60s Horror – Homicidal
1961/US
Director: William Castle
Starring: Jean Arless, Patricia Breslin, Glenn Corbett, and Eugenie Leontovich
IMDB
Homicidal is a knockoff of Psycho that famed horror showman William Castle released the year after Alfred Hitchcock chilled the world with his tale of madness, murder, and crossdressing.
Castle, known for his crowd-drawing and -pleasing gimmicks (among the greatest of these was the Tingler, an attachment to theater seats that caused them to vibrate when the film’s monster, The Tingler, was on-screen), is remembered today as the producer and director of a group of films that have been remade into terrible modern teen horror pics, including The House on Haunted Hill and Thirteen Ghosts. That his pictures became bad remakes 30-plus years later can’t be held against him, but his remaking of pictures of his day, only a few months after their release, certainly can.
And that’s very much what Castle did with Homicidal, a film clearly based heavily on, and perhaps designed to cash in heavily on, Psycho.
If you’ve seen Psycho (and if you haven’t, get thee to a video store posthaste), you’ll be able to suss of what’s happening in Homicidal about a third of the way through the film. Because it’s not much of a surprise as to who’s doing the killing, why, and what the film’s big secret is, the last half of the movie drags.
And it drags in more than just its use of time.
Just as in Psycho, Homicidal features a crossdressing killer. Unlike Psycho, however, Homicidal makes the strange and daring choice of keeping the killer, in both regular clothing and crossdress clothing, on camera for much of the film. In our post-Ed Wood, post-Psycho, post-The Crying Game film world, this probably isn’t such a good idea. The audience is going to see it coming. But in 1961, this was, no doubt, the set up for a major shock ending.
It’s an audacious choice because it gives the audience so much time to puzzle through the film’s mystery.
Having the crossdressed character, with the dental implants, different hairstyle, heavier makeup and dubbed over dialogue, on screen for so long creates an unnerving frission for the viewer. You’re able to tell that there’s something not right about that actor, but you can’t necessarily put your finger on it.
It’s the film’s most interesting effect, calling into question the viewer’s ability to visually distinguish one gender from the other. In this way, the films calls to mind David Cronenberg’s early obsessions with the mutability and unreliability of the body and our perception of it.
In a better, more interesting film, these issues would be at the center of Homicidal. But, since the movie existed largely to cash in on the success of Psycho (a featurette on the DVD attempts to convince us, and fails, that the film is actually an homage to Psycho), these issue are just garnish for the murder mystery plot.
The film comes to a predictable climax. But just before doing so, it detours into one of Castle’s famous, and amusing, bits of showmanship. Prior to the film’s last five minutes which feature one of the lead characters following another into a house for what promises to be bloody murder, a clock comes onto the screen and Castle begins to speak.
He tells the audience that this is their 45-second break and that if anyone is too afraid to continue, they should leave the theater at that moment and they will be given a full refund. The “fear break? is a bit of an odd duck, and breaks some of the film’s suspense even as it creates new suspense, but is a great example of Castle’s style and taste.
According to the featurette, no one ever left the theater during the break.
And they were rewarded with a decent climax. Unfortunately, Homicidal just isn’t sharp enough to cut too deep.
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