low-aiming programmer more interesting now for its snapshot of a time long past and a character actor playing way against type. In this case the latter asset is John Karlen, best known to TV fans for his recurring roles on Dark Shadows and Cagney and Lacey as well as his turn as the belt-wielding male lead in Daughters of Darkness. Here he goes all Zodiac on a bunch of pretty young things in San Francisco, all of whom hang out at a swimming pool where he hangs out at night scoping out victims. Detective DeCarlo (Luisi) juggles his home life with the investigation, which is complicated by his involvement on the side with a criminologist (Sullivan) a bit too willing to put herself in harm's way and a partner (Ivy) as interested in chasing tail as perpetrators.
Released the same year as John Carpenter's Halloween, this is a far more typically '70s exploitation relic filled with gaudy fashions, hairstyles and decor. Single-shot director Hoenack (who went on to become a very busy TV sound man) doesn't make much of a deliberate attempt to generate atmosphere or stylsh visuals, though some of the nocturnal pool shots have a weird, desolate quality. Karlen is the real reason to stick around as he chomps up the scenery as a disturbed mama's boy, obsessed with abducting women (who provide the requisite T&A) for regular rounds of cat and mouse. The gore quotient is low, but the sleaze never relents. If you enjoy mid-'70s Harry Novak fare like Hitchhike to Hell and A Scream in the Streets, this should be just the ticket.
Though it straggled onto VHS under its alternate titles for a handful of VHS releases in the US and UK without ever building up much of a reputation. Thus it's quite a shock to see it get such loving treatment here, with Media Blasters (picking this up from a Code Red deal) delivering a solid, colorful anamoprhic transfer along with the original trailer under the Sport Killer title. Plus you get the always conversant Karlen (who gave good commentary on Daughters earlier) providing both an audio, feature-length chat and a video interview along with Hoenack, both of whom are candid and often hilarious in their assessment on mounting a commercially-viable project on a very limited budget. The SF locales and the relation to the real-life serial killer antics of Ted Bundy and his ilk get a lot of the focus here, and true crime buffs should be interested to find out how much of the real-life facts affected the storyline. You also get a batch of pressbook and still images covering the various promotional tactics, all of them very different. An odd and occasionally fascinating thriller that precedes the modern serial killer film in some interesting ways, Killer's Delight is a modest but worthwhile mixture of grit and unapologetic drive-in grime worth adding to any exploitation DVD library.
