Lonely Sex, The (1959)
** (out of 4)
Bizarre film about a sex maniac stalking the streets who is apparently messed up due to his first sexual encounter being with a prostitute. He eventually kidnaps a woman and keeps her locked up in a shack in the woods as her friends try to find her. It's very important to keep in mind that this film beat PEEPING TOM and PSYCHO into theaters by a year so this film probably deserves to be better known among movie fans. Director Hilliard is best known for directing VIOLENT MIDNIGHT and writing the cult classic THE HORROR OF PARTY BEACH so it's interesting to see such an early cash-in on the sex maniac that would become more popular a decade or two later. This film has an ultra-low budget that doesn't allow for too much on the technical side but there are a few nice moments including one sequence in front of the mirror as the killer tries to "paint" over his face. The low-budget nature works in some ways as it gives the film a more documentary-like feel and this certainly helps in the scenes with the killer quietly stalking the women. What doesn't work too well are the performances, which are far from bad but none of them are good enough to really carry the movie. Another problem is the screenplay that never really gets too deep so don't expect anything psychological like the future Hitchcock film. Running a brief 58-minutes there's really not too much time to dig into any real issues with the killer so everything is pretty much just skipped in order to keep the film moving. We do get some brief nudity and a rather violent scene where the killer stones a woman to death but the blood level remains at zero. This certainly isn't a good movie but fans of the genre will probably want to check it out just to see something made before Norman Bates.
