelations given.
As the make-up for the undead killer looks great and the kills are certainly gruesome and bloody enough, these here are more than enough to make this a highly enjoyable effort that holds out over its few flaws nicely. The only area that holds this down is the length it goes to keep the false-accusation thread going, blatantly ignoring tons of witness testimony and their own officers' accounts merely to keep his neck on the line and enabling the rampage to continue when it makes no sense to continue it. Otherwise, this one here is a pretty enjoyable and entertaining slasher.
Overview: ****/5
Highly underrated slasher effort, there's quite a lot to like here which manages to make this one of the more entertaining entries in the genre as the few flaws aren't that damaging. Give this a shot if you're a fan of this kind of genre fare, are curious about it, or appreciate the creative crew while others out there might want to heed caution.
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