As the saying goes, everyone has to start somewhere and, for Curtis Hanson, that somewhere was with 1973’s Sweet Kill.

Curtis Hanson, of course, would go on to become one of Hollywood’s top genre directors, directing films like The River Wild, Bad Influence, Wonder Boys, The Hand That Rocks The Cradle, 8 Mile, and the Oscar-nominated L.A. Confidential.  But, in the early 70s, he was just one of the many recent film school grads who approached Roger Corman for a job.

Having previously worked on the script for the Corman-produced Dunwich Horror, Hanson approached Roger and told him that he had an idea for a Psycho-inspired movie about a female serial killer.  Corman replied that he would help finance the film if Hanson made the killer into a man.  Hanson did so but Corman still ended up only putting up a third of the film’s budget as opposed to the two/thirds that he had originally offered.  Hanson ended up convincing his parents to take out a mortgage on their home to help finance the movie.

Hanson shot the film in 1971.  Corman said that the film showed promise but that it needed more nudity and a better title if it was going to be successful.  Corman re-edited the film and additional nude scenes were shot and inserted into the film.  Despite this, Sweet Kill was a box office disappointment when it was originally released.  Corman re-titled the film Kisses For Eddie but it didn’t help at the box office.  Finally, the film was released under a third title, The Arousers.  Despite a lurid ad campaign built around “the arousers,” the film once again failed at the box office.  It wouldn’t be until years later, when Hanson started to achieve some mainstream success, that Sweet Kill would be rediscovered.

After all of the drama that went into post-production, it would be nice to be able to report that Sweet Kill was some sort of overlooked masterpiece but, to be honest, it’s pretty bad.  The film stars Tab Hunter as Eddie Collins.  When Eddie was a kid, he used to hide in the closet and watch as his mother lounged around her bedroom in lingerie.  Now that Eddie is a grown-up and working as a high school gym coach, he is still so haunted by his mother that he’s impotent.  As a result, Eddie spends his time breaking into apartments, stealing underwear, and having a prostitute dress up like his mother so that he can undress her while sobbing.  After a chance meeting with a hippie girl leads to Eddie once again failing to get it up, he shoves the girl hard enough to kill her.  The film implies that this act of violence leads to Eddie getting aroused for the first time and soon, Eddie is killing people and …. well, that’s pretty much the whole movie.  There’s not really a plot, beyond Eddie looking confused and trying to keep his sympathetic neighbor from finding out that he’s a serial killer.

Sweet Kill has gotten some attention because of the casting of former teen idol Tab Hunter in the role of psycho Eddie.  Tab Hunter has the right blonde look for Eddie, who is basically a homicidal beach bum, but otherwise, Hunter’s performance is fairly dull.  Watching the film, it’s obvious that he wasn’t particularly comfortable with the role of Eddie and, as such, he sleepwalks through the performance.  (Ironically, Eddie was based on Norman Bates, who was played by Hunter’s former partner, Anthony Perkins.)  There are a few creepy moments where Hunter stares off into the distance with a blank look on his face but otherwise, this isn’t a particularly memorable performance nor is Sweet Kill a particularly interesting film.

That said, Curtis Hanson went on to have quite a career so, on that level, Sweet Kill‘s bland badness is inspiring.  If the director of Sweet Kill could still go on to direct and produce some of the best films of the past 50 years, there’s hope for everyone looking to achieve their dreams.  Don’t let one failure get you down.