15 Uncharacteristic Movie Maniacs

            Alright I admit it- I have a fondness for psychos. Most of my closest friends have often been referred to as “nuts.” Many of the guys I dated were so disturbed they probably deserved to be permanently outfitted for strait–jackets (especially when I got through with them). If I ever decided to send away my DNA to Ancestry.com it would probably come back resembling the family tree in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Every morning, while having tea, I loving look up at the giant 3-sheet movie poster for the 1966 film The Psychopath (with the tag line: “Mother, May I Go Out to Kill?”). And I vividly recall a boss who once screamed at me, “You are as nutty as a fruitcake!” 

            So, it stands to reason I love movies about lunatics. And while I adore Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, especially the astonishing performance by Anthony Perkins, I have to say the movies I re-watch the most, concerning disordered minds, lean more to the offbeat. When an actor goes for broke playing someone barking mad. Especially when going against type. Here are 15 that I psychotically enjoy.

            Alan Alda (To Kill a Clown) Hawkeye turns homicidal! Affable Alan Alda, who transitioned from theater to movies and TV, best known for his sardonic portrayal of Captain Benjamin Franklin “Hawkeye” Pierce on the long-running CBS show M*A*S*H, plays a deranged Vietnam veteran in this oddball psychological thriller. An asshole artist and sometimes clown (Heath Lamberts) and his whiny wife (Blythe Danner) rent a seaside cottage from Major Evelyn Ritchie (Alan Alda), who uses walking sticks to get around and has two highly trained Dobermans. He starts out friendly but eventually terrorizes the hapless couple, using his snarling dogs to keep them in line. Forcing the artist to senselessly carry rocks on the beach he has an angry tantrum when he sees him shirtless. “Put your shirt on!” he commands, “Button it up. Every single button. Buttoned, buttoned! There were wild savages roaming this country before buttons came. This country is founded on buttons. The United States of America is what it is because of buttons!” Needless to say, it all ends in unbuttoned tragedy. But not near as tragic as having to sit through it.

            Mickey Hargitay (Bloody Pit of Horror) A staggering Italian exploitation classic starring a musclebound Mickey Hargitay who plays the owner of a castle with a haunted history who invites a crew to photograph sexy models in the torture dungeon. But Mickey gets taken over by the vengeful spirit of a 16^th century sadist “The Crimson Executioner” (complete with red hood and cape, the bare-chested Hargitay terrorizes his guests and gives a performance so gloriously bonkers it merrily unhinges the jaw. Hargitay, a Hungarian/American bodybuilder and former Mr. Universe, famously married to Jayne Mansfield, was able to carve out a cool movie career in Italy, playing in Italian westerns and “peplum” sword and sandal epics. But he really is having a blast in this movie.

            Louis Jourdan (Julie) Jourdan, the handsome star of Gigi was good at playing suave playboys and rakes, but here he plays Lyle, a deranged concert pianist, pathologically jealous of his wife Julie (Doris Day). She flees to San Francisco after finding out Lyle killed her first husband. The police are unable to help her because she has no evidence so she changes her identity and gets her old job back as a stewardess. But Lyle relentlessly hunts her down. He even sneaks onto a plane Julie is a flight attendant on and murders the pilot and wounds the co-pilot. Like Karen Black in Airport 1975, Julie has to land the plane by herself and save all the passengers. (Mercifully not cross-eyed). So much fun, and Jourdan is a hoot as the stalking scumbag.

            June Allyson (They Only Kill Their Masters). Alright- big spoiler alert. If you haven’t seen this incredibly enjoyable mystery/comedy don’t read on. It stars laid-back, genial, James Garner as Abel, the Police Chief of a California coastal town investigating the murder of a woman. Her body washes up on shore and, at first, it looks like her pet Doberman- Murphy, mauled her to death. But the pooch is innocent. Abel ends up with the Doberman as his pet, not to mention romancing the beautiful gal from the veterinarian office (Katharine Ross). But the killer turns out to be the wife of the vet, a crazed lesbian, played by, of all people, June Allyson. Her name doesn’t even appear in the opening credits, so it’s supposed to be a surprise reveal. But Allyson was the sweetheart of MGM musicals with her wide infectious smile and good cheer. To see her in a short, mannish haircut, wearing a dirty sweatshirt, and trying to kill nice James Garner makes you doubt the existence of God.  

