Films That Time Forgot

Killer Workout (a.k.a. Aerobicide) (1986)

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Reviewed by Keith Phipps
February 12th, 2003

In for 1986: Australia, nuclear paranoia, Alf, and working out. Out for 1986: Libya, détente, That's Incredible!, and gyms with vengeful serial killers. So detective David James Campbell discovers when he starts to probe a murder at Rhonda's Workout, a chic L.A. gym run by Hardbodies supporting player Marcia Karr. But Karr's motivations extend beyond a desire to run the best health club in town: She's also driven by a flashback sequence starring her sister, a one-time aspiring model who met her death on the eve of a big assignment for Cosmopolitan. "Look, I told them you have a great tan, so make sure you do," her agent says via an answering-machine message, but the quest for a perfect tan only succeeds in earning her a third-degree flame-broiling. Apparently undaunted by her sister's accident, Karr carries on in the fitness industry, keeping her gym open even after a member turns up murdered in—originally enough—the shower. As Campbell tries to get to the bottom of the grisly death, the body count increases, as does the list of suspects. Could it be the buff, sandy-haired new employee? Or could it be the extra-buff roughneck fond of sexually harassing instructors and lurking menacingly in the parking lot? Or could it be the composer of the song "Aerobicide," the background music for one of Killer Workout's many scenes of women working out suggestively while wearing form-fitting spandex outfits? (Sample lyric: "Aerobicide... working out until you die.") Only the composer can be safely eliminated as a suspect, though Campbell settles on an even stranger solution: He reveals that Karr and her tanning-bed-casualty sister are one and the same, a woman who "was to become the modeling world's newest young star, but suddenly couldn't get a job starring in a freak show." "Is this what you wanted to see?" Karr asks, shortly before showing off her breasts, which are covered in cheap burn makeup. But just when Campbell would seem to have caught his killer, another suspect confesses, and one chase through the old brickyard later, the matter looks settled. Karr returns to work a hero, but as she heads back to work beneath an L.A. Gear poster, she shoots the camera a look, subtly telling viewers that fitness seekers might be feeling the burn of her killer workout for years to come.