Schizo (1976 film)

Last updated
Schizo
"Schizo" U.S.film poster.jpg
US poster (1977)
Directed by Pete Walker
Written by David McGillivray
Produced byPete Walker
Starring Lynne Frederick
John Leyton
Stephanie Beacham
CinematographyPeter Jessop
Edited byAlan Brett
Music by Stanley Myers
Production
company
Pete Walker (Heritage) Ltd
Distributed by Columbia-Warner
Release date
  • 11 November 1976 (1976-11-11)
Running time
109 minutes
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish

Schizo is a 1976 British psychological horror slasher film directed and produced by Pete Walker and starring Lynne Frederick, John Leyton and Stephanie Beacham. [1]

Contents

Plot

Samantha Gray, a famous figure skater, is engaged to London businessman Alan Falconer. On the day of Alan and Samantha's wedding, ex-convict William Haskin begins stalking Samantha. Over the next few days, Haskin terrifies Samantha by leaving bloody knives in various locations, including her home.

Samantha tells her psychiatrist friend, Leonard Hawthorne, that Haskin was her mother's lover until he brutally stabbed her to death during an argument. Now that Haskin has been released from prison, Samantha thinks that he is trying to kill her. That night, Leonard is found murdered in his car, his throat slashed.

Samantha's housekeeper, Mrs Wallace, takes Samantha to see her daughter Joy, a medium who channels Leonard's spirit and warns Samantha that the killer is close by. While making her way home, Joy is bludgeoned with a hammer and thrown under a moving bus. At Samantha's house, Samantha finds Mrs Wallace dead in the cellar, stabbed through the head.

Samantha confronts Haskin at Alan's factory. Haskin tells Samantha that he is not a murderer and was wrongfully convicted: Samantha has a split personality, part of which is murderous, and killed her own mother. He explains that the bloody knives were intended as clues to force her to remember and confess. A physical struggle ensues, which ends with Haskin being fatally impaled on one of the factory machines.

Some time later, Alan and Samantha depart for their honeymoon. Unknown to Alan, Samantha has packed a knife in her luggage.

Cast

Production

The film was shot on location in Newcastle upon Tyne and London, England.[ citation needed ]

Lynne Frederick had known director Pete Walker since she was 14 years old (her mother was a friend and co-worker of Walker). However, Schizo is the only film that they worked on together.[ citation needed ]

Frederick started work on the film just days after wrapping on Voyage of the Damned (1976). When Frederick was cast, Walker was under the impression that she still had her trademark long hair. Unbeknownst to him, Frederick had cut it short for her previous role in Voyage of the Damned.[ citation needed ]

Due to the film's low budget, many of Frederick's clothes came from her own personal wardrobe. Frederick had worn many of these outfits the previous year in A Long Return (1975).[ citation needed ]

Release

The release of Schizo (1976) was rushed to coincide with the anticipated success of Frederick’s highly acclaimed performance in Voyage of the Damned (1976). It was hoped that the success of that film would garner a following for Frederick and bring in extra earnings for this film..[ citation needed ]

The film received a release in the US on 7 December 1977.

Critical reception

In The Monthly Film Bulletin , Tom Milne wrote "Not one of the happier Walker-McGillivray collaborations, Schizo starts off on the wrong foot with a truly hackneyed come-on (an awed transatlantic voice solemnly explaining the joys of schizophrenia), and thereafter trudges wearily into a morass of evasions and red herrings as the plot twists and turns in a frenzied attempt to obscure the fact, obvious from the very start, that beleaguered heroine and bloodthirsty killer are one and the same. Deprived of any support from the script this time, Pete Walker's direction, all thump, scream and cut as shadows lurk and doorknobs turn – with each cliché heralded by a triumphant tremolo or bass boom from the score – reduces the whole thing to risible absurdity in which even the studiously nasty murders (Mrs. Wallace killed by a knitting-needle rammed right through her skull) are unconvincing. " [2]

