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A Movie A Day: THE SADIST (1963) To inflict moral insanity on the innocent. That is his twisted pleasure!
Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with the newest October special horror run of A Movie A Day!
[For the entirety of October I will be showcasing one horror film each day. Every film is pulled from my DVD shelf, recorded on the home DVR or streamed via Instant Netflix and will be one I haven’t seen. Unlike my usual A Movie A Day or A Movie A Week columns there won’t necessarily be connectors between each film, but you’ll more than likely see patterns emerge day to day. At the end of each standard AMAD I’m going to include a recommendation of a genre film that is either one of my personal favorites or too good of a double feature with the AMAD title to pass up a mention.]
As further proof of how misplaced expectation can be, I went into this movie thinking it was going to be a silly cheese-ball exploitation flick starring a dude doing his best to ham it up having seen clips of it appear in Joe Dante’s infamous Movie Orgy.
I was kind of right. Arch Hall, Jr. sure isn’t underplaying the lead role of Charlie Tibbs, a psychotic murderer, but silly this movie isn’t. In fact it’s quite brutal and shockingly modern in its approach to storytelling.
The opening of the movie is right out of a modern studio thriller. An unassuming threesome comprised of teachers including a fatherly older man, a Doris Day-ish young woman and her musclebound love-interest pull into an autoshop/junkyard with car trouble while on their way to LA for a Dodgers game.
Unbeknownst to them a young man has killed the owners and watches as they try to repair the car themselves. Turns out this squinty-eyed kid is Arch Hall, Jr. and he’s not alone. Joining him is his just as crazy girlfriend. Think of them as a Mickey & Mallory type. In fact, both serial killer pairs were based on the real-life boyfriend/girlfriend team of Charles Starkweather and Caril Fugate.
When Hall makes his appearance the first we see of him directly is his hand holding a gun on the unassuming teachers. That gun is his position of power. He might be full of crazy, but the muscular Richard Alden could take him if it wasn’t for this gun.
So here I was expecting a little Petrified Forest or Key Largo situation where a group is held against their will, but figure out a way out… or maybe the bad guys are human afterall. No way, Jose. This movie shows us it means business within the first half-hour as Hall not only pistolwhips the older man into submission, but then shoots him in the head just for the hell of it.
The Sadist really is ahead of its time in showing such pure, unexplainable human cruelty and doing so bluntly. This isn’t a pleasant thrillride movie, but a gritty off-putting exploration of an insane mind given license by the cowardice and optimism of his victims.
Charlie doesn’t just kill his victims, but he torments them, giving them false hope, teasing them, chipping away at their humanity. There’s one great scene where our heroes are trying to figure out how many shots he’s fired and if he’s run out of bullets. So, Alden begins quizzing the nut, finding out how many people he’s shot. Charlie abides, relishing in recounting his past triumphs.
But he knows what the good guy is up to and says he can count to and spends one more bullet (which should theoretically mean he’s holding an empty gun) and taunts Alden, saying now is his shot. If he’s so sure the gun is empty why not take him out?
After Alden wusses out, Charlie pulls the trigger, it clicks. In a flash he replaces the clip, giggling all the way.
In short, Hall is playing the character like a teenage Joker. He gets his kicks from the game, not just the final score.
The ending (which I won’t ruin) is fantastic. I wasn’t sure how it was going to go by the time it arrived and it plays almost like Texas Chain Saw Massacre, but with a great, great bit of comeuppance for Hall.
Final Thoughts: The Sadist was a very pleasant surprise. Good script, great unhinged performance from Arch Hall Jr., great doomed tone and all photographed beautifully by master cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond. This is his first American film and his sheer talent at photography could have elevated this movie out of B-movie hell just by itself, but luckily enough there’s a smart script and a good central performance so he doesn’t have to save this movie all by his lonesome.
My recommendation title is something I remember sneaking down to watch on TV as a kid. It was past my bedtime and this one was supposed to be too intense for me. A half hour later I snuck downstairs and my mom was asleep on the couch with this movie having just started on cable.
So this is one of my early memories, watching this movie crouched behind the couch with my sleeping mother on it… nervous of being caught and creeped out by the evil Australian men in the masks on the TV screen.
