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Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

Memorable, crazy movie

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

Blistering performances.

William Castle directed this blatant rip off of "Psycho", featuring Patricia Breslin as Miriam Webster, who is set to inherit a fortune along with her half-brother Warren, who still lives in their childhood home with his guardian Helga(now wheelchair bound) and her strange nurse Emily. Weird things are going on, and after a justice of the peace is brutally murdered with a knife, it is obvious that a homicidal psycho is on the loose, and may well be living closer than Miriam suspects... The gimmick of a "Fright Break" was used for film goers too scared to finish the film, though they would have to stand in the "coward corner" in the theater! Too bad this obvious film wasn't as imaginative...

In the very first scene we are introduced to director Bill Castle, who gave us such movies as "Macabre" (1958), "House on Haunted Hill" (1959), and "Strait-Jacket" (1964). Some of his gimmicks included Emergo (a glow in the dark skeleton seen above theater audiences), Percepto (vibrating device attached to some theater chairs) and Illusiono (red and blue cellophane strips for one to see/not see the ghosts in a movie). In "Homicidal" he used the "Fright Break," where audience members saw a 45-second timer on screen; they could leave their seats and get a full admission refund in Coward's Corner, assuming a too frightful climax.In the second scene we observe two children, a boy and girl. The strange-looking boy with big teeth takes a doll from the girl and smirks. "Warren, Warren, it's mine," utters the girl. There is something odd about the boy. Later we will understand that the two are Warren and Miriam, half-brother and half-sister (same father). Now we fast-forward 13 years to the early 1960s; the kids are grown up. Warren still has big teeth.In the next scene, a blonde woman calling herself Miriam Webster (Jean Arless / Joan Marshall) checks into a hotel and offers a bellhop $2,000 to marry her with the understanding that the marriage will be quickly annulled. He likes the quick cash and agrees. Ms. Webster has a specific justice of the peace in mind, so they drive out to Ventura, California and convince Adrins (James Westerfield) to conduct the midnight ceremony. At its end she pulls out a long knife and stabs Adrins a number of times in the midsection, with blood pouring and with her facial features contorted in murderous hatred. The homicidal one easily escapes from Adrin's shocked wife and bellhop, and drives his car to her own auto, which she then uses from this point on. In the next scene, we learn that Miriam Webster's real name is Emily. She is a caretaker for a wheelchair-bound mute, Helga (Eugenie Leontovich). Helga knows secrets but cannot speak, and is terrified of Emily, who enjoys torturing her verbally. She quickly tells Helga that Adrins died. Helga was Miriam and Warren's nanny. Grown up Miriam Webster is a florist in the attractive Danish-looking town of Solvang, California. She and Emily dislike each other. Emily flirts with Karl (Glen Corbett), a pharmacist who dates Miriam.Earlier Helga had taken Warren on an ambiguous trip to Denmark. There, Warren had met and secretly married Emily. One evening Emily lies to Karl, thus preventing him from seeing Miriam. Emily breaks into Miriam's flower shop and trashes things; when Karl enters she cracks him over the head and leaves. When he awakens he is staring into the face of Warren. We learn that Miriam and Warren suffered mightily at the hands of Helga (who was a nasty person) and their equally nasty father. Now Warren, strange looking and slightly built, seems to be a confidante of sorts for half-sister Miriam. In two days he will be 21 years old and – AS A MALE – will inherit $10 million. meanwhile, Emily wants to dispose of Helga and Miriam.SPOILERS - DO NOT READ UNLESS YOU WANT A THOROUGH EXPLANATION:Greed and psychosis are the issues. There are an evil mom, a weird dad, a bad nanny, and a seedy justice of the peace. The dead wealthy father wanted a son; the mother and nanny raised the daughter like a son to placate him. Adrins went along with the scheme. So there is child abuse (with a whip to toughen up the obviously effeminate Warren) and gender distortion as a male will inherit $10 million, not Miriam, a female! After the horrible Helga is decapitated, Miriam is in the homicidal clutches of Emily and cries for Warren. Emily pulls off her wig and reveals herself as Warren. Emily's motive for killing Adrins and Helga is revenge against their sinister plot to raise Emily as Warren (and to devastate Emily's life along the way). As she is so crazy with murderous revenge she does not radiate sympathy. Miriam's issue differs; she obviously did not know that Warren was a girl (?). Perhaps there is just a sibling rivalry. Note when "Warren" tells Miriam that "he" has already killed Emily. Is it possible that an Emily did exist in Denmark all along? So Warren killed her to assume her identity, to have Emily do the dirty work for Warren? Pretty crazy stuff for 1961! But, discounting this information, there are still plot holes:PLOT HOLE #1: How could Miriam be so naïve about Emily/Warren's gender? She was her half-sibling after all.PLOT HOLE #2: Emily gives the name of "Miriam Webster" to the hotel folks to incriminate her. But it would be obvious that Miriam's dissimilar likeness would be an alibi. Did Emily not realize that the police would show up at Miriam's flower shop in Solvang to investigate, leading the police almost to Emily's very doorstep? So why did Emily decide to kill Miriam, who was apparently unaware of the wicked scheme?PLOT HOLE #3: Why did the adults want Warren to gain the inheritance in the first place? "He" would get the cash, not them. So again, why kill Miriam? Was there a deal to split the cash? While it certainly borrows quite a few scenes from "Psycho," "Homicidal" stands on its own with its peculiar gender-twisting plot. Overall, the acting is not bad. By the way, Warren's voice was NOT dubbed. The actress Joan Marshall had the uncanny ability to lower her voice range to sound like a man. It adds to the creepiness, like the eerie indoor shots. They called Bill Castle schlock-meister, but he certainly had his following. He was the type of guy who would spend $100,000 for a movie and make $2 million. He made his mark, and since his passing we have not seen the likes of him.

