Looks Can Kill carries on the legacy established in 1964 with Mario Bava’s Blood and Black Lace (6 Donne per L’assassino). This is not in the style of a Giallo, but in something more familiar, a serial killer’s fashion model muse. This is a premise that has appeared in everything from the sub par budget films like Centerfold Girls to the Hollywood movies like The Eyes of Laura Mars.
Rhonda (Danielle Scott, Prototype, Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey) receives a call from her sister Gina (Sarah Alexandra Marks, Kingdom of the Dinosaurs, Exorcist Vengeance). Their father is showing signs of worsened health, and will not make it past the night. He is about to kick the bucket, but she has more pressing things like a meeting with her agent, which is why she is only in her underwear.
Elsewhere, Pete is managing a T&A photoshoot with cheerleader costumes that he describes as “sexy fear.” Even though many would consider this to be a dream job, Pete looks miserable. During the post-shoot, he expresses his dissatisfaction towards photographer Zach stating, “double D dimwit” when referring to the model they just shot being the tamest insult he could think of. He then continues his discussion with Rants about porn and Instagram that he holds responsible for his business problems.
Making her directorial debut, Jasmine Ebony Thomas directs the script of Tom Hillery, who has few writing credits but is a known producer of Seized, The Legion, and Attack of the Unknown. As expected, the film features a lot of drama and revolves around nudity, which is unusual for a Scott Jeffrey production. He seems to decide against showcasing skin in his movies, such as Reign of Chaos and The Gardener. I am not sure if it is to avoid ratings issues, or to minimize pay for the actresses, but I can make an educated guess.
Within its first act, the best Looks Can Kill achieves is a photo session featuring a broken glass bottle, which might not have been real glass. The only other moment where the film approaches murder, is in the mention of the BLT (Bondage, Lechery, Torture) Killer. But for a film claiming to be an erotic thriller, there is a complete absence of midline action, which is quite concerning.
In place of that, what Looks Can Kill offers instead is an extended tale of Rachael’s dead father, who is some sort of a character in else a very hastily done probate. There’s Hank and his financial troubles, who also serves as Clint Gordon (Spider in the Attic, The Legend of Jack and Jill). And then there’s some model friends of theirs whose financial struggles push them into the modeling world. All of that adds to the possible body count without actually creating one.
The attempts at slasher style sequences are greatly hampered, and with barely any clothes on display, the film, Looks Can Kill, loses its edge. It turns into a drama on the modeling business, which is not very captivating until after an hour when there are some murders. And we do get some in the last half hour, one of which, a strangulation could have been graphic but not as it was shown. The same goes for an axe murder. Even at the end when it inexplicably tries to be Saw, Looks Can Kill surprisingly remains bloodless.
Looks Can Kill happens to be one of those movies where they leave a model tied up to a chair until they return. And apparently, they don’t come back otherwise they would have seen a dead body, so I guess it should not have shocked me that the whole gimmick of the killer’s identity was rather ridiculous. Not that it helps because, despite some of the lackluster effort to try and make other people the prime suspects, identifying the killer becomes a piece of cake.
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