SCHIZO (1976)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

I've never got much out of the works of the British director Pete Walker, but whatever films his followers esteem, I find it hard to believe SCHIZO would make any top-ten lists. For me, as a non-believer, this tawdry psycho-thriller epitomizes Walker's failings.

Even by 1976, there had been dozens of "psycho-stalker" films, in which some apparent innocent was relentlessly pursued by an implacable psychotic. But whether those films have been good or mediocre, most raconteurs come up with a stalker who looks at least passably menacing. For whatever reason, Walker cast one Jack Watson as ex-con William Haskin, and Watson, as seen above, is a hangdog-looking, balding middle-aged man who looks about as threatening as a Wal-Mart manager. Even if an audience-member doesn't see SCHIZO's big twist coming, I can't imagine anyone experiencing any tension at Haskin's stalking of the young heroine.

So, the young heroine is Samantha Gray (Lynne Frederick), a figure skater about to marry Alan, a prosperous English businessman. But as she finds herself stalked by Haskin, Samantha's forced to reveal her dark past. When she was six, her mother was sleeping with her lover Haskin (no mention of Samantha's actual father), but Haskin was sentenced to roughly fifteen-twenty years in prison for having knifed Samantha's mom to death. Now he's been released, but no one in the government sees fit to notify Samantha. For some time many of her friends don't believe she's seeing anyone real-- until various murders transpire.

Walker pretty much gives away the game by the fact that the viewer never sees Haskin commit any of the gore-murders. And since there's not so much as a red herring about, there's no big surprise when it turns out that Samantha's the "schizo" of the title. David McGillivray's script offers no reason, psychological or metaphysical, as to why six-year-old Samantha knifed her mom to death and let Haskin go to prison for the crime. Schizophrenia here is just a bullshit tag being rung in to explain why the murderess acts normal most of the time, and McGillivray can't even bother to conjure with the usual Oedipal explanation. SCHIZO is just smoke and mirrors next to a genuinely well-crafted film on this theme, such as Philip Gilbert's BLOOD AND LACE.

Frederick doesn't come off much better than Watson, but then, she had more to work with in most of her other movies, even the mediocre VAMPIRE CIRCUS.  Walker is so devoted to sedulously following McGillivray's dull script that he never even shows his female killer slaying anyone on-screen.