Schizoid (1980)

(On Cable TV, October 2021) There’s a long list of reasons why I loathe slasher movies, with gore and nihilistic disregard for human life being near the top of the list. But the inherent misogyny of the genre, especially in its first flash of early-1980s popularity, is right up there with the worst. It’s always young women being targeted, with the desecration of their bodies being integral to the murders. Schizoid, while better than many other slashers from a narrative perspective, is harder to excuse when it comes to violence directed at women: the targets are older, they’re not necessarily a cheerleader squad and the identity of the killer underscores its misogyny badly enough. From a narrative point of view, Schizoid has a few more things going for it than the usual summer camp bloodbath slasher: As a psychiatrist receives threatening letters and sees members of her therapy group being murdered one by one, she wonders: who’s the murderer? Could it be… creepy Klaus Kinski? Well, maybe—terribly miscast as what’s supposed to be an irresistible senior psychiatrist, he rings off red herring alarms the moment he walks on the screen. Could it be… creepy Christopher Lloyd as an unhinged handyman? Well, maybe—except how about that weird teenager with an axe to grudge against the protagonist? There are plenty of possibilities and Schizoid, once it moves away from the gruesome murders, does have some interest as a whodunnit. Alas, it does remain a slasher and not a particularly well-handled one. Whatever attempts at giallo style are there fall flat and there’s not much more to compensate. Kinski is a presence by himself, but Marianna Hill is merely beautiful-but-bland in the lead role. I’ll tolerate Schizoid as being slightly better than the average slasher, but that’s not a very high bar to begin with.