Los Angeles [www.filmstew.com]- If the feature film Amateur Porn Star Killer attracts just a dozen moviegoers to its midnight screenings at L.A.’s Laemmle Sunset Five complex this Friday and Saturday, August 24th and 25th, it will have recouped its entire production cost.
It’s not the fact that filmmaker Shane Ryan shot his horror thriller in three hours for the discount mini-DV price of $45, thanks to the donated services of a co-star and possibly one or two other crew members. It’s the fact that ahead of the film’s November DVD release, it’s actually getting shown in theaters.
“Sure, we had 8mm,” Ryan explains, referring to the 1999 Joel Schumacher drama that starred Nicolas Cage. “But I wanted the film inside the film of 8mm to be a real, full-length film. Maybe it wasn’t meant to be, but I made it happen, and here it is.”
Shot in 2004, completed in 2005 and retooled in 2006, Amateur Porn Star Killer stars Ryan as a snuff film psychopath who drags a woman (Michiko Jimenez) to a hotel room and proceeds to do pretty much everything imaginable to her.
In light of this summer’s poor performance of similar gore porn films (Captivity, Hostel: Part II), it’s unclear if the theatrical audience for this kind of thing still exists. But as mentioned, all Ryan needs to do is attract twelve people to the L.A. midnight shows (besides himself), which may be followed by other showings elsewhere.
The tag line for Ryan’s film says it all: ‘This young girl will be humiliated, raped, murdered and you will watch.’ But ahead of perhaps some sort of public outcry over the film’s content, Ryan makes no apologies.
“Horror should either scare, terrify, disturb or make you uneasy,” he insists. “Don’t look for entertainment in this movie. Look for reality, at its most ruthless and evil side.” “If you are, however, entertained, please call my shrink.” Our favorite thing about Ryan’s film are the sources of some of rave quotes on his website. Lurid Sinema deems it “excellent,” Sex Gore Mutants warn that it’s “sickening” and Evil Dread labels it “psychotic.” In the horror world, this is as good as two thumbs up.