A little while ago I did an interview with Kane Hodder; in it we discussed a good portion of his out-of-costume acting work: stuff where he doesn’t have a mask on, and such. I brought up his quite good performance in director Michael Feifer’s previous serial killer biopic, Ed Gein: The Butcher of Plainfield. I told him I was looking forward to his and Feifer’s newest collaboration, and a little while later B.T.K. showed up in my mailbox.
You’ve probably noticed the scores I’ve given the film by now. Keep in mind that Hodder’s still the man. His performance as Dennis Rader, the notorious killer on whom the film is based, really elevates the production a great deal, not just in the masterful physicality he exhibits, but in his truly inspired delivery. A lot of the dialogue in B.T.K. is fairly expositional, often telling you outright and ham-handedly what you need to know. But Hodder exhibits a naturalism that makes even these lines easy enough to swallow that most viewers may not even notice it. Some of the other actors deserve a great deal of credit as well, most notably Rader’s many victims, who most of the time have nothing to do but act totally helpless, crying, begging and screaming for mercy.
This also brings another positive to the table – somehow, Feifer is able to avoid this coming off as blatantly misogynistic. The last screener I got of a shot-on-digital slasher flick, the flagrantly awful Baseline Killer, exhibited a completely demeaning portrayal of its almost entirely female cast. Feifer pulls it off by making whatever misogyny might be inherent in the character only exhibited by the character himself. Baseline Killer director Ulli Lommel seemed to take sides with his antagonists throughout that film’s unbearable 80-minute runtime, but B.T.K. avoids the slasher movie deathblow by focusing his writing squarely on Rader’s mindset, not one that seems to come from a director.
Unfortunately, that’s the most I can say in support of B.T.K. While every ten minutes or so there will occur an inspired moment or shot or set piece or makeup effect, there simply isn’t enough here to fill 85 minutes. Rader goes about his day, meets some people, says hi to his family, and then goes back out and kills the people he met; even if this exact order of events only occurs once, ostensibly it encompasses the bulk of the film’s subject matter. In the last ten minutes or so, some pretty good drama featuring Rader’s family comes about, but whenever two of the four people in the scene open their mouth any believability is sucked right down their gaping faceholes. The younger daughter with the braces simply cannot act and, as a result, what could have been the strongest dramatic scene in the movie ultimately ends up forgettable.
Feifer has a good visual style on occasion, but for the most part the film lacks a sense of polish. Fairly bad lighting is made worse by poor planning for the shoot on digital. There’s nothing inherently bad about digital cinematography, and in fact it may suit this production better. But you may as well be seeing the lights themselves with these reflections on people’s faces and on any pseudo-reflective surface. It seems so much like a movie when you can tell where light is coming from, and as a result it ends up seeming less like a movie.
It is a shame, because you can clearly see what Feifer is trying to do. I could very easily compare this film to Bill Lustig’s Maniac, a film that for some reason is considered “required viewing,” in most horror circles. Like Lustig’s film, I see what people may like in B.T.K., but I just don’t see it as any real stroke of genius. There’s a calculated and, honestly, well-done sense of meanness to these films, but on the whole they don’t click with me. I can recommend B.T.K. only if you want to see an actor you most likely associate with big-time monster roles come into his own as a more than capable dramatic actor. Beyond that, there’s not all that much to love.
DVD Bonus Features
My screener copy featured no extras. Searching for information of the DVD (which is available now) wielded no information on an official set of extras.
"B.T.K." is on sale December 31, 1969 and is rated R. Horror. Written and directed by Michael Feifer. Starring Amy Lyndon, Kane Hodder.
