Headhunter (1989)

It is a performances centric movie

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Detectives Katherine Hall (Kay Lenz) and Pete Giullani (Wayne Crawford) are investigating a bizarre series of beheadings in Miami. With Christopher Lambert nowhere to be seen, they focus on a small community of Nigerian immigrants who believe they are being haunted by a vengeful spirit from their homeland. Before you can say THE BELIEVERS, our heroes find themselves targets and their personal lives attacked. This is a pretty average 80s horror flick that loses points for being boring. It is too bad because director Francis Schaeffer stages some effective scenes (all of the kill scenes are well done), but then bungles the human drama. The end has Crawford chasing the main beast - that looks kind of like Rawhead Rex - around a tiny backyard with a chainsaw. The movie needed more crazy stuff like this, and less stuff like Crawford arguing with his wife. The film ends with Headhunter being resurrected back in Africa, but no sequel arrived.

The constant bad swipes this low-rent South American horror film receives might be justified, but I didn't think it was entirely terrible. Mostly wooden, and more often vapid you could say, with the occult idea being push aside for lame (and oddly placed) soapy domestic quibbles of the two police detectives (likeably played by Wayne Crawford and Kay Lenz) who are chasing a killer that unusually decapitates its victims, and might be something supernatural of African origins. Cool! No not cool. This offbeat angle is left high and dry, and just frustrates with its sloppy pace and bland script. Quite a drag! Well up until the frenetic climax. Having the two leads being fully developed is fine, but still it leaves us with too many questions about our ugly looking demon. The underwritten premise is randomly disjointed and terribly unclear and inconsistent in its motives. Never does it become much fun, as its light on suspense, action and gratuitous splatter. Nor does it have any sort of camp value. It needed to go out on a limb to achieve excitement, because it sadly underplays itself and goes about things seriously. The convincing location choices however, seemed to invoke an effective atmospheric tenor, and Hans Kuhle's free-flowing camera-work is well done. Julian Laxton's howling music score has a thumping, menacing tone that won't let up. The rubber demon looks tacky and bulky, but decent for such a budget. Watchable fluff, but not one to lose your head over.

A forgettable little horror ditty involving two cops in Miami (Wayne Crawford and Kay Lenz) investigating some bloody murders which prove to be the work of an African demon which has pursued some refugees there. Headhunter is actually kind of plodding and uneventful and not the cheesefest the gaudy cover promised (How many times have I been let down by a dull movie with a cheesy VHS cover). There is little in the way of suspense, gore or action until the end of the movie when we finally get a look at the titular nasty which is actually a rather impressive, if rubbery, looking nasty. The dialogue is dull, the acting is decent and the plot is a little muddled (Something about the creature killing those are unfaithful to the African religion involved the movie and those who know its secret but it is unclear and underdeveloped and comes across as somewhat nonsensical and random given the events of the movie). There is some attempt at characterisation but it is of the clumsy, awkwardly inserted background personal life stuff that just eats up running time instead of seeming part of the movie – Your wife left you for a woman, boo-hoo, go and sit in the sitcom corner with George Costanza and that big nosed schlub from friends. There are some weak attempts at black humour such as an aborted baptism scene and one amusing scene involving a spontaneous late night visit to a hardware store by the films male protagonist to grab a chainsaw to do battle with the headhunter. A good sense of place and atmosphere is actually created in the seamy back blocks of Miami but it is not enough to make the film work any better. Not really terrible but mot really worth watching unless you're really stuck for something.

This review has some minor spoilers in it.I avoided renting `Headhunter' for years. I would see it on the shelves and the picture on the cover would make it so that I just did not even want to hold the box in my hands. It has a picture of a deformed head on the cover, which would turn out to be the head of the title character. But it looked really gross. I finally broke down and rented it, and as it turns out, I had no reason to be hesitant, as it is neither very gross nor very scary. Yet that also serves to work against this movie, for much of it is not very interesting enough to keep your attention.That fact has more to do with the plot than anything else. The plot is that people are being murdered in the city of Miami, Florida, with all the victims being Haitian immigrants and all of them having their heads lopped off. Two detectives are assigned the case. One of them (Wayne Crawford) is struggling with the stress of a separation from his wife. His wife has been seeing another woman, and his ego is pretty dashed. In the meantime, he has to balance out his feelings for his partner (Kay Lenz). So when the grisly murders start to happen, it is just another stressful aspect in his life, but one he hopes he can at least handle. But then the case takes an unusual turn when their prime suspect informs them that the people are being killed by black magic. Yep, for some reason, voodoo has been used to conjure up a big, sword-wielding creature that pops up mysteriously for fun dismemberment.All that is nice, but it isn't effectively pulled off. It is never fully clear why the murders are happening, for one thing, and then it never makes sense how the creature gets around so fast. If he is magical enough to pop up in and out of places, why not dispose of all targets in one night? But then it starts to target anyone that knows the secret of the Headhunter. So it makes less sense with every little twist, and this makes it so that you have some contempt for the movie for a long time. It isn't until we actually get to see the Headhunter fully in the end climax that the movie turns from so-so to good. The climax is thrilling, well-shot, and all-around cool, although the final scene sort of robs you of all this. It's too bad the rest of the movie couldn't have been as good, for it would have made it a wonderful gem. I mean, it isn't all bad up to this point. It does things some horror movies don't even bother with, and that is nice characterization. The personal struggles of the main characters are realistic and insightful, it's just that the movie chooses not to resolve them interestingly but to resolve them through bloodshed. Still, the things I liked most about the movie were the main players. Crawford and Lenz are good in their parts when the story isn't making you scratch your head. They aren't the usual pretty faces, and I thought that was a good step by the casting department. If only the whole movie had been more cohesive, perhaps these two would be more noticed for their abilities. Zantara's score: 5 out of 10.