The Astral Factor

A mentally ill prisoner, through some sort of yogic meditation, manages to make himself invisible and escapes. As a child, he'd been unwanted by his celebrity mother, who nevertheless kept him close to her and didn't let him create a life of his own. He had strangled her, and apparently other women, giving him the nickname of "the celebrity strangler."

Having escaped, he goes after celebrity women who had testified against him. The police, having learned he was into reading mystical books in prison, for some reason contracted a para-psychological institute. The institute thinks perhaps the strangler is killing women by astrally projecting himself. In reality, he's merely strangling them while he is invisible (and naked). He nearly gets caught when to reach one woman, he has to don a scuba suit to get out to her boat. It's more interesting when he manages to strangle a woman in front of many witnesses simply because they don't realize what is going on. Eventually, a trap is set for him.

I kind of wonder if this was originally done as a TV movie, perhaps as a pilot. There doesn't seem to have been any reason for introducing the lead cop's girlfriend/wife Candy and the psychics unless they were to return in subsequent episodes.

It's not very good, but it's not terrible.

The Astral Factor is about a psychopath, imprisoned for murdering his mother, who somehow learns how to make himself invisible by studying books while incarcerated in a hospital for the criminally insane. Needless to say, he escapes and goes on a killing spree.

This one begins quite well in all fairness but it soon gets somewhat tedious. The storyline is such a bad basic idea you have to wonder how the likes of it ever got as far as to be given the green light for an actual movie. Well, while it was made as film, it seemingly sat on a shelf for near enough ten years before actually being released. It's really not all that surprising to be perfectly honest. While the story is pretty terrible, it's not really that that is the chief problem. Sometimes bad stories make for good films after all. No the issue is probably that, with very few exceptions, movies about invisible men are almost always terrible. What can be more cinematically tedious than an invisible character? What it does mean though, is there are some very silly murder scenes which I guess could provide some laughs I suppose. But for me the best aspects about this one were the appearances of Elke Sommer and Stephanie Powers. Sommer starred in a few interesting cult films in the 70's and her presence is always welcome, while it was strange to see future 'Hart To Hart' TV star Powers cavorting about with her butt exposed. She played the detective's trophy wife! She does zero housework and spends all his hard earned cash. She and Sommer were at the very least interesting diversions in a film in need of them.

This budget "Boogie Man" film was just that.

I thought this movie was worth watching. Elke Sommer shows some nice cleavage and we get to see Stephanie Powers naked butt. That almost is worth it by itself.

This is definitely midnight movie fare, but I thought it told a story of an invisible stalker that was almost convincing. This movie embodies the flavor of 1970's budget movies. Stephanie Powers is fun as the cops playful girlfriend. Elke Sommer gets to be the drunk mean witch. The ending left something to be desired, as we really don't know what happened to the boogie man.

I think this was worth watching. 6/10

This movie is kind of like the more famous 70's cult horror film "Psychic Killer" in that it deals with a prisoner who develops psychic powers which he uses to escape and take revenge on his enemies. But while in that movie the convict was an innocent man taking well-deserved revenge, the psychic killer here is a grade-A lunatic out to finish the job. In an interesting back-story he is revealed to be the disturbed illegitimate son of a famous actress/sex symbol who kept him isolated from her social circle to avoid scandal, and ended up being strangled by him. (This might have been inspired by the real-life Hollywood murder of B-movie actress Susan Cabot in the 1960's, allegedly by her troubled, illegitimate dwarf son). It's never really made clear whether his psychic "powers" actually involve astral projection(thus the alternate title "The Astral Factor") or if he is simply able to appear invisible somehow (thus "The Invisible Strangler"). The inept cops are powerless to stop him regardless, even when he is obviously in non-"astral" form and has rendered himself decidedly visible by putting on a scuba suit.

What really makes this movie though is the all-star cast(or, as some wag might say, the "all has-been and never-would-be cast"). The lead detective is played by Robert Foxworth, who appeared most memorably in the ridiculous 70's mutant bear/environmental horror flick "Prophecy". German actress Elke Sommers appears as a "special guest star" (as opposed to the other actors who were apparently "regulars"). She plays a sexy former "Miss Galaxy" who the cops try to protect while she lounges around her mansion in skimpy bikinis. Sue "Lolita" Lyon has a five minute role as an early victim without uttering a word of dialogue (which is probably for the best as acting was never her strong suit). Mariana Hill ("Mrs. Fredo Corleone" in "The Godfather Part II") appears also, in accordance with an apparent law that she had to appear in every low-budget exploitation/horror movie made in the 70's and early 80's. The best though is Stefanie "Hart to Hart" Powers, who is VERY sexy as Foxworth's bimbo girlfriend "Candy". She routinely refers to herself in the third person, and buys herself an expensive fur coat on HIS birthday (which he doesn't object to since she's obviously wearing absolutely nothing underneath it). Some will probably tune in for Powers' "nude scene" (if you don't blink you might get to see the top part of her bare butt), but frankly her whole performance is downright wood-inducing (even if, like me, you don't usually go for the whole Marilyn Monroesque dumb bimbo thing). So what, if her entire character is completely superfluous. . .

This actually seems kind of like a 70's TV movie or series episode--it would not have been out of place as an episode of "Kolchack, the Night Stalker" actually. But since I like "Kolchack" and 70's TV movies I found it pretty satisfying overall if, admittedly, not all that great.

Morrison's supermarkets are currently selling this movie in their bargain DVD bin. I decided to risk picking it up on the off-chance that it might be a forgotten SF classic. It isn't. The print was awful. It looked like it had been fished out of a sewer and then sand-blasted. I gave up trying to watch the film itself as it just seemed so ridiculous. What I could make out of the acting and direction, which wasn't much, brought to mind a bad episode of Prisoner Cell Block H.

Don't take the risk! Learn from my mistake! I had to have a big argument with one of the managers at Morrison's before they would give me my money back.