ANATOMY OF A PSYCHO

The poster for ANATOMY OF A PSYCHO (1961) is writing a check that the movie can't possibly cash. That's because this film has no money to spare since the budget for this bottom-rung exploitation cheapie was scraped together using the money (and most likely the lint ) producer/director Boris Petroff (aka Brooke L. Peters) found under his couch cushions. A no-name cast and cheap sets, mixed in with sparse location work, a horrible music score (by Michael Terr) and a leaden pace, make this one a chore to sit through (even with a running time of 75 mintues), for all but the most die hard fans of "psychotronic" cinema. 

Still, I have to give credit where credit is due. This film aired late last night/early this morning on TCM as part of their Saturday night "Underground" series of off-beat, little seen genre films. The film comes complete with a Something Weird logo and what a pleasant surprise it was to see that long-forgotten brand name. Back in the 1990s, Something Weird was a video label that specialized in unearthing and distributing obscure, forgotten, grind house horror films and such other cheap, sensationalistic cinematic fare as nudies, strip tease films, shock instructional films, you name it, Something Weird had it. Finding a Something Weird video at Blockbuster was never going to happen, but thanks to such local stalwarts as I Love Video and Vulcan Video which carried Something Weird films, my buddy Kelly Greene and I were able to finally see films we had believed were forever lost to us. So, kudos to TCM and Something Weird.

That said, ANATOMY OF A PSYCHO, despite the lurid title and flagrant come-on provided by the poster, is a routine drama about a disturbed young man, Mickey (Ronnie Burns, the adopted son of George Burns and Gracie Allen, believe it or not) who goes on a murderous rampage to revenge the death of his older brother, a vicious hood who killed a man in a hold up attempt. To complicate matters, Mickey's sister, Pat (the lovely Pamela Lincoln) is in love with Chet (Darrell Howe), a Dennis Hopper look-alike whose father was the sole eyewitness that sent her brother to the gas chamber.

Mickey and his gang of kinda/sorta juvenile delinquents hang out in a shack of a house owned by Moe (Don Devlin). None of the youths appear to attend school or have any visible means of support and they're well known by police detective Lt. Mac (Michael Granger).

ANATOMY OF A PSYCHO takes place in a world where teenage boys dress in sports coats and ties to attend an afternoon poolside dance party, with their dates clad in layers of petticoats and perfectly coiffed, beehive hairdos. It's also a universe where Mickey can set fire to the house where said party is taking place and then walk away (in the middle of the Palm Springs desert, apparently) with no one stopping or questioning him.

There's little bloodshed or violence and the fight scenes are poorly choreographed and staged.  With all of the dramatic tension of a junior high school one act play, ANATOMY OF A PSYCHO is an excavated long lost film that most likely should have remained buried.

Thumbs down.