There are bad horror movies. Then there are exploitation films. And then, somewhere beneath both, wallowing in mud and pig feces, there’s Killer Pickton (2006). Directed by Ulli Lommel—yes, the same Lommel who once made interesting things in the 1970s before dedicating his twilight years to direct-to-DVD abominations—this film attempts to cash in on the horrific real-life crimes of Canadian serial killer Robert Pickton.
That’s right: someone thought, “How do we honor the suffering of dozens of murdered women? By making a backyard horror flick with the budget of a used lawnmower and acting that wouldn’t pass in a middle-school talent show.” The result is an 83-minute insult to filmmaking, true crime, and anyone unfortunate enough to watch it.
The Setup: Serial Killer Courtroom Theater
The movie starts in a police interrogation room, where “Billy Pickton” (played by Jeff Frentzen under the pseudonym Curtis Graan, because even he knew to hide) sits with his lawyer. A detective and district attorney talk about his case while the movie slips into flashbacks. What follows is less “narrative” and more “collage of unpleasantness filmed in someone’s cousin’s farmhouse.”
Instead of psychological insight or suspense, we get endless scenes of Billy running a severed pig’s head across women’s bodies in what I can only describe as a bargain-bin Hannibal Lecter audition filmed in a barn. It’s not scary. It’s not shocking. It’s not even offensive in the way it intends to be. It’s boring.
The Murders: Repetition, Woodchippers, and Meat Grinders
The killings all follow the same rhythm: lure sex worker, drug her, drag her around like a sack of potatoes, and dispose of her in either the wood chipper or the meat grinder. Rinse, repeat, no imagination required. By the third victim, the wood chipper has become less a horror device and more a recurring gag, like the Wilhelm scream.
The film desperately tries to shock by suggesting Billy mixed human flesh into pork sold at supermarkets. Instead, it makes you wonder if the writers were mixing whiskey with cough syrup when they wrote this script.
One sequence has Billy pouring alcohol down a victim’s throat while forcing pills into her mouth, filmed with the artistry of a college dorm prank video. Another victim asks him to kill her after reading him Edgar Allan Poe. This is treated like a tender romantic beat, which is like filming The Notebook in a slaughterhouse.
The Acting: Wax Mannequins Would’ve Done Better
Curtis Graan, as Billy, delivers his lines with all the menace of a man ordering a sandwich. His performance wavers between “local community theater villain” and “dad trying to be scary at Halloween.” His attempt at menace is undone by scenes where he mutters exposition with a pig mask half-falling off his face.
The supporting cast? A parade of human cardboard cutouts. Jillian Swanson and Heidi Rhodes scream, stumble, and die on cue. The family members—Billy’s sister Julia and brother Darryl—look like they wandered onto the set by mistake and decided to stick around for craft services.
And the detective, whose narration holds this wet blanket of a film together? He sounds less like a hardened cop and more like a man reading IKEA instructions about dismemberment.
Ulli Lommel: From Warhol to Walmart Horror
It’s almost tragic. Lommel started his career working with Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Andy Warhol. Decades later, he’s directing Killer Pickton, a movie that looks like it was shot on VHS for $40 and a six-pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon.
This wasn’t a one-off, either. Lommel churned out a whole string of “true crime” exploitation films in the mid-2000s: BTK Killer, Zodiac Killer, Green River Killer. Each one was a cinematic dumpster fire, rushed into existence to capitalize on headlines. Killer Pickton might be the most tasteless of the bunch, reducing one of Canada’s most disturbing serial murder cases into a grindhouse knockoff that doesn’t even have the decency to be entertaining.
The Aesthetic: Horror by PowerPoint
The cinematography, credited to Bianco Pacelli, makes New Hampshire look like the inside of a damp closet. Lighting is inconsistent, colors are washed out, and half the movie looks like it was shot through a jar of maple syrup. The editing is somehow worse, cutting between interrogation scenes and killings with the grace of a weed whacker.
The “scary” moments? Pig squeals dubbed over stock footage, lingering shots of meat grinders, and Billy frolicking in his attic like a serial killer cosplayer at Comic-Con. The only genuine horror is realizing you still have 40 minutes left.
The Ethics: Exploitation at Its Grimiest
This isn’t just bad cinema—it’s bad taste weaponized. The real Robert Pickton murdered dozens of women, many of them from vulnerable communities. Their families lived through grief and trauma. And Lommel decided to turn that into sleazy horror “entertainment,” complete with wood chippers, pig heads, and insinuations about cannibal pork products.
It’s exploitation without artistry, empathy, or even the cheap thrills exploitation sometimes provides. It doesn’t make you think. It doesn’t even make you squirm. It just leaves you feeling dirty, like you stumbled into a frat house prank that went too far.
The Controversy: Canada vs. Trash Cinema
The Canadian government pressured Australian distributors not to release the film before Pickton’s trial. Imagine a movie so bad, so legally and morally questionable, that an entire government steps in and says, “Please don’t unleash this on the public yet.” That’s Killer Pickton.
Even Lions Gate—no stranger to schlock and gore—shelved the North American release. When the studio behind Saw IIIlooks at your film and says, “Eh, too tasteless,” you’ve reached a special milestone.
The Climax: A Pigsty of Nonsense
The final act dribbles to an ending with Billy’s brother discovering a corpse, the cops swooping in, and some text onscreen announcing Billy may have killed “as many as 135 women.” The movie tries to end with gravitas, but by then it feels like the credits are apologizing for taking so long to arrive.
Why It Fails: No Scares, No Insight, No Point
What makes Killer Pickton unbearable isn’t just its bad acting, its laughable effects, or its nonexistent suspense. It’s that it does nothing. It doesn’t scare you, educate you, or even titillate you with the guilty pleasures of grindhouse horror. It’s inert. It sits there like a lump of waxy pork, daring you to chew.
Final Verdict: Slaughterhouse Reject
If you’re a horror fan, you’ve probably sat through your fair share of trash. Trash can be fun. Trash can be thrilling. Trash can even be oddly profound. Killer Pickton is none of these. It’s the cinematic equivalent of a cold hot dog found under a carnival ride: slimy, tasteless, and possibly dangerous to your health.
Ulli Lommel may have set out to create horror ripped from the headlines. What he delivered was a pigsty of incompetence, a disgrace to true crime, and a film so devoid of merit it makes you long for the subtle craftsmanship of Manos: The Hands of Fate.