            Robin Williams (One Hour Photo) Robin Williams is Sy Parrish, the Eleanor Rigby of one hour photo developers, at a local SavMart. To the Norkin family- Nina (Connie Nielsen), husband Will (Michael Vartan) and their 9-year-old son Jake, he’s just slightly sad “Sy-the photo guy”, but what they don’t know is that back in his apartment is a wall of Norkin family photos that Sy keeps adding to. Unfortunately, Sy’s obsession takes a dark, dangerous, turn when he begins to see cracks in this “perfect” family’s foundation. Director Mark Romanek modest, well-crafted film doesn’t resort to cheap shocks but still establishes a deep sense of dread and Williams gives a (surprisingly) restrained, un-Doubtfire performance.

            John Phillip Law (Blood Delirium) John Phillip Law plays a loony painter, convinced he is the reincarnation of Vincent van Gogh. His wife dies and he is so distraught he gets his necrophiliac butler (Gordon Mitchell) to dig up her body which he keeps in a hidden crypt for inspiration. He meets a beautiful woman who resembles his late wife and invites her to his castle where she soon realizes the depths of his craziness. Everything is pitched at such a hysterical level that from scene to scene you have a hard time catching your breath. Or reason why people are doing what they are doing. After a while you just give in to the film’s overwrought sensibility. John Phillip Law, so memorably dreamy as the blind angel in Barbarella, plays it so unhinged from the get-go, you’ll feel like cutting off your own ear by the end.

            Olivia de Havilland (Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte) Joan Crawford was originally attached to this Southern gothic thriller, helmed by Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? director Robert Aldrich. She even shot several scenes but Bette Davis emotionally wore her down and she admitted herself to a hospital just to get out of the picture. So, Bette’s old Warner Brothers buddy Olivia de Havilland was brought in. Bette plays Charlotte, a reclusive spinster living in a gloomy estate with her faithful servant (wonderfully hammy Agnes Moorehead). They plan to build an interstate highway through her house and land but she refuses to budge (with a shotgun). Cousin Miriam (Olivia de Havilland) shows up to calm the waters but really sets out to drive her cousin insane. Joan Crawford might have been easier to see through, but when elegant, lady-like de Havilland shows her vicious true colors it’s a surprise. And how much fun to see kind and sweet Melanie from Gone with the Wind turn rotten.

            Troy Donahue (My Blood Runs Cold) Warner Brothers was busy turning Troy Donahue into a dreamboat teen idol with A Summer Place and Parrish. They were also trying to find the best way to feature their resident sex kitten- Joey Heatherton. This bizarre thriller stars Heatherton as Julie, a spoiled rich girl who meets a stranger named Ben Gunther (Troy Donahue), who tries to convince her she is the reincarnation of Barbara, her great grandmother from the 1870s, and he is the reincarnation of Barbara’s doomed lover. Jeanette Nolan plays her no-nonsense Aunt fond of big barrel-curl hairdos and hideous outfits. Julie wearies of the whole reincarnation nonsense, “Can’t we be together without making it a part of yesterday?” But Ben won’t let it go and eventually he drags her away on his boat during a dangerous thunderstorm. We see Ben having some mini mental fits early on. But by the end of the film he is completely bonkers. “I Loved a Loon- from the Past,” should have been the ad campaign.

            Arch Hall Jr. (The Sadist). Arch Hall Jr. made a series of movies in the 60s where his father (Arch Hall– whose experience in the Air Force was immortalized in the movie The Last Time I Saw Archie) attempted to create a new teenage idol out of his son. I love him in movies though, like The Choppers, Eegah and especially Wild Guitar. When Mystery Science Theater 3000 riffed on one of his movies they called him a “Cabbage Patch Elvis.” But in The Sadist he is surprisingly effective as a young psycho who holds several people hostage at a gas station. He’s like a pug-nose punk but you really feel the danger in him. The cinematography for this demented gem is by Vilmos Zsigmond. 

            Michael York (Off Balance) A sort-of “giallo” by director Reggero Deodato (Cannibal Holocaust) about a world-famous pianist Robert Dominici (Michael York) diagnosed with a rare disease that causes rapid aging. He suffers sudden explosions of rage as his condition worsens and begins to commit a series of violent murders, taunting the police on the phone after each one. There is little mystery to who the killer is right from the get-go, but what’s interesting is the sympathy you have for Robert, despite the hideous crimes. The film is problematic, but still fascinating. Even though you keep flashing back to the dashing York from Cabaret, he successfully acts like a true lunatic in the film. York sadly ended up actually suffering from a rare blood disease himself. (Mercifully it was cured by a successful stem cell transplant at the Mayo Clinic).

