“The holiest of holiest days. Merry Christmas, Dad. Boom! Stocking stuffers, Mom? Boom! Inspired. The flicker of yuletide lights, off-green artificial tree, carolers, the patter of eight tiny reindeer and the small jingle bells. Oh, what a silent night; that is, of course, unless you wanna count the 27 double-buck rounds which are blasted pounding and ripping into both you and your better half…”
There’s an ongoing argument about the classic Bruce Willis film, Die Hard. Is it a Christmas movie, or merely a movie that happens at Christmas time? If you think that’s a tough one, wait until you get your hands on the latest release from Synapse Films. It’s Mike Mendez’s first time as a director, and the film is Killers. It’s 1997, and Mendez still has a few small-budget gems in Christmas yet to come, Big Ass Spider and The Convent being two of his best. Mendez would get his first large attention project with the television series Masters Of Horror. But it all started here with one of the craziest films you will ever see. So is it a Christmas movie, or a movie that happens at Christmas? Boom!
We go back a few years with the James brothers Odessa (Larsen) and Kyle (Gunn). It’s Christmas Eve, and so they put on a Halloween skull face makeup job and head upstairs to the bedroom of their parents, where they let loose with a bloody barrage of shotgun blasts, and it’s bye-bye mom and dad. The act makes the brothers and their small town famous. Years later they’re on death row when they manage to break out. It’s a rainy night, and the Ryan family are in for a holiday surprise.
Meet the Ryans. Charlie (Morgan) is the deadpan dad. Rea (Hoffer) is Mom. Their daughter, Jamie (Bianchi) is home from college for the holidays, and then there’s little Jenny (Cohen). They appear to be your typical 1950’s television family. These two worlds are about to collide when the James Brothers pick out the Ryan home for a little home invasion and torture spree. From here the film goes completely off the rails as the mom and daughter seduce the two brothers, and we find out there’s also another member of the family we hadn’t met yet. That would be Bob (Sommers) and the little “playroom” the family keeps in the basement. Before it’s all over, there are more gunshots than a Dirty Harry movie, and you won’t be able to tell the players without a program. This little slice of insanity often makes no sense, but it’s like that bad accident you drive by on the interstate. You just can’t help but look. The worse the wreck, the more you can’t keep from watching. The disturbed final act of this one is one of those things you’ll hate but feel compelled to watch it until the end. And you still won’t exactly have much of an idea about what it is you saw.
There’s a side story that involves U.S. Marshall McCoy (Latta). She has spent two years eating lunch opposite these brutal killers. Why? That’s just one of those questions you shouldn’t ask. Now she’s determined to bring them back for their appointment with the death chamber. Either that or get killed trying and have a quick fling with one of the killers before you kick the bucket. It’s one of those things. I’m sure of it. Truth be told, Wendy Latta is actually one of the more compelling characters and performances in the film, at least until the blood-soaked coda where I don’t know what the heck is going on anymore. Dave Larsen plays the killer Odessa and was a co-writer with Mendez on the film. He actually has a pretty killer stare. Unfortunately, the actor/writer died just a few years later in 2003 and missed the chance to see the film actually catch on as a cult film on home video. It’s too bad, because the guy mortgaged his home, which also serves as the Ryan family home, to help finance the film. He ended up losing the home over the film’s poor returns. It wasn’t until around 2014 when the film started showing up in a few art houses that most of the audience even heard of it.
There’s no question that Mendez and Larsen were going for more style over substance, unless of course, you consider the blood and gunfire part of the substance. The dialog is rather cold and dark and humorously unnatural. Daddy Charles recites poetry as he gets into a gun battle with Odessa near the film’s finale. The editing is manic at times, yet at other times it lingers on a super close-up of a character lighting a cigarette or just standing there in contemplation. Two sex scenes play against the narrative near the beginning of the home invasion that had me scratching my head. It does pay off in the end, but you’ve truly got to be patient here.
There are a couple of trailers here with an Audio Commentary from Mendez and a film historian. An alternate ending isn’t very interesting. The end credits score is another one of those wacky elements that doesn’t work … but really does. Contradiction? You bet. That’s Killers in a nutshell. “America’s favorite killers: Odessa and Kyle James can be yours to bring home.”
