User Reviews

William Castle "borrowed" rather liberally from Hitchcock's slightly earlier PSYCHO for this tale of a knife-wielding blonde beauty--but as usual, he gave it his famous showman's tacky spin. In theatrical release, the film featured a "fright break:" as the action approaches a climax, a clockface appears on the screen and Castle himself urges those too terrified to return to the lobby for a full refund. But there was, of course, a catch: you had to walk in yellow footsteps applied to the carpet past the jeering audience and agree to sit in "The Coward's Corner" until the movie was over and every one had filed out past you! Needless to say, few (if any) movie-goers ever took him up on it.

But the famous "Fright Break" isn't the only thing HOMICIDAL has going for it. The story itself is more sophisticated than that of most William Castle films, and the female leads are quite effective. Jean Arless, a surprising beauty, is quite startling as "The Homicidal Girl"--a blonde bombshell who has a way with a knife--while both Patricia Breslin and Eugenie Leontovich are quite convincing as two of those on her list of intended victims. And lastly, the film offers a surprise conclusion that can still blindside some less suspecting viewers even today.

That aside, HOMICIDAL has plenty of camp appeal, all of it resting on Jean Arless' WAY over the top performance as she entices, ices, and slices her way from one victim to the next--and as one reviewer has already remarked, you'll feel pretty sure that Annie Lennox borrowed Arless' look (and in some pretty unexpected ways, too) for several of her videos. I must admit that I don't consider HOMICIDAL in the same league with other William Castle schlock-favorites such as 13 GHOSTS, HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL, or STRAIT-JACKET--largely, I think, because it seems Castle really is making a bid for cinematic respectability here and that sorta detracts from the fun. But all the same, most fans of Castle's silly horror flicks should get a stab--I mean, a KICK--out of it!

Gary F. Taylor, aka GFT, Amazon Reviewer

I just had my first viewing of HOMICIDAL, having already heard that it "steals shamelessly from PSYCHO". Well it does do that, but it's also a surprisingly effective chiller that manages to set out on its own course and strikes up enough originality to make it well worth watching. The acting is mostly competent, given the film's era and genre.

But I kept wondering all the while why such an unattractive actor was cast to play the role of Warren. Certainly, I thought, they could have found a trainload of reasonably handsome men to cast in this role(?) Of course, this odd point becomes somewhat cleared up in the end...that is, if the viewer is able to navigate the rather complicated (and rapid) unraveling of the family's dark history. I expect I'll have to view it again to make sense of it. But HOMICIDAL is cheesy campy fun of the best kind, so it will be a guilty pleasure to have a second stab at it.

This movie was frightening, but it was hokey. So, I was confused; why was it so scary when everything seemed so obvious? Well, the film plays on a lot of childhood fears, in ways that are not entirely obvious. Furthermore, it seems like some of the scary bits are just patched on. So, you come away puzzled, but still disturbed.

The killer is a girl who was raised as a boy, because of the greed of adults she has no control over.

The old woman in the chair is powerless, terrified and not taken seriously by anyone. So, she's covered in shame and fear, as well as guilt for the horrible deed she's done to this girl. Anyone can identify with that and this character does it enough to make your bones ache.

The bit with the doll was confusing, until I realized the killer was just envious of the normal girls childhood. Oddly, she seems far less threatening playing the boy than she does playing a woman. Of course, she's always playing something; that's the tragedy. Still, as her own gender she is the most menacing; that's irony.

Constantly throughout the film your pounded with this feeling of helplessness as the characters do things that bring them so much danger and it all seems so avoidable. So, there's a sense of guilt, in not preventing their doom and shame in not being able to.

Finally, the ending seems timely for 1961, because many folks saw our society as too materialistic. The detective coldly sums it all up as a murder plot motivated by greed, when in reality, the character would have gladly paid for the "privilege" of murdering her victims, without any reward, other than revenge.

An attractive, but odd looking blonde woman named Emily pays a hotel bellhop to marry her, and then stabs the justice of the peace to death right after the ceremony. Thus does Homicidal get underway with a bang. What follows is a convoluted, implausible, but surprisingly effective suspense thriller with some pretty kinky undercurrents.Emily ,as played by Jean Arless/Joan Marshall, is one scary lady. Her sweet, innocent manner conceals a truly menacing character, who will let nothing stand in her way. She murders her victims with an enthusiasm bordering on glee, and audiences in 1961 must have been startled to see a woman act out such unexpected violence.There are classic horror movie clichés, such as the spooky dark house, the helpless old lady unable to tell others of her danger, an inheritance waiting to be claimed, secrets from the past affecting the present. The movie is usually considered to be a ripoff of Hitchcock's Psycho, which seems credible. There are definite plot parallels, but Homicidal goes off in some pretty weird directions all its own. Worth seeing at least once by horror movie fans. Castle really knew how to entertain a crowd.

