Schizoid Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		1.0
Video		3.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		1.5
Overall		2.0

Schizoid Blu-ray Movie Review

Crazy is as crazy does.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman August 15, 2013

Note: This film is currently available only as part of this double feature: X-Ray / Schizoid.

Shout! Factory has started to release some double features on Blu-ray, with at least tangential connections uniting the features. Scream Factory, an imprint of Shout!, is jumping into the fray now with a pairing of X-Ray and Schizoid, two 1980’s horror outings that were originally released under the Cannon Films imprimatur. The two have a couple of other linking elements, including the fact that both were released under alternate titles (in the case of X-Ray, make that several alternate titles), and the use of the ever popular device of a pretty young woman being stalked by a mysterious (and murder prone) stranger. Both films also have some interesting casting choices, with X-Ray starring Playboy regular Barbi Benton and Schizoid featuring a leering performance from Werner Herzog regular Klaus Kinski. While neither film is ever going to make anyone’s Top 10 Horror lists anytime soon, they both have sporadic chills to offer, and both have attained something of a cult status after years of previous (if sometimes brief) home video releases and lots of cable broadcasts. Scream Factory has also upped the ante, if only slightly, by including a couple of newly done interviews with various participants, offered here as supplementary features.

My childhood doctor was an avuncular elderly man with the surname of Snow, so when it came time for me as an adult to choose my first “paid for by insurance” doctor, I gravitated toward a guy with the last name of Santa. It only made sense—or at least did to me, back in my fun loving twenties. But would you willingly go to a doctor—a psychiatrist, no less—with the last name of Fales? That’s just the first of several probably inconsequential but nonetheless subtextual questions which arise in Schizoid, a lurid 1980 opus that in some ways echoes Brian De Palma’s Dressed to Kill, which was released at more or less the same time.

The ineluctably bizarre Klaus Kinski portrays the unfortunately named Dr. Fales, who has a bunch of people in his group therapy sessions, including pretty young advice columnist Julie (Marianna Hill). Julie probably doesn’t really need therapy, but she feels attending these group sessions helps her with her professional advice, plus she's also trying to come to terms with her recent divorce. Unbeknownst to Julie and the others in her group, they’re all being watched by a mysterious stranger who, in the film’s opening sequence, tracks one of them down and viciously stabs them to death.

In the meantime, Julie has been receiving a series of threatening notes, cobbled together with words cut out of magazines (how are mentally unbalanced people going to communicate with their ostensible victims with the death of printed media ?). Julie’s ex-husband Doug (Craig Wasson), who works at the same newspaper as Julie does, thinks it’s a stunt, a nutcase trying to get Julie to engage him (or her) in her column, which Doug insists would be a mistake. When the notes keep coming, Julie goes to the police, though they feel it’s probably nothing to worry about (and we know how that’s going to turn out). Ultimately when the police finally stumble across the first body, and when a couple more murders of group patients take place, they finally take Julie seriously and grudgingly offer a bit of support.

Schizoid also features a couple of pretty smarmy subplots, both perhaps appropriately featuring Kinski, an actor who seemingly oozed smarm without even trying. Dr. Fales is carnally involved with seemingly all of his female patients, and that ultimately includes Julie herself. There are a couple of pretty icky sex scenes, including one of Fales slurping up the side of Julie’s face while he sticks his hand down her throat. How romantic. Perhaps just as troubling is the sidebar featuring Fales’ whacked out daughter Alison (Donna Wilkes, in a hilariously perfect nutso performance), a girl with, shall we say, “Daddy” issues who like to cavort about naked in front of her father and who obviously has at least one screw beyond loose.

The film has a couple of decent scares, though it’s a fairly squirm inducing outing most of the time. There’s one patent rip off of the infamous Psycho shower scene, this time transported to a hut tub, replete with Bernard Herrmann-esque sul ponticello strings (lovingly aped by an eighties’ era synthesizer). And while Schizoid tips its hand just a bit too early for its own good (at least with regard to some of what's going on), the film at least does something a little creative with its denouement, proving that there might be more than one reasonable explanation for a series of seemingly interrelated events, so to speak.

Schizoid probably has a little pop culture allure going for it due to early performances by Christopher Lloyd as a menacing handyman who’s part of the group sessions and future Murphy Brown co-star Joe Regalbuto as one of the hapless cops. That may seem like slim pickings in what is otherwise a pretty turgid melodrama, but for those not wanting to deal with a doctor named Fales, it may be enough.

Schizoid Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Schizoid is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Scream Factory, an imprint of Shout! Factory, with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. This is a marginally better looking presentation than this film's "stable mate" on this double feature, X-Ray. Colors are a bit better saturated and fine detail is more in evidence, especially in close-ups. The film still has a somewhat gauzy appearance, something it shares with X-Ray, but contrast is much better here, helping to ameliorate some of that softness. Grain is natural looking and does not rise to the noise levels that are apparent in some scenes of X-Ray.

Schizoid Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Schizoid features a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio Mono mix (in 2.0) which sounds a bit over-brittle at times probably due to the synth-soaked score, which frankly does the film no favors. Other than that anomaly, things sound fine here, with dialogue cleanly and accurately rendered. Fidelity is fine and dynamic range is reasonably wide.

Schizoid Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Dear Alison. . . Interview with Actress Donna Wilkes (1080p; 10:41). Wilkes is rather charmingly self-deprecating in this entertaining piece. She evidently had no great burning desire to be an actress, and it sounds like she might have had a typical stage mother pushing her along when she was a child. She talks about her career, including Jaws 2, which she considers her breakthrough role.


• Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 1:39)

Schizoid Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Schizoid has a couple of effective moments, and its plot is actually relatively sound, but the realization here is fraught with so much gag inducing smarminess that it's hard to really invest much emotion in what's going on. Kinski is his typically unforgettable self, but it's Wilkes who steals this film, hook, line and sinker. The film, aside from its "eww" aspect, is also pretty formulaic, including the done to death trope of the cops who don't take anything seriously until it's too late, at which point they're so confounded they can't do much to help anyway. Hill is kind of a bland heroine, though Wasson has some fun moments in an unusual role for him.