There’s almost no dialogue, just a running first person narration as the nameless killer laments his shitty childhood and fantasizes about his next set of torture murders. We follow the killer on the day he is released from prison as he wanders around looking for victims. He believes he can perfectly plan his murders for maximum sadistic pleasure. Alas, his perfect plans are about as perfect as Trump’s COVID-19 plans, and suffer from similar impatience, frustration, hasty revisions, short-sightedness and self-delusion. By happenstance he ends up at a fairly secluded house, breaks in, and then all Hell breaks loose:
A guy named Erwin Leder (supposedly he was in Schindler’s List, but I don’t remember him) plays the killer, and nobody, NOBODY has ever expended more energy in any role. It may be cinema’s greatest ever portrayal of a psychopath. It’s an exhausting physical performance, as Leder runs, stumbles, crawls and stomps nearly non-stop through the film’s eighty-seven minutes. You’ve never seen a psycho spend so much time dragging around so many bodies (living, dead, crippled) and soaked in so much sweat and blood.
In the film’s rare relatively still moments as the killer tries to stealthily stalk his victims, Leder creeps around like an spastic Nosferatu. Even behind the wheel in a car, the killer can barely sit still, and, fleeing the site of his murders and with his victims in the trunk, he rear ends another car at a school crossing, resulting in one of the craziest film endings ever.
The movie’s few moments of comic relief are provided by the pet dachshund at the site of the killer’s home invasion. This may be the only movie ever in which a dog uses a dead fat old woman’s dentures as a chew toy.
From beginning to end, a completely original psycho flick shot in a convulsive cinematography and portraying a killer not as cold and cunning, but as boiling and unhinged. Truly one of a kind.
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