            Elizabeth Montgomery (The Legend of Lizzie Bordon) The nose-twitching, happily married, suburban necromancer from the TV series Bewitched, Elizabeth Montgomery, becomes a different kind of witch, starring in this TV movie about Fall River, Massachusetts’ notorious Lizzie Borden, who “took an axe and gave her mother forty whacks. When she saw what she had done, she gave her father 41.” It was actually her father and stepmother that Lizzie was accused of killing in 1892. And she got exonerated by a jury for lack of evidence. The film tries to faithfully follow the actual trial testimony, especially from the Irish maid Brigid Sullivan (Fionnula Flanagan) who was the only other person there when the murders happened. When Lizzie gets acquitted we are treated to a creepy flashback and we see how Lizzie actually did it. Stripping nude and bathing herself between each savage kill. Having the inherently lovely Elizabeth Montgomery play the role is wonderfully subversive casting. And, to be brutally honest, they had it coming.

            Tony Curtis (The Boston Strangler). Tony Curtis lobbied hard for the role of Boston strangler Albert DeSalvo, based on the non-fiction book about the crime by Gerold Frank. The well-made film really tries to examine the psychology of the killer, who seemed to have a split personality. One, a simple family man. The other, a fiendish strangler of women, whose reign of terror traumatized the city of Boston in the 1960s. Tony Curtis forever fought being thought of as a lightweight in the movie industry, and to be honest, you only have to watch The Defiant Ones and The Sweet Smell of Success to agree with him. Curtis acts his ass off as DeSalvo (he even gets the Boston accent right and had a fake nose applied to make him look more like DeSalvo). A scene near the end where he reconstructs his murders for the police is genuinely chilling. While garnering good reviews he was still shut out of an Oscar nomination which probably (and rightfully) pissed him off. Albert DeSalvo unsuccessfully sued Twentieth-Century Fox to stop the showing of the film.

            Macaulay Culkin (The Good Son). It wasn’t a bad idea. Take the star of Home Alone (Macaulay Culkin)- and turn his character from mischievous imp to evil sociopath. Elijah Wood plays a young boy whose mother died and is sent to stay with relatives in Maine. His cousin Henry (Culkin) seems friendly, at first, but his psychopathic nature slowly reveals itself. Audiences were comfortable seeing a swinging paint can hit a burglar full in the face, but not so much Culkin pushing his sister on skates across thin ice to watch her crash through just for fun. Although witnessing Henry’s mom ask point blank if he killed his own brother to have Culkin belligerently reply, “What if I did?” somewhat makes up for the endless, repugnantly cute “O” faces Home Alone spawned.

            Ted Bessell (Scream, Pretty Peggy) A notoriously campy 1973 TV movie about a sculptor (That Girl’s Ted Bessell) who hires a college girl (Sian Barbara Allen) for a housekeeping job for his ailing mother (Bette Davis) in a gloomy mansion. Bette Davis is a riot as the slightly tipsy matriarch, hiding liquor bottles in the bookcase and warning the girl that she shouldn’t have taken the job. And who is the mysterious figure behind the curtains in the barred room over the garage? One of the screenwriters- Jimmy Sangster wrote some the best Hammer films. And it’s directed by Gordon Hessler (Scream and Scream Again). This howler will have you spit-taking your cocktail during the last 10 minutes when Ted Bessell reveals himself as a psycho in drag.

            Frankie Avalon (Blood Song) You’d think any movie that opens with a quote from Tennyson would be kind of classy. Well, perhaps not this one starring Frankie Avalon as an escaped mental patient and psychotic hatchet killer, forever blowing into a stupid, handmade wooden flute. The musical instrument was made by his father right before daddy shot mommy and her lover and then blew his own brains out (all in front of Sonny). Now, anytime anyone complains when he (unendingly) plays that damn Lullaby and Goodnight on his flute they usually end up strangled (or worse). Donna Wilkes plays a high school girl with a leg brace named Marion, who, (get this), has a psychic connection to the killer because of a blood transfusion! In the end, she is chased (very slowly) around her father’s mill by the maniac. When she hits him in the belly with a pick axe he cries out, “You hurt me. You really hurt me.” (Oh, Annette Funicello, where are you when we need you?) The only song in the movie is not bloody, but it is sung by Lainie Kazan.

            The trouble when I do lists like this, I always get comments like, “You forgot this one or that one.” It’s not that I forgot them. I just got sick of the subject matter and decided to stop writing and guzzle down a well-earned martini.