Zipperface is a low-budget American erotic slasher from 1992, directed by Mansour Pourmand and co-written by him and Barbara Bishop. It puts stage actresses, BDSM prostitution, and a serial killer in one story, and it sits with the cheap American exploitation pictures of that decade. Donna Adams plays Detective Lisa Ryder. Jonathan Mandell plays the photographer Michael Walker. Trisha Melynkov plays the hard-charging mayor, Angela Harris. Bruce Brown plays her husband, Brewster Harris.
The city is the fictional Palm City. A sadomasochistic killer in a full black leather or latex bondage suit, face hidden by a zipper mask, is murdering stage actresses who moonlight as BDSM prostitutes. Detective Lisa Ryder and her partner, Detective Harry Shine, catch the case under pressure from Mayor Angela Harris, who wants it closed fast so her record stays clean. Suspects keep piling up: a fellow officer, crude and misogynist; the mayor’s cross-dressing aide; Reverend Dimsdale, a charitable preacher; and Michael Walker, the photographer.
Lisa and Michael start seeing each other in secret. Circumstantial evidence makes him the prime suspect, the man the case is calling Zipperface, and Lisa is suspended. A warrant goes out for his arrest. The two of them still follow the case to Reverend Dimsdale, having worked out that the preacher connects to the victims, possibly as the man pimping women he claimed his charity was saving. They arrive and find him with his throat cut. The trail ends in a sex dungeon hidden in an abandoned warehouse. Zipperface attacks. He wounds Michael and tries to strangle Lisa. Michael gets back up, saves her, and stabs the killer with the killer’s own machete. That holds long enough for Harry Shine to reach them with backup and with Mayor Harris. The mask comes off. The killer is the mayor’s husband, Brewster Harris.
Brewster rants that living in the shadow of his dominant wife has left him feeling emasculated. He says that is why he kept a dungeon and, through violent domination, murdered the actresses who were working as BDSM prostitutes. Mayor Harris sees the scandal finishing her political career. She draws a gun and shoots him there, with the officers present.
The reviews, and the zipper mask
The reviews were harsh. TV Guide called the film a mash-up of “female exploitation and feminist-bashing,” and “low-grade in all departments, not just gender politics.” Horror News called it unoriginal, poorly written, badly acted, and a mighty bad movie in general in every conceivable way. What still gets it mentioned is the picture: a full bondage suit, a zipper mask, and a sex dungeon in a warehouse. It is one of the marginal cult titles of 1990s American B-grade exploitation. It welds fetish clothing to pathological killing, it leans on old stereotypes, and it plays as camp. Watch it as a cheap slasher with a zipper mask, not as a picture of professional domination or of play that was negotiated.
