Sweet Kill

It must have been hard to imagine in 1973 that the director of this low budget shock flick would go on to make one of the very best crime films of the nineties with LA Confidential, but indeed that was the case. Anyway, this was his first attempt at directing, and it's a rather lukewarm film. I never go into films like this expecting too much; generally these film were made with the intention of getting as many people into a theatre as possible and that isn't usually the best base for a great film. This one focuses on Eddie Collins, a disturbed man who gets into murdering women after one unsuccessful encounter and then ends up not being able to shake off the urge to do so. The film was obviously made on a shoestring budget and it does look very cheap. There's also rather too many sex scenes in the film which were obviously included to help sell the film, but actually end up making it all the more boring. Naturally the point of the film is to see the lead character butchering some women rather than any kind of character study, and that's really all we get. Still, Sweet Kill is not a total dead loss; it makes for an interesting watch and fans of low budget seventies exploitation will probably get a kick out of it.

1950s matinée idol Tab Hunter here gets a juicy role into which he can sink his teeth, and does: he plays Eddie, a Phys. Ed. teacher in Venice, California, who's sad and lonely. He has a real problem when it comes to making love to women, and it stems from a traumatic incident in his childhood (no surprise there). When he accidentally kills one young women, it sets off something inside him, and then he graduates to actually murdering the sexy ladies of Venice.

Not that this film, written, co-produced, and directed by budding young talent Curtis Hanson ("L.A. Confidential", "8 Mile"), is really about jacking up a body count. It's more of a character study than anything else, and Hunter proves up to the task of helping us get to know this man with severe psycho sexual issues. The whole film is simply but effectively done, with some solid atmosphere and a bit of gore.

There's also a delectable dose of nudity in this thing; when originally released under the title "Sweet Kill", it wasn't too successful; (uncredited) executive producer Roger Corman then went to Hanson and ordered him to "sleaze up" his film a bit with additional sex scenes. Unfortunately, this move didn't help the films' fortunes. Still, it will make many a voyeur quite happy as the female co-stars show the goods.

Hunter is well supported by the appealing Latimer, Nadyne Turney as Barbara (the one well meaning woman with whom Eddie tries to make a connection), veteran actress Isabel Jewell as a landlady, a pre-fame Angus Scrimm as her husband, 70s drive-in starlet Roberta Collins as a call girl, and John Aprea of "The Godfather Part II" as Latimers' boyfriend.

With a chilling score by Charles Bernstein as accompaniment, this is well done overall and worth a viewing for trash devotees.

Eight out of 10.

A handsome and lonely gym teacher Eddie Collins can't perform sexually due to his constant watching of his mother undress while he hid in her closet as a child.His only recourse is to kill the women he tries to sleep with and stash them in a pigeon hutch on his roof.He hires a prostitute to dress as his dead mother,the only way he is able to achieve sexual gratification..."The Arousers" is the first film of director Curtis Hanson.Originally shot in 1971 under the title "Sweet Kill",this film lingered on the shelf until 1973 when executive producer Roger Corman had Hanson shoot two days of nudity inserts to spice-up the film.Angus Scrimm of "Phanatsm" fame has a small cameo here.Overall,this is a good piece of sleaze from the early 70's that should satisfy the exploitation fans out there looking for plenty of nudity,sex and violence.7 out of 10.

"Sweet Kill" was the very first film of writer/director Curtis Hanson who would become reasonably successful and acclaimed more than twenty years later thanks to a couple of popular mainstream titles such as "The River Wild", the Oscar-winning "LA Confidential", "Wonder Boys" and the Eminem biography "8 Mile". But like so many other now famous & influential film makers (Francis Ford Coppola, Jack Nicholson, James Cameron, Joe Dante, Jonathan Demme…), Curtis Hanson in fact owes his entire career to the support and mentoring of one of the most important individuals in the history of cinema; namely Roger – "King of the B's" - Corman. Back when "Sweet Kill" was first released and quickly turned out unsuccessful at the box-office, it was executive producer Roger Corman who came to the rescue and instructed Curtis Hanson to add a lot more female nudity and change the title to "The Arousers". It didn't help all that much, but at least and thanks to Corman we're treated to copious amounts of gratuitous B, B and B (which stands for boobs, bums and bush). During the first five minutes, for example, 3 different nameless and totally random women are walking nonchalantly through the screen butt-naked! Not taking into account all the bare female flesh, "Sweet Kill" is half fascinating and half of a failure. The film is undoubtedly inspired (like countless of other movies) by Hitchcock's "Psycho", with another cinematic madman that is actually good- looking and sophisticated, but socially incompetent due to his sexual fixation on mommy. Hanson introduces Tab Hunter, a former poster-boy from the fifties, as an introvert serial killer slash gym teacher Eddie Collins. Numerous beautiful and predatory women literally throw themselves at Eddie, but he's only turned on when he pays a prostitute to dress up like his own mother. "Sweet Kill" opens quite promisingly, with the murder of some beach girl and subsequently the hiding of her corpse in the pigeon loft above his apartment (where she remains throughout the entire movie, by the way) but then the film gets gradually more boring, repetitive and predictable. I'm honestly convinced that Curtis Hanson wanted to draw a profound and insightful portrait of his protagonist serial killer, but Eddie Collins remains a bland and largely uninteresting character and he hardly ever succeeds in generating suspense or discomfort. It's a forgettable film, with a nevertheless good performance of Tab Hunter and a fairly uncanny score, and you could probably never guess from this early work that Curtis Hanson would hold an Oscar for best screenplay in his hands 25 years later.

I would have never expected Curtis Hanson directing such a film; I hardly realize that LA CONFIDENTIAL maker gave us this more than twenty years earlier. And besides, I also hardly believe that former Hollywood actor in the fifties Tab Hunter could perform in such a film. Not a bad one though, so typical from from late sixties, early seventies. A period where anything was possible, ANYTHING. I was not bored with this film, not disappointed, not deceived, unlike many other stuff of this kind. Good, solid script and a convincing acting performance from Tab Hunter. I think Matt - forever young - Dillon could have played such a role.