International preview review for Pig Killer (USA - 2022), a horror film about Robert William "Willy" Pickton (class of 1949), a serial killer and former Canadian pig farmer responsible for killing about 50 women between the 1980s and 2002 and currently serving a life sentence.
Directing is Chad Ferrin, the director of the remarkable horror film The Chair with Bill Oberst Jr. (Circus of the Dead) and the nostalgic and violent survival horror Parasites with Robert Miano and Joseph Pilato (Day of the Zombies).
Once again, Chad Ferrin reasserts himself as a level-headed screenwriter and director, crafting a film based on true events to which he adds a faint vein of black humor that tends to exaggerate a crazy and perverse context.
The director dedicates this film to one of the most prolific serial killers in Canadian history by tracing part of his life, mainly his modus operandi and family background, thus providing a satisfying characterization of the character, here played masterfully by an extraordinary Jake Busey (Starship Troopers, Public Enemy, Identity, The Predator).
Right from the start, Pig Killer opens the curtain on the theater of horrors performed by Pickton: a bloody feast featuring pigs feeding on human flesh. For the notorious serial killer in fact, this was the way to get rid of his victims namely by feeding them to his animals, not before abusing them, strangling them, gutting them or killing them by injecting them with antifreeze liquid and finally cutting them into pieces.
In Pig Killer, actor Jake Busey very ably steps into the shoes of this feared and heinous psychopath, emulating his life, his madness, his violent amputations and murders, while flashbacks bring to light his bitter past of abuse and humiliation. His ferocity then explodes during the executions in which he shreds the bodies of his victims, then reappears in public, pretending to be a harmless man in the eyes of society and those of his brother David (the Lew Temple de The House of the Devil).
Pig Killer traces the horror sown by the killer in the past, leveraging his instability and the terror instilled in his victims, succeeding in capturing the essence of degradation and death rooted in his mind. In Pig Killer one glimpses veiled homages to cult films of the past such as to The bodies show evidence of rape (1973) for the dismemberment of bodies but also to Henry rain of blood (1986) for victim hunting and to Maniac (1980) for the sense of bleakness that pervades this new horror film by Chad Ferrin.
In addition to standing out for remarkable direction and screenplay, Pig Killer enjoys excellent cinematography that adds to its value. Also not unnoticed are the effective practical effects (by Joe Castro) that make even the goriest sequences credible, such as those of the butchering or the syringe plunged into an eye, surely an homage, the latter, to Zombie Flesh Eaters by Lucio Fulci.
Finally, a note of credit also goes to the very well-curated soundtrack that goes well with the entire film. In this regard we point out that in Pig Killer singer G Tom Mac, one of the authors of the soundtrack, also known for "Cry Little Sister", a 1987 song he made for the famous vampire movie Lost boys.
Bottom line, Pig Killer is a worthwhile film about serial killers. A relevant title in which visual horror blends with psychological horror for a satisfying result for both horror lovers and fans of true stories about serial killers.
The cast, in addition to the aforementioned Jake Busey and Lew Temple, also includes Kate Patel, Robert Miano (Parasites), Robert Rhine, Bai Ling, Silvia Spross, James Russo, Cassandra Gava, Ginger Lynn (House of the Devil), Cyril O'Reilly, Michael Paré (Streets of Fire) and Elina Madison (Creepshow 3).
Pig Killer will have its world premiere at the Sydney Underground Film Festival September 9, 2022.
The murders at the hands of Robert William "Willy" Pickton are believed to have begun in the early 1980s, after he inherited the family farm and started the Piggy Palace Good Times Society, a nonprofit corporation where orgiastic parties actually took place in a building adjacent to the farm. These parties were often attended by many nightclub dancers, drug addicts, and prostitutes. The perfect victims.
The man was arrested in 2002 and sentenced to life in prison for the murder of 26 women but later confided to an undercover officer (posing as a cellmate) that he had killed 49 of them, with regrets that he had failed to make it to 50.
