Killing American Style

• Also known as American Murder
• Directed by Amir Shervan
• December 1988

After escaping a prison transport, a group of criminals take over a house while plotting their next move.

Killing American Style is an unapologetically bad film. There is quite possibly nothing good about it. Yet in its trashiness and poor quality, there is a level of enjoyment. Maybe because there’s enough of a good story among the poor execution and bad acting that you keep thinking it will get better.

The film itself starts at one of the most secure ice cream truck depots you will ever encounter in fiction or reality. There is a guy at the gate and several armed guards roaming the facility ready to blow away any interlopers. Is the Ice cream truck industry that lucrative and that cutthroat?

Guess so because Tony (Robert Z’Dar) and pals decide to rob the place. Let that sink in. Has it? Good. Anyway, they get caught and go to prison. When their transport encounters the most suspicious staged accident in film history where Tony’s brother is shot, they take over a house and set up shop so well that the police that are looking for them never think to look for them there.

Our hero of John Morgan (Harold Diamond) is framed as a badass and super tough early in the movie but takes his good old time getting around to doing anything. One of the women at the house even gets raped while he is waiting for the right moment.

The cops headed up by Lt. Sunset (Jim Brown) that are hot on the trail of the villains border on seriously incompetent. Some very basic bits would have put them into direct contact with their quarry. I am thinking this element was added in after the film was finished. It looks like the hostage situation was to be the only narrative but when that was too short they had to go and add police in.

Amir Shervan was behind the unintentional cult classic Samurai Cop and brings the same level of skill to this that he brought to that. Maybe a little more as this does not contain any of the clearly obvious flaws that Samurai Cop had that made it so good. It does have flaws though which come from the laziness of Shervan. Ironically that laziness made one film so-bad-it’s-good but made this one not so much.

Everything was done correctly from a technical perspective which did not help things. There is nothing you could find to laugh at or joke about or just was generally unintentionally humorous. The acting is quite bad. If Z’Dar is your biggest name and/or best actor, your project could be in trouble.

Yet the movie itself is strangely watchable because as I said earlier, there is a good idea here. The basic idea has been done plenty. The difference is it’s not done well in Killing American Style. Between the bad acting and some of the sillier plot elements it just falls flat. Plus what we get is padded out. This feels like an A-Team episode stretched out into a movie. They really stretched out the whole family hostage bit. There’s some sound and occasionally questionable technical issues, but those are minor when it comes to the overall end product.

With a bad script and questionable dialogue, Killing American Style still manages to be a trashy and strangely watchable action film from many years ago. Much like a serious auto accident you won’t be able to look away. Not sure if I wanna recommend this or not though.