Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to an all new Reaction & Review. Tonight, guys, I'm gonna be covering a British psychological horror movie from 1976. That movie is "Schizo".
Now, I'm actually kinda looking forward to watching this movie. Simply because of it's premise where our female lead is being stalked by somebody who killed her mother when she was a kid, and is also being stalked by him as an adult. This might prove to be really interesting and I'm curious to see if the movie will actually do anything good with this premise.
I can also tell you guys two things about this movie that I picked up on from the back of the film's DVD case. The first thing is that this movie promises a twist ending. Which, I'm not sure if that's gonna be a good thing or not, especially since this DVD comes out and advertises it very casually. However, that could just be me nitpicking there. Now the second thing is something that I found a little humorous. According to the synopsis on the DVD case, near the end of it, it says that this movie was so frightening that squeamish theater patrons were promised free smelling salts if they fainted. Which sounds really stupid, but at the same time, I wonder how much of a common practice that was back in the mid 70's. Where if a horror movie was so scary that pussified theater patrons were promised to get free smelling salts if they ever fainted. Maybe that was just a British custom back then for movie theaters in the U.K or something.
Now beyond those two things, I'm really looking forward to watching this movie. I hope that it's really good and I'm hoping that this movie will deliver on it's really interesting premise. I don't know if it will or not, but that's what I'm here to find out. And the only way I'm gonna find out if this movie is any good at all is if I shut up and I push play, and I'm gonna do that right now. So, without further ado, it's time to kick back, relax, and check out "Schizo".
18 minutes later
So, guys, we're still early into this movie and I can tell you that nothing of interest has happened. I mean literally nothing has happened yet. I'm kinda hoping the movie will pick up sooner rather than later, eventually, but right now, this movie hasn't really given me much to work with at the moment.
18 minutes later
OK, how the hell did that meat cleaver get inside Samantha's cart? There was no indication at any point to where she grabbed it and put it in her cart. It doesn't make any sense. And also, this movie is really starting to drag a little bit. I'm still hoping that it'll pick up soon, because, otherwise, I'm slowly starting to fall asleep from boredom.
20 minutes later
So, guys, I got some good news and some bad news. The good news is that we finally have our first kill of the movie from our stalker. At least I think so, the movie never showed his face. But I'm going to assume that it is the same person that has been stalking Samantha. Bad news is that it took almost an hour to get to this point in a movie that has less than an hour left. This film's pacing is just becoming horrible and I'm starting to lose patience by how slow this movie is going.
19 minutes later
OK, that actually is a little bit creepy with this girl's eyes bugging out all wide-eyed like that while also being possessed. It's just a pity that it took the movie this fucking long to finally start getting interesting at this juncture. So really, it's just a case of too little, too late, guys.
The Review
Well, guys, that was "Schizo". And apparently, the movie doesn't have any ending credits. It just goes straight to the scene selection on the menu screen. So, I'm gonna go ahead and shut the movie off here...OK. So, about that "twist ending" I mentioned earlier. This movie promised a twist ending and, without spoiling what it is, I'm gonna let you guys know now that it isn't even a twist. And if you want proof, the hint is in the movie's title. And if you still haven't figured it out by the time the movie reveals it's twist, then you probably should get yourself educated on what the definition of the title really means.
So now, let's get into this review here. Let's start with writing. Now if I had a time machine, and if I had a choice on what year I wanted to travel back to, I would go back to 1976 around the same time that this movie was released. I would then ask the theater patrons, the ones who got so "frightened" by this movie and ask them what the hell did they see in this movie that I didn't that was suppose to be scary? Because, I'm gonna tell you guys right now that, outside of a couple of creepy moments, this movie is in no way scary. It is never frightening in the slightest. In fact, it is probably one of the most boring horror movies I have ever seen in a long time. And that's saying a lot because I reviewed another British horror movie not too long ago called "The Godsend", and as bad as that movie was, at least it kinda kept my interest for a bit. This thing, however, was so fucking boring that I almost fell asleep at one point. Which is a terrible thing for a horror movie, because those things aren't meant to be boring! But this thing, somehow, found a way to be boring throughout almost the entirety of it's hour and 50 minute runtime.
In fact, let's start with that, shall we? This movie's pacing goes at a fucking snail's pace. It is so damn slow that it's filled to the brim with so much padding! You could've honestly cut about 20 minutes of filler from this movie that you wouldn't miss a thing. I know I've stated in the past that I don't mind slower paced movies as long as you have somewhere to go with it, but this movie has almost nowhere to go with it's pacing. The kills, in particular, are vastly spaced out. Because, first of all, there's only 4 kills in the entire movie out of it's near two hour runtime. I'll get a little more in depth about the victims later on, but as for how the kills are laid out, the first one doesn't happen until almost an hour into the movie. And then the next one doesn't happen until about 25 minutes later followed by two more after that. It's that poorly paced out, as is the entirety of the movie. Like I said, you could've cut out about 20, probably 25 minutes worth of filler, and you'd have a much better paced movie.