In the very first scene we are introduced to director Bill Castle, who gave us such movies as "Macabre" (1958), "House on Haunted Hill" (1959), and "Strait-Jacket" (1964). Some of his gimmicks included Emergo (a glow in the dark skeleton seen above theater audiences), Percepto (vibrating device attached to some theater chairs) and Illusiono (red and blue cellophane strips for one to see/not see the ghosts in a movie). In "Homicidal" he used the "Fright Break," where audience members saw a 45-second timer on screen; they could leave their seats and get a full admission refund in Coward's Corner, assuming a too frightful climax.

In the second scene we observe two children, a boy and girl. The strange-looking boy with big teeth takes a doll from the girl and smirks. "Warren, Warren, it's mine," utters the girl. There is something odd about the boy. Later we will understand that the two are Warren and Miriam, half-brother and half-sister (same father). Now we fast-forward 13 years to the early 1960s; the kids are grown up. Warren still has big teeth.

In the next scene, a blonde woman calling herself Miriam Webster (Jean Arless / Joan Marshall) checks into a hotel and offers a bellhop $2,000 to marry her with the understanding that the marriage will be quickly annulled. He likes the quick cash and agrees. Ms. Webster has a specific justice of the peace in mind, so they drive out to Ventura, California and convince Adrins (James Westerfield) to conduct the midnight ceremony. At its end she pulls out a long knife and stabs Adrins a number of times in the midsection, with blood pouring and with her facial features contorted in murderous hatred. The homicidal one easily escapes from Adrin's shocked wife and bellhop, and drives his car to her own auto, which she then uses from this point on. In the next scene, we learn that Miriam Webster's real name is Emily. She is a caretaker for a wheelchair-bound mute, Helga (Eugenie Leontovich). Helga knows secrets but cannot speak, and is terrified of Emily, who enjoys torturing her verbally. She quickly tells Helga that Adrins died. Helga was Miriam and Warren's nanny. Grown up Miriam Webster is a florist in the attractive Danish-looking town of Solvang, California. She and Emily dislike each other. Emily flirts with Karl (Glen Corbett), a pharmacist who dates Miriam.

Earlier Helga had taken Warren on an ambiguous trip to Denmark. There, Warren had met and secretly married Emily. One evening Emily lies to Karl, thus preventing him from seeing Miriam. Emily breaks into Miriam's flower shop and trashes things; when Karl enters she cracks him over the head and leaves. When he awakens he is staring into the face of Warren. We learn that Miriam and Warren suffered mightily at the hands of Helga (who was a nasty person) and their equally nasty father. Now Warren, strange looking and slightly built, seems to be a confidante of sorts for half-sister Miriam. In two days he will be 21 years old and – AS A MALE – will inherit $10 million. meanwhile, Emily wants to dispose of Helga and Miriam.

SPOILERS - DO NOT READ UNLESS YOU WANT A THOROUGH EXPLANATION:

Greed and psychosis are the issues. There are an evil mom, a weird dad, a bad nanny, and a seedy justice of the peace. The dead wealthy father wanted a son; the mother and nanny raised the daughter like a son to placate him. Adrins went along with the scheme. So there is child abuse (with a whip to toughen up the obviously effeminate Warren) and gender distortion as a male will inherit $10 million, not Miriam, a female! After the horrible Helga is decapitated, Miriam is in the homicidal clutches of Emily and cries for Warren. Emily pulls off her wig and reveals herself as Warren. Emily's motive for killing Adrins and Helga is revenge against their sinister plot to raise Emily as Warren (and to devastate Emily's life along the way). As she is so crazy with murderous revenge she does not radiate sympathy. Miriam's issue differs; she obviously did not know that Warren was a girl (?). Perhaps there is just a sibling rivalry. Note when "Warren" tells Miriam that "he" has already killed Emily. Is it possible that an Emily did exist in Denmark all along? So Warren killed her to assume her identity, to have Emily do the dirty work for Warren? Pretty crazy stuff for 1961! But, discounting this information, there are still plot holes:

PLOT HOLE #1: How could Miriam be so naïve about Emily/Warren's gender? She was her half-sibling after all.

