Census Bloodbath: Scissors, Der Zorn Gottes

If you're new to Census Bloodbath, click here.

Year: 1980

Director: David Paulsen

Cast: Klaus Kinski, Donna Wilkes, Marianna Hill

Run Time: 1 hour 26 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

After some time traveling all the way through to 1984 with my Friday the 13th marathon, let's reel it back in here with the next film, straight outta 1980. This was a unique year for the slasher film because nobody really knew what they were doing yet. The rules hadn't yet been set in stone, and the flicks that came out in the months following the Crystal Lake Massacre were too deep in production at the time of release to reasonably be able to copy Mrs. Voorhees' exploits. That would come, my pretties. That would come.

But in the meantime the slasher film was still on uneven ground, and this film falls in more with the Silent Scream and Don't Answer the Phone features, focused more on plot and characters than elaborate gore effects. In fact, except for the damning aspect that a serial killer is offing women with a pair of scissors, Schizoid could hardly be considered a slasher movie at all.

It regards itself more as a psychological thriller, which is evident in the film's lack of gore (except for one split second shot of a cut on a woman's face, it's absolutely bloodless) as well as its cast. For you see, Schizoid is helmed by the frequent Werner Herzog collaborator Klaus Kinski, a man of no small talent who would certainly see it as an insult to be asked to perform in something as lowly as a slasher picture.

Those Germans, man.

As a result, the film takes itself very seriously, which to be honest isn't a total benefit to Census Bloodbath.

The plot follows recently divorced advice columnist Julie (Marianna Hill) as she receives a series of mysterious and threatening letters cut and pasted from magazines. She is unsettled by this, but she is rebuffed by the police when she requests an investigation. Nobody has actually been harmed by the letter sender, so there's no justification to warrant police action.

Things begin to look up for her case when members of her therapy group begin turning up dead, brutally stabbed to death with scissors like a demented giant's art project. These victims include Sally (Cindy Donlan), who was supposed to leave for Tennessee so nobody noticed she was gone; Rosemary (Kiva Lawrence), who disappears for the entire second act only to be killed in the last half hour; and a woman who is apparently called Pat according to IMDb, but I assure you gets no name in the film. I took to calling her Boobs McGee (Flo Gerrish, aka the Final Girl from Don't Answer the Phone, a movie with a suspiciously similar plot) because there's a scene with her being a topless dancer at a bar that has absolutely zero impact on the film at large.

As the bodies pile up, Julie gets more and more perturbed. And the dramatic upheaval of her personal life certainly isn't making things any easier. She has recently kindled a relationship with her therapist, Dr. Pieter Fales (Kinski) against the objections of his daughter Alison (Donna Wilkes), who hasn't yet come to terms with the death of her mother. And her annoying ex-husband Doug (Craig Wasson who we'll later see in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, one of the actually good Freddy movies) simply won't leave her alone, especially since they work for the same newspaper.

Also creepy plumber Gilbert (Christopher Lloyd aka Doc Freaking Brown) stands in the background being creepy.

You know what else can go 88 miles per hour...

Julie is much more reactionary than your typical Final Girl which is a little disappointing, but she does stick to her guns and get what she wants. Go feminism!

Honestly I don't have a ton to say about this film. It was obvious they were trying to be scary (you'd be surprised how many slasher films seem to forget that's an element of horror) and they were intermittently successful, meaning this is one of the scariest slashers ever made (slashers aren't scary). But for the bulk of it, it's just pretty boring.

The greatest redeeming factor of the film is the interplay between Kinski and Wilkes as an estranged father and daughter. Their chemistry is so strong it burns holes in the film and the scenes they have together sizzle and pop.

For some reason, I can't find a picture of them together without her boobs showing. Screw you too, Google.

There's really a lot of good in this film, it's a shame it's so slow. Alongside its pretty well accomplished actors, it has a uniquely realistic plot and the twists bubble up naturally from the movie's universe so they're totally believable as well as being unexpected. The reveals at the end are a marvel of intricate slasher plotting that are only undone by the sedate finale, in which Kinski walks around an office building for five minutes.

So, maybe not one for the record books, but this slasher has a brain and it's not afraid to use it. I'd much rather rewatch this film than any of the Don't films or even Mother's Day. Schizoid has understandably been forgotten by time, but it perhaps doesn't deserve its fate as much as some of its 1980 brethren.

Killer: [Doug (Craig Wasson)]

Final Girl: Julie (Marianna Hill)

Best Kill: The kills are all the same, but Rosemary's is the best cuz she's in a hot tub.

Sign of the Times: Typewriters and pay phones are both integral to the plot.

Scariest Moment: Sally is chased into an abandoned house off the side of the road.

Weirdest Moment: The doctor has sex with Boobs McGee in a scene that, rather than increasing the mystery, makes everything that much more confusing. Also he never takes his pants off.

Champion Dialogue: "I have felt less terrified in my life."

Body Count: 5; including the killer.

1. Sally is stabbed in the gut with scissors.
2. Boobs McGee is stabbed in the back with scissors.
3. Rosemary is slashed with scissors in a hot tub.
4. A man is stabbed in the back.
5. [Doug is killed somehow. Let me get back to you on that one.]

TL;DR: Schizoid is of a higher class than some of its slasher counterparts, but we're not in this for the class.

Rating: 5/10

Word Count: 1077

Census Bloodbath: Sexual Hangups

If you're new to Census Bloodbath, click here.

