With some trepidation, I decided to review the latest movie about Dennis L. Rader, the notorious Wichita serial killer known as B.T.K. (Bind them, Torture them, Kill them). It seemed too early to enjoy GIMP scenes in a movie based on the real-life deeds perpetrated by this asshole. But Michael Feifer's film is stated as a fictional representation of Rader. And fortunately, there are a number of inconsistencies with the real-life B.T.K. killer that do indeed make this movie a work of fiction.

So does the movie work? Well, there's certainly a lot of killing but unfortunately for GIMPers, not enough binding and torturing.

The movie starts off in an awesome manner. A voice-over narrative by Rader says stuff like: "I'll stuff your jaws 'til you can't talk. I'll bind your legs 'til you can't walk. I'll tie your hands 'til you can't make a stand."

He has taken a hiatus from killing, and in a yellow-hazed flashback, we see a dusty and battered blond woman in black bra and panties struggling against her bonds in a shallow grave. Her wrists are tied in front and connected by rope to her bound ankles so she can't reach the rather convincing duct tape gag wrapped over her mouth. Rader starts choking her, and we get some good close-ups of her face. He follows with some punches until she's dazed, then he steps on her face before delivering the death blow with his boot. As he buries her, the opening credits roll with some quick blurry shots of his bound victims and the crime scenes.

After that excellent start, B.T.K. becomes WTF? Rader gets a young and sexy strawberry blond call girl sent to his hotel room and pulls out some rope. But does he tie her up? NO! He asks her to tie HIM up, which she does, and then takes off with his money. I guess that during his extended layoff from killing, he forgot that he's supposed to be the one doing the tying. However, his anger at getting ripped off seems to serve as the catalyst for restarting his serial killing ways.

Rader is played by Kane Hodder, whose face may not be familiar without the hockey mask. (He played Jason in some of the Friday the 13th movies.) Hodder is a tall, heavy-set guy with a big mustache and glasses. When he's "normal," he looks like the type of guy you'd see at a bar, give a playful punch in the arm, and say, "Ya big lug."

But the more we see of Rader, even in his non-killing mode, the more we realize that this guy is a total asshole. He's married with two teenage daughters and works as a city parks compliance officer. His days are spent driving around in his white van and giving tickets and warnings to women for such minor infractions as blocking a sidewalk in a driveway and even having "too high" front-lawn grass. (This was apparently what the real B.T.K. killer was like.)

Rader is actually scoping out future victims, especially the ones who get in his face after he annoys them so much with his over-the-top power trip.

His first victim is an MILF with a nice body. The woman is woken up in the middle of the night by sounds from downstairs. After she investigates, Rader appears, pushes her against a wall and pulls out a gun. He binds her wrists with rope as she sobs. With his beefy hand around her throat, Rader tells her he is not getting enough sex at home and he can't control his testosterone-fueled urges.

He slowly pulls out a plastic dry cleaning bag and swiftly covers her face as she pleads "no no." After she stops breathing, Rader examines his handiwork, but she gasps for breath and so he finishes the job. Asphyx fans will probably like this scene as it lasts for a good 80 seconds and really shows the life being sucked out of the victim with the plastic clinging to her face.

But for me, the only torture I saw in the scene was the fact that the woman had to listen to Rader talk about his sexual problems.

Rader's home life appears to be rather normal, except when he sneaks out to a workshop where he plans his next crime. His naive but loving wife asks what he's up to. He says he has to work late because, you know, the workday never ends for a parks compliance officer.

So on his late-night shift, Rader breaks into the home of a large-chested blonde who had earlier given him some lip when he warned her about her dog on the loose. She arrives home with her boyfriend. Rader shoots the boyfriend and blood splatters all over blonde. He forces her on the bed and strangles her with his latex-glove-covered hands. No binding. No torture. No nudity. And no satisfaction for the GIMP viewer with this scene.

The next day, Rader is approached by a cute teen looking for her dog. He pretends he has her dog in the back of his van, so when she takes a look, he hits her head with a night stick and shoves her in. Then we get the obligatory "close-call" scene where he's almost caught.

The teen's body is later seen wrapped in plastic, wrists tied and connected to her bound ankles in a shallow grave in the woods. Rader is in a similar position beside her. Ah, he's just posing for his camera set on a timer. The killer exits the pit, unties himself, and after a bit of small talk with the terrified girl, he thrusts a shovel into her gut and twists it around.

The final pseudo GIMP scene occurs when Rader, pretending to be on a camping trip as leader of the boy scouts, finds the call girl who ripped him off (she dropped her driver's license in her flight). He forces his way into her apartment and shoots her husband in the head.

He knocks the hooker unconscious. I was expecting her to awaken all tied up with Rader exacting his torturous revenge. After all, he's an arrogant sadist who loves power and hates women, especially those who fail to fall in line. But alas, she's lying next to dead hubby, her face covered in blood and left eye swollen shut. She is not bound, not gagged and not even naked.

Rader lectures her about respect and a woman's place in the world, and starts strangling her while explaining what she'll experience on her way to death. Then it gets to the WTF stage. The bloody hooker turns into Rader's oldest daughter. Rader is confused, and so am I. He leaves without killing the woman, who has reverted back to the hooker.

The rest of the film is a mishmash of the police investigation, revelations that Rader wasn't a good father ("He never once helped me with my homework!") plus some rather phony emotional family scenes and his eventual arrest and confession.

As a low-budget movie, B.T.K. isn't terrible, but it missed the mark in many ways. It seems that Michael Feifer was trying to shove too many aspects of the real B.T.K. into the movie, leaving us with incomplete developments about his family life, the investigation and Rader's psychological conflict, which is told mainly through first-person monologues.

There are some chilling scenes, particularly when Rader talks a young girl into his van and she soon realizes she has made a horrible mistake, and his stalking of the MILF. Hodder did a plausible job as the villain, but I can't say the same for his co-stars.

GIMP-wise, I must say that B.T.K. went downhill fast after its most promising start. Asphyx aficionados may enjoy some of the killings, but I found nothing really sexy about them. And there was no nudity to speak of throughout the film.

The bottom line is that the film lacked binding and torturing. Rader's MO in the movie could have been Annoy them, Stalk them and Suffocate them, but being called the A.S.S. Killer might not have worked. Oh well, the film didn't either.

My rating for both the movie and GIMP scenes: C-