PLOT HOLE #2: Emily gives the name of "Miriam Webster" to the hotel folks to incriminate her. But it would be obvious that Miriam's dissimilar likeness would be an alibi. Did Emily not realize that the police would show up at Miriam's flower shop in Solvang to investigate, leading the police almost to Emily's very doorstep? So why did Emily decide to kill Miriam, who was apparently unaware of the wicked scheme?

PLOT HOLE #3: Why did the adults want Warren to gain the inheritance in the first place? "He" would get the cash, not them. So again, why kill Miriam? Was there a deal to split the cash?

While it certainly borrows quite a few scenes from "Psycho," "Homicidal" stands on its own with its peculiar gender-twisting plot. Overall, the acting is not bad. By the way, Warren's voice was NOT dubbed. The actress Joan Marshall had the uncanny ability to lower her voice range to sound like a man. It adds to the creepiness, like the eerie indoor shots. They called Bill Castle schlock-meister, but he certainly had his following. He was the type of guy who would spend $100,000 for a movie and make $2 million. He made his mark, and since his passing we have not seen the likes of him.

(MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD) First, I'll say that I loved the movies of William Castle. From "Macabre" through "House on Haunted Hill," "The Tingler," "13 Ghosts" to "Homicidal," with all those great gimmicks, Castle was the epitome of a drive-in horror showman genius in the late 50's.

Second, Hitchcock copied Castle when he made "Psycho." Hitchcock was well aware of the big bucks made by "Macabre" and "House on Haunted Hill" and wanted to make something like William Castle did "for the teenage drive-in crowd." Robert Bloch's novel "Psycho" came out in 1959 and Hitchcock pounced on it. Like many a William Castle movie, "Psycho" was made cheaply in black-and-white, and set in a small town backwater area like Castle movies. Hitchcock also included an "upscale William Castle gimmick." Rather than tingling seats or "death insurance," Hitchcock simply stamped a demand on all "Psycho" advertising: "No one

can enter the theater after 'Psycho' begins!" Hitch said he wanted to protect his secrets, but he was also making "Psycho" feel completely like a Castle picture.

Third, William Castle saw what a blockbuster hit Hitchcock had in "Psycho," so he rushed "Homicidal" into production. Look at the release date: June 1961. Plenty of time for Castle to see "Psycho," have a script written, and film his copycat.

The plot specifics and murders in "Homicidal" are different from "Psycho," but the film has these match-ups: 1. After years of making "haunted house" type movies, Castle makes in "Homicidal" a slasher movie like "Psycho." 2. The story begins with a title: "Ventura, California," like "Psycho"'s "Phoenix, Arizona." 3. The story starts on a pretty blonde making a journey in a car.

NOTE: Here comes BIG TWIST on "Psycho" : instead of killing the beautiful girl at the 30 minute mark, Castle surprises us by having the GIRL commit the bloody murder instead. Nice.

4. Eventually, the story moves to a lonely house near a small California town: Solvang (a real town, instead of the fictional Fairvale in "Psycho.") 5. A hero and heroine are introduced in that small town. A police detective , instead of a private eye, introduces himself.

6. SPOILER: the twist ending is just like "Psycho": a man dressed like a woman has been committing the murders.

Like most William Castle movies, "Homicidal" is cheesy fun on its own terms, and scary enough. Fair play: Hitchcock homaged Castle with "Psycho," so Castle homaged him back.

But "Time" magazine was absolutely crazy to say that "Homicidal" was better than "Psycho." That's insane.

Hitchcock's command of cinematic art is everywhere in "Psycho." Compare the editing of the shower scene to any of the murder in "Homicidal" (which involve animated cartoon blood on one victim and a dummy head on the other.) Compare Hitchcock's great camera move over Anthony Perkins, the dialogue, the acting, the other murder scene, the climax.

"Homicidal" is fun, but comes nowhere near the artistry of "Psycho."

The movie "Homicidal" actually has a much better story then "Psycho" to which it's always compared to. A young woman checks into an hotel in Ventura Calif. For the night and when the bellhop is called to her room to bring a pitcher of ice, after giving him an $100.00 bill as a tip, startles him by asking that he marry her! This under the condition that he gets the marriage annulled immediately after the ceremony! If all that's not enough to leave the stunned bellhop wondering if he's not really under the influence of some strong hallucinogenic drug the woman offers him another $1,900.00 to agree to it!

Later that night after taking the vows of matrimony and with the Justice of the Peace about to kiss the bride she pulls out a knife from her purse! To the shock and horror of her new husband and the Justices wife she stabs him to death! Was it his bad breath that made her do it? Wow! What a way to start for a movie.

