After watching TRUTH OR DARE and KILLING SPREE and enjoying the hell out of both of them, I downloaded Tim Ritter's first directorial effort in hopes it would be a bizarre, inept slice of psychotronic cinema. It definitely IS that, but that doesn't mean watching it is any fun whatsoever.
Released straight-to-video in 1984, DAY OF THE REAPER was shot when Tim Ritter was still in high school. He cobbled together some friends from school, a Super-8 camera and $1,000, then sold the final project door-to-door to video stores in his home state of Florida. It got the attention of the right people, and Ritter went on to be a minor cult icon in the horror world. It takes a lot of guts to do something like this, and he should definitely get some recognition for doing it.
Unfortunately, DAY OF THE REAPER is damn near unwatchable. Half of the shots are too dark to make out what's happening and the other half are tinted a bevy of strange colors. The film was dubbed after the fact with mumbled, nonsensical dialogue delivered by high schoolers who wouldn't make the cut for their senior play. The gore scenes are so ineptly shot that you're unsure if someone is actually being killed. And don't get me started on the "plot."
Finally, it commits the deadly sin of being utterly boring. It's, like, 60 minutes long, and 58 of them are filler. I actually fell asleep watching it and only finished it the next morning due to an obsessive-compulsive habit of completing any film I start. The version I found has text commentary written by Ritter that lambasts the film and occasionally mutes the pain of viewing it, but it doesn't help nearly enough.
If you're looking for the next BOARDINGHOUSE or THINGS, this is most definitely not it. Watch Ritter's later work and pretend this doesn't exist. 4/10 for the effort and the synthtastic score, but, oh lord, is this bad, and not in a charming way.