Lori is a hard-luck barroom hooker who dreams of a better life, and her dream seems to come true when Jeff, a dashing and successful bachelor, sweeps her off her barstool and straight to the altar. Jeff, however, is not the man he appears to be...he's still living with his overbearing, manipulative mother, and she's none too pleased by her new daughter-in-law's presence. Worse yet, Jeff's a serial killer who's been blazing a gin-slicked trail of terror through Sin City, hitting all the sleaziest Vegas nightspots and exterminating every slutty, passed-out slag who crosses his path. He kills in a variety of gruesome ways, snipping a swatch of hair from each victim with a pair of giant ceremonial ribbon-cutting scissors. The implied reason for this psychosis is that his mother kept him dressed in a sissified Little Lord Fauntleroy getup with long hair until late in his childhood. Lori is perplexed by her new husband's nightly absence, and the fact that he still hasn't layed a hand on her...much to her mother-in-law's cruel amusement.
NO TEARS FOR THE DAMNED/LAS VEGAS STRANGLER is, centrally, a tit window from pre-porn times, when more than just a mouse click was needed to get an eyeful of the female mystique. It's a bit more ambitious than the quotidian example of this extinct realm of cinema, putting forward a fairly coherent story with developed and passably limned characters. It could easily be shorn of its naughty bits and passed off as a sub-B mainstream thriller(in noting the choppy placement of mature content, it would seem that may, indeed, have been intended). It shares several parallels with the little-seen post-noir shocker ANGEL'S FLIGHT(1965), another sexed-up poverty-row precendent to the modern "slasher" subgenre. Additionally, this one's a real treasure for anyone with an appreciation of kitsch midcentury furnishings...there's no fewer than three mini-bars in this flick!
All things considered, a welcome addition to the recent windfall of rediscovered regional indies which had long been feared lost, and it's got some great footage of iconic Vegas hotels which are no longer standing. 6/10.
NO TEARS FOR THE DAMNED/LAS VEGAS STRANGLER is, centrally, a tit window from pre-porn times, when more than just a mouse click was needed to get an eyeful of the female mystique. It's a bit more ambitious than the quotidian example of this extinct realm of cinema, putting forward a fairly coherent story with developed and passably limned characters. It could easily be shorn of its naughty bits and passed off as a sub-B mainstream thriller(in noting the choppy placement of mature content, it would seem that may, indeed, have been intended). It shares several parallels with the little-seen post-noir shocker ANGEL'S FLIGHT(1965), another sexed-up poverty-row precendent to the modern "slasher" subgenre. Additionally, this one's a real treasure for anyone with an appreciation of kitsch midcentury furnishings...there's no fewer than three mini-bars in this flick!
All things considered, a welcome addition to the recent windfall of rediscovered regional indies which had long been feared lost, and it's got some great footage of iconic Vegas hotels which are no longer standing. 6/10.