The Sadist

Archie Hall Jr. gives a really good, creepy performance in this take on the infamous spree killer Charles Starkweather.

This is a movie that's so bad and so over the top that it actually works. An entertaining shit film.

Pretty exciting stuff for how minimal it is. In editing and use of the z-axis it ranks with the best shoestring efforts of its time. Impossible to tell if Junior is doing a good job or a bad one; it's memorable either way and in fact with his swoopy hair and pinched smirk he reminds one of young Donald Trump, adding a eerie timeliness to an obscure and relatively ancient film.

A simple thriller that could easily have been better if it wasn't so stagey, if the acting wasn't so hammy, if the stereotypes weren't so blatant (the villain, the hysterical woman..), and if all the redundant lines of dialogue were cut out (the obvious is stated very often). It does improve as it progresses, and there are some good tense scenes near the end especially.

Masterful editing makes this movie relentless in suspense and brutality.

Absolutely over the top with Arch Hall Jr hamming it up for the entire movie. Hall has to be one of the worst and most repulsive actors to grace a screen. However, not in spite but because of this in the particular situation here, it's at times frightening. One of a kind trash movie that actually works because of it's cheapness and the non actor quality. This could happen and probably has. A true guilty pleasure. Got it?

Maybe the best movie with Arch Hall, jr. I note that it had much less Arch Hall, sr. to do with it than the other Arch Hall pictures I've seen. It's a pretty good picture; best if used to wash the taste of "Eegah" out of your mouth.

Surprisingly good for its low budget. Worth a look.

Ah yes, Charlie & Judy...the sweetest couple this side of Sid & Nancy. Could've used a better title; also the final sequence was about 20 minutes too long. Hall sounds sometimes like Mr Magoo and sometimes like Walter Brennan's demented nephew, but mostly he's the spittin' image of Dub Taylor (with a surfer's rug). He must've been Michael J Pollard's role model. Still, all in all better than what you might expect from a Halls extravaganza (btw, I wonder if Squeaky got paid for a speaking part?).