1965's "Run, Psycho, Run" remains intact in its original Italian language version, "Piu Tardi Claire, Piu Tardi..." (Later Claire, Later...), while the English dub sometimes pops up from occasional screenings through AIP-TV (it debuted on Sacramento's KCRA-TV on Nov. 2, 1969). It was a troubled production that sat on the shelf for at least three years as it was shot in black and white in Tuscany, Italy, by director and coscripter Brunello Rondi, only seeing the light of day in Italy by July 1968, importing Hollywood veteran Gary Merrill as Judge George Dennison for added marquee value, not making his first entrance for a full half hour (he dubs his own voice). Very few comments are available to decipher a plot that proves to be dialogue heavy in its entirety, the Dennison villa a sumptuous one on the 1910 Cornish coast where the family gathers together every summer but there is trouble brewing for the Judge's beautiful wife Claire, her throat slashed by an unseen assailant (their piano playing son also dies trying to escape). Remarkably, the following scene takes place one year later, the same family members back on the same grounds, the killer never caught nor a motive uncovered for the crime. Dennison now returns with Ann (also Elga Andersen), a different woman who looks exactly like Claire, to become his new bride, another young son in tow (asked to refer to the Judge as Papa), ostensibly an attempt to ferret out the culprit but mostly to ensure a house filled with the same type of hatred that killed Claire. The final reel shows the connection to Hitchcock's "Psycho," a hidden corpse next to a diary where the murderer makes a confession that Ann discovers, only for the dismissive family to disbelieve her accusations, a vagrant found dead with one of Claire's earrings, allowing police to close the case as a robbery gone wrong. Poor Ann is forced to leave with her son, no questions asked and all wages paid for services rendered, a head scratcher that could prove baffling to viewers lucky enough to enjoy the opportunity. Too early to qualify as giallo, just one clear murder committed by an unseen killer whose later confession is only revealed by a diary, one crazy girl wielding a phallic knife but not to kill, and a host of wealthy family members who plan on keeping things hushed up for a continued life of luxury, perhaps not to everyone's liking.
