By Richard Winters
My Rating: 6 out of 10
4-Word Review: Child kills his parents.
As a young boy Matthew (Fred Holbert) kills his father by running him over with a tractor, but also losses his arm in the process. He gets sent to a Mental Hospital until he’s 18 when he gets released and with a metal hook replacing the arm he lost moves back in with his mother who has now remarried. He becomes upset at this due to having unhealthy feelings for his mom, so he kills her new husband as well as her. He then hithes a ride with a young couple and kills them before coming upon a woman artist named Vera (Leigh Mitchell). While she does paintings in her spare time she also works as a prostitute in order to pay the bills. Matthew does not approve of this and kidnaps her and holds her hostage inside a mansion, whose owners he has already killed, in an attempt to get her to change her ways.
This film, which was written by Marc B Ray and Larry Alexander, who also penned The Severed Arm that also dealt with a one-armed killer, could easily be considered the very first precursor to the slasher film genre. There are other more famous ones, but this one, shot in the spring of 1971, was the earliest to be filmed and it’s a surprise it isn’t better known, or achieved cult status. The color is faded and the film stock grainy as its never gotten a quality remaster, but in a lot of ways that works to the film’s advantage. Makes it seem more of an ‘underground’ flick and helps accentuate the grimy, seedy nature of the story.
The killings are effective and explicit for its time period; one segment even has him cutting the head off of a pet dog and the pace is good too. Most horror films from the 70’s suffered from too much talk and not adequate buildup, but this one jumps into the murders quickly and also frames them through a fish-eye lens, which helps add to the creepiness. It’s unusual that the psycho is the main character as most films like to revolve around the victim, but it manages to be compelling despite this and Holbert, who never appeared in any other movie, does a good job as he walks the line of being both scary and vulnerable.
The defect comes more with the unexplained motives of the character. Why would a young child want to kill his dad? Was his dad abusive? The story teases the subject of the son having an incestuous feeling towards his mother, but what brought that on? Was she coming on to him? There needs to be some starting point to what created the child’s thoughts for him to commit such a drastic act, and the film fails to show this.
Why was he sent away to the mental hospital? How did the authorities ascertain what happened? Was it considered an accident and the kid put there for having witnessed such a traumatic event, or was it deemed intentional and thus committed there for being a danger to society? Why is the mother so open to having him move back in with her? Shouldn’t she be a bit concerned and afraid? None of these questions even get touched on, but for the movie and characters to be fully effective and understandable these things really needed to be answered.
The actions of the supporting cast are equally confusing. Why would a young couple ever want to invite a strange kid into their car? I know it was the early 70’s, and people were a little naiver to things, but this guy should be sending out bad vibes to anyone with an ounce of common sense. Plus, since he’s 18 and reasonably good looking, he could make a potential play for the girlfriend, and no guy is ever going to invite someone into his car who could be competition.
The prostitute/artist lady is even more confounding. This guy behaves menacingly towards her right from the start, but she blows past the red flags like they aren’t even there. However, if a woman is in the habit of inviting strangers into her home to have sex with then for own protection, she should have a heightened sense of awareness and tap into every little troubling sign she sees and thus have this guy pegged as a bad apple almost immediately. Virtually anyone could see this guy was troubled, so the fact that he’s able to ‘fool her’ and she lets down her guard until it’s too late, is so preposterous it’s laughable.
Watching her try to escape and find help as she hops through the home with both her arms and legs tied up is moderately compelling. This film’s ending, in which he runs into a church and has the ghostly images of his victims attack him isn’t bad either. I also really enjoyed Angus Scrimm, billed as Rory Guy, who is better known for playing the Tall Man in the Phantasm film series. He’s terrific here in one of his early roles, most viewers probably won’t even recognize him, as a doctor who comes to the mansion to see the owner, whom Matthew has killed. The part is not significant, but he uses a wonderful inflection that makes the role, as small as it is, quite fun to watch and thus helps the film considerably.
My Rating: 5 out of 10
Released: December 28, 1972
Runtime: 1 Hour 26 Minutes
Rated R
Director: Marc B. Ray
Studio: Indepix Releasing
Available: Blu-ray, Amazon Video, Fawesome, Plex, Tubi
