Schizoid
Bad movies are just bad movies and will always continue to be made regardless on whether the budgets are $200 million or $2 dollars. But yet when we watch what can be considered a âbad movieâ, perhaps the biggest factor is whether or not the movie is bad because itâs actually BORING. Thus the two exact types of bad cinema can be clearly defined on one hand where the boredom factor becomes so intense that one loses all interest in what theyâre watching and either falls into a deep sleep during viewing or just tunes out entirely and allows their mind to wander while the movie continues to play out in front of them. But the other type of âbad movieâ so to speak is infinitely better, one where the overall story, acting and style of filmmaking is just so outright ridiculous that a film that may have had serious intentions to begin with now becomes a laugh out loud comedy, with many of the funniest lines coming from the viewers themselves as they watch it, playing off the ludicrousness of what theyâre watching to entertain themselves and others as it goes on. Many people immediately think of Rocky Horror (at its heart a bad movie even if the music was quite good) as being the film that invented the âtalk backâ style of viewing and then the minds behind Mystery Science Theater 3000 would go on to make a mint watching numerous bad movies while achieving something almost akin to resembling comedy gold while commenting on it. Itâs hard to fathom what some filmmakers might think of their own work meeting this kind of fate, but at least if a movie is thought of as being HILARIOUSLY bad, it means that the movie in question will stay in circulation and continue to have its own fans for years and years to come (think of Ed Woodâs filmography as a prime example). Which brings us to this release from 1980, written and directed by one David Paulsen (who would go on to be one of the creative masterminds of the long running TV show Dallas, which is very much in the conversation as being the single most popular TV show of The 1980s) and produced by the kings of cheese at Cannon Films, Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, who gave Paulsen an ultimatum: he could direct a movie for them with a budget of under $1 million in one month if during that time he could come up with a workable script along with assembling his own crew and scouting for locations. He managed to do just that and the film got made, on the surface an old fashioned slasher horror film (one that employs the whodunit mystery angle) with certain nods to the European style giallo horror, but one that (obviously given the very short prep time) is so full of plot holes and unintentionally goofy stupidity that it quickly becomes laugh out loud funny but is still a good time nonetheless for that very reason alone. Itâs also a bit historic in that itâs the only time that we will ever see both Klaus Kinski and Christopher Lloyd in the same movie together which brings it a coolness factor that renders it watchable no matter what. The story depicts a group therapy session that meets twice a week under the watchful eye of their doctor (Kinski) that consists mostly of women and a jittery social misfit (Lloyd) whom ironically spends much of his time in the group talking about how much he hates being alone. But suddenly thereâs a problem as an unseen psycho has started killing the females in the group, starting with one who is out jogging before he chases her into an abandoned house, whereupon she does more damage to the house than it originally had to begin with while bumbling around trying to escape before the killer sticks her with a pair of scissors. The next victim is a semi hot stripper (whom Kinski is screwing) who gets chased into an alley and after the laziest attempt ever to scale a fence also finds herself skewered. Then an older lady from the group gets snuck up on and brutally stabbed while relaxing in her hot tub. In case one hasnât figured it out yet, the actual victims themselves are not really important at all (we only get one scene showing them all together in therapy) and are shown being killed just to establish that a killer is indeed on the loose (even as the killer steals their ID so that the victims wind up being Jane Does in the morgue) while the much more interesting characters are kept around so that we can venture guesses as to which one of them is the mystery killer. However, whenever you have Klaus Kinski as the star of your movie, that makes him automatically by default the number one suspect right from the opening title cards onward and the fact that his psychiatrist is clearly NOT a very nice guy makes him look even more suspicious in the eyes of the viewer, but then there is also Lloyd with his creeper personality along with Craig Wasson as the nice guy ex husband of one of the group patients (Marianna Hill) who also happens to write an âAdvice For Lonelyheartsâ newspaper column despite the fact that she couldnât keep her own marriage together and is now also screwing Dr. Klaus. Finally, there is the ultimate wild card possibility: Klausâ troubled teenage daughter (Donna Wilkes) who is clearly feeling neglected by her Daddy despite an early scene showing him peeping in on her while she is showering (and given the notorious real life stories about Klausâ relationship with his own daughter, a rather disturbing element as well) and is displaying what could be described as psychotic tendencies that she just might be acting out on by brutally murdering the various females whom her Doctor Daddy spends so much time trying to help rather than attending to her own needs. The surprising thing is that Wilkes (who later went on to play the teen hooker vigilante Angel) is so beautiful and charismatic in her own right that she nearly winds up taking over the whole movie (even while her possible guilt is dangled right in front of us like a pinata) as we get scenes where she wears her dead motherâs dress in order to upset her father (and then rips it off right in front of him too) and then makes a suicide attempt via carbon monoxide poisoning in the garage while Klaus manfully tries to chop the front door of the garage down with an axe so that he can save her. With all of this father / daughter drama going on (cleverly played with just enough cheese to make it go down smoothly such as when the very European Klaus starts chastising his daughter in German and then she yells back at him not to talk to her that way because âIâm American!â), it almost makes the slasher aspect of the film into an afterthought even as the case itself is being investigated by one Joe Regalbuto (best known as the goofy Frank Fontana on Murphy Brown) who seems to have no idea whatâs going on and even assumes that one of the unlucky victims was just a common, unlucky street hooker(!). The film also goes on the theory that when the âmystery killerâ is finally revealed (with that person of course always being somebody from the main cast), the characterâs whole personality changes entirely to now acting giddy and over the top crazy in order to sell us on the notion that he / she is now a real, viable (and visible) threat to any other characters who are still left alive (a formula which the Scream franchise paid huge dividends from) because after all, this regular person has been brutally killing people all this time and nobody ever knew it. The beauty here is in the hilarity of the final confrontation and how it is staged, completely unrealistic (including by Scream standards) in how it actually goes down but also so mind numbingly stupid that it crosses the line into straight up comedy. If there was ever a slasher that was made that was supposed to be played straight that instead could be considered one that turned into an outright spoof of its own genre, then it was this one, with Klaus stomping around the whole time acting guity as hell although his character is respectable and even Lloyd (who despite the legendary exception of Doc Brown has spent most of his career playing various rogues and villains) spending much of his screen time proudly wearing a neon sign around his neck proclaiming him as the obvious choice to be the killer even while the Klaus / daughter angle takes center stage and becomes the source of most of the hilarity on display here, but the funny thing is that it keeps everything moving and keeps the whole movie entertaining as the search continues for a psycho who is killing characters whom nobody cares aboutâŚ
7/10