Director: David A. Prior
18 | 1hr 25min | Horror
Killer Workout is a feminist’s nightmare. Released at the tail end of the slasher boom, it manages to shock an exhausted genre into life by using its most obvious ingredients to smother you like a sopping pair of heaving bosoms. In cinematic terms, there’s nothing remotely original about a film that was already well past its sell-by date in 1987, a censorship-imposed time when golden age slashers had been replaced by those of the more supernatural variety, but through sheer audacity it manages to carve out a unique place for itself in the realms of bad movies past. If nothing else, it’s a film that you’re unlikely to forget in a hurry.
The 1980s was a decade defined almost exclusively by image. The rise of MTV would lead to a spike in youth marketing, and with the sleek medium of the pop music video promoting physical perfection, adolescents would find themselves with much to live up to. In an era of self-improvement and American exceptionalism, such attitudes were not exclusive to teenagers. As Reagan’s trickle-down economics and infamous war on drugs decimated low-income minorities, self-styled ‘masters of the universe’ aspired to Wall Street decadence, a pumped-up Arnold Schwarzenegger becoming Hollywood’s biggest movie star. Even Jane Fonda would catch the fitness bug, heading the aerobics home video revolution for housewives across America.
Opening with a fatal tanning bed accident (you heard me), Killer Workout is an exercise in shrewd cultural marketing which plays on those fears and obsessions — that, or the commercially appropriate by-product of an awful lot of investor-bought cocaine. The movie takes place almost entirely in the confines of a health club, where gorgeous women pump and sweat to 80s pop music and musclebound jerks deride their mysterious in-house murderer for not raping his victims first. This is deplorable, morally corrupt behaviour, but in a world where scantily-clad babes walk around with purses full of condoms, breaking into mens’ lockers with the intention of sniffing their jock straps, you get the impression that they’d get off on that kind of talk.
Killer Workout serves up flaming misogyny with the lurid enthusiasm of a no holds barred stag doo for sex offenders. The oddly impenetrable fortress that is Rhonda’s Workout is an Alcatraz of health clubs, one that keeps the unrestrained murders in-house while pushing the law and any chance of retribution out to sea. If repeatedly killing day after day within such a small locale was this easy, we’d all be dropping like flies.
You can almost empathise with our resident killer’s audacious lack of restraint. Slashers are infamous for loathsome and/or braindead characters who deserve it in the worst way imaginable, but Killer Workout is a different animal. Take all the tropes that make up your standard, genericised slasher victim and turn the dial up to rumba. The men are selfish, detestable and after only one thing, and, even worse, the female clientele aren’t exactly resistant to it.
In the world of director David A. Prior, women are little more than accessories to spandex, a species so devoid of honour and propriety that they’ll jump into bed with any man who blinks at them, only to puss and weep at the merest hint of rejection. When not doing everything in their power to please their male overlords, they’re seething neon bitches ripe for the slaughter, ready to expose themselves at a moment’s notice in their fickle quest to stave off the competition. They’re vacuous, capricious and a dozen other adjectives that bring shame to the female species, especially since the actresses who feature, particularly the flagrantly exhibitionist Teresa Van der Woude, wow the way street walkers do and do so with pride. There isn’t a prudish, self-respecting final girl in sight. Let’s just hope that Prior, also taking on script duties, never married.
These insecurities throw up enough red herrings to fill a bucket. Everyone seems to have their heart set on someone, and as come-ons fail bodies fall, leading to the involvement of the comically inept Detective Morgan (Campbell) and his badly-dressed platoon of one. Not only does Morgan wrongly finger every character in the movie, he allows potential suspects to handle valuable evidence at will, failing to isolate multiple crime scenes and refusing to provide adequate police protection as one grisly death evolves into an unrelenting bloodbath of medieval proportions. And where are the security cameras? There are like four rooms in Rhonda’s Workout. Even if the place doesn’t have cameras, surely the police could spring for some in light of such a relentless and brazen serial killer.
Killer Workout isn’t concerned with plausibility, or even general logicality, which is what makes it such an indelible, low-grade treat. The action is so ineptly plotted that half the fun resides there, each gobsmacking development slapping you in the face like an impromptu martial arts battle, the kind motivated by kindergarten-level bouts of jealousy (it has those too). Where else would you find a business that continues to take on new employees while the grisly corpses continue to pile up, or a brand new employee who is willing to work for minimum wage under such conditions? It’s all so gloriously without reason.
The new face in question, Chuck, is played by writer/director David’s real-life sibling and cult bad movie headliner Ted Prior, the two teaming up for a series of outrageous, low-budget absurdities that include the mindblowingly dissonant Deadly Prey, Hell on the Battleground, Jungle Assault, Future Zone and The Final Sanction, action and sci-fi outings that give new meaning to the word cheapjack. They would also team up for another serial killer flick in 1991’s gloriously OTT Raw Nerve, but Killer Workout is the real must-see killer thriller in their gloriously kitsch back catalogue (though everyone should see at least all of their movies).
