Once in a while you watch a horror film that feels like it doesn't quite belong in the genre it got shackled to. There's something more to Crazed, also known as Bloodshed and Slipping Into Darkness, than simply the need to shock and horrify. It's a story we've all seen before, but never quite this way and with such a dark, repressive atmosphere. The little details are what make Crazed so special, and its undeserved obscurity must be rectified.
Karen (Beverly Ross) leaves her boyfriend and his farm and moves into the city to become a writer. She meets a few bizarre, potential landlords while looking for an apartment, before finally settling on a room in a house owned by an eccentric, mildly obnoxious, but basically nice old lady (Belle Mitchell). The only other tenant is Grahame (Laszlo Papas), a quiet young man who helps the old woman, who claims she cannot climb the stairs and hasn't been on the second floor in twenty years, with chores and errands. Karen finds Grahame and his mumbling about government conspiracies annoying, but she is happy with her room and keeps in touch with her ex-boyfriend, who tries to woo her back. She attends a creative writing course taught by a loud, pretentious professor and befriends a classmate who wants her to critique his writing – and, inevitably, his performance in bed. Meanwhile, Grahame is spying on Karen through the ventilation grill between their rooms. He tries asking her out; forcing himself on her when she rebuffs him, but stops himself out of guilt. He has problems with sex – it is suggested via flashbacks, shown during his visit with a hooker, that he was molested as a child by both a priest and his foster father (!) – and doesn't want to defile her. When Karen unexpectedly drowns in the bathtub, Grahame keeps her body in his room. Eventually, Karen's boyfriend and classmate begin to get suspicious, and the old lady asks Grahame to find the source of that awful smell...
Crazed is, of course, very predictable, having been preceded by Psycho and The Killing Kind and followed by Silent Scream and Crawlspace. With the exception of Psycho, it's a good deal better than all of them, even if nothing scary happens until halfway through the movie. The film takes its time developing the characters and has a compassion for them that's rare in this genre. The quirky details – like the fact that Karen is a diabetic and prone to seizures – make you feel like you really know them, so that when the shit hits the fan, you're utterly engrossed and on the edge of your seat. You could argue there's too much of a focus on character and it slows the story down, and you would be right, but there's nothing wrong with that. "Slow" does not mean "boring". If there's a true flaw, it's that the uneven score can ruin the mood by being inappropriately jaunty at times.
Karen (Beverly Ross) leaves her boyfriend and his farm and moves into the city to become a writer. She meets a few bizarre, potential landlords while looking for an apartment, before finally settling on a room in a house owned by an eccentric, mildly obnoxious, but basically nice old lady (Belle Mitchell). The only other tenant is Grahame (Laszlo Papas), a quiet young man who helps the old woman, who claims she cannot climb the stairs and hasn't been on the second floor in twenty years, with chores and errands. Karen finds Grahame and his mumbling about government conspiracies annoying, but she is happy with her room and keeps in touch with her ex-boyfriend, who tries to woo her back. She attends a creative writing course taught by a loud, pretentious professor and befriends a classmate who wants her to critique his writing – and, inevitably, his performance in bed. Meanwhile, Grahame is spying on Karen through the ventilation grill between their rooms. He tries asking her out; forcing himself on her when she rebuffs him, but stops himself out of guilt. He has problems with sex – it is suggested via flashbacks, shown during his visit with a hooker, that he was molested as a child by both a priest and his foster father (!) – and doesn't want to defile her. When Karen unexpectedly drowns in the bathtub, Grahame keeps her body in his room. Eventually, Karen's boyfriend and classmate begin to get suspicious, and the old lady asks Grahame to find the source of that awful smell...
Crazed is, of course, very predictable, having been preceded by Psycho and The Killing Kind and followed by Silent Scream and Crawlspace. With the exception of Psycho, it's a good deal better than all of them, even if nothing scary happens until halfway through the movie. The film takes its time developing the characters and has a compassion for them that's rare in this genre. The quirky details – like the fact that Karen is a diabetic and prone to seizures – make you feel like you really know them, so that when the shit hits the fan, you're utterly engrossed and on the edge of your seat. You could argue there's too much of a focus on character and it slows the story down, and you would be right, but there's nothing wrong with that. "Slow" does not mean "boring". If there's a true flaw, it's that the uneven score can ruin the mood by being inappropriately jaunty at times.
Shot in 1977 as The Paranoiac and released theatrically by Jupiter Pictures in 1979 under the title Slipping Into Darkness, it would appear on tape in the 80s as Crazed (from Trans World Entertainment), Bloodshed (with wonderfully trashy artwork from Regal Video that had nothing whatsoever to do with the film), and Slipping Into Darkness (Genesis Home Video). I'm not sure where the 1982 release year came from, but it has stuck, so I've decided to use that for the sake of identification since multiple films have been released under those three titles. (I've also picked Crazed as the title of choice, because the Trans World VHS release was first and that's what it is known as on IMDb.) Crazed has never been available legitimately on DVD, and it remains unknown outside of a very select group of adventurous horror fans. It would be a dream if a company like Code Red or Scorpion Releasing could release this on DVD and widen its audience – are you listening, guys?
Very cool review. I'm certainly intrigued, but doubt I'll ever track this one down.
ReplyDeleteJust saw this film on YouTube, actually. I thought the woman who played the elderly landlady was so hysterically funny. I laughed out loud every time she was on the screen. Best character of that type ever! Her name is Belle Mitchell. This woman was in over a hundred films, Unfortunately, these were small parts where she was rarely credited. But she started in film in 1915 (!) and Crazed was one of her last films.
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