Now Fortress is actually an Aussie TV movie, but still creepy. For the longest time I was trying to find out the name of this flick and it was actually a talkbacker that pointed me in the right direction. I bougth the DVD and rewatched and the movie still holds up.
Basically the movie’s about a group of masked men that take a young teacher and her schoolkids hostage. Much like The Sadist this flick focuses on the many attempts taken by our victims to escape their captors and, in many ways, becoming just as violent as their tormentors when they finally decide to make a stand.
So the movie builds up to a group of kids, aged 10-16 and their teacher, fighting evil men wearing scary masks to the death.
The movie is pretty intense and captures a great, eerie tone, especially for the young me. The accents and Australian outback were new to me and added to the mystique of the movie. That isn’t the case so much anymore, but the eerie tone is still there.
See?
There’s threats to children, horrible kid-made booby traps and a swimming scene that makes me feel short of breath just thinking about it… and that’s not just because Rache Ward strips down to her bra and panties… The group is hiding out in a cave and have to swim through an underwater tunnel that may or may not lead to a way out. Ward shepherds the younger kids and on one of the trips gets turned around, finding only a small bubble at the cave’s roof, just shallow enough to allow her lips up to suck in air.
Really intense scene and one of many memorable moments in this movie.
And you’ve never been so scared of Santa, or, as he is known to territories which recognize the Queen, Father Christmas. That makes this creepy little gem of a movie the perfect segue to the next AMAD.
Here are the final run of Halloween AMAD titles:
Wednesday, October 28th: CHRISTMAS EVIL (1980)
Thursday, October 29th: WHATEVER HAPPENED TO AUNT ALICE? (1969)
Friday, October 30th: WHO SAW HER DIE? (1972)
Saturday, October 31st: CARNIVAL OF SOULS (1962)
We’re in the final days! See you for Christmas Evil!
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
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AMAD Halloween Spectacular 2009:
October 1st: Nothing But The Night (& The Wicker Man)
October 2nd: Beware! Children At Play (& The Devil Times Five)
October 3rd: Cameron’s Closet (& Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood)
October 4th: Afraid of the Dark (& The Lady In White)
October 5th: The Pit (& The Gate)
October 6th: Brain Damage (& Basket Case)
October 7th: Brain Dead (& Braindead, aka Dead Alive)
October 8th: Visiting Hours (& Dressed To Kill)
October 9th: Macabre (& The Beyond)
October 10th: Private Parts (& Eating Raoul)
October 11th: Road Games (& Duel)
October 12th: Dead End Drive-In (& Repo Man)
October 13th: Psychic Killer (& Alone In The Dark)
October 14th: The Body Snatcher (& Son of Frankenstein)
October 15th: The Leopard Man (& The Ghost and The Darkness)
October 16th: Wolfen (& Cujo)
October 17th: Madhouse (& Happy Birthday To Me)
October 18th: The House With The Laughing Windows (& Deep Red)
October 19th: The Spiral Staircase (& Eyes of a Stranger)
October 20th: Demon Seed (& Inside)
October 21st: Stagefright (& Phantom of the Paradise)
October 22nd: Dead of Night (’77) (& Twilight Zone: The Movie)
October 23rd: The Serpent’s Egg (& Don’t Look Now)
October 24th: The Swarm (& The Birds)
October 25th: The Flesh and the Fiends (& Prince of Darkness)
October 26th: Count Yorga, Vampire (& Dracula AD 1972)
Click here for the full 215 movie run of A Movie A Day!
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Never got around to renting it though. From the sound of your review, I will have to rectify that.
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Both of these sound really good. I'll have to check them out.
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Goddamn, I remember seeing that on HBO when I was a kid and loving it, but it's been years since I've seen that thing! Cool!
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Holy S
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I'd almost forgotten about fortress, i could never remember the name. What an awesome movie.
There's another Aussie horror film that must have came out around the same time as fortress called "Spook", about a family on a camping holiday, getting stalked by some bigfoot/yowie type thing. I only remember it vaguely, just these creepy POV shots watching the mother swim in a creek. It scared the shit out of me as a kid. Does anyone know this film? It would've been late 80's. -
I remember watching [and loving] not only this movie as a kid, but also watching a bollywood remake of this one in college.
