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[Blu-ray Review] ‘Killer Workout’ is Trashy, Slasher Fun
When Slasher // Video announced their first set of Blu-ray releases with Olive Films the one I was most excited about was Killer Workout. I would say this is a pretty obscure 80’s slasher with a fairly strong cult following. If you haven’t seen Killer Workout yet, please read along and perhaps I’ll be able to convince you to do so!
The film opens with a model getting a phone call from her agent informing her that she just landed the cover shoot for a popular fashion magazine. Excited beyond belief, she heads to her local tanning salon to get nice and tan before the big shoot. Unfortunately the tanning booth malfunctions and burns the model very, very badly. Flash forward two years later and the model’s twin sister, Rhonda (Marcia Karr), is now running her own fitness club in Los Angeles, fittingly named Rhonda’s Workout.
Rhonda’s Workout is a very specific type of fitness club. They have all the normal amenities you would expect to see at your average gym, but their big focus is on aerobics-based exercise classes. Of course we’re talking about aerobicise because this is the 80’s.
Business is going pretty well for Rhonda until one of the club’s members is murdered in the shower. With a mystery attacker now targeting the club Detective Morgan (David James Campbell) begins to investigate. As Morgan begins to dig deeper into the mystery, more and more people turn up dead. Will Morgan be able to solve the case before it’s too late? Dun dun dun!
Killer Workout was directed by David A. Prior who made a bit of a name for himself directing a number of low grade B-movies and Killer Workout definitely fits that bill. The plot is the very basic slasher setup in that you meet a handful of characters and an unknown killer begins picking them off one by one. None of the characters are very well developed and are introduced to fit two very specific needs – be eye candy and become victims. And for most slashers that’s honestly all you need. Sure, this won’t result in a groundbreaking slasher that breaks the mold, but it works perfectly to create some enjoyable trash.
Aerobicise was quite popular in the 80’s and Killer Workout attempted to capitalize on that and it was a smart idea. A gym is a great location for a slasher as it offers up lots of possibilities for kills. The addition of aerobicise allows the film to have plenty of scantily clad women moving around provocatively and somewhat work it into the story. Keyword there being somewhat. Prior was no dummy, he knew exactly who is audience was and what they wanted. They wanted boobs and butts and Prior made sure to give them plenty of boobs and butts. The film features numerous sequences of large groups of girls exercising together in skin tight spandex, with their goodies all hanging out. And it’s not just the ladies as there are plenty of muscle bound dudes walking around in tank tops and short shorts with their junk all up in your face.
Killer Workout features a ton of moments of things that literally make no sense. My favorite nonsense scene features Ted Prior (David’s brother) as Chuck Dawson having a runin with an equally ripped individual. Chuck is a new employee and Rhonda doesn’t like him so she gives him the worst jobs, one of which is taking out the trash. While taking out the trash Chuck runs into another fellow who just doesn’t like him for whatever reason. The other guy tells Chuck to stay away from Rhonda, which is weird because he’s nowhere near Rhonda. They fight and Chuck wins. Once the fight is over Chuck spots a girl who was just leaving the gym. She happens to catch the fight and is very impressed, so much so that she asks Chuck to go for a ride. And Chuck does! This is his first day of work at a new job and he’s just going to take off less than an hour in?! That makes no sense. Chuck should be fired!
I understand that it’s silly to question something like this from a movie called Killer Workout. Story and plot aren’t incredibly important here. It’s such an absurd scene though, with literally none of it making any sense that I had to point it out. I’m not complaining, however, because every time this scene comes up I have a blast. It’s hilarious.
Killer Workout also features the most ridiculous weapon of choice for a killer in any slasher ever. I’m not exaggerating either. The weapon used by the killer in this movie is a giant safety pin. I’m 100% serious when I say that. Maybe there is a specific name for it, but it just looks like a giant safety pin. I’m sure it’s very sharp and hurts, but you can’t help but laugh when you see someone getting stabbed with a safety pin. Scores points for originality because I can definitely say I’ve never seen that done anywhere else.
This isn’t a great looking Blu-ray unfortunately, but I suppose that kind of fits the movie. A number of the Slasher // Video titles released with Olive Films come with a disclaimer that they are not HD and are sourced from the best materials made available and Killer Workout does come with this disclaimer. For the most part I’d say the quality is equal to that of a DVD, though at times it’s more like a VHS. There are a few scenes that look really, really rough. Given that Slasher // Video was very upfront about this I can’t hold it against them too much. Not a lot of special features but you do get a trailer, photo gallery and original title sequence.
