Black Cat Cinema - Transgression Reviews

Phantom of the Movies MONDO DIPAOLO A more impressive outing that did not turn up at either fest is veteran video maker Michael DiPaolo's 16mm feature-film debut, Transgression, a low-budget but highly professional cross between The Silence of the Lambs and a Jose Mojica Coffin Joe Marin's styled fright fable. DiPaolo spent several videotaping confessions (by his count, more than 1400!) for the Brooklyn district attorney's office, an experience the auteur puts to chilling use here.

Transgression opens on Death Row, where tele-journalist turned murderess Molly Jackson casually informs us: "I killed three men and found God." DiPaolo backtracks to Jackson's interactions with depraved psychiatrist/serial killer Marc St. Camille. Despite the efforts of her older cop boyfriend (Julio Rodriguez), Jackson is captured by the black-hooded maniac, who's determined to transform her not into another victim but into his successor at the serial-killer trade.

A morally complex tale, Transgression creates a genuinely creepy aura without resorting to gratuitous gore or conventional suspense. It was shot, in NYC and upstate, on a 12-day sked and took only six months from story treatment to finished product. New York Daily News - March 30, 1994