The Banker, Financial Whiz and Weird Indian Cults

High stakes bankers do serve a purpose. They put deals together that affect corporations and enable them to grow, thus hiring more people and producing more goods and services. Just because some of these financiers are misogynistic homicidal lunatics shouldn't dissuade us from appreciating their services to our society. I mean, just because they hunt women with crossbows and use their corpses for cultist offerings to weird deities doesn't mean they're bad people. Who among us doesn't have an aspect of all that in our private lives? Hence 1989's "The Banker," directed by William Webb.

Spaulding Osbourne (Duncan Regehr) is the above mentioned lunatic. He pays for the classiest hookers and then shoots them with a crossbow and carves up their bodies in weird cult ceremonies. Jaynie (Teri Weigel) is the first to succumb to some ancient South American deity, and we are sorry to see her go. Her sex scene (pre-marital sex, I might add) is steamy and vicious. Detective Dan (Robert Forster) is assigned to the case and he figures there will be more killings. He is a good detective and Spaulding has no idea what he is in for.  Neither does another sultry hooker, Melanie (Deborah Richter). She'll be carved up, as well. However, Melanie was one of Dan's snitches and now Dan is taking this case more seriously.

Uh oh again, info-babe Sharon (Shanna Reed) is covering the story for a TV station. She also happens to be Dan's ex-wife. Sharon detests that a misogynistic killer is killing young ladies. Her approach on the air is antagonistic and she mocks and humiliates the killer. Not a good move. Spaulding will buy the TV station and then stalk her. More sultry whores will die horribly as well as some poor schmucks who figure out it's Spaulding. Spaulding's crossbow gets a lot of use in this film and now he aims it at Sharon, who just happens to be falling back in love with her ex, Detective Dan.
As Dan and Sharon get sweet on each other again, Spaulding goes full throttle Inca (or maybe Aztec) madman.

Are Sharon's First Amendment rights as a TV reporterette more important than the sensitivities of weird, homicidal, South American Inca cults? Who would win in a one on one contest between the hunk Duncan Regehr and the babe Rhona Mitra (crossbow vixen in "Hard Target 2") in a duel of crossbows? Oh yes, the last five minutes of this film is classic which includes one of the best one-liners ever uttered in film history. For a steamy and vicious thriller, with terrific crossbow carnage, see "The Banker."