This
college coed’s pathological aversion to men is not the product of freshmen
indoctrination programs (although that probably did not help matters). She is quite
literally insane, but do not judge her too harshly. Maniacal killing runs in
her family. Montreal’s loutish frat boys are in for the slice & dice treatment
in Nathan Oliver’s satirical Lady Psycho
Killer (trailer
here), which
screens today during the 2015 Fantasia International Film Festival in that very
same Montreal.
Ella
is suspiciously naïve and socially stunted. It is not just because she was
home-schooled by her clingy mother. There is something off about her that her “edgy”
psych professor will inadvertently turn loose. The only assignment of Prof. Douglas’s
introductory class is to do something outside your normal bounds of behavior
and write a paper about it. Ella decides to go to a strip club. Good choice.
Of
course, when the manager inevitably starts sleazing on her, Ella ends up offing
the creep. There is a lot of blood, but she likes it. Soon, she starts
prosecuting her private war on the sexes, one sexually overbearing scumbag at a
time, or in some cases, two at a time. However, she is not sure what to do with
Daniel, the lacrosse-playing frat boy. He seems to genuinely like her—and he
might be even shier than her. Eventually, her mother realizes what Ella is up
to, but she understands. Her long absent father was the exact same way.
Somehow
Oliver and co-screenwriter Albert I Melamed pull off quite a nifty trick in LPK. They have written a film all about
gender politics that touches on just about every hot button social issue you
can think of, yet it never comes across as didactic or hackneyed. The gory
humor undoubtedly helps a lot. The crazy casting is also sure to please genre
fans. If you have Michael Madsen, Malcolm McDowell, Daniel Baldwin, and Ron
Jeremy on your Rotisserie B-movie team, than LPK will score you a lot of points, including a bonus for McDowell
serving as executive producer.
The
idea of Michael Madsen as an aging hipster freshman psych professor should
unnerve any parent. Even though he tries to play it straight, it is hard not to
laugh during his scenes. Be that as it may, nobody can top Kate Daly’s big
screen debut as Ella. She is over-the-top nuts, but still projects a sense of
pathos, while also nailing some wickedly droll narration. It is sort of like
Reese Witherspoon’s arrival in Legally
Blonde, but with buckets of blood.
