Fantom Kiler

The woodlands around a rural Polish train station are haunted by a masked figure known as the Fantom Kiler. He shows up whenever a woman displeases him by doing something 'wrong', whether it be having a career, an independent mind or dressing 'provocatively', to sexually assault and/or murder her…

This awkward, deliberately provocative combination of giallo, porno and low-brow comedy looks to have been made with the aims of offending as many people as possible and providing stimulation for a target audience of rapists and killers.

The former is excusable – John Waters made his early career out if it – but the latter is not.

Whatever one might think of contemporary mores that mean its essentially unacceptable for a porn film to present non-consensual sex, it's hard to see how Fantom Kiler's presentation of a masked rapist and murderer as a positive figure can be endorsed.

Quite simply, when it coms to the Kiler's dishing out 'retribution' towards the array of bitches/sluts/cunts/choose your term of abuse for their imagined crimes, one gets the distinct impression that the director is identifying with the Kiler and inviting his audience to do the same.

There is no sense of distance, irony or critique, only one of a very sick mind at work.

To cite Waters again, there's good bad taste and bad bad taste and Fantom Kiler is of the latter sort.

With the above in mind, it almost seems irrelevant to criticise the film's stylistic failings. While the director has the tropes of giallo down well, with the Blood and Black Lace stylistics augmented by with an effective mock-Goblin score reminscent of Tenebre, these are countered by haphazard subtitling, shifts in aspect ratio and – worst of all – interminable Benny Hill Show style interludes.

Had the sex and violence not been so disconcerting the mix might have worked, allowing the film to qualify as a parody rather than an incitment. But, as it is, it just doesn't work.

Combined with the reputedly British director's hiding behind a pseudonym and passing off the film as a Polish product, Fantom Kiler becomes that rare exploitation film that one does not want to make a case for.

Yet, worryingly, someone must like it, seeing as there are already two sequels. I won't be seeking them out, believing in the adage "once a philosopher, twice a pervert"