I think Killer Workout is a lot of fun, especially if you like weird slashers and aerobicise. If that sounds like your cup of tea, I definitely recommend picking this one up. Slasher // Video released the film on both DVD and Blu-ray. If you can find the Blu-ray for about $15, then I’d grab that. Otherwise go with the cheaper DVD option as the quality will be identical.
Killer Workout is now out on Blu-ray and DVD from Slasher // Video and Olive Films.
There’s something really insidious, in a great way, about setting a horror story in a movie theater. It’s something filmmakers have known for decades, going back to The Blob and beyond, but it never fails to strike a chord because, in a way, it hits us exactly where we feel safest. Seeing a horror movie on the big screen, surrounded by like-minded moviegoers, is a communal experience, one in which everyone screams and laughs together. We are together, and therefore we are much less vulnerable, so when someone punctures that bubble of safety, it’s all the more frightening.
Matinee (also released as Midnight Matinee in some territories) is a movie that understands this from the jump, setting up a stunning opening kill that predates a similar sequence in Scream 2 by almost a full decade. A smart, layered, very stylish Canadian slasher released at the tail end of the 1980s, it’s one of those films that’s spent a lot of time in the dark even among the horror faithful (I’m willing to admit that I hadn’t seen it until recently). Now, a new Kino Cult Blu-ray release is out to change that, and it reveals a slasher essential that, while not perfect, has charm and style to spare.
Two years ago, the Paramount Theater in the small town of Halston closed its doors when, during the theater’s annual horror festival, a young moviegoer was murdered in his seat, mid-movie. Leads in the murder quickly dried up, and the case is cold enough now that the town barely talks about it anymore. Fortunately for local horror fans, that means the Paramount can open again in time for its Halloween horror festival, and they’ve got a hotshot producer (William B. Davis) in town for just such an occasion.
As the festival draws closer, the film introduces us to a variety of characters, including rebellious teenager Sherri (Beatrice Boepple), her boyfriend Lawrence (Jeff Schultz), her overbearing mother Marilyn (Gillian Barber), and the theater’s kindly owner, Earle (Don S. Davis), who’s just hoping he can run a business without more bloodshed. But someone clearly remembers what happened two years ago, and their violent streak is on a collision course with opening night.
Matinee has quite a few things going for it, but what stands out right away, and maintains a consistent grip right up through a wonderful crescendo in the third act, is the film’s visual style. Writer/Director Richard Martin, cinematographer Cyrus Block, and special effects wizard Bob Comer make great use of the film’s limited locations, giving the movie a charming small-town feel reminiscent of Halloween or The Blob while building a self-contained little world inside the theater itself that’ll remind you of films like Popcorn and Demons.
The colors are striking, the framing is clever, and the film clearly has a ball making references to all kinds of other horror cinema moments ranging from The Phantom of the Opera to Friday the 13th. The kills, while relatively sparing with gore, are delivered with style and appropriate tension, creating that sense of unease right in the middle of a place where we as movie fans should be comfortable: The movie theater. Along the way, the Paramount itself becomes a character, and this release definitely dials up its retro splendor.
The Blu-ray upgrade preserves the film’s attention to detail and ambitious cinematography, helping the colors to pop while never letting go of the texture and feel of a relatively low-budget horror film made in Canada in the 1980s. There’s a certain gauziness to many exploitation films of this era, that haloed light you get when the scene is perhaps overexposed just a little too much. It makes the film dreamlike even when it reaches for realism, and Kino Cult’s upgrade preserves that feeling. Throw in a smart script and a whodunit plot that leans heavily into the psychological details of each character, and you’ve got a winner.
There are a couple of things that stick out as slight issues here, including the lack of special features beyond an excellent commentary from film historians and Kino regulars Jason Pichonsky and Paul Corupe. The disc is quite reasonably priced, so it’s not a letdown economically speaking, but I’d love a deeper dive into the film and the Canadian slasher boom in general, particularly for a movie like this that seems to have faded from so many memories, including mine. The sound mix also has some issues, probably left over from previous releases, that might have you playing with your volume settings a little more than you’d like over the course of a 90-minute film, particularly when lines of ADR dialogue crop up.
These are minor concerns, though, and they do nothing to diminish the impact of Matinee, or the joy that’ll come from watching this film for the first time if you’re a slasher devotee in search of something new, or even someone who saw this movie way back when hoping to relive its glories. This is one of those slashers I’ll be talking about with fellow horrorphiles for a long time, and it’s because of this disc.
Matinee is now available on Blu-ray from Kino Cult.
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