My review was written in March 1987 after watching the movie at a Times Square screening room.
"Prettykill", originally titled "Tomorrow's a Killer", is a tame exploitation film from Sandy Howard, revisiting once again the thematic territory of his 1982 pic "Vice Squad". Pic is notable mainly as the vehicle by which former Canadian-U. S. art film distributor Spectrafilm gets its feet wet with grindhouse product.
Three parallel stories intertwine unconvincingly in Sandra K. Bailey's far-fetched script: David Birney is a cop tortured with guilt for killing a guy in the line of duty, whose problems keep mounting as he gets in hot water with his superior, Yaphet Kotto; his girlfriend Season Hubley (star of "Vice Squad") is a $500-a-pop call girl fed up with her life but unwilling to wed Birney; and Suzanne Snyder is a pretty blonde dancer who Hubley takes under her wing to show her the ropes of prostitution.
A key subplot involves Hubley's mentor, an older prostie now working as a madam (Susannah York), who is having problems as her young daughters (raised in the same house where her group of prostitutes work) find out about her line of work and are ostracized at school. This material is played sentimentally and doesn't work.
The drug bust case Birney's working on curiously links up with an investigation of a serial killer of prostitutes, with Birney's conflict of interests leading him to protect York and foolishly punch out Kotto, spelling the end of the line for him as a New York City policeman. Hubley becomes fed up with hooking and decides to quit. Main plot element, however, is revelation (already given away by the film's attractive one-sheet of Snyder in lingerie holding a knife) that Snydr4 is a schizo, talking on her incestuous fathr's personality and killing hookers.
Main entertainment value of this plodding film comes in some of the campiest scenes since "Mommie Dearest" as Snyder changes voices an behavior back and forth between her lip-smacking, southern-fried dady and her own ever-smiling (replete with Raggedy Ann doll plaything) little girl personality. Pic climaxes with her made up and styled as a doppelganger for Hubley, taking on daddy's voice and trying to kill hne. Sudden happy ending is preposterous.
Birney is miscast as a film noir antihero while Hubley is far too cool (one almost starts sympathizing with her sleazy johns when she is so unfriendly to them) for the role. Both Kotto and YHork maintain their professional standards and Snyder is a hoot -her performance is ready-made for midnight screenings. Supporting cast is stuck with stereotypes.
Film is professionally lensed, but lowon action for a policier. One can infer from the end credits (which list gallery credits under "additional photography unit") that a sleazy sequence set in an art gallery, including the films only nude footage, was shot and added as an afterthought, typical of exploitation features. Though set in New York, the film was made primarily in Toronto.
