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Kim Newman's Video Dungeon March 2003 David Jacobson's Dahmer is a better 'real life' serial killer picture than recent efforts like Ted Bundy. Mild-mannered, bespectacled-but-buffed Jeffrey Dahmer (Jeremy Renner) wants to own young men sexually and as silent companions. Having picked up a talkative black guy (Artel Kayaru) while shopping for knives, Dahmer and his probable victim flirt, argue, tussle and reveal secrets, while the film flashes back to earlier experiments in murder, rape, mind-control and near-sitcom family arguments with his suspicious-but-not-enough father (Bruce Davison). More like a Todd Solonz true crime picture than tabloid exploitation, Dahmer is genuinely creepy. Mad Dogs is a low-budget British comic apocalypse in Douglas Adams mode. It has an anything-goes plot and makeshift direction, but a nice, dry, witty script from novelist Simon Louvish and generally pointed performances. Schizophrenic Iain Fraser, taken off his medication, hears voices from pa systems in the Tube or at the supermarket, purportedly from aliens working for the Supreme Being (Jonathan Pryce) who ask him to prevent atop-secret US experiment. The ambitious mix extends to phantom Tube stations, a law against dogs, sundry conspiracy theories and the worldwide resurrection of the dead. Weirder than good, but an interesting rental. The nicely titled Route 666 is a neat little ghost / road movie, mixing criminality and horror. Cops Lou Diamond Phillips and Lori Petty head off the highway to elude hit men after the witness in their custody, but run into asphalt-looking zombie convicts who draw power whenever blood is spilled on the road. The impressive monsters wield road-making tools to pound victims into the asphalt, but need to be augmented by other menaces to bring the film up to feature length, hence an extended last-reel cameo from the always-welcome L.Q. Jones as a '70s-style, bigoted, redneck Sheriff, Phillips and Petty are fun, too. If it weren't a bloated three-hour
TV movies, Firestarter Rekindled might be a lot more
fun. A Stephen King-derived sequel, it has Marguerite Moreau replacing
Drew Barrymore as the now-grown-up pyrokinetic babe, but delivers value-for-money
raging ham from Malcolm McDowell as a scarred Man in Black in charge
of a crew of evil kid mutants, plus the added bonus of Dennis Hopper
as a psychic drug casualty. Expect Cujo Bites Back imminently. First Published In: Empire no.165 [March 2003] p.122 [UK] Visit Kim's Official Website at www.johnnyalucard.com
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