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Homicidal

Play trailer Poster for Homicidal Released Jul 26, 1961 1h 27m Horror Play Trailer Watchlist
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73% Tomatometer 11 Reviews 67% Popcornmeter 1,000+ Ratings
Chaos and danger reign when good girl Miriam Webster (Patricia Breslin) meets her half brother's girl friend, Emily (Jean Arless), a mysterious blonde bombshell living at their family's Southern California estate. Emily serves as the nurse for the sibling's aging, wheelchair-using guardian, Helga Swenson (Eugenie Leontovich). She is not, however, as sweet as she seems. Emily soon reveals herself to be a murderous schemer who will stop at nothing to steal Miriam's extensive inheritance.
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Homicidal

Critics Reviews

View All (11) Critics Reviews
Maxine Dowling New York Daily News Castle, whose specialty is turning out horror and ghost tales, has succeeded in achieving several moments of terror in this story of a homicidal maniac on the loose in a small, sleepy community. Rated: 3/4 Sep 22, 2021 Full Review Noel Murray The Dissolve What's really surprising about Homicidal is that...it's an enjoyably bizarre film, making some of the basic elements of Psycho even freakier. Rated: 3.5/5 Oct 21, 2013 Full Review Wesley Lovell Cinema Sight Mediocre to acceptable acting is plentiful and the plot, while for the most part inventive, lacks a lot of good narrative structure and yields an intriguing, but predictable ending. Rated: 1.5/4 Nov 22, 2022 Full Review Matt Brunson Creative Loafing While traveling along similar lines as Psycho, director William Castle and scripter Robb White manage to include enough originality that the shock ending still has the power to catch many viewers off guard. Rated: 3/4 Sep 17, 2016 Full Review Tim Brayton Antagony & Ecstasy There never was a Psycho knock-off quite as overt about it, yet at the same time as creative and effective in its own right, Rated: 7/10 Jul 4, 2015 Full Review Brian Gibson Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Alberta) The plot's soon dawdling, a stuffy, overheated theatricality creeping in ... No pulpish curiosity but a mere footnote in the post-Psycho history of slasher movies. May 25, 2015 Full Review Read all reviews

Audience Reviews

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Audience Member The blonde gal/guy is a treat. Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 02/06/23 Full Review Audience Member Great movie! Worth the watch. Rated 5 out of 5 stars 01/23/23 Full Review Audience Member A little-known gem. Hysterical, over the top camp classic. I can't understand how this hasn't entered the "bad movie night" hall of fame. Rated 4 out of 5 stars 01/15/23 Full Review Audience Member She's considered to be homicidal. Emily is a home aid that takes care of a young man's mother, Helga, who had an unfortunate accident that left her wheel chair bound and unable to speak. Helga and Emily have an intense relationship and the boy is in love with Emily and they are secretly married, which complicates matters. Emily can get away with anything with this cover, maybe even murder... "What do we know about her?" "What do we know about anybody?" William Castle, director of House on Haunted Hill, The Tingler, 13 Ghosts, Rosemary's Baby, Macabre, Jesse James vs. the Daltons, and The Law vs. Billy the Kid, delivers Homicidal. The storyline for this picture is interesting and fun to watch unfold and has some unique characters. The performances were uneven and the cast includes Glenn Corbett, Patricia Breslin, and Joan Marshall. "If you stay in this house one more minute I'm going to kill you." This was on Turner Classic Movies (TCM) this past Halloween season and I had to DVR it. This was very entertaining. There were some entertaining kill scenes and I loved the character Emily but the son's character was annoying at times. This is an above average addition to the classic horror genre. "You shouldn't do that, dear, it's impolite." Grade: B- Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 01/19/23 Full Review Audience Member There are enough Psycho knock-offs in the world to keep you busy for as long as you could possibly stand it, but there never was a Psycho knock-off quite as overt about it, yet at the same time as creative and effective in its own right, as Homicidal. It's one of the earliest of its breed, coming to theaters in the summer of 1961, less than a year after Hitchcock's groundbreaking work, and the screenplay by Robb White is precisely the thing that you'd expect when a producer gave the order to copy this other movie exactly, but make every single detail a tiny bit different.  Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars 02/06/23 Full Review Audience Member Stephen King must have seen this at some point and then improved upon it when he wrote "Misery." This cheesy William Castle pictures, which included a "Fright Break" for the audience, tells the story of a homicidal caregiver for an elderly mute wheelchair-bound old woman. The caregiver torments her charge, telling her of about her killings and threatening to kill her. Like Annie in King's novel, the caregiver also has wild mood swings between sickly sweet and mentally deranged. Although this film is clearly a ripoff of Alfred Hitchcock's psycho, like most Castle films, there is something oddly compelling about this trashy film. Not a classic, but worth checking out for Castle fans. Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 01/31/23 Full Review Read all reviews
Homicidal

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Cast & Crew

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Movie Info

Synopsis Chaos and danger reign when good girl Miriam Webster (Patricia Breslin) meets her half brother's girl friend, Emily (Jean Arless), a mysterious blonde bombshell living at their family's Southern California estate. Emily serves as the nurse for the sibling's aging, wheelchair-using guardian, Helga Swenson (Eugenie Leontovich). She is not, however, as sweet as she seems. Emily soon reveals herself to be a murderous schemer who will stop at nothing to steal Miriam's extensive inheritance.
Director
William Castle
Producer
William Castle
Screenwriter
Robb White
Distributor
Columbia Pictures
Production Co
Columbia Pictures Corporation
Genre
Horror
Original Language
English
Release Date (Theaters)
Jul 26, 1961, Original
Release Date (Streaming)
Aug 31, 2010
Runtime
1h 27m
Sound Mix
Mono
Aspect Ratio
35mm
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