Squeezing its way into Killer Workout’s barrage of MTV-styled pornography there is something resembling a conventional plot, various douchebags leaving painfully obvious hints that they are perhaps the culprit, but if you haven’t figured out the identity of the killer after the first five minutes, you’re either not very bright or utterly distracted by the ceaseless flesh banquet steaming up the cinematographer’s lens. There’s so much steam served up it’ll shoot out of your ears with the alarming gusto of a screaming kettle.
As teased, the movie also features its fair share of kung-fu action, the kind that has rarely been so inappropriate, even in the cackhanded world of ’80s B-movie pap. In the blink of an eye, the gym’s musclebound alpha males leap headlong into savage battles for reasons that are too facile to elaborate on. One minute a pair of hairspray-fresh nimrods are running their mouths, the next their wholly unconvincing body doubles are indulging in lavish bouts of martial artistry, delivering the kind of stiff roundhouse kicks that must have loosened a few teeth along the way. It’s Cannon Films crazy at times.
For those of you with a taste for deliriously vacant 80s pop music, Killer Workout also features a killer soundtrack. Since it was never actually released aside from several promotional vinyl copies, which are either the rarest horror movie artefacts of the era or simply no longer exist, the likelihood is that you won’t recognise a single track, but that’s what makes it so great. Research indicates that the majority of contributing artists only have one or two tracks to their name; not just on this particular OST, I mean period. The breezy, vacuous sounds are enough to stir the nostalgia juices of any kid drip-fed a diet of bubble gum pop, though they do pang of a decade of decadence running on empty. There’s a serious sense of cocaine burnout at times. It must have been an exhausting experience for all involved.
Ultimately, Killer Workout is something akin to a pornographic Scooby Doo adventure: mildly macabre, utterly haphazard and hurtling towards the kind of unlikely reveal that is both utterly predictable and so beyond the realms of plausibility that you may need to watch it twice. Approaching his work with the scattergun logic of Shaggy Rogers after a whole tray of space brownies, Detective Morgan even bows down to gym owner Rhonda (Karr), allowing her business to continue operating as the body count continues to soar. But if members are willing to work out day after day while their friends are brutally cut to ribbons, who is he to argue? Like the gym’s sleazy clientele, he’s probably too busy enjoying the view.
Safety First
Killer Workout is seriously low-budget, so don’t expect much in the blood and guts department. Ultimately, it’s not that kind of slasher, but there’s plenty to smile about, even for genre purists. With that knowledge, it probably won’t surprise you to discover that the movie’s best kill is also its silliest. And I don’t use the word Silliest lightly.
In a thinly-veiled and vastly inferior homage to Psycho‘s infamous shower scene, a young woman is brutally hacked to ribbons… with a giant safety pin.
I would love to elaborate on the reasons for choosing such an implement, but the nature of the act is so random and devoid of meaning that I’m simply lost for words. To be fair, this was 1987, so ideas for unique weapons were running just a little thin, and as you will see from the movie, it’s rather effective in a gobsmackingly offbeat sense.
Whistle While You Work
As silliness is Killer Workout‘s lifeblood, it seems appropriate to award a prize for the film’s most ridiculous moment, but there’s so much nonsense on offer that it becomes a hugely subjective endeavour. Any one of ten moments could have taken the prize.
Though the movie’s nutty reveal and even nuttier spade-orientated finale are perhaps a tad more absurd, I don’t want to give too much away. Less of a spoiler, but equally absurd, is one of many priceless plot developments that make Killer Workout such a ludicrous treat.
Five minutes after arriving at Rhonda’s Workout for his first shift and naturally wanting to make a good first impression, musclebound douchebag, Chuck, kicks the living shit out of his colleague before fleeing to hardbody Debbie’s house for a quick bout of bump n’ grind while still on the clock.
He would later form a union for the criminally overworked.
Choice Dialogue
Again, we’re truly spoilt for choice when it comes to preposterous dialogue, so I’ll choose a line from one of the seriously inept Lieutenant Morgan’s many bonehead plays.
After becoming Morgan’s tenth lead suspect in as many minutes, a delightfully bitchy Rhonda confronts the subject of his woefully inferior detective work, the kind that he seems mercifully unaware of.
Rhonda: ‘Do you even have a suspect?’
Lieutenant Morgan: ‘As a matter of fact, I have several. It’s just the motive I can’t quite figure out.’
A bog-standard, low-budget slasher crudely elevated by a ceaseless diet of exploitation,
Edison Smithis a weakly-plotted gem of accidental hilarity with so many laughable quirks it becomes painful. A notable lack of gore and genuine scares may disappoint serious slasher fans, but as a B-movie ode to the wild excesses of late-80s burnout, there are few more striking.
vhsrevival.com 