So much average

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Taking part in the Grindhouse/"Cult" and Italian challenges on ICM,I've been keeping a look out on times when the two can be crossed. Seeing the likeable Stoney last night,I decided to unwrap the second feature on Code Red's DVD.View on the film:Treating it to none of the care they gave the Stoney transfer, Code Red slap on an old VHS print to disc,that includes moments where the tape has been chewed up. Done as the Euro Spy genre was fading out, the writers adaptation of Adam Saint Moore's novel targets crossing Euro Spy with the Thriller. Sweetening the intro of the killer, the writers move to make CIA agent Mark Stone a hard-nosed assassin determined to protect the king gives the flick an Italian Crime edge. Once the candy has been eaten, the writers sadly let the somewhat off-beat mood melt away for dry gang fights between Stone and the would-be killers. Chewing up the candy killer, co-directors Federico Chentrens & Maurice Cloche (who also co-wrote) give the sniper killer targeting a documentary rawness, which whimpers into shoot-outs that offer litter on screen candy.

For those who like their pasta cheesy: a 60s French-Italian-German pulp thriller filmed at the tail end of the Euro spy craze (1964-1968), and loaded with warped camera angles and great bongo-driven muzak that kicks in at totally inappropriate moments. Top agent OSS117 `Angel Face" (Kerwin Matthews) is assigned to protect a Eurasian monarch from a ruthless assassin, a glassy-eyed ex-Gestapo officer who leaves a candy wrapper at the scene of every hit. Damn, these spaghetti merchants keep finding novel settings for their genre punchups - this time round a karate fight at a meatworks (one guy gets covered in a bucket of pig's blood!) and ending in a shootout amidst a truckload of crumbling skeletons in the Rome catacombs.

This Italian/French/West German co-production could just as easily have been a cop thriller but for the element of Mark Stone (Kerwin Matthews) being a U.S. government agent. Locations in Venice and Rome keep things visually interesting, the cast is filled with recognizable faces, and the score by Gianni Marchetti is appropriately jazzy.Stone's assignment is to guard the life of a king so we can have his oil. Sound familiar? By the way, at the beginning of the film, the killer uses an ice bullet in his first attempt to kill the king. This little trick was used two years earlier in the Ernesto Gastaldi-scripted Ring Around the World. The plot may be simple but Matthews makes for a good hero and The Killer Likes Candy has enough going for it to make it worth seeking out.

This is the most stupid movie I have seen. Is's about a hired murderer who eats candy while killing people, and always leaves a piece of the candy-paper behind. And the music.... Well, you have to see and hear it to believe it. I can't put words on it. The name of the movie says it all: The Killer likes candy!!! See it if you have the chance.