A-Pix
Home Video | Review by Dan Taylor
I
always enjoy renting B-movies, especially
when they throw together stars whose careers
ebb and flow like the tide at the Jersey
shore.
Take DIARY OF A SERIAL KILLER
for instance. This sometimes-clever, sometimes-derivative
little thriller brings a solid, if familiar,
premise to the table: a struggling journalist
stumbles upon a serial killer "on the
job" and eventually becomes his confidant...even
though the closeness threatens to implicate
him in the heinous crimes.
Alright, I'll grant you that
the serial killer plotlines are being played
out for all their worth (and then some),
but in the hands of a competent director
even this straight-to-video storyline can
be enjoyable. And, in this case, it is.
But, what makes DIARY a solid
$3 rental for a cold winter's night is the
casting. There's Gary Busey, nominated for
an Academy Award for his work in the bio-pic
THE BUDDY HOLLY STORY and star of more flicks
than I care to name. He turns up in the
starring role as the soon-to-be-washed-up
writer looking for one more big story to
right his ship. Sure we've got to look at
him in drag for more time than I'm comfortable
with, but if it saves him from making another
DC CAB I'm willing to go the distance.
Then we've got Michael Madsen
as a world-weary cop (is there any other
kind in this sort of genre entry?) whose
daughter was kidnapped a decade prior to
this current killing spree. That's about
all we get for characterization, and Madsen's
cop is handed the most ignomiously off-handed
death in recent screen history, but the
same gruff charm he brings to tv each week
in 'Vengeance Unlimited' is in ample supply
here.
And finally, we can't fail
to mention Arnold Vosloo, who made John
Woo's HARD TARGET crackle with sinister
charm and who deserved much more to work
with than the scripts that were DARKMAN
2 and 3. Here, as the publicity-hungry serial
killer, he brings that same sinister glee
to a role that could've been an emotional
cripple in the hands of say, Lorenzo Lamas
or Kevin Sorbo. In fact, I'm not so sure
Vosloo isn't a serial killer in real life
-- somebody needs to do a thorough background
check on this joker. (Look for his break-out
performance in THE
MUMMY.)
Like many of the flicks on
the shelf from A-Pix, you could do a lot
worse.
