Schizoid

Julie (Mariana Hill) is an advice columnist for the city newspaper who begins to receive anonymous notes threatening murder and worse. At about the same time, female members of the group therapy session she attends are being stabbed, one by one, by an unknown assailant. Is there a connection?

This film has a very low rating on IMDb as of August 2013. I am not sure how, but i suspect it is due in part to the very few people who have voted. Hopefully when the Blu-Ray is released, the film gets more respect. Currently, it sits below "X-Ray", which is just unfair.

There is plenty of suspense, some good characters (Klaus Kinski and Christopher Lloyd never disappoint) and overall a pretty good mystery. You might have to guess two or three times before you figure out who the killer is (and yes, the clues are there).

I highly recommend Scream Factory's DVD / BD of this film. While it has few special features, the picture and sound look great and it was nice to watch an interview with Donna Wilkes, who really needs to make the rounds at more horror conventions.

The most unbelievable part of Schizoid is the fact that every female patient of Klaus Kinski's therapy group wants to sleep with him. Not to be ugly or anything, but the man looks like a serial killing rapist and seems mentally unstable himself. Maybe this would have worked with a less creepy actor in the role, but it doesn't ring true the way it is.

Anyway, Schizoid is about a newspaper advice writer who keeps getting creepy letters that look like ransom notes. Could these be connected to the recent string of scissor murders that have terrorized her therapy group - the one run by Klaus Kinski?

Schizoid wants to go down a classier road than the other slashers at the time with it's relative lack of blood and adult cast. That's admirable, but there's not a whole lot of mystery here, especially after the opening murder where we can clearly see the killer's reflection in the rear view mirror of the car they're driving.

It also gets things off on the wrong foot by having the most boring opening scene of all time. Instead of starting off with the first murder, we spend a few minutes in our leading lady's apartment at night as she writes, goes to the fridge, etc. There's nothing interesting or gripping about it.

Schizoid is a good movie to have on in the background while you organize your clothes, but nothing more.

"Schizoid" is a so-so stalk 'n' slash 80s thriller with a cast of familiar faces but not much to really recommend it. As a mystery it doesn't exactly work; despite the presence of red herrings, most people will figure out who the killer is early on. The kill scenes have no flair, and slasher lovers will be disappointed with the almost complete absence of gore, even though the murder weapon is a pair of scissors. As for female flesh, the ever lovely Donna Wilkes (of "Angel" fame) does give us - and her leering father - a little bit of a look at the goods. The dialogue, courtesy of writer / director David Paulsen ("Savage Weekend") is downright silly at times, but the cast does whatever it can with the material.

The pretty Mariana Hill ("High Plains Drifter") stars as Julie, an advice columnist who is receiving threatening letters from some unbalanced individual. At the same time, members of her therapy group are being knocked off. Who could the maniac be? Pieter Fales (Klaus Kinski), the sleazy psychiatrist moderating the group who has a habit of fooling around with his female patients? Doug (Craig Wasson, "Ghost Story"), Julie's soon-to-be ex-husband who doesn't want to divorce? Pieters' daughter Alison (Wilkes), an angry young woman who resents the presence of Julie in her fathers' life? Or off-putting, lonely maintenance man Gilbert (Christopher Lloyd)? The two detectives on the case (Richard Herd of "Trancers" and Joe Regalbuto of 'Murphy Brown') don't take Julie seriously at first but eventually come around.

Also featuring Flo Lawrence ("Don't Answer the Phone!") and Fredric Cook ("Jackson County Jail"), this just isn't as much fun as the viewer might wish. It's trashy enough to keep it amusing and watchable. A glum looking Kinski is interesting to watch, as always. Hill and Wasson are likable, but Wasson has what is one of the dumbest moments in the film regarding Dougs' reaction to one of the letters. Wilkes is a delight as the somewhat disturbed daughter. Lloyd is good as he underplays his role. Herd is clearly just picking up a paycheck. Everything climaxes in an awkward sequence in which all of the suspects show up in one location. Perhaps the most egregious element of "Schizoid" is the awful - albeit sometimes amusingly awful - music score by Craig Hundley, who did much better work for "Alligator" the same year.

Dedicated completists of 80s slasher cinema will want to see this, for sure, but they're advised simply to just keep those expectations low and they might have a reasonably good time.

Five out of 10.

Schizoid is fairly up front with you in the first 5 minutes or so: if you like seeing very sleazy movies where a guy in black gloves and a pair of scissors is going after women in not-terribly-clever-but-direct ways, then this is for you. But in place of having a director with some actual visual appeal or attempts at creating a distinct style like some of the Giallo directors (i.e. Argento or Fulci), you get here instead the 'different' side of things with casting: Klaus Kinski. For me, I thought this was the filmmakers going about it somewhat obviously - like, of course he's the killer, right? I mean, look at him! Or it might be Christopher Lloyd, who is the sort of maintenance man who shares an elevator with the main female character after fixing the boiler (so he says) and showing what a handy-man he is by moving the elevator by pressing a button with a screwdriver. Or could it be... someone else??

This is fairly standard stuff - the main woman, Julie of "Dear Julie", is part of some sort of weekly couples (or singles?) therapy group that also includes Lloyd's character, and we see how these murders unfold and how Julie wants to try to entrap the killer, who seems to be sending those word-cut-up type of letters - and yet it's hard not to want to keep watching with Kinski there. This is basic stuff for him, but he takes it seriously enough, and even created some ambiguity with his character. He also gets to play MELODRAMA (in bold type) with his daughter character, who lost a mother years before and blames him for it some reason or another. They have father-daughter squabbles, and those are some of the more entertaining scenes of the movie. For what it's worth, he makes it sort of compelling.

The rest of it is not very remarkable, neither in the kills (again there's little tension since we've seen these before, or at least you have if you've ever seen a horror movie, let along a slasher) nor in what seem to be red herrings going left and right (i.e. Lloyd's character, who gets kind of short-shrifted in the grand scheme of the story). The filmmaker, David Paulsen, didn't do that much else other than this movie and one other, and it's clear he's in it to create the requisite drama necessary to keep the story going, without putting in the work to make the dialog more than groan-indusing. And Craig Wasson, who one would later see in Body Double, is relegated to a role that any actor could play... almost, anyway.

Even the title is kind of disappointing; there's not too much of any kind of 'schizo' side to things, and we're just waiting for the other shoe to drop as far as when the killer may strike next or go after Julie, or when the cops might do *something* with this case. And yet because of people like Kinski and Marianna Hill (who is alright as Julie, just enough to get by), I can't say it's a total failure or mess. It's just... there, with some sleazy 80's horror-synth and a "twist" ending that reeks of hackery.

"Schizoid" is a fair early-80's slasher flick that suffers from a distinct lack of personality. It boasts a somewhat name, B-list cast, and derivative yet effective stalking scenes. Writer-director David Paulsen tries, in vain, to make everyone a suspect, but you eventually stop caring because of the clumsy script contrivances he expects us to swallow. But there's nothing here you haven't seen before, except maybe Klaus Kinski, wildly miscast but still highly entertaining as a marriage counselor who carries on affairs with his patients! I'm not ashamed to admit he kept me watching the whole way through. 2.5 stars out of 5.