Now, before I get to the victims themselves, I want to touch upon something that I found when I was reading the synopsis on the back of the DVD case for this movie. It says that Samantha's friends are murdered one by one and is convinced that the stalker isn't a stranger. I'm gonna tell you guys right now that out of the 4 people that are killed in this movie, only 2 of them are actually Samantha's friends. Those two people are Leonard, the psychiatrist, and the housekeeper lady. I don't know her name, but I think she's suppose to be her housekeeper or maid. I'm not totally sure which one exactly. Doesn't matter, though, because she's the second to last victim. The other two victims are Joy, who is the housekeeper's daughter and also a psychic, and the stalker. Again, I won't say who it is but that person is also dead. The latter aren't really friends because she barely knew Joy, and the stalker, well, obviously, she has a history with. But yeah, 4 people are dead, in a horror movie that's nearly 2 hours long. And the fact that the first kill doesn't happen until nearly an hour in is just bullshit.
As for the characters themselves, none of them are really all that interesting, and that includes our main character, Samantha Grey. You would think that, with our main character being stalked by this guy, you would find a reason to care for her and hope that she gets out of this scary situation. But no, that doesn't happen, because Samantha's personality has all the personality of burnt toast and her backstory is also equally rather stupid, too. I'm almost tempted to spoil it, seeing as how it's a 50 year old movie and all, but part of me is going to be somewhat nice to it, so I won't do that here. So yeah, all the other characters here aren't very interesting. The only one who I kinda sorta liked was Leonard, because he actually had something resembling an interesting personality. Yeah, he's a little creepy with how he handles women, but that's more personality than almost any other character that this movie had. And the moment that he was killed, my interest slowly started to die off. Though then again, with how boring this movie really is, that wasn't really too hard for this movie to accomplish in the first place.
So, overall, guys, the writing in this movie is just bad. It's worse with the horrendous pacing that you're almost guaranteed to fall asleep with how boring the movie is. Although I'm sorta getting ahead of myself here. Let me back this up a bit so I can talk about acting next. The acting here was actually okay. It wasn't great by any means, but at least most of the actors here tried to work with what they were given. The best actor would have to be Leonard's actor, since it seemed like he was actually having fun with his performance and all. The worst actress would actually have to be the one playing Joy. She sounded terrible, though I think that's mainly for when she has to speak as one of the heads of this "Psychic Brotherhood" for when they're trying to perform a seance. It kinda sorta makes sense in context. Though that's not saying very much. So, besides her, everyone else did okay with script that was given to them. So that's sort of a plus from me.
Special effects, I will say, are actually pretty decent. I'm gonna take a guess here and say that this movie was filmed on a low budget. And for what it is here isn't really too bad. Although I would say that the blood effects can vary because some of it, when viewed up close anyway, actually looks like jelly. And for what little gore is here is not too bad either. The one effect that I actually did think was impressive was when Joy's eyes are bugging out after being possessed. That actually looks really cool and it was one of the only interesting things that happened in this movie for me. So yeah, I can say that, for the most part, the special effects here are decent.
Camerawork here is pretty good. Lighting here is also pretty good, too. Sound-mixing here is mixed fine. The score here is also decent, too. There's not a whole lot of music to go on, but what little is here does work fine. So, I can say that the technical stuff here is another positive.
Now with all that said, when it comes down it, guys, can I recommend "Schizo"? No. I honestly can't find a reason to recommend this movie to anyone. Really, what's holding me back from actually recommend this movie is the god-awful pacing. It is so bad and so slow that you're gonna be fucking bored with it and you'll potentially fall asleep from trying to watch the whole thing. Like I mentioned earlier, I was almost tempted to fall asleep because the movie is just so fucking boring. Now is it one of the worst horror movies I've ever seen? Fuck no! This movie is nowhere near in contention for that title. So far, the worst movie I've ever seen belongs to "The Item". But then again, I don't think any horror movie is ever gonna be contention to take that movie's title. But still, this movie is still really bad and it's not even scary in the slightest. So no, I can't recommend this movie to anyone. And so far, I've not had a great track record when it comes to British horror movies. That said, I'm gonna go and watch one that actually is pretty good, and is also funny too. I'm gonna go and watch "Stitches" again because I need to watch something better at this point.
So anyway, guys, with that, we come to the close of another Reaction & Review. Until next time, ladies and gentlemen, take care, and I will see you all later. Peace.
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