Synopsis
Sergeant Boyd's police search to find a sniper who has been shooting hookers.
1979 Directed by George Mendeluk
Sergeant Boyd's police search to find a sniper who has been shooting hookers.
Raide Mort, 모니카, Убиец в нощта, Flash mortal, Ледяная смерть, 石头冷死了, Squilli di sangue
Stone Cold Dead is a mostly forgotten example of the kind of nocturnal urban thriller that thrived in drive-ins and grindhouses in the 70’s and 80’s. It’s got all the hallmarks fans of this sort of thing come to see. Seedy red light district locations, asshole cops, violent pimps, unlucky sex workers, a killer with major sexual hangups. There’s not much in it that you can’t find in any number of better movies. But if you’re like me, and you can’t seem to get enough of this sort of cinematic sleaze, you’ll probably find something to appreciate about it.
Being shot in Toronto in December gives the movie a unique wintery vibe that distinguishes it a bit from other titles…
Mainly a sleazy exploitation film about prostitutes and strippers as a sniper picks them off and a detective tries to stop the bloodshed. Features Richard Crenna as the detective and Paul Williams as a drug-dealing pimp, drifting between strip joints and hustling with the kind of gritty look you'd come to expect. Plus the giallo angle of a cold-blooded sniper and this slow but interesting revelation of who it is and the twisted motive turns out to be really dark with some cold-blooded kills executed with creepy precision with a .22 caliber rifle and a Canon SLR camera mounted on it. Has an unsettling mechanical coldness unlike someone slashing away with a straight razor. Mostly you would watch this flick for the street level grittiness so the dramatic parts might seem too melodramatic and unnecessarily prolong it, but overall they're also pretty effective.
Toronto in its sleazier days is second only to Montreal in the preferred Canadian destinations of my youth. I love discovering these exploitation films from the era. I know that I've been to that grindhouse that appears in the background of one shot. I saw Eastwood's The Gauntlet along with the Marilyn Chambers "classic" Insatiable there.
This movie is a decently absurd Canadian giallo-fest with Richard Crenna as a crusty, mopey cop and Paul Williams (he's still alive!) as a dandy hooker-lovin' bastard. Michael Ironside is in the final credits, but I must have blinked or he was unrecognizable. Forgive me, it was late. 7.4/10
Richard Crenna plays a world-weary Toronto detective chasing a rooftop sniper prowling the city's red-light district. Pretty decent urban thriller is a bit tame compared to other similar films from this era,but its worth a watch for the always dependable Crenna and especially a great performance by the diminutive Paul Williams..of 'Phantom of the Paradise' and 'Smokey and the Bandit' fame..as a ruthless, manipulative pimp!! Crenna is attracted to a slightly clapped out,over-the-hill escort,but fends off the advances of a bodacious, ballsy undercover cop..whatever floats your boat,I guess !? Some nice shots of the Toronto red-light district..'Wanda the Wicked Warden' is playing one of the grindhouses! Michael Ironside is listed in the credits but I still can't spot him onscreen..maybe its a different Michael Ironside?
Toronto vice cop Richard Crenna is tracking a sniper with a fancy-dan bespoke rifle, who is picking off hookers while photographing them. He also wants to take down sleazoid pimp Paul Williams...yeah, that Paul Williams!
Often if I start following someone new on LB, I have a quick scan over recent activity to see if there was anything interesting or different. Today, with thanks to JSlattery, I discovered a film I'd never heard off, thought "I want to see that", and hey, YouTube provides. This Canuxploitation is written and directed by the guy that brought us Meatballs 3, this is quite a switch for sure. Showing a grimy side to Toronto, it's guilty of meandering off course plot wise too…
Kind of unremarkable killer movie that focuses way too much on a detective (and basically everybody else) harassing prostitutes. Most of the men in this are awful. The murder aspect doesn't kick in till halfway through the film and it's hard to really get behind any of the characters. Merely okay. Pair with store brand cereal.
Canadian sorta-giallo mega sleaze where a black gloved sniper picks off the working girls of Toronto (conspicuously standing in for NYC). Sorta worth it for Paul Williams playing a bloated, abusively emo pimp, but too skeezy for anyone beyond tried and true exploitation hounds. Glad it exists, but probably could’ve done without the seventeenth scene of a prostitute jamming a heroin needle into her arm. What I could’ve used more of? Women’s room knife fights, as there’s a real wild one here.
Hooptober X - 10/34
6 countries: Canada
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Toronto 1979, a.k.a. Bad Vibes Central. It's cold and gray outside, and the "Sin Sniper" is killing women, prostitutes specifically, using a sniper rifle with a camera rigged up to it so that it takes a picture right when the trigger is pulled. Richard Crenna is the cold, jaded cop on the case, and Paul Williams is his nemesis - an evil pimp called Julie. They make a really weird pair, to say the least.
Everything is sad and kind of hopeless feeling. Everyone's either strung out on junk or getting killed by the Sin Sniper, or both. No end in sight. The original theme song is depressing. Eventually the identity of…
Richard Crenna as a hard-to-like cop tracks down “the Sin Sniper,” a killer after prostitutes who’s connected a pistol to a camera and captures their assassinations Peeping Tom style. Wanted to like this and it sure had enough threads going at once, but in the last 40 minutes it methodically ties them up one by one, with little thought paid to the viewer’s patience (it’s weird to know that someone is definitely not the killer, and get written out of the story so the movie can end). Too many characters, none of which are that interesting. Starts out promising Vice Squad-progenitor style sleaze, and slowly cleans up as the movie goes along, which feels like being left behind. Yonge St. and the…
Canadian maple sleaze that takes the police procedural/giallo to the great white north; the kind of thriller that meanders about - the black-gloved killer with a sniper rifle strikes so infrequently that for stretches you almost forget about it - but the vibe is sleazy, the 70s funk and melodramatic orchestration is laid on thick, Paul Williams is overacting, and the grimy Toronto atmosphere and locations seal the deal.
A low-key, hang out in the gutter, winter-bound Peeping Tom meets detective thriller for the Labatt 50 set.
Richard Crenna started out his acting career on the television comedy series OUR MISS BROOKS,which e then followed up with other various television series(including THE REAL McCOYS) and after his successful start in theatrical films in the mid 60s(via the likes of WAIT UNTIL DARK and THE SAND PEPPLES) Creena started appearing in many various types of genre films,which included this Canadian thriller from director George Mendeluk(THE KIDNAPPING OF THE PRESIDENT,MEATBALLS 3) that is widely influenced by Italy's giallos and police thrillers as a shadowy killer is on the loose on the streets taking out hookers and strippers with a sniper rifle,with Linnea Quigley(as a local hooker) being the first to feel the killer's moralistic wrath. Crenna is soon feverishly…