Time Out wrote: "Walker and writer David McGillivray's most ambitious project to date attempts to shake off the low-budget horror/exploitation tag with a move into more up-market psychological suspense. If the formula is thread-worn – a trail of victimisation, sexual paranoia, and murder in the wake of the heroine's wedding - at least some effort is made to locate it (rich, middle-class London). But things collapse disastrously in the second half. Caught between sending itself up and taking itself seriously, the film ends closer to the silliness of Francis Durbridge than to the menace of Alfred Hitchcock." [3]

Legacy

Although the film was not a success during its initial release.[ citation needed ], it became a cult classic in the horror movie community. The underground success of the film was in part due to Lynne Frederick’s new found cult fanbase. This film, along with Vampire Circus (1971), helped establish Frederick as a scream queen icon of the 1970s. [4]

Related Research Articles

A slasher film is a subgenre of horror films involving a killer stalking and murdering a group of people, usually by use of bladed or sharp tools. Although the term "slasher" may occasionally be used informally as a generic term for any horror film involving murder, film analysts cite an established set of characteristics which set slasher films apart from other horror subgenres, such as monster movies, splatter films, supernatural and psychological horror films.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lynne Frederick</span> British actress (1954–1994)

Lynne Frederick was an English actress. In a career spanning ten years, she made over thirty appearances in film and television productions. Known for her classic English rose beauty, she often played the girl next door and was famous for her performances in a range of genres, from contemporary science fiction to slasher horror, romantic dramas, classic westerns, and occasional comedies, although her greater successes were in period films and costume dramas.

<i>Voyage of the Damned</i> 1976 film

Voyage of the Damned is a 1976 drama film directed by Stuart Rosenberg, with an all-star cast featuring Faye Dunaway, Oskar Werner, Lee Grant, Max von Sydow, James Mason, Lynne Frederick and Malcolm McDowell.

<i>Emma</i> (1932 film) 1932 film

Emma is a 1932 American pre-Code comedy-drama film released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, starring Marie Dressler, written by Leonard Praskins from a story by Frances Marion, and directed by Clarence Brown. The supporting cast features Richard Cromwell, Jean Hersholt and Myrna Loy.

<i>Black Christmas</i> (1974 film) 1974 film by Bob Clark

Black Christmas is a 1974 Canadian slasher film produced and directed by Bob Clark, and written by Roy Moore. It stars Olivia Hussey, Keir Dullea, Margot Kidder, and John Saxon. The story follows a group of sorority sisters who receive threatening phone calls and are eventually stalked and murdered by a mentally ill killer during the Christmas season.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Barbara Shelley</span> British actress (1932–2021)

Barbara Shelley was an English film and television actress. She appeared in more than a hundred films and television series. She was particularly known for her work in horror films, notably Village of the Damned; Dracula, Prince of Darkness; Rasputin, the Mad Monk and Quatermass and the Pit.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cameron Mitchell (actor)</span> American actor (1918–1994)

Cameron Mitchell was an American film, television, and stage actor. He began his career on Broadway before entering films in the 1950s, appearing in several major features. Late in his career, he became known for his roles in numerous exploitation films in the 1970s and 1980s.

<i>The Comeback</i> (1978 film) 1978 British film by Pete Walker

The Comeback is a 1978 British psychological horror slasher film directed and produced by Pete Walker and starring Jack Jones, Pamela Stephenson, and David Doyle. Its plot follows a successful but dormant American singer who retreats to a remote manor in Surrey to record an album; there, he is followed by a psychopath—donning a hag mask—who murdered his ex-wife.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Françoise Pascal</span> British actress, singer (born 1949)

Françoise Pascal is a Mauritius-born British actress, singer, dancer, fashion model, and producer. She appeared in numerous film and television productions at her peak throughout the late 1960s to early 1980s.

<i>Die Screaming, Marianne</i> 1971 British film by Pete Walker

Die Screaming, Marianne is a 1971 British thriller film produced and directed by Pete Walker and starring Susan George and Barry Evans. Although Walker's films are mostly in the horror or sexploitation genres, this is a straight thriller, with mild horror undertones.

