For about two-thirds of Click: The Calendar Girl Killer, the movie flirts with being an erotic thriller, featuring a passel of middle-aged Hollywood b-listers cashing checks. Then, for the final act, the movie makes a hard turn into slasher horror. It’s a change in tone that’s unusual, only because there is no indication this will happen. It’s obvious to viewers that violence will be coming in the final act, but not the scale, and not how it is depicted.
Something of a vanity project in the world of b-movies, Click was written by Hollywood acting stalwarts Ross Hagen and Hoke Howell, with David Reskin and David Chute. Hagen also directed alongside longtime stunt man John Stewart. To make it a family affair, Hagen’s wife, Claire, co-produced.
The film opens with a montage of scantily-clad models posing, and then we see what appears to be a flashback of a nurse (Joan-Carol Bensen) scolding a young boy (Johnny Stewart) for reading a Playboy. This is interspersed with shots of an unidentified older male donning a wig and nurse’s uniform. This is Chekhov’s slasher. Viewers know it’s coming, we just don’t know when.
There are two suspects for the audience to consider. The killer could be Jack (Hagen), a fashion photographer specializing in calendars with an unusual style. A former photojournalist, Jack has his models wield all types of weapons during a shoot, firing off machine guns or swinging a flamethrower about. He draws on what he saw overseas in wartime to create a weird pastiche of big 1980s hair and deadly armament.
The other suspect is Alan (Troy Donahue), Jack’s assistant, whose mysterious nature is heightened by the fact he’s much older than one would expect a photographer’s assistant to be. Viewers will wonder what in Alan’s past has held him back.
But, before any questions are answered, viewers will sit through about an hour of a very low-rent thriller with not a lot happening. I’ve seen a whole pile of movies like this during my shitty movie odyssey. Former stars, in the latter days of their careers, wind up taking 
jobs in b-movies because it’s the only work they can get, and the movies end up being drawn out set pieces where leathery men in toupees get an opportunity to cozy up to some young ladies. It’s cringe-inducing cinema, but this movie has more depth than that.
Yes, Jack is a little cringey, but what middle-aged fashion photographer with a Corvette convertible, deep tan, and pearly-white dentures isn’t? Get past that, and Hagen plays his character better than the stereotype. He’s a good combination of sincere in how he treats his models, and suspicious. And he manages to do this without his character being slimy.
His latest project involves taking his models out to his ranch in the hills (played by the now defunct CineWest movie ranch just south of Thousand Oaks, California). He has the property set up to make a spectacular calendar shoot featuring flaming vehicles, explosions, models being cut down by machine gun fire, etc.
Jack’s main model is Cindy (Keely Sims), whom he has promised to make a star. Again, Jack is sincere, so his ambitions for Cindy don’t feel slimy. That doesn’t stop her boyfriend, Johnny (Gregory Scott Cummins), from suffering jealousy, so Jack invites him along to the ranch to watch the shoot.
Occasional moments of gratuitous nudity happen here and there in between Jack’s photoshoot, and the tone of the film is firmly established. Then Stewart and Hagen throw away all the erotic thriller stuff and the movie goes mad. The transvestite nurse from the intro shows up and goes on a murderous rampage to rival anything Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees ever did. This is also when this movie’s watchability takes off.
Before this final act, the film was just plodding along. Everything was a setup for the finale, with Hagen and Stewart so focused on that finale that the first and second acts almost don’t matter. There is character development, but it feels half-baked. Especially when it comes to Alan. For someone being set up as the possible killer, he didn’t have nearly enough screen time. Jack and Johnny were the most fleshed out, and it’s clear that Johnny isn’t the bad guy.
As for Johnny, Cummins did very well with the character. In countless movies like this, the bad boy boyfriend would have been played by a pretty face with marginal acting talent. Not so, here. Cummins was believable, and intense in moments when he needed to be. He was the standout of the film. Not to short shrift Hagen. He being so involved in the production, he gave it his all. Only the appearance of Hoke Howell feels out of place in the film, as his character, although he provides some useful exposition in one scene, is largely superfluous. I suspect this was a movie made amongst friends, and his role was part of that, since he contributed to the screenplay.
Click is something of a chore to get through until the killing starts. Afterwards, it’s an outlandish slasher flick. Throwing a little fodder the viewer’s way in the first two acts would have done wonders for its quality, and its watchability. Is that a shallow assessment? Sure, it is. But when one’s movie is stinking up the screen for fifty minutes, anything would help. Click: The Calendar Girl Killer slots into the Watchability Index at #340, taking the spot from Alien Warfare.