Rating: 3/5
Hooptober 9.0 | 33/34 | Bonus 2/3
An overcrowded and understaffed mental institution releases patients they consider able enough to reenter society.
The problem is that it’s subjective, leaving vulnerable people homeless. Dr. Joan Gilmore, a newer doctor at the facility, fights these measures with rare success.
Worse still, the hospital accidentally releases Howard Johns instead of John Howard.
Howard is a minimum security patient. The computer classifies Johns as “Paranoid and Dangerous” and one previously held in maximum security.
Cut to Johns taking a sledgehammer to a shaggin wagon. He bashes in a man’s face. A woman tries to run away. He throws an axe at her back, killing her. The axe throw is one of the few 3-D sequences in this 3-D movie.
Dr. Gilmore fights against bureaucracy and red tape to learn the truth. Gilmore discovers that most of Johns’s murders occurred in a sorority house — the so-called Sorority Slaughter.
So, she does the most logical thing — she poses as a former sorority sister to gain entry.
Despite being procedural, the plot holds a few hidden secrets. It makes little sense by the end but waits long enough to twist into nonsense.
The blurry edges from the 3-D give many scenes a soap opera feel.
Belinda Montgomery and Viveca Lindfors are television royalty, and Katherine Kamhi was on several soaps, so their presence may also enforce that feeling.
The murders are pretty brutal! Some of the set pieces are tense, at least to a degree.
Stray Thoughts
- I have a book called Frightfest Guide to Exploitation Movies. This movie’s poster is the cover.
- Coca-Cola in a bowl of cereal??
- TIL fax is short for facsimile
- One of them plays Dragon’s Lair! Laserdisc got around, huh?