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said recently that she wished she had of stripped off fully in one of her movies but never did. this could have been the one! she said women stripping in movies should be the norm but not men - women are better looking. of course, she is married to brian brown so.....
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which i just viewed today.
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omg when did u remember this movie? i havent seen it,but i had seen a trailer on tv some decades ago.damn,i must find it.
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Man, I remember casually stumbling The Sadist on crackly community TV a few years ago and it stunned me. I was so sucked into it, have been looking for it since. Well ahead of its time - it's brutal and terrifying, brilliant exercise in tension. And yes, a fantastic comeuppance scene. But I had no idea it was Vilmos Zsigmond's first American movie!
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Man, that movie scared the living FUCK out of me when I was a kid. Those fucking masks busting into that school just killin kids for the hell of it. When the show up at the farmhouse? Holy fuck, I looked for this movie for years and caught in on cable a few years back. It still does hold up pretty well, didn't scare the living FUCK out of me, but, oh well, what does anymore?
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Oct 29, 2009 8:05:41 AM CDT
I got it, he looks like the bat from Ferngully...!
by nasty in the pasty
SORRY ABOUT MY FACE...!
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...I CAN'T FIGHT THIS FEELING...!
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I don't know if you noticed but the film is in chronological order, that is to say that the whole story takes place in 90 minutes. Originally it was called 11:45 but of course the producers changed the title to something more exploitative and tacked on that silly prologue.
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a while back (miss that series TCM, bring it back), and although I thought Arch Hall played the hipster/hillbilly role a little over the top, I got caught up and involved with the fate of his victims. Tarantino once said that no matter the tech specs or acting or what-have-you of a B-movie. If there is a point where you CARE, it draws you in, and damn, if The Sadist doesn't achieve that.
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I'd love to see it again.
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but "Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer" would be a nice bleak pairing with this one too
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I got to see The Sadist during Joe Dante's DANTE'S INFERNO mini-fest at the New Beverly, and I saw The Movie Orgy, but I didn't remember any clips overlapping. Must have been in the longer version.
The interesting thing about Arch Hall Jr. is that the only reason he was in any films at all is because his father, Arch Hall Sr., was convinced that his son should be a movie star and literally produced movies only so that his son could star in them.
The Sadist actually played him completely against type... most of the B-movies he was in back then cast him as the teenage rock-and-roller, rebellious but never evil. Most of those films are famous only for sucking out loud (MST3K fans will remember him as the male lead from Eegah!).
The Sadist is one of those movies that really shouldn't even be good, but achieves a weird sort of greatness due to the combination of unorthodox casting working out, an incredibly talented crew at the beginning of their careers and the lack of any sort of studio looking over their shoulder. -
I love that film. The part where the kids go nuts with spears is chilling, especially the last shot where we see the kids school science jars are filled with human organs.
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...sounds awfully good. Nice to learn! This is just the kind of thing I like about this column.
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Most of the other Talkbacks had people bashing on Sadist simply because it was Hall Jr. Now, everyone's interested. hehe. It really is creepy flick.
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divided up into 9 parts.
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Just the way I like my movies.
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I was expecting another stupid film like Eegah, and it rocked my world. If you want a quality DVD, Johnny Legend's company just released a special edition in 16:9 widescreen and featuring a new interview with Arch Hall Jr, now looking just like his dad.
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Yeah, I remember being creeped out by the end as well. I had completely forgotten about that one.
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Unfortunately it's well out of print but Allday entertainment released a DVD of it in '97 that featured a pristine print and a audio commentary by Zsigmond.
It's the only DVD I've got backed up because the original disc started to deteriorate. -
a movie with a cover like that would turn out to actually be good?
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You're right, I used to own the Allday edition. However, the print on the new edition blows that one away and is worth it. It's enhanced for widescreen TVs and most of the major dirt and scratches have been removed...including that bubble on the print that popped up during the last act that was on the Allday DVD. The commentary by Zsigmond is interesting, especially now that he's passed away, but he really doesn't have much to say about the film and it's not the kind of commentary that you could more than once. Now the drunken commentary on Cannibal The Musical, THAT'S a commentary that's extremely rewatchable!
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