There’s just something about serial killers that says “ka-ching,” eh? At least that’s what no-budget filmmaker Michael Feifer must have thought when he booted up his computer and starting typing out the script for B.T.K. Now, I’ll admit: I’m just like any other guy when it comes to possessing a morbid fascination with serial killers and mass murderers. I’ll watch just about any ol’ bio-pic or documentary that comes along — although I prefer the latter of the two as they usually tend to get most of the facts right…which is something that Michael Feifer really didn’t bother doing in this mess of a film.
As Dennis Rader — the man who was captured and sentenced to life in prison in 2005 for a string of bind-torture-kill murders from as far back as 1974 — actor Kane Hodder is quite intimidating (certainly more intimidating than he was with a hockey mask over his face during his Friday The 13th films) and really looks the part. Note how I used the word “looks” and did not incorporate a noun such as “plays” or an adjective like “owns” in that statement. I did so purposefully, too — as B.T.K. only makes one wonder if Kane Hodder wouldn’t be better off acting behind a hockey mask or not. When he was Jason Voorhees, he had no problem swingin’ a machete. As a huge lumbering henchman and stuntman, there are few that could fill his shoes. But if you cast Kane as a real-life serial killer and actually expect him to emote…well, he certainly looks the part (more so than he looked like Ed Gein).
All Kane-kidding aside, B.T.K. is quite possibly the cheapest films that I’ve seen in a while (and I watch a lot of cheap movies on a regular basis, mind you). From the minimalistic (and annoying) music score to the weak special effects (e.g. runny fake blood and strawberry jam, CGI gunshots and smoke), this film is so bad that I doubt your drunken friends would even want to watch it on Bad Movie Night. Writer/director Michael Fefier must suffer from some form of Attention Deficit Disorder as one particularly amusing moment has a woman sitting down to eat dinner and then, suddenly, heading upstairs to go to bed (so did she eat or didn’t she?). The massive police manhunt is relayed via the sounds of patrol vehicle sirens set to the blurry image of Kane Hodder jogging down a very wide and sunny alley.
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