This is a case that would have Columbo both perplexed and disgusted, especially if he had to face the look-alike who committed a vile murder simply for "thrills". Peter Falk delivers a truly spine-chilling performance as Rico, a well dressed self-declared outcast from society who provides beatniks with places to party at a price. Along with cynical TV commercial director Ron Hartmann, Falk decides to kill someone just for the power and pleasure of it and choose a hard working young college student (William Kowalchuk) delivering a telegram as their victim. When the young delivery boy calls up his brother (Jack Betts) to tell him that he's in horrible pain then suddenly collapses (later dying), Betts decides he will find the perpetrators who fed him a hamburger laced with ground glass and make them pay. Clues lead him to the address where his brother tried to deliver a telegram, and several seemingly insignificant conversations make him realize that Falk and Hartmann were behind his brother's death. With the aide of one of the beatniks, a recovering junkie (Barbara Lord), Betts sets his plan in motion, but encounters with gang members and the suspicious Falk puts him in grave danger that just might meet his ending, too!
Watching my usual retrospective of horror films during the Halloween season somehow lead me to this one, a Canadian underground film that probably had some small release somewhere, but is little known commercially. Not a traditional horror film, it does however contain monsters of the human kind, ones who wear neckties, hold down day jobs yet have an abhorrence for society and the world in which they live and anybody "respectable". To see the poor William Kowalchuk die in such a horrific way may have you shaking. Betts eulogizes his brother to a cop friend as a kid who always wanted to make everybody like him and had hopes to be a doctor, so that makes the hatred towards the villains here even stronger. Falk's character is completely vile, a total scumbag you want to see go down in the worst way, but his performance is so mesmerizing that you can't take your eyes off of him. He got two Best Supporting Actor nominations the year after this and the following year, and it is obvious that his talent is enormous if he can make you hate his character this much yet be unable to take your eyes off of him. An amazingly disturbing scene has Falk watching a dying old man who has walked in to one of their hangouts, expressing delight at the opportunity to see death knocking at the door, yet somehow strangely sympathetic to someone he doesn't know or care about, as if he saw his own fate in the old man's eyes.
Mainstream Hollywood films couldn't dare tell a story like this because they knew that they'd lose a good percentage of their audience with such horrible characters on the big screen. But the independents and underground filmmakers could tackle the uglier side of the world, and along with Falk, Hartmann really expresses the horrors that are on the dark side of humanity. Even a shot of him working making a commercial don't hide his darkness as he begins to panic, not out of guilt but of worry of being caught, when he reads of the brutal murder in the newspaper. Ron Taylor, as another one of the beatniks, shows a gentler side of the outcasts of society, playing the type of "cat" that digs poetry, bongo drums and wild music to dance to, yet wouldn't stoop to the contemptible actions of his supposed "friends". Future soap actor Jack Betts, who played some delicious villains on the soaps (and was featured as Boris Karloff in "Gods and Monsters") is excellent as the determined brother. My only disappointment was with the jarring ending which not only was too easy on the bad guys but just came too fast and wasn't really satisfying.
Watching my usual retrospective of horror films during the Halloween season somehow lead me to this one, a Canadian underground film that probably had some small release somewhere, but is little known commercially. Not a traditional horror film, it does however contain monsters of the human kind, ones who wear neckties, hold down day jobs yet have an abhorrence for society and the world in which they live and anybody "respectable". To see the poor William Kowalchuk die in such a horrific way may have you shaking. Betts eulogizes his brother to a cop friend as a kid who always wanted to make everybody like him and had hopes to be a doctor, so that makes the hatred towards the villains here even stronger. Falk's character is completely vile, a total scumbag you want to see go down in the worst way, but his performance is so mesmerizing that you can't take your eyes off of him. He got two Best Supporting Actor nominations the year after this and the following year, and it is obvious that his talent is enormous if he can make you hate his character this much yet be unable to take your eyes off of him. An amazingly disturbing scene has Falk watching a dying old man who has walked in to one of their hangouts, expressing delight at the opportunity to see death knocking at the door, yet somehow strangely sympathetic to someone he doesn't know or care about, as if he saw his own fate in the old man's eyes.
Mainstream Hollywood films couldn't dare tell a story like this because they knew that they'd lose a good percentage of their audience with such horrible characters on the big screen. But the independents and underground filmmakers could tackle the uglier side of the world, and along with Falk, Hartmann really expresses the horrors that are on the dark side of humanity. Even a shot of him working making a commercial don't hide his darkness as he begins to panic, not out of guilt but of worry of being caught, when he reads of the brutal murder in the newspaper. Ron Taylor, as another one of the beatniks, shows a gentler side of the outcasts of society, playing the type of "cat" that digs poetry, bongo drums and wild music to dance to, yet wouldn't stoop to the contemptible actions of his supposed "friends". Future soap actor Jack Betts, who played some delicious villains on the soaps (and was featured as Boris Karloff in "Gods and Monsters") is excellent as the determined brother. My only disappointment was with the jarring ending which not only was too easy on the bad guys but just came too fast and wasn't really satisfying.