Killer Workout aka Aerobi-cide (1987)

(In French, On Cable TV, August 2020) The 1980s were a low point for many things, including made-for-video horror movies and exercise tapes. Now here’s Killer Workout doing its best to fuse the two. The premise is nothing more complicated than a serial killer selecting victims inside an aerobics workout studio. As with similar slashers, it’s schematic in its construction – clearly imitating better movies along the way. It doesn’t take a long time to realize that this is not going to be a good movie, whether it’s the primitive opening credits (displayed in VHS blurriness even on a high-definition channel – the film cannot be remastered in HD), the opening tanning bed that somehow catches fire, or the establishing shots of the workout studio that showcase an embarrassing amount of T&A. The rest isn’t much better, with a strikingly incompetent policeman investigating the murders, the attractive black girl dying first, a ludicrous murder weapon (an oversized safety pin!?!), action sequences thrown carelessly as filler between the slasher horror and a baffling conclusion that holds absolutely no surprise. Looking at writer-director David A. Prior’s biography is informative, as he spent his entire career churning out cheap straight-to-video features starring his brother. If Killer Workout is representative of the rest of his filmography, here’s nothing further to see there – it’s strikingly inept filmmaking, cheap and boring at the same time. Fans of terrible movies may get a kick out of it, but there are really much better, much funnier movies out there.