<i>Hands of the Ripper</i> 1971 British film by Peter Sasdy

Hands of the Ripper is a 1971 British horror film directed by Peter Sasdy and starring Eric Porter, Angharad Rees and Jane Merrow. It was produced by Aida Young for Hammer Film Productions, and written by L. W. Davidson from a story by Edward Spencer Shew. The film was released in the U.S. as a double feature with Twins of Evil (1971).

Stuart Rosenberg was an American film and television director whose motion pictures include Cool Hand Luke (1967), Voyage of the Damned (1976), The Amityville Horror (1979), and The Pope of Greenwich Village (1984). He was noted for his work with actor Paul Newman.

David McGillivray is an actor, producer, playwright, screenwriter and film critic.

<i>Killers Moon</i> 1978 British horror film directed by Alan Birkinshaw

Killer's Moon is a 1978 British slasher film written and directed by Alan Birkinshaw, with uncredited dialogue written by his novelist sister, Fay Weldon, and starring Anthony Forrest, Tom Marshall, Jane Hayden, JoAnne Good, Nigel Gregory, David Jackson, and Lisa Vanderpump. It follows a group of schoolgirls on a choir trip who are terrorized by four escaped psychiatric patients on LSD while staying in a remote hotel in the Lake District.

<i>The Nightcomers</i> 1971 British film by Michael Winner

The Nightcomers is a 1971 British horror film directed by Michael Winner and starring Marlon Brando, Stephanie Beacham, Thora Hird, Harry Andrews and Anna Palk. It is a prequel to Henry James' 1898 novella The Turn of the Screw, which had already been adapted intoThe Innocents (1961).

<i>The Uncanny</i> (film) 1977 film

The Uncanny is a 1977 British-Canadian anthology horror film directed by Denis Héroux, written by Michel Parry, and starring Peter Cushing, Donald Pleasence, Ray Milland, Joan Greenwood, Donald Pilon, Samantha Eggar, and John Vernon.

<i>The Flesh and Blood Show</i> 1972 British film by Pete Walker

The Flesh and Blood Show is a 1972 British horror slasher film directed and produced by Pete Walker, and starring Ray Brooks, Jenny Hanley, and Luan Peters. It follows a group of actors being stalked and murdered by an unseen assailant while rehearsing a play at a derelict seaside theatre.

Judy Matheson is a British actress notable for her appearances in several horror films in the 1970s. She also appeared in many other films and television series.

<i>House of Whipcord</i> 1974 British film by Pete Walker

House of Whipcord is a 1974 British exploitation thriller film directed and produced by Pete Walker and starring Barbara Markham, Patrick Barr, Ray Brooks, Ann Michelle, Sheila Keith, Dorothy Gordon, Robert Tayman and Penny Irving. In the United States, House of Whipcord was distributed by American International Pictures. In 1975, AIP reissued it under a new title, The Photographer's Model, in a double feature package with Thriller – A Cruel Picture (1973) re-tiled Hooker's Revenge.

<i>House of Mortal Sin</i> 1976 British film by Pete Walker

House of Mortal Sin is a 1976 British horror slasher film directed and produced by Pete Walker. It was scripted by David McGillivray from a story by Walker. Its plot concerns a deranged priest who takes it upon himself to punish his parishioners for their moral transgressions.

References

  1. "Schizo". British Film Institute Collections Search. Retrieved 1 December 2023.
  2. "Schizo". Monthly Film Bulletin . 43 (504): 256. 1976. ProQuest   1305836143 via ProQuest.
  3. "Schizo | review, synopsis, book tickets, showtimes, movie release date | Time Out London". Timeout.com. 10 September 2012. Retrieved 2014-03-04.
  4. "Lynne Frederick, The Legacy of a Scream Queen, 65th Birthday Tribute | Spooky Isles". www.spookyisles.com. Retrieved 2019-11-17.