Day of the Nightmare

Contrary to what the plot summary says, this is NOT about a woman returning from the dead! The story concerns Jonathan Crane, an artist with a decidedly sick way of getting his models in the mood to pose. The movie opens with Jonathan having a topless lovely lay across a couch, then binding her ankles and wrists and beating her back with a belt while wailing, "Unclean!Unclean!" Ooohkaaay. To top THAT off, Jonathan's wife is being stalked by a mysterious woman who slips into the house and chases the wife out and through some woods. The wife is baffled as to who the woman is, but she's someone closer to Mrs. Crane than she realizes . . .

A weird psychosexual drama with all kinds of dysfunctional kinkiness. In between the story concerning Jonathan's kinkiness and the mystery woman are some sleazy scenes including an orgy and a flashback revealing an adolescent sex encounter between Jonathan and an older woman that indicates where he got his taste for whipping from. Grotesquely fascinating.

"Day of the Nightmare" is a dandy psycho picture. Now I am not saying it's a great film, but in light of the very low budget, it's awfully entertaining.

The film begins with two strange events. The first is when a couple are heard arguing violently in their apartment and the police are called. The couple is gone, but their dog has been viciously kicked to death--and the police assume the woman was murdered since some neighbor saw a man hauling away a large trunk nearby. The second involves a woman stalking another lady--you think there's going to be a murder, but a friend shows up and frightens away the attacker. The problem is, that the intended victim doesn't know she was almost killed. How does all this fit together? See the film for yourself to find out.

For 1965, this is a rather scandalous film and must have caught audiences by surprise. I guessed the surprise twist--but that is because now in 2013, practically anything goes on TV and in films! My only serious complaint is that this twist was revealed a bit too early and impaired the suspense just a bit. Still, worth seeing and really strange for the time in which it was made.

Entertaining in a strange sort of way. Not sure who the editor was on this film but the husband was seen driving a particular car in one scene but in the same scene after a short break when you see his wife opening a trunk low and behold he's in a different car??

Near the end of the movie when the police are chasing him in the dark dressed as a woman, low and behold he opoens a gate and its broad daylight. The film was littered with these amusing mistakes. Having noticed these badly put together scenes, I spent most of the movie looking for more, in that this kept me entertained when the actual script did not.

Nice locations and decent "daytime" cinematography in La Jolla, but a terrible low-grade exploitation flick..YUCK! Lots of booze bottles and tacky paintings in this movie. The father and son look to be the same age. The cross-dressing psycho is completely idiotic..he has such a pretty wife. What's his problem? Best line of dialogue - "People go crazy...every day people go crazy". What is John Ireland doing in this one? I know he made some bad flicks, but this is too much. Some nudity. A 2 out of 10. Best performance = Beverly Bain. Ms. Bain plays the attractive and very normal wife of the crazy. Elena Verdugo from MARCUS WELBY, M.D. has a small role as does Liz Renay from John Waters flicks.

The Good Deed Mission guys are right out of the Bowery Boys. Not much to recommend here with the acting low-grade and repellent passivity of most of the characters, especially Mr. Ireland as the world-weary detective. Terrible!

This one is a lot like watching an episode of Dragnet or Route 66 and and combing that with Hitchcock's Psycho. John Ireland plays Detective Sgt. Dave Harmon who reminds me a little bit like Sgt. Joe Friday or even Buz Murdock with his cool demeanor and smooth talking detective style. Cliff Fields plays Jonathan Crane who will remind you all to much Norman Bates. There are a lot of differences of course from this film and Hitchcock's Psycho but you can easily draw parallels between the films and characters Jonathan Crane & Norman Bates.

While this film is very similar to Psycho in it's way it is in no means a rip-off of Hitchcock's classic. This film is a story of it's own - and it's a pretty good one.

One thing I did not like this film - the ending. The ending to me was hurried, a bit sloppy and could have been rewritten into something conclusive. But it is an unsuspected ending which is nice - must have been a shock to audiences in 1965.

7/10