I can't believe I still keep discovering 80's horror/slasher movies I've never heard about before?!? I like to think of myself that I have built up a little bit of horror knowledge over the years, and yet I keep finding obscure and long-forgotten stuff left and right; mostly from the 80's. I guess this genre really is inexhaustible. But anyway, "Perfect Victims" is more than just an average 80's slasher and actually belongs more in the small cult category of misogynistic thrillers. It's similar to notorious titles like "Maniac", "Don't Answer the Phone", "Bloodrage" and "Don't Go in the House". Movies in which a perverted and sleazy male individual, who never bothers to keep his identity a secret, exclusively targets young girls and kills them in the most brutal and repulsive ways imaginable. The pervert in "Perfect Victims" is a frustrated carrier of the AIDS virus. He's really angry at women – ALL women – and intends to spread the disease that is slowly killing him around as much as possible. So basically, he's even worse than a killer; he's a really sick bastard! His modus operandi exists of drugging the girls with large animal tranquilizers, whether Hollywood fashion models or random girls in sleazy bars, before barbarically raping them. The head of a modeling agency, who's also an ex-model herself, is targeted as the next victim because she called him a sick person live on national TV. Tom Dugan, the actor playing the rapist is quite "good" (if you can call it that). He looks like a genuine creep and someone you really don't want to mess with if you accidentally step on his toe in a bar. The film isn't great, with a very uneven pacing and too few character developments, but it's definitely a lot more horrific than I expected. The story is plausible and unsettling and there are a handful of infuriating and shocking sequences featuring violence towards women. Heavy stuff.
Review of Perfect Victims