The movie "Homicidal" then goes into a long and drawn out story about a dysfunctional family that's coming to a crisis point at the time that the son Warren is about to reach his twenty first birthday. By reaching that milestone Warren is to inherit ten million dollars that his father left him. A few years back Warren and his former nanny Helga, who suffered a stroke, went on a trip to her native country Denmark. It's there Warren met and fell in love with Emily and they were secretly married.

Emily who, by her talk and actions, seemed to be a bit unstable and even more serious has a murderous dislike of Helga and Warren's step-sister Miriam. Still Warren is so much in love Emily that he tries to overlook all of that.

Homicidal has some very good plot twists in it with a surprise ending to the surprise of no one watching the movie. I for one really liked that fright-clock scene that director William Castle put in the movie just before the you know what was about to hit the fan. This in order to give the people in the audience time to run out of the theater and not only get their money back but to avoid seeing the terrifying as well as heart-stopping ending. An ending that might very well have put them into cardiac arrest if their hearts were too weak and couldn't take the shock.

But the most incredible thing about the movie was the appearance as well as the acting of of the star Gean Arless who played the part of Warren. Arless made those of us watching the movie think that this was too good, or better yet too bad, to be true. Looking like a cross between Bela Lugosi's Dracula when he's just about to plant his fangs into your neck and Lon Cheney Jr. In the early stages of him morphing into the Wolf-Man with a voice that sounds like it's being generated straight out of a computer.

A very good storyline keeps the movie going smoothly with a plot that has more meat to it and is less complicated then "Psycho" even though I thought that the "surprise" ending was very predictable.

I had heard about this film for years and caught the end of it on pay-tv recently. I taped it when it was shown again and I was blown away! "Jean Arliss" who is the real star of the film is fantastic in her dual role. But the dialogue is also a little off-centre and even Glen Corbett and Patricia Breslin get to engage in some of it. The eerie first 20 minutes is justly praised by all but it is the mood of the film and its puzzling construction ( where is the story heading ?; it is hard to say) which make it quite unique. The kid who played Warren as a child was so perfect that I believed his adult "look" even more and the casual conversations about sanity and homicide left me feeling like I was in another world. I think this is a really European feeling film. With wonderful atmosphere and dread , it is a classic of its kind.

Even though the story doesn't stand up under close scrutiny, I had the greatest time with this flick. I'm not going to be one of those people who say they saw the twist ending coming from a mile away because I didn't. In fact the real twist came right at the end when Jean Arless (real name Joan Marshall) revealed her role as both Emily and Warren. You could have blown me away at that point, I just couldn't believe the same person played both characters, and even then, I thought it would have been a male impersonator. Which made me think back to whether Emily and Warren ever appeared in a scene together in the picture, and I would have bet they did, but turns out only in that late night scene in the bedroom, and that was another gimmick of the story. Pretty cool.

But it's a Castle film, so I guess you have to expect the gimmicks. The opening admonition from Castle himself was a decent set up, but I roared when the countdown clock showed up on screen. I guess I was part of the brave audience that persevered to see what happened when Miriam Webster (Patricia Breslin) stepped through the door, no fright break worth it's salt was going to stop me.

I didn't think I'd seen Breslin in a movie before but she sure did look familiar so I had to look up her other credits on IMDb. Somewhat surprisingly, my memory dredged up another TV show from my childhood past I used to watch all the time - 'The People's Choice'. In it, Breslin was married to Jackie Cooper's character, 'Sock' Miller. The name of the series was a play on words, Breslin was Amanda Peoples Miller, daughter of the town mayor John Peoples. None of this would probably have been memorable if not for Sock's pet, a sad looking basset hound named Cleo, who's thoughts about what was going on was provided by a narrator. His insights were meaningful but hilarious. Now I've got to hunt down some of those episodes.

Anyway, all you have to do is think about the story line here and it all falls apart pretty quickly. Since Warren and Emily were the same person, an opening scene in which Warren took the doll away from half-sister Miriam could never have happened the way it did. And if Warren and housekeeper Helga (Eugenie Leontovich) moved away to Denmark after the death of Warren's abusive father, who wound up raising Miriam? But the real kicker while all this was going on was the way anyone in contact with Helga simply stood there during any of her frantic attempts to get attention - why didn't someone just hand her some paper and a pencil?

