"All American Murder" is a fairly pleasant diversion in case you're looking for a light-headed horror/thriller and keep your expectations to an absolute minimum. I honestly don't see the point of harshly criticizing this modest little straight-to-video flick, since the makers themselves clearly never intended to deliver a groundbreaking masterpiece. The film has a good pacing, fresh faces, a couple of inventive murder sequences and – most importantly – another straight- faced performance from the tremendously awesome Christopher Walken who's still way cooler than any other major actor even if the script is inferior. Also, with a little bit of goodwill and imagination, you could state that "All American Murder" is some sort of tribute to the Italian Giallo of the late 60's and 70's. Most of the Giallo-essentials are well represented: luscious babes in peril, red herrings and far-fetched plot twists, sleazy supportive characters, black gloves and a grotesque denouement. Thanks to daddy's influence, the rebellious teenager Artie Logan is accepted at the respectable Fairfield campus for his absolute last chance at a proper education. He meets the impeccably perfect all- American girl Tally and really intends to make an effort, but then the poor girl is brutally killed when someone sets her entire body on fire. Due to his past and questionable reputation, Artie naturally becomes prime suspect #1, but the witty and seasoned police detective PJ Decker somewhat believes in his innocence and gives him 24 hours to prove it. During his search for the real culprit, Artie quickly discovers that behind Fairfield's prestigious reputation lies a network of perversion, blackmail and corruption. The first half hour of "All American Murder" can only be described as … very, very WRONG! Wrong 90's music, wrong teenage & adult stereotypes (the dominant father and his rebel son? Please!),wrong depiction of college differentiation and extremely wrong attempts at dry humor (Walken's hostage negotiation). The film gets better and even fairly compelling after that, with various murders and interesting enough plot twists. Some of the initial defaults remain throughout the movie, however. For some reason all characters, including the insignificant supportive ones, also insist on narrating jokes and anecdotes that are completely irrelevant to the plot. The acts of violence and sex also remain too brief and decent, but that's probably linked to the fact this is a low-budgeted video production. And Walken is too cool, period!

You know, we probably don't need to sell Vinegar Syndrome to you, but let us sell Vinegar Syndrome to you, who rediscovered and re-released this early 90s direct to video hybrid of the slasher and giallo and the erotic thriller and made it look better than it had any right to be.

If you're like us, you only need to know one thing: it was directed by Anson "Potsie" Williams*. Which is more than enough strangeness to get this at least one watch. It was written by Barry Sandler, who has plenty of experience in writing detective-style movies, with two Agatha Christie adaptions (The Mirror Crack'd and Evil Under the Sun) and the neo-noir as well, with the Ken Russell film Crimes of Passion. Actually, that's pretty much a giallo too, what with women changing their identities, a vibrator used as a murder weapon and a synth score by Rick Wakeman.

Charlie Schlatter doesn't seem like a giallo hero, what with 18 Again! And Police Academy: Mission to Moscow on his resume. And at first in this movie, hiis character of Artie Logan is too much the jokester, a stranger in a strange land of a new college who has a reputation for going against authority; a rich man's son out to rebel against anything you got. He meets cute with Tally Fuller (Josie Bissett, no stranger to the scumtastic world of the Italian thriller thanks to her appearing in Lenzi's Hitcher in the Dark and equally scummy American direct to video slashers like Mikey),a cheerleader who has it all together and who seems like the kind of girl who can save him.

Here's the rug pull. On the night that should be their first date, she's murdered by a killer in a black trenchcoat armed with a blowtorch. And that killer is probably Artie, at least if the cops have anything to say.

And here's the second time that the movie switches gears, as detective P. J. Decker (Christopher Walken) just saunters in and takes over the movie, owning every single scene he's in, including one where he verbally harrangues a hostage taker until the man rushes out, only to be greeted by Decker's bullets. He gives a world weary performance here, a man who can't just sleep with an eighteen year old virgin who loves cops because he can't stop thinking about how his wife is now married to a cheesemonger who sends him a big wheel of the stuff every holiday, a man who his kids now call daddy.

You really need to see this scene with the hostage in danger inside a convenience store and Walken just rattling off lines like "I never forget a face...especially, if I've sat on it!" and "I thought jaws only moved that fast in water!" before starting to sing "Feelings." It's the kind of madness that makes me fall in love with a film, kind of like the minor moment made large when Don Rickles shows up in Dirty Work except that this is a drama.

Decker is that most rare of a giallo cop: one who knows what he's doing. And to do so, he gives Artie 24 hours to prove his innocence.

This is also a movie that knows to make things work, you need great actors even in the small parts, like Joanna Cassidy and Richard Kind. And to make this movie even more exciting, you get people killed by power drills to the head, via snakes and even by handgrenades, all broken up by reveals of illicit polaroids - of a teenager not under suspicion - and misdirection of who really is innocent, plus a scene of exposition told over laundry folding.

Also: a soundtrack that sounds like a combination of sitcom themes and the kind of weird funk that would play over a Dark Brothers scene. Sountrack songwriter Ted Mather wrote one of the songs in Berseker and Gary Griffin was in Gary and the Rippers on Full House and also wrote several pieces of music for that saccahrine show, which is very on brand for this very off brand movie.

*Ken Russell was originally going to direct this. I mean, if you can't get the visionary genius who made The Devils get the man who played a character whose nickname came from his love of clay. To be fair, Williams has had a pretty solid directing career.

Here's a thriller which stands completely alone, with great casting and a great twist. And we have the charismatic and handsome rebel, Schlatter, who this time, receives a much higher education, he didn't want. One involving survival. The new kid at school, and falling head over heels for the most popular girl, hot Bissett, he soon becomes the prime suspect in her murder, her burning and charred remains at the campus's footsteps. Walken is fun as narcissistic detective , only one of 2, who believes Schlatter to be innocent, where soon, lone investigator Schlatter, becomes in over his head as acquaintances, like the hot Cassidy he beds, are taken out, so who is the killer. All American Murder is a really fun thriller and juicy entertainment, where an unclad Bissett, makes us see how sexy she really is., with our feasting vision. A couple of red herrings, not enough thrown in, AAM is a low key thriller, but it works, due to Schlatter's charismatic and enthusiastic performance, the film opening up, with such a weird amusing scene or more correctly WTF scene. Good music too, showing the 90's up, for what they were. Some nasty gore too