The Psychopath - 1966 film review

Robert Bloch was a prolific and highly capable writer who made his name by writing Psycho. A few years later he cashed in on the success of that Alfred Hitchcock film by writing the story for a movie made by Amicus, which was a film company ploughing much the same furrow in the horror market as Hammer. This film had the somewhat unoriginal title of The Psychopath, though apparently it's also known as Schizo and it was released in 1966.

It's an odd movie, because it works quite well as a macabre thriller, making good use of that great trope of macabre movies, creepy dolls. Unfortunately, the story does descend into the same sort of barminess that affects the titular serial killer. However, the director, Freddie Francis, was adept at camera work, and some of the visual effects are impressive.

The film opens with the murder of a musician in London. He's run over repeatedly by a car and a doll bearing his likeness is found at the scene. It turns out that he collaborated with a number of other musicians who had a dark secret in their past and - guess what? - one by one, they are eliminated. The daughter of one of them, Louise, is played by the extremely attractive Judy Huxtable, making her film debut. She happens to be involved professionally with doll-making and personally with a rather wooden chap called Loftis (played, not very plausibly I'm afraid, by Don Borisenko).

Soon the trail leads to the home of a strange old woman in a wheelchair ('hysterical paralysis' is diagnosed) called Mrs Von Sturm (Margaret Johnston who succumbs to the urge to act hysterically). She lives with her weird son Mark (John Standing, a very good actor who certainly isn't seen at his best here). All in all, there is some indifferent acting and script-writing, but one of the redeeming features of the film is a strong performance by Patrick Wymark as the investigating detective. I think this film could have done with a better final twist and the latter stages were too over-the-top to be effective. And that's frustrating, because there are some good ingredients here, and a subtler approach could have paid dividends.