A Low-Budget Fever Dream in a Suburban House
Some films ask you to suspend disbelief. Killing Spree asks you to strangle it, bury it in the backyard, and wait for it to come back as a zombie. Written and directed by Tim Ritter, this 1987 splatter-fest is a gleeful descent into paranoia, bloodshed, and neighborhood homicide—all made for the price of a used car and shot with the enthusiasm of a high school drama club that just discovered fake blood.
The hero—or villain, or both—is Tom Russo (played by the magnificently named Asbestos Felt, which sounds less like an actor and more like something OSHA would ban). Tom is a paranoid airplane mechanic who suspects his wife, Leeza, of cheating on him with every man who so much as looks at her. When he stumbles across her “diary,” he takes every word at face value, failing to realize it’s actually her attempt at writing smut for a romance magazine. Instead of applauding her side hustle, Tom embarks on a murder spree worthy of a Looney Tunes episode directed by Herschell Gordon Lewis.
Murder by Ceiling Fan, and Other Domestic Solutions
Let’s be clear: the kills in Killing Spree are the real stars. The plot is essentially just window dressing for Ritter’s gleeful parade of gore gags. Take, for example, the electrician. Tom believes the man has been servicing more than just light fixtures, so he straps machetes to a ceiling fan and lifts the poor guy into it, turning home improvement into home dismemberment. It’s ingenious, ridiculous, and exactly the kind of creativity that makes microbudget horror unforgettable.
Tom doesn’t stop there. A TV repairman, a gardener, a courier—if you can step onto the Russo lawn, you can die on it. Mrs. Palmer, the neighborhood gossip, stumbles into the carnage and earns herself a particularly nasty fate: Tom rips her jaw off with a claw hammer. It’s as grotesque as it is cartoonish, like Tom and Jerry directed by Lucio Fulci.
Each kill is staged with a mix of slapstick and sincerity, the kind of “I can’t believe they went there” energy that separates dull exploitation films from cult classics. You don’t watch Killing Spree for tension or suspense—you watch to see how a man with a hacksaw and zero impulse control will dispose of the next poor bastard.
Asbestos Felt: The Patron Saint of Overacting
It takes a special kind of actor to anchor a film like this, and Asbestos Felt is nothing if not special. With his bug-eyed intensity, erratic line deliveries, and commitment to looking utterly deranged at all times, he turns Tom Russo into a low-rent Jack Torrance filtered through public-access television.
His paranoia escalates with such cartoonish fervor that you half expect him to sprout antennae and start gnawing on the drywall. He doesn’t just suspect his wife is cheating—he knows it, he feels it in his bones, and he reacts with the restraint of a toddler hopped up on Pixy Stix.
There are moments when you almost sympathize with him. After all, who hasn’t been irrationally jealous once or twice? But then he beats a man to death with a severed head, and you realize Tom is less “relatable antihero” and more “walking Florida Man headline.”
Leeza Russo: The Poor, Doomed Wife
Courtney Lercara plays Leeza, Tom’s long-suffering wife, with the bewildered energy of someone who thought she signed up for a daytime soap but ended up in a blood-splattered student film. She isn’t cheating, she isn’t lying—she’s just writing bodice-rippers for Romping Romance Magazine. But instead of celebrating her entrepreneurial spirit, Tom interprets her fiction as autobiography.
It’s a cruel joke at the heart of the movie: Leeza is innocent, but she’s married to the kind of man who reads Fifty Shades of Grey and assumes it’s his wife’s diary. By the time she discovers the truth and tries to show Tom her paycheck, he’s already waist-deep in corpses and covered in gore like it’s casual Friday at the abattoir.
The Zombies Have the Last Laugh
Of course, no splatter movie would be complete without the bodies coming back for seconds. In a final act twist, Tom’s victims rise from their graves as zombies, ready to exact revenge. It’s poetic justice served cold, rotting, and with plenty of pus.
In one of the film’s most absurdly hilarious moves, the undead give Tom an ultimatum: kill Leeza, and they’ll spare him. For once, Tom makes the right decision. He refuses—and then slits his own throat with a hacksaw in a melodramatic gesture worthy of Shakespeare in the Park: Zombie Edition.
The zombies, apparently satisfied, leap into a mysterious pit that has opened in the backyard (because why not?) and vanish. But the film saves its last cruel punch for Leeza: Tom immediately returns from the dead and lunges at her. Love never dies, but it might try to eat your face.
Why Killing Spree Works (Despite Everything)
On paper, Killing Spree should be a disaster. It’s cheap, it’s overacted, and the plot is thinner than a gas station napkin. But in execution, it’s a delirious, blood-soaked gem of backyard filmmaking.
Tim Ritter, barely out of his teens when he made it, knew exactly what he was doing: give the audience outrageous gore, over-the-top performances, and enough insanity to keep them talking. The result is a movie that feels like it was shot in someone’s garage with props from a yard sale—and somehow that works in its favor.
There’s an honesty to Killing Spree. It doesn’t try to be slick. It doesn’t aim for subtlety. It’s pure id on VHS: jealousy, rage, violence, and buckets of corn syrup masquerading as blood. Where Hollywood horror often plays it safe, Killing Spree gleefully dives headfirst into the absurd.
Cult Cinema at Its Most Deranged
Decades later, Killing Spree has earned its place in the pantheon of cult horror. It’s not art, at least not in the traditional sense. But it is memorable, which is more than can be said for a hundred forgettable studio slashers.
It’s the kind of movie you show at a midnight screening, half the audience laughing, the other half gagging, and everyone agreeing that they’ve never seen anything quite like it. Like The Evil Dead’s unruly cousin or Dead Alive on a shoestring, it’s a film that proves creativity and audacity can outshine budget any day.
Final Verdict
Killing Spree is trash cinema in the best possible way. It’s crude, it’s clumsy, and it’s dripping with gore—but it’s also funny, inventive, and weirdly endearing. Asbestos Felt gives the performance of a lifetime, the kills are ludicrously inventive, and the whole thing hums with manic energy.
It’s not for everyone. In fact, it’s probably not for most people. But if you have a taste for the outrageous, a tolerance for gallons of fake blood, and an appreciation for movies that swing wildly for the fences, Killing Spree is absolutely worth your time.
