A.K.: ART KILLER

A.K.: ART KILLER is the predictable tale of Peter Sherwood, a struggling musician, and his live-in girlfriend, Nellie, a news reporter. Their lives are intertwined with best friend and neighbor, Teddy, an offbeat performance artist.

Peter’s career takes off when Luther Wax, a patron of the arts, sends Peter a videotape commissioning him to record a song that is to be inspired by images Wax provides on the videotape–images of explosions and destruction.

Nellie, meanwhile, has been following a story about a murderer named the Art Killer, who shocks even the New Yorkers with his gruesome masterpieces: bizarrely painted corpses left on the side streets of Lower Manhattan, signed “A.K.” (for the Art Killer).

Some are alarmed by murder committed in the name of art, while others receive the Art Killer as a visionary. Peter thus becomes a living victim when two of the Art Killer’s followers attach him to a frame and suspend him from a building.

Nellie is later abducted by Luther Wax, who blackmails Peter into finishing the song. Evidently Luther’s accomplice, Teddy, turns out to be the Art Killer.

Police surround the building as Teddy prepares to murder Nellie and Peter. Shouting, “You have to die to make it in the art world,” Teddy decides to make it a self-portrait instead by hurtling himself out of the window, splattering himself onto a squad car below.

The theme of “anything for art” runs throughout this film, as the main characters have an insatiable desire for success. Only too late do Nellie and Peter realize the price of fame. As Matthew 16:26 says, “What will a man be profited if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?”

Of more significance are the film’s themes of graphic violence, sexual immorality and obscene language. The best thing that could happen to this worthless film would be to chop it up into little bits and use them as guitar picks for making music unto the Lord. A.K.: ART KILLER demonstrates that art is not beyond good and evil.