SummaryAttorney Kit (Bellamy Young) travels to San Quentin, determined to get the infamous serial killer Richard Ramirez (Lou Diamond Phillips) to confess to murders a Texas inmate is currently incarcerated for.
SummaryAttorney Kit (Bellamy Young) travels to San Quentin, determined to get the infamous serial killer Richard Ramirez (Lou Diamond Phillips) to confess to murders a Texas inmate is currently incarcerated for.
The film doesn't aim to make us complicit in Kit's conflicted desires, or to make them its main subject; it just wants to show how this killer changed the lives of countless women he never met. The Night Stalker does that job ably while simultaneously exploring the man's biography, in interview/flashback sequences informed by Philip Carlo's biography.
Phillips, with that ability to radiate anger, is not just convincing but scary-as-hell as Ramirez even though he spends most of The Night Stalker chained to a desk and coughing up a lung. If anything, this can be too much of a good thing however, as Phillips overwhelms Young in their exchanges even more than he should. When Phillips rages about embracing evil and gold being "the metal of Christianity," Young is too often shown staring blankly in return.