HOMICIDAL
US, 1961, 87 minutes, Black and white.
Jean Arless, Glenn Corbett, Patricia Breslin, Eugenie Leontovitch.
Directed by William Castle.
Homicidal is one of several psychological thrillers produced and directed by William Castle in the late 1950s and early 1960s (The Tingler, I Saw What You Did). The film was in the vein of Psycho and is something of a psychological shocker. Castle himself introduced the film – with the gimmick of giving people a chance to leave the theatre if they didn’t want to be shocked!
The film is a thriller about a split personality. Jean Arless has to be both man and woman (not entirely persuasively). However, Eugenie Leontovitch as Helga is much more effective. There are the usual mix-ups of identity, heroines getting into danger, deaths and chases.
1.An entertaining psychological thriller? Shocker?
2.William Castle’s introduction? Was the film as frightening and as shocking as suggested? Black and white photography, the American town, Californian atmosphere? Light and darkness, night and day? Editing and shocks? Musical score?
3.The bluntness of the title? The homicidal maniac? Split personality? Madness and greed?
4.The focus on Emily – her youthfulness, her hiring Jim Nesbitt for two thousand dollars, the wedding ceremony? The sudden killing of the justice of the peace after the ceremony? Her speeding away? The house? Helga and her fear of Emily? The irony of Emily and Warren not being seen at the same time? Warren as the slender and weak young man? The background of his father and his sadism? Helga as his nurse? Emily and her relationship with Miriam, telling Miriam that Warren was her husband? Emily and the connection with the killing, Emily as mad? Her using Miriam’s name? The irony of Karl and Miriam telling Warren about Emily? Emily stalking Miriam in the house? The death of Helga? Her revealing that she and Warren were the one person? The truth about the justice of the peace and Helga knowing about the birth of Warren? The plan to eliminate Miriam as heir to the money? The credibility of the split personality? Warren and Emily as one person? Behaviour, violence?
5.Miriam and Karl as conventional hero and heroine? Miriam as Warren’s half-sister? Her concern about him, reaction to Emily, fears about Emily as a killer? Emily’s visits to the florist shop? Karl and his investigations? Confiding in Warren? Emily pursuing Miriam, the threat to Miriam? The truth?
6.Helga and her being paralysed, her terror, speechless? Genuine intimation of terror and horror? Emily’s persecuting her? Her death?
7.The use of horror conventions for the thriller: the house, the speechless old woman, the knife murders, disguises, stalking of a victim through the house? How effectively done?
8.The nightmare aspects of this kind of psychological thriller? The plausibility – but the dramatising of attitudes of victimisation, greed, violence?
