TERRIFIED

d. Lew Landers (1963)

Pretty teenager Marge hasn't had much luck of late: her father was murdered by an unknown assailant; her mother was killed in a mysterious car crash, and her older brother was turned into a 'dribbling oyster' by a man in a black silk mask who threw him screaming into a grave at the local ghost town and then filled it with wet concrete until the boy's mind snapped at the prospect of being simultaneously drowned and buried alive. 

What Marge doesn't know is that the kinky killer is a man who is horribly fixated on her, and is systematically eliminating the people she loves in order to facilitate possessing her. This is also bad news for the two callow youths* who are wooing her, one of whom ends up being tormented and tortured and, yes, terrified to death.

It's pretty sick, especially at the climax when the unmasked killer says he first noticed Marge when she was ten years old, then whispers excitedly about her 'bare little feet' and 'torn dress' and promises to look after her always as she lies rigid with fear in his arms. At this point, my skin crawled off and hid behind the sofa.  

Terrified examines the notion of the cheerful small town where everything is gingham and gee willikers on the surface but, underneath, is sick and corrupt and rotten and dirty. It's a particularly American obsession: King's Row, Peyton Place and Twin Peaks all attest to that. America has a tragic, terrible history: a vast, wild, deadly landscape colonised by force, seeded by sacrifice, watered by blood, built on death. 

If the English are always bemoaning the fact that life used to be better, that the best of our country has come and gone, then perhaps the American psyche works in reverse, and the people are haunted by a folk memory of when things were infinitely worse. Is it any wonder that they are scared of what's out there in the dark?**

*  Technically only one callow youth: the other one is thirty three and looks every month of it, especially as he is painted, coloured and styled like a cheap whore in order to try and look 18.

**  According to the FBI, between 35 and 50 active serial killers at any one time, for a start.

BARE KNUCKLES

d. Don Edmonds (1977)

Bare Knuckles is sometimes described as a Blaxploitation film, despite the fact that it was produced, written and directed by a white man, and, after about forty minutes, dispenses entirely with its few black cast members and concentrates exclusively on Robert Viharo, a bepermed and moustachioed action hero of obviously Italian descent. But the original poster cannily emphasises the black actors and it does feel like a Blaxploitation film: fast, fun, daft, full of fighting, shouting and running around. At the end, I felt like I'd been watching it for about ten minutes.

Viharo plays Zachery Kane, a principled and unconventional ex-cop turned bounty hunter. In a quick montage, it's also revealed that he is a semi-pro boxer (who trains in jeans and a polo neck jumper), a kung fu expert and that he plays the flute, albeit in a way that produces synthesised electronic tones. He lives on pizza and sleeps in an office plastered with 'Wanted' posters. When a perverted psycho killer starts picking off young women, Kane decides to catch him, partly for the reward and partly because Kane is a good guy with a strong moral compass and incredibly tight jeans.

The killer, revealed early on, is a horrible, incredible creation: a stunted rich kid (in his 30s) who was so disturbed by his Mother's promiscuity that he grew up full of hate and sickness and murder and incestuous lust. Rather like one of the younger Trumps, the only way he can feel whole is to don a leather suit and a ragged gimp mask and stab young women to death, hissing and wheezing in a most disturbing way. He's a really horrible guy, with no redeeming features whatsoever and, when he kisses his Mom and tries to slip his tongue in, you can't wait for Kane to bring him to justice, preferably using a flaming chainsaw.

The last quarter of the film is a chase: by car, by motorcycle, on foot. The finale of the action, like Grease, takes place in a partially flooded storm drain. Unlike Grease, however, death is on the cards for at least one of our combatants. I won't spoil it by telling you which one, other than to say I actually pumped my fist and said 'yes!' when it happened.     

STRAIT JACKET

d. William Castle (1964)

There is a sub-genre of cinema known as Psycho Biddy. You may already know that, but I think it’s worth reiterating as it always gives me a little pang of pleasure. A Psycho Biddy film contains a middle aged (or older) woman who is either guilty or suspected of suffering from a violent mental illness. Murder and mayhem most usually follows. Sometimes the biddy turns out NOT to be a psycho, and it is instead the people and world around her that are insane. Either ways, these films tend to be an amusing blend of over the top melodrama and gruesome physical and psychological horror, and are recommended as long as you don't mind screaming, lots and lots of screaming.

The psycho biddy here is domestic nightmare Joan Crawford. The film starts with her hacking her unfaithful husband and his floosie to death with an axe then flashes forward twenty years to her release from the asylum. The timid, aged, very grey Joan moves in with her now grown up daughter (who witnessed the whole thing) and, slowly, begins to regain a little of her mojo thanks to a new wardrobe and a polyester wig. Just when she begins to think her nightmare is behind her, she starts hearing voices and hallucinating severed heads. Then the decapitations begin…

It's a very William Castle type of William Castle film, in that the majority of the artistry in this film went into the title and the casting, and the rest just hangs loosely on the (hopefully wood, not wire) hanger. There is the odd visual flourish, and Joan has fun playing on the periphery of hysteria and it's nice to see persistent b-movie menace George Kennedy get his (paper mache) noggin knocked off. It's good fun.

Castle saves the best joke for the last frame, a reconstruction of the famous Columbia pictures logo of the flag draped lady carrying a torch. In Castle's version, her head has been chopped off, and sits neatly at her feet.