The Killing Kind

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01/18/2022 Terry (John Savage, The Deer Hunter) was forced to participate in a gang assault and served two years in prison, losing his sanity. His mother Thelma (Ann Sothern, so many roles, but also the titular voice of My Mother the Car) runs a boarding house for old women who all gossip about the strange nature of their relationship; if you didn't know the truth, you would think they were a married couple, not a son and his mother. Thelma wishes that the victim of the assault, Tina (Sue Bernard, Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!) was dead. So Terry runs her off the road. He hears how his attorney Rhea Benson (Ruth Roman, whose slate of movies in the early 70s was absolutely wild between this, The Baby and Impulse) didn't protect him enough, so he kills her too. He even kills new tenant Lori (Cindy Williams, who was commuting between the set of this film and The Conversation) and they move the body out in full view of their suspicious neighbor Lori (Luana Anders, Night Tide). Speaking of that librarian next door, that same character shows up in 1980s The Attic, which was also written by Tony Crechales and George Edwards. Also, to those that worry about cat murder, yes — a cat does die in this. It was a real cat in that scene, but it was sedated by a vet. The one in the dumpster is an actual euthanized cat, but it was not killed for this production. Sadly, this movie had poor distribution and was lost for a few years. How exciting is it that we live in a world where films get found and we can find them ourselves so easily? See more 04/10/2012 A young and handsome but impotent mama's boy takes revenge on the ladies who crossed him (mocking the man's sexual ineptitude will guarantee an early exit). Neatly directed by Curtis Harrington ("Games", "Night Tide", "Ruby"), this oedipal thriller is sufficiently creepy, but its misogynistic depiction of women as tarts whose antics are deserving of violence by a male psychopath (hence inadvertently portraying him as sympathetic) leaves a sour taste in the mouth. See more 10/27/2011 Ann Sothern gives what is probably the best performance ever on a B-movie, giving dimenion and depth to her character through subtlety and emotion. As for the rest of the film, well, it isn't bad, actually, but it's just kind of lost when it comes to focus. It's an interesting character study in its own right, but it could've been way better. Nevertheless, it remains very reminiscnent of 'Psycho' given the way it explores how much a mover's love affects a child. See more 12/01/2010 Another of great director Curtis Harrington's interesting and involving psychological horror-melodramas, and rarely seen, here being the account of the very unhealthy Oedipal relationship between a fat, blowsy mother, (Ann Sothern in a wonderful performance-) and her murderously-psychotic son (John Savage) after he is released from prison. Harrington delighted in exploring the dynamics between very disturbed, emotionally-scarred characters, and he doesn't disappoint here. Featuring a very young Cindy Williams in a sympathetic role as one of Savage's unfortunate victims. See more 05/08/2009 Curtis Harrington had one of the more varied careers in American cinema: an avant garde filmmaker; a studio executive for Columbia; a hired gun on network TV shows; and the director of a string of acclaimed, low-budget exploitation films. The Killing Kind is one of the latter: a bizarre and gripping study of psychopathology and mother love with more than a few nods to Hitchcock's Psycho. It stars John Savage, a number of years before he did The Deer Hunter, and he is both adorably sweet and frighteningly disturbing as a young killer seeking revenge on those who have wronged him. Also excellent are the leading ladies in the film, including two Hollywood has beens (Ann Sothern, Ruth Roman) and one soon to be (Cindy Williams). The film never quite reaches the level of demented psychodrama that it occasionally promises, and it has a few slow stretches, but it is always compellingly off-key. Due to poorly handled distribution, the film never really got a theatrical release, and was effectively a "lost" film until Dark Sky recently put it out on DVD. Welcome back! See more 05/06/2009 i usually dig these "drive in" style movies but unless you really want to see Cindy Williams (Lavern and Shirley) get strangled, i wouldn't really bother with this flick. Ann Sothern is decent as the loopy mother. See more Read all reviews

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