Obviously a rip-off of 'Psycho', William Castle even repeats specific images from Hitchcock's earlier classic. It manages however be even weirder and may be the originator itself of the childhood prologue soon became a cliche in it's own right in the films of Robert Aldrich and John Carpenter.

The mysterious Jean Arless (who gets an 'introducing' credit) cuts a very dramatic figure playing a glacial blonde who's Mrs Bates, her son Norman, Marion Crane and Marnie all rolled into one (although - SPOILER COMING: - her impersonation as her husband is rather obvious since her centre of gravity is obviously that of a girl. And probably wouldn't work today when it's no longer possible to pass yourself off as a bloke just by wearing a suit and tie).

You know how many movies start with an exciting intro-sequence before the opening credits? Usually this scene involves a horrid flashback, the first of many murders or something else that is truly adrenalin-rushing. The intro-sequence in "Homicidal" therefore looks a little ridiculous as it only just depicts a bratty (and quite ugly) young boy stealing a doll from his little sister! Oh, the humanity! The horror!! Anyway, although the intro may look extremely silly, it does gradually makes more sense once the story is properly developing. Perhaps director William Castle suffered a little from a large ego (he insisted on introducing his movies himself) and possibly he paid a little too much attention to bizarre gimmicks, but he also definitely knew how to make adequate scary movies! "Homicidal" is a lot less notorious as, say, "House on Haunted Hill" or "13 Ghosts", but this film's script is far more intriguing and effectively dark. Many people are comparing this film with Hitchcock's "Psycho", but I tend to disagree. Surely there are similar themes and common story elements, but numberless of contemporary films cashed in on "Psycho", and most of them did it a lot less subtly than Castle's gem "Homicidal". After the aforementioned intro, the story opens fascinatingly mysterious. A young and seemingly confused blond woman moves into a hotel room in a little Californian town and promptly bribes one of the bellboys to marry her the next day. Even more awkward than the proposal is that she assures him that the marriage will be annulled immediately after. The wedding ceremony is a real shocker as the girl totally unexpectedly kills the Justice of the Pearce and flees. This is only just the beginning of a loopy and genuinely imaginative suspense story that also introduces a terrified and mute old lady in a wheelchair, isolated country mansions, $10 million inheritances and creepy-looking Danish blokes. The plot is quite compelling and tense, but it definitely isn't without holes. Our blond killer, for example, takes some really severe risks like leaving the bellboy alive as a key witness and at one point she even hires a professional to sharpen the knife she uses as the murder weapon. The major surprise twist of the story isn't all that hard to predict, but still William Castle sustains a fairly high level of atmospheric tension (interrupted only by a goofy 45 sec. long "fright-break") to compensate for the rather obvious finale. "Homicidal" is good entertainment with some ahead-of-its-time shocks & violence and pitch black humor. Recommended!

As an attention-grabbing title for a slasher-thriller picture of this one's twisted nature, I'd say that the use of a single word, like "Homicidal", was very effective in grasping my curiosity and interest.

But, on the other hand, since Homicidal was apparently William Castle's sneering and envious answer to Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, then this off-kilter, second-rate, maniac movie repeatedly fell short of its intended goal. It neither shocked me, nor held my attention for more than a few minutes at a time.

Out of this whole movie there were only 2 memorable scenes in its entire 90-minute running time that I thought were stand-outs and worthy of any mention.

The first scene happens at about the 15-minute point when Emily pulls a razor-sharp carving knife out of her purse and immediately begins to brutally stab the old Justice of the Peace in the stomach, over and over again, while 2 horrified witnesses look on.

The second scene containing any fright-value takes place in the last 10 minutes of the story.

In between these 2 moments there's about an hour's worth of story that literally goes nowhere and, believe me, this is more than enough to put most viewers off to sleep while the characters continually bicker away with each other.

Even though I knew from the start that the 2 characters of Emily & Warren were being played by the same person, what came as a real surprise to me was to find out that it wasn't an effeminate man playing these dual roles, but rather a somewhat butch woman.

I understand that it's never been officially revealed as to whether Jean Arless' voice as Warren was really hers, or if it was dubbed. All the same, her performance as a man was very convincing.

I found it really puzzling that if William Castle had really wanted Homicidal to be a much more memorable rip-off of Psycho, then he should've made it a point to include a horrific "shower scene" in his film, as well. But, he didn't do this (much to my disappointment).

All that Castle added to Homicidal, for novelty effect, was a somewhat ridiculous tongue-in-cheek "fright break" of 60 seconds which allowed those in the audience (who were easily frightened) to safely leave the theater before the story's climatic moment of terror got underway.