''Sweet Kill'' (also known as ''A Kiss from Eddie'' and ''The Arousers'') is a 1973

B-movie A B movie, or B film, is a type of cheap, low-budget commercial motion picture. Originally, during the Classical Hollywood cinema, Golden Age of Hollywood, this term specifically referred to films meant to be shown as the lesser-known second ...

written and directed by future

Academy Award The Academy Awards, commonly known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit in film. They are presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) in the United States in recognition of excellence ...

winner

Curtis Hanson Curtis Lee Hanson (March 24, 1945 – September 20, 2016) was an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. Born in Reno, Nevada, Hanson grew up in Los Angeles. After dropping out of high school, Hanson worked as photographer and edito ...

. The film was Hanson's

directorial debut This is a list of film directorial debuts in chronological order. The films and dates referred to are a director's first commercial cinematic release. Many filmmakers have directed works which were not commercially released, for example early work ...

and was executive-produced by

Roger Corman Roger William Corman (April 5, 1926 – May 9, 2024) was an American film director, producer, and actor. Known under various monikers such as "The Pope of Pop Cinema", "The Spiritual Godfather of the New Hollywood", and "The King of Cult", he w ...

. It stars

Tab Hunter Tab Hunter (born Arthur Andrew Kelm; July 11, 1931 – July 8, 2018) was an American actor, singer, film producer, and author. Known for his blond hair and clean-cut good looks, Hunter starred in more than forty films. During the 1950s and 1960s ...

and was the last film of actress

Isabel Jewell Isabel Jewell (July 19, 1907 – April 5, 1972) was an American actress, who rose to prominence in the 1930s and early 1940s. Some of her more famous films were '' Ceiling Zero'', ''Marked Woman'', ''A Tale of Two Cities'', and ''Gone with the Wi ...

Plot

Eddie Collins finds that he is unable to perform sexually with women because of repressed memories of his mother. After accidentally killing a woman while trying to sleep with her, he finds that he is able to get aroused by the dead body. This leads him into a chain of luring women into bed in order to kill them for sexual gratification.

Main cast

Production

Development

Curtis Hanson got to know

while doing re-writes on ''

The Dunwich Horror "The Dunwich Horror" is a cosmic horror novella by American writer H. P. Lovecraft. Written in 1928, it was first published in the April 1929 issue of ''Weird Tales'' (pp. 481–508). It takes place in Dunwich, a fictional town in Massa ...

'' (1970), which Corman had helped finance. Corman had a track record of giving opportunities to first time directors and was setting up his own distribution company, New World Pictures. When ''Dunwhich Horror'' was finished, Hanson told Corman he wanted to direct a film he had written; Corman said he would be interested in financing a motorcycle movie, a women in prison movie or a nurses movie. Hanson was unenthusiastic, so Corman then said he might also be interested in a modern horror film along the lines of '' Psycho'' (1960). Hanson wrote the script originally with the killer as a female. Corman liked it but felt it was "a little too different" for the killer to be female so asked she be turned male. The producer, Tamara Asseyev, was Corman's former assistant. According to Hanson, the film cost $130,000 and Corman was supposed to put up two-thirds of the money. A couple of weeks before filming started Hanson says Corman "reneged on the deal and said he would only put up one-third of the money. My producing partner and I had to raise the other two-thirds. To show how foolhardy I was, I went to my parents and persuaded them to put a mortgage on their home in order to finance this film." In November 1970, Tab Hunter signed to make the film. Isabelle Jewel, Cherie Latimer and Rita Murrie were also cast. At this stage the film was called A Kiss for Eddie.

Shooting

Filming took place in 1971. The apartment where Tab Hunter's character lived in Venice was owned by Hanson's grandmother.

Reshoots

Hanson says when he showed the film to Corman "he said it needed more tits in it... It was my first nightmare post-production experience." Hanson says "It was recut to some degree and more bare breasts were put into it. It was the first time I learned the lesson that I had the opportunity to learn multiple times after that which is: If you're going to risk being wrong, it's better to be wrong with your own mistakes than with somebody else's. " "It was very low-budget and it was a really interesting script", said Hunter. "But, of course, Roger Corman had to put his own little tweaks into it (laughter). He had his own way of making motion pictures... and selling them."

Releases

The film was originally released as ''Sweet Kill''. Box office performance was disappointing. The film was re-released as ''The Arousers''. It arrived in Los Angeles cinemas in 1976. The ''Los Angeles Times'' said it was "made with a sensitivity and intelligence unusual for the normally lurid psycho genre." Hanson later described the experience as a "very unhappy" one.Christopher T Koetting, ''Mind Warp!: The Fantastic True Story of Roger Corman's New World Pictures'', Hemlock Books. 2009 p 36

References

External links

* {{Curtis Hanson 1973 horror films 1973 films American erotic horror films 1970s English-language films Films directed by Curtis Hanson Films scored by Charles Bernstein Films about necrophilia New World Pictures films American serial killer films 1973 directorial debut films Films produced by Roger Corman 1970s American films English-language horror films