"Office Killer," the 1997 film by visual artist Cindy Sherman, is a weird little horror movie cast with actresses who are themselves cult figures, and reflects the mayhem that ensues when the workplace treats its employees like cattle feed. Since Sherman is nothing if not a commentator on the cultural scene, she has her pathetic heroine reap revenge via the very technological skills that have cost her her job.

The Department of Media Study and Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center will present a screening of "Office Killer" at 7:30 p.m. on April 3 in the Screening Room (Room 112) of the Center for the Arts on the North Campus.

The event will be $5.50, open to the public, pretty bloody and full of physical decay.

The movie stars Carol Kane as homely, socially awkward Doreen, a withdrawn, overworked editor whose life is destroyed when the company is brutally downsized. She is tormented publicly by the likes of yuppie Kim, played by Molly Ringwald, and Norah, a corporate hatchet played by Jeanne Tripplehorn. They, in turn, are abused by their cruel conniving supervisor, a manic, chain-smoking witch played à la Ivana Trump by celebrated Polish actress Barbara Sukowa.

One night, Doreen accidentally kills a slimy co-worker and uses her new computer skills to cover her trail. Empowered by her success, she begins to use her on-line abilities to facilitate one murder after another.

She hauls the corpses to her house and produces a life-size, museum-like exhibition of the "office." Naturally, without regular coffee breaks, the workers begin to decompose right at their desks.

Doreen is so empowered by taking charge of the situation that she metamorphoses from a mousy submissive into something quite different from her old self.

Sherman is a Buffalo State College art graduate and master photographer who co-founded Hallwalls with classmate Robert Longo. Both went off to New York City, where they became world-renowned as two of the most radical and influential artists of their generation.

Sherman established herself as an artistic visionary with her critically acclaimed series, "Untitled Film Stills," recently purchased by the Museum of Modern Art for a record sum-20 years after the fact.

Her art is well-known for being confrontational and ironic. She once donned prosthetic breasts, false noses and elaborate costumes for a series of "History Portraits"- a commentary on high-art portraiture by the old masters. These nightmarish portraits and her deep appreciation of patently gross material are exhibited prominently in "Office Killer" to illustrate and mock the effects of new technologies that replace humans with computers.