First of all, if one adamantly holds that Homicidal is a Psycho knockoff and Castle is a Hitchcock wannabe, then take a fright break and do your historical research because neither holds up against the facts. That being said, Castle is no Hitchcock, but personally I believe Homicidal is a better film than Psycho (it is my least favorite Hitchcock I might add, and I've seen only about a dozen). Homicidal is fresh in its sexual politics, whereas Psycho is traditional (one could say the former adds to post-structuralist discourse while the latter adds to structuralist discourse). Homicidal introduces the transvestite as a conscious chooser, as opposed to Bates who is wracked with psychological strife. Bates cannot express his intentions honestly even when being upfront, whereas the Emily character of Homicidal appears to have plans for everyone. I couldn't help but feel this character was so well developed that they might have a sexual political manifesto tucked away in their study, just waiting for the twenty-teens when it could be published and hailed as a Constitution of Rights and Freedoms for the hard-done-by and misunderstood. The story does not get by on a self-piteous treatment, but that sentiment is at the core of all its characters. Psycho, thematically, is a mere anachronistic blip in comparison. In fact, the rhetoric of Psycho has DSM written all over it (hopefully one day we just throw that thing out and start again). Did the PCA get in Hitchcock's way? Not at least in the expression of currency of sexual politics as the PCA's greatest problems were with a "torrid" love-making scene in the opening sequence and with references in the dialogue to incestuous relations of Bates and his mother. This is old hat. Homicidal provokes a hetero-normative anxiety that Psycho never could - the anxiety regarding the formation and presence of self-sufficient and full independent non-hetero-normative persons. Herein lies the terror of this film because if you don't like Bates running around stabbing people, you just lock him up and throw away the key, but Emily in the same situation would find a way to persuade a new key to be made. She shows rational agency and cunning resourcefulness. Norman's secrets scream out at the audience "I like panties and I don't know why!", but Emily has a very different motivation and it is clearer (to her at least). To the hetero-normative audience this clarity of motivation is insidious and sinister. Castle and White are clearly attuned to a more developed understanding of "fringe" sexuality and radical sexual politics. I digress and my reviews rarely end up so tangential and polemical. As for the independent analysis of Homicidal, the opening sequence tells a lot. Castle provides another prologue, this time hailing his own previous films and thus interpellating his audience into the Castle 'brand'. The milieu is urban, the time of day is high noon... not characteristic of Castle branded horror. As the characters drive out to the suburbs at night things are getting more familiar. The wedding scene is bizarre, unpredictable and establishes an erratic pace that will be forgiving to the plot points as they come up. There is good characterization and performance as we land back in a small shadowy town. The voice-dubbing is good, but not uncanny. That being said, the odd synchronicity works well on the denial of a culture only just becoming aware of the new voices to be represented in its society. There are some amusing allusions when the knife sharpener shows up. The final sequence is accompanied by a 'fright break'. There is a clock superimposed onto the frozen frame on the screen. A heart is heard beating. A voice-over announcer directly addresses the audience regarding the opportunity to leave the theatre for fear of fright. This gimmick appears to be well connected to Psycho and Hitchcock's own gimmick for the exhibition of his film (he wouldn't let anyone come into the theatre after it started playing). For Castle, the one-upmanship was a disaster waiting to happen. Ironically, his own ego could not support the idea of not only competing to create a great gimmick related to his film but to have it as an apt counterpoint to another film/gimmick combination. He was suffering from his own genius imagination and the nature of the industry at the time and all in the worst possible way. Coward's corner was the resultant gimmick for releasing the pressure and sadly it was a place for Castle more than anyone else. I think he would soon realize that. That being said, the final shot of the film provides great insight and a moral lesson (seldom part of Castle films). A well directed effort by Castle and a brave, powerful film that will inevitably withstand the test of time (but not the scorn of Hitchcockites).

William Castle directed this great black and white film at Columbia. Glenn Corbett then a Columbia contract player stars and one wonders why Glenn Corbett never became a big movie star. After this film Glenn Corbett would go on to play supporting roles in movies starring James Stewart, Charlton Heston and several with John Wayne.This movie expertly filmed and with fine art and set decoration has a trick ending and one can figure it out midway the film but if you do it sort of ruins the wind up of this suspense film. All the attractive leads do very well and this is a most enjoyable film from the William Castle suspense factorI recommend this film