Jeffrey Hartmann

The city of Antwerp is being terrorized by a serial killer. When the killer discovers one of his victims is seeing a psychiatrist to overcome her trauma, he goes after her…

"The Antwerp Killer" is the ideal movie (although it doesn't deserve to be called like that) to watch for all young and aspiring but inexperienced film fanatics who dream of making their very own independent low-budget horror movie one day. They might think they're able to direct an instant cult-classic, but for every Sam Raimi or David Lynch, there are a few dozen of untalented and miserably incompetent amateurs. Back in the early eighties, a young bloke named Luc Veldeman also considered himself to be God's gift to independent horror cinema, and he managed to sell his product to a big national festival before he even properly started filming! The result is an infamous but luckily little seen amateur catastrophe that nearly turned into an enormous embarrassment for the festival and all its organizers. The legend states that, immediately after its release and following numerous of mocking reviews, Luc Veldeman's father couldn't handle the humiliation and allegedly traced down every existing copy of the film in order to destroy it. Well, in 1983 that may have been a workable solution, but Veldeman Sr. probably never could have guessed that a few decades later a little something called the Internet would bring all the dirty family secrets right back to the surface! To make the myth even more legendary, there exists an interview with Luc Veldeman in which he claims, straight-faced, that the whole movie was experimental and intentionally clumsy. Yeah right, nice try? "The Antwerp Killer" is hilarious, but naturally for all the wrong reasons. It's a very weak attempt to cash in on the success of contemporary American slasher movies and perhaps even still on the Italian Gialli of the '70s and early '80s, but Luc Veldeman didn't have a script, didn't have ideas, didn't have any inspiration and – most of all – he didn't have a clue! There's a nutbag at large in Antwerp who enjoys stabbing women in dark alleys. The investigating officer promptly arrests the first random witness who comes walking into the police station, but afterwards he's too busy with reading about heroine deals gone awry at the docks and babysitting a mysterious Asian toddler that someone dumped at his desk. Meanwhile the killer cheerfully continues his killing spree and visits his psychiatrist! In case you're looking for a link between the different events or simply even for structure or coherence, don't bother as there isn't any. The movie appears to be improvised on the spot, the camera-work and editing are painfully bad, the attempts to generate tension are lame and the set-up of the action sequences is downright pitiable. The amount of random stupidities is enormous, like the mafia gunfight at the harbor or the chase scene inside the police station, and the acting performances are so incredible that they below in a league of their own. The official running time of "The Antwerp Killer" is 62 minutes, but in fact it only lasts 49 minutes and even that's a sham. The opening and end credits are exactly the same and last for about 3 minutes each, there's at least 7-8 minutes of Antwerp rooftop footage and just past the half an hour mark, there's some sort of "best-of" compilation with recycled footage of the previous 25 minutes! By all known standards of movie reviewing, I'm simply obliged to rate "The Antwerp Killer" 1 out of 10, but I nevertheless have two positive points to mention. The score, composed by main actor Eric Feremans, is exhilarating and raw. Sure it's blatantly copied from the John Carpenter soundtracks, but at least it adds panache to the horrible film! Secondly, I personally find it a major advantage that all the actors/actresses were at least allowed to speak in their own language and even in their local Antwerp dialect! I watched too many Belgian horror movies (notably the oeuvre of Johan Vandewoestijne) where the cast gets forced by the producers to talk in English, and boy does that ever sound atrocious! Special word of thanks to Steve De Roover, thanks to whom I was finally able to watch this film. Steve's very own documentary "Forgotten Scares: An In-depth Look at Flemish Horror Cinema" (2016) will include footage of "The Antwerp Killer" as well as many other obscure horror curiosities from Flanders. I'm very much looking forward to seeing that!