• Directed by Ray Danton
• Written by Mikel Angel, Greydon Clark, and Ray Danton
• Starring
  • Paul Burke
  • Jim Hutton
  • Julie Adams
  • Nehemiah Persoff

It’s a nice feeling to randomly discover a movie like this, a hidden gem. Well, maybe “gem” is too strong a word, but at least a pretty if valueless little rock.

First impressions weren’t that great, though; the video box look like the work of a high school art student, and the opening music sounded like outtakes from the score for Planet of the Apes.

Basic storyline: Masters, a mentally fragile man, is sent to prison for a crime he didn’t commit, leaving his ill mother alone. She dies, neglected, before he is exonerated, and upon release he makes it his mission to kill all those involved with both his trumped-up charges and those who should have been looking out for his mother, using the powers of astral projection he learned from his cellmate.

Given both the echoes of Psycho (the big house, the mother obsession, the shower killing) and the foreshadowing of Psycho 2 (the mental patient coming home to the big house), I wouldn’t be surprised if this film were part of the inspiration and impetus to do Psycho 2.

And it just happens that everyone Masters blamed for his mother’s death was a raunchy sex pervert? It seems everyone he kills was in the middle of a sleazy exploit of one sort or another. (Wait, the butcher wasn’t a sex fiend, but he did argue with a black woman on food stamps.) No murder of innocents here, as Dr. Phibes did; these people all “deserved it.”

Now here’s something odd. The filmmakers certainly weren’t shy about showing breasts of the nurse who let Masters’ mother die of negligence (pretty racy for a PG), so why did they go to ridiculous extremes to avoid showing those of the woman cheating on her husband with her psychiatrist?

The police behavior was utterly unbelievable. Do you know how hard it is for a local police force to justify the time, expenditures, and approvals necessary for wire taps and 24-hour surveillance? All for someone with no real evidence against him?

The lieutanant on Masters’ tail and the shrink who had known him in prison went directly from being adversaries to being bedfellows with nary a pause. Ah, the ’70s…

Now, I have to admit, the ending confused me. It almost looked like he was turning into his mother in astral form (shades of Psycho again). But I probably would have been able to tell better if they had shown more footage of the mother for me to compare with.

Here’s how ’90s I am: I thought they were setting up for a shocker ending, with Masters now a vengeful spirit freed from the constraints of a mortal body, able to terrorize anyone at will! Bah-ha-ha-hah! Sequel fodder! But they didn’t.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 6 (but one was repeatedly dead and kept coming back)
• breasts: 2
• milk, pomegranate juice, and lemonade
• actors who’ve been on Star Trek: 2
  • Whit Bissell (Dr. Taylor) played “Lurry” in the original “Trouble with Tribbles” (woo-woo!)
  • Nehemiah Persoff (Dr. Gubner) was “Palor” in the TNG episode “The Most Toys”