REVIEW – Killer Car

Published on: 16th January, 2010

REVIEW - Killer Car  | read this item

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Along with Jesus Franco, cult French director Jean Rollin is one of the most overrated filmmakers in horror history. His movies are often banal, ridiculous, boring, incoherent and tedious, lacking any real redeeming features and serve as a reminder as to why the horror genre is given such a negative response from the majority of critics. Clearly seeing himself as something of an auteur, Rollin’s work lacks any kind of credibility or style and each of his movies have the appearance of a first-time filmmaker. Yet somehow he has built up a loyal fan base over the years and lovers of European trash cinema seem to hold him in high regard. His lack of talent even outshines Joe D’Amato, who would at least substitute his lack of style with excessive violence and nudity. Instead, Rollin’s output is childish, boring and pointless.

A strange Asian woman (Anissa Berkani-Rohmer) appears in a scrap yard and begins to take interest in one of the cars. Meanwhile, the sleazy owner is inside harassing a young girl when he notices the figure outside. He heads over to her but suddenly she begins to strip, showing him her breasts, before pulling out a gun and shooting him dead. The girl hears the shots and picks up a gun nearby, running outside and shooting at the Asian woman as she drives away in the car. Soon afterwards, the girl is at a fairground with her friends when the woman reappears and begins to shoot at them, despite the girl having no reason why. The Asian woman seems intent on killing everyone she comes across without ever giving a reason.

Avoiding giving away any kind of motive at the beginning of the film does not add any kind of interesting ambiguity but instead highlights Rollin’s lack of talent as both a storyteller and filmmaker. He never allows for his characters to be fleshed out and so each death comes with very little emotional impact. The senseless killings that open the movie fail to shock as they were intended and instead become tedious, particularly as each time one of the women fires their gun it looks like a student film where the sound effects were added afterwards and no bullet holes appear. The so-called action sequences are poorly executed and the film offers no kind of tension or intelligence.

Failing to understand that an effective horror film requires character, set up, tension, intelligence and pace Rollin fills the screen with pointless nudity (of women who really should be keeping their clothes on). His other downfall is his insistence to move from one shootout to another without properly establishing the new characters beforehand. This makes it impossible for the viewer to care about their fates and so each scene becomes monotonous and ‘filler’ until the next death. Whilst a horror movie or a thriller should not have to rely on special effects or gore, everything else about the movie is so tedious and poorly realized that at least some inventive deaths would have given the film at least one merit. Sadly, however, it lacks even that.

Rollin had become a cult favourite in his native France after a string of irritating vampire films that began with the success of Le viol du vampire (Queen of the Vampires) in 1968. For the next four decades, he has continued to subject his audiences to one disappointment after another – a string of stupid and generic horror films that managed to draw in the public due to their promises of sex and violence. Killing Car (also known as La femme dangereuse in its native country) came long after Rollin’s lucky streak had become to an end and the public had lost interest in simple sleaze (the Italian movie industry had also become to a standstill by this point), and so it almost seems that Rollin has given up even trying anymore.

It is hard to believe that Killing Car was made by a thirty year veteran of the industry. It has all the telltale signs of a first-time filmmaker or, even worse, a film student. There is nothing at all that redeems this movie: the cinematography is flat, the music is minimal and generic, both the script and direction are amateur and the acting is laughable. Rollin clearly became such a success because he appeared at a time when the French film industry needed something a little more excessive, but just how he became so popular remains a mystery. As with his Spanish counterpart Franco, he has yet to make a truly great film and instead has made a career out of producing boring movies. And that is his greatest crime – he is boring.

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