Year: 1980

Director: Robert Hammer

Cast: Nicholas Worth, Ben Frank, Flo Gerrish

Run Time: 1 hour 34 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Here we are! My first official Census Bloodbath post! We're really cooking with gas now! Now, it's true that Don't Answer the Phone has a lot more in common with the 70's grindhouse trend than the 80's slasher genre but it's a clear transitionary film - one of the missing links in the evolutionary chain, if you will. And who can blame it? After all, it came out months before Friday the 13th burst onto the scene.

The film declares itself a Hammer/Castle production, but don't get too excited. That just happens to be the last names of the men who wrote the movie, although I'm sure they appreciated the accidental brand tie-in.

Let me tell you, Don't Answer the Phone was not a good introduction to this slasher retrospective, oh nosiree bob. Following a psychotic photographer who murders and rapes beautiful women and uses their corpses for pornographic photo shoots, there is very little pleasantness to be had. Not that I'm asking for my slasher films to be pleasant, but rape is a huge no-no if you're not going to say something about it. We'll let this one slide (only barely) because it's a cheap ripoff of the highly exploitative grindhouse genre, but man oh man is it hard to watch.

My thoughts on rape in cinema can and have filled much longer articles than this one, so I won't get into it now, but this film does not earn the badge of brutality it wears so proudly.

Nor its title - there's not a lot of phones involved.

In Hollywood, California Dr. Lindsay Gale (Gerrish) runs a radio show where she practices "abnormal psychology" for free. Maybe it's just because I was born in the 90's but this doesn't feel like it's a real thing. She's been receiving calls from a disturbing man who calls himself "Rrrrrrrramon" and suffers from headaches, but apparently he's recently found a nurse who is helping him with his problem.

It turns out the man is Kirk Smith (Worth), the photographer, and the nurse is a candy striper he murdered last night in her home by strangling her with a coin wrapped in pantyhose in the manner of the Viet Cong (apparently). He believes he is some sort of religious avenger

And Bruce Willis impersonator

and he "cleanses" women to purify their souls. This involves pulling down their tops and dripping candle wax on them and laughing like a lunatic. 

It's very hard to like this movie.

Meanwhile Dr. Gale continues to be the worst psychologist ever, telling a debilitatingly shy woman to learn to assert herself but not telling her how (it all works out in the end, she gets murdered) and explaining to a drug addict how awesome heroin is. Kirk keeps calling her show in a series of escalatingly creepy messages, and eventually she joins the detective team trying to track him down.

In her capacity as team psychologist she fails to talk a woman down from the edge in a suicide attempt and fails to talk the killer out of untying her. You'd basically be better off trying to get psychiatric advice from a Zoltar machine. For all this movie's reliance on the psychology of a murderer, its exceedingly loose grasp of the subject systematically destroys any strengths the film might have had.

Also there is a botched romantic subplot where the doctor and the lieutenant bone because while not all the scenes should have to feature women being strangled, apparently five minutes couldn't go by without showing us boobs. 

Don't Answer the Phone is a murder mystery written by a twelve-year-old and doesn't deserve any more credit than that.

Guess whose boobs we get to see. Did you guess both of them? Congratulations, you win! Your prize is never having to watch this movie.

While this movie is a colossal waste of time, it is a curious artifact, hanging on a precipice between a dying 70's genre and a burgeoning 80's one. Most of the grindhouse elements - mountains of naked breasts, rape, and murders perpetrated with sadistic glee - are present, but the slasher elements are starting to poke their little heads out of the shell.

The rape is thankfully mostly offscreen, there is a main girl who survives, and the focus is more on quantity of bodies rather than what is done to them. Not that we can thank Don't Answer the Phone for inventing any of these tropes, but it just goes to show that they were already starting to form in the vacuum of time between 1978's Halloween and 1980's Friday the 13th.

Before I sign off, allow me to give a little bit of credit to the film - the kill sequences are more terrifying than your average slasher because of their pure hard-to-watchiness (Don't pull out your dictionaries on me now) and Worth's grunting, sweaty performance as a truly disgusting and depraved man.

Some may be confused by my relatively high rating for this film considering my generally nasty review, but the movie is at least competently shot and lit, and I know I should leave room for a steep decline in overall quality. Aren't y'all excited? I know I am.

Killer: Kirk "The Strangler" Smith (Nicholas Worth)

Final Girl: Dr. Lindsay Gale (Flo Gerrish)

Best Kill: N/A - all had the same M.O. and all were too upsetting to take any pleasure in.

Sign of the Times: The score sounds something like the Seinfeld theme played on a lightsaber by the bassist from Bon Jovi. For a porno.

Scariest Moment: Kirk kills a prostitute while she's an on-air caller to Dr. Gale's radio show.

Weirdest Moment: A massage parlor is busted by the cops and among the patrons running out is what appears to be Whoopi Golberg in a graduation cap.

Champion Dialogue: "There's enough porn pictures here to sink a battleship."

Body Count: 7; 6 girls raped and murdered, one pimp accidentally shot by the police.

1. A woman is raped and strangled.
2. A woman is raped and strangled.
3. A woman is raped and strangled.
4. A woman is raped and strangled.
5. A pimp is shot by the police.
6. A woman is raped and strangled.
7. A woman is raped and strangled.

TL;DR: Don't Answer the Phone is cheap, exploitative, and its presence at the beginning of the slasher Golden Age is of historical interest, but nevertheless an embarrassment.

Rating: 3/10

Word Count: 1096