Sexy Killer: You’ll Die For Her

Barbara (Macarena Gómez), a promising student at an exclusive Spanish university, daydreams of meeting Mr Right, devours issues of Cosmo and indulges in shopping sprees for the latest must-have fashions. The thing is though, Barbara is also a psychotic serial killer. Particularly when she sees someone wearing the dress she had her eye on.

In what is surprisingly the same film, Tomas (Cesar Camino) and Alex (Alejo Sauras), interns in the Anatomy Department of the university, have been working on a device to cure headaches. In a ludicrous twist that recalls Argento’s Four Flies On Grey Velvet, they discover their device can retrieve the last image glimpsed by someone before their death. When the inspector investigating the ‘campus killer’ case is bumped off, Tomas uses the decoder to try to reveal the face of the killer – however, he ends up reviving the dead cop who insists the other victims be resurrected so they can be questioned. After more unexpected twists and turns that only add to its already gleefully deranged tone, Sexy Killer eventually swerves away from sexy serial killer antics into Night Of The Creeps territory – complete with a horde of disgruntled zombies making their way to the campus Halloween party.

The bulk of the story is revealed in flashbacks as Barbara makes her way to the Halloween party and tortures an obnoxious guy who ran over her dog along the way. Fourth-wall-decimating pieces to camera, musical interludes and a mock advert providing a check list of all you’ll ever need for a ‘clean and efficient murder’ – delivered by Barbara in unnervingly perky fashion – all culminates in a film that resembles what would happen if Pedro Almodóvar directed a slasher movie. Peppered with loving references to other genre classics the film is flamboyant, kinky, kitsch and irresistibly irreverent.

Expertly balancing the varying tones of comedy and horror, Miguel Martí directs the crazed proceedings with lively panache and constantly raises a smile with his pop-culture references and nods to the likes of Friday The 13th, Scream, Taxi Driver, Re-Animator, Macabre and the work of George A Romero. Gómez is a revelation as the utterly deranged Barbara and she imbues the character with breezily wild abandon and edgy intensity. At one stage, when she realises the only way to stop the marauding zombies is to shoot them in the head, Barbara declares that ‘some guys think with their dicks.’ And I don’t need to tell you where she then aims her rifle.

It is testament to Gómez’s performance that Barbara remains a strangely sympathetic anti-heroine, and in a moment that feels as bizarrely poignant as it is ludicrously over-the-top, she is seen carrying the body of her dead lover off into the moonlit distance.

Slyly subverting as many horror film conventions as it lovingly pays homage to, Sexy Killer is a riotous, colourful and extremely lively outing that is sure to provide welcome relief to those fed up with lacklustre remakes and endless sequels. A cheeky little flick you’ll die for.