KILLER QUEEN – Like a lost Fred Friedel flick remixed into a cubist collage by Doris Wishman, ‘Killer Queen’ strikes the strangest of poses with its concoction of grimy grindhouse tropes and nouvelle vague. Story isn’t the point, but for what it’s worth it’s about a couple on a crime spree in New York, except the eponymous half of this double act, based on what we can glean from possibly half-hallucinated memories, might just be in it for the sheer bloody murder. I really dug this film. It’s very contrived, and that might be a turn off, but I was transfixed by what I saw. It’s grimy, filmed in 8mm so you can practically taste the grain, and it’s just full of breathless dislocation and moments of possibly insignificant strangeness. It’s the kind of film where characters talk about cheesecakes, then drift in and out of Proustian asides. It’s the kind of film where a giallo-style explanation-of-killer-tendencies-by-ambiguous-flashback-to-childhood gives way and gives up because someone needs to wander off and have a conversation with a librarian (or something). The ever-present threat of a slide into outright delirium is held in check by the knowing wink of its maker, but this is a giddy goose for sure. The benefits of the occasional trawl through the outer reaches of Prime (not a product placement) include discoveries like ‘Killer Queen’.
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