Killer Workout 1987

The workout will kill you!

4.9 / 10   65 vote(s)
R
Horror Thriller

Two years ago, a young woman named Valerie was burned after entering a tanning salon. Now, Rhonda runs a local gym where all of a sudden, people are being murdered.

Release Date 1987-04-16
Runtime 1h 24m
Directors Stephen Ashley Blake, George Eskander, Thomas Baldwin, Thomas Baldwin, Peter Bonilla, David A. Prior
Producers Peter Yuval, Marc Winters, David Winters, David A. Prior, Thomas Baldwin
Writer David A. Prior

Fun low-rent slasher schlock from the mid-80s

After a woman is burned in a horrible tanning salon accident, her sister (Marcia Karr) opens a gym in Los Angeles where the clients start dying one-by-one. David Campbell plays the grim detective, Ted Prior a new employee at the gym and Fritz Matthews a weirdo tough guy client.

“Killer Workout” (1987) is cut-rate slasher schlock focused around (big surprise) a gym in the Hollywood area. To be expected, there are a lot of shots of the women working out, mostly aerobic exercise, but don’t expect the voluptuous females in “Heavenly Bodies” (1984), although a few of the ladies are a’right, e.g. Teresa Van der Woude (Jaimy) and Dianne Copeland (Debbie).

The soundtrack is glaring mid-80’s pop (with the requisite electronic drums) while the dialog & acting are mostly bad, but in an amusing way, like the cast/crew had fun shooting. Meanwhile there’s some unexpected martial-arts action and a fairly long chase on foot. The first half is too one-dimensional in that it concentrates on events at the gym, but the second half opens things up a bit. The reveal in the third act surprised me.

Bottom line: It’s a cheap and quietly laugh-inducing 80’s slasher, but fairly entertaining.

The movie runs 1 hour, 25 minutes and was shot in Beverly Hills, North Hollywood and Sun Valley, Los Angeles.

GRADE: C

Wuchak