Mike Mendez’s (The Convent, Big Ass Spider, Satanic Hispanics) Killers certainly begins with a bang as Odessa and Kyle James (Dave Larsen… who also wrote the film… and David Gunn respectively) throw on a lil’ skull make-up and some Santa hats and blow the absolute shit out of their parents with a truly unreasonable amount of gunfire.
This gets the duo sent to prison, but that does fuck-all as the quickly escape during a violent thunderstorm and end up pulling a home invasion in suburbia on the Ryan family… a typical family consisting of patriarch Charles (Burke Morgan), mother Rea (Damian Hoffer), and siblings Jenny (Renee Cohen) & Jami (Nanette Bianchi).
While there, the brutal bros. dispense both fucked-up philosophy and film critique in equal measure before Jami and momma Rea straight up fuck the brothers because apparently they love the bad boys, and admittedly the only one who doesn’t seem delighted about their new houseguests is Charles… but mostly because they tie him up with Christmas lights.
Things go decidedly further south when the long arm of the law, in the form of U.S. Marshall Lorna McCoy (Wendy Latta) makes the scene and the James brothers find that they have picked the wrong house to enter as the Ryan’s are anything but the typical American family!
Killers is definitely a product of it’s time; we get a dose of Melendez Brothers, a dash of Natural Born Killers, a hint of From Dusk Till Dawn… all swirled around with references aplenty for film fans by film fans in the truest Tarantino sense.
That being said you can bet your arcane asses that we get a heathy helpin’ of Shakespearean soliloquy by way of the local Mom and Pop video store too (which never lessens the pace or fever-dream sensibilities of the picture) , intermingled with plenty of good ol’ bullet wounds and spraying blood… and of course we get a few twists n’ turns along the way with our seemingly hapless family growing ever-more downright bizarre as their ordeal carries on.
To that end we get some fun performances from the fine folks playing the Ryan clan, with all members proving to be memorable and completely invested in the crazy goings-on, and their adversaries appear to be devouring their roles with absolute devilish delight which makes the outrageous narrative even more entertaining to experience.
While we are on the topic of acting, this film features a sex scene that goes on longer than one could have ever anticipated and every time it “ends” there’s more… it’s like The Return of the King: The Extended Edition but with less elves and more fucking… well, all fucking to be precise…
If you’re curious as to how all of this came to be, the special features Synapse have assembled for this Blu-ray release have you covered since they kick off with an audio commentary from Mendez and writer/film historian Michael Gingold which takes us through what it took to bring Killers to fruition in detail.
Also included are an alternate ending (which I preferred as it doesn’t have the overzealous extras fucking up the scene that the original version contains), and a dup of promotional trailers.
Bloody, surreal, and completely over-the-top, Killers is a psychotronic trip into madness you shouldn’t miss if you dig your flicks on the batshit side!
