Holstra Boring, long, and too preachy.

Odelecol Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Merolliv I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

Zlatica One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Sam Panico Julie (Marianna Hill, Messiah of Evil, The Baby) writes the lonely hearts column for a newspaper, but she's suddenly getting more than letters from the lovelorn. An anonymous person is sending her letters threatening to murder people. And at the very same time, members of her group therapy session are getting stabbed and killed, one by one. Is there a connection?Schizoid has all the markings of a giallo - the main character is in the middle of a murder investigation and has no idea who is behind it, while many of the killings are from the murderer's POV. And let's not forget the black leather gloves!It's missing the insane devotion to fashion and interior design, but we can't hold that against it, as at least Dr. Pieter (Klaus Kinski, a legit real life maniac who always plays maniacs on screen) has an interesting home.Right from the beginning, when the ladies of Dr. Pieter's encounter group luxuriate in a hot tub, we get the idea that someone is watching. When one of them leaves, she is run off the road, chased into a farmhouse and repeatedly stabbed with a pair of scissors. Several days later, a couple that's trying to have sex is surprised by the body.Are the letters connected? Why do they mention a gun when the murders are done with a knife? Who is the killer? Is it Gilbert (Christopher Lloyd, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai: Across the Eighth Dimension), the weirdest person in her therapy group? Is it her ex-husband, Doug (Craig Wasson, Body Double) who argues with her every day because they work in the same place? Or how about Dr. Pieter, because he's Klaus Kinski? Beyond that, he's having sex with every single one of his patients, including a stripper named Pat (Flo Gerrish, Don't Answer the Phone) who he takes against a hot water heater! And hey - his relationship with Alison, (Donna Wilkes, Jaws 2, Angel) his daughter, feels super incestual. Maybe that's who the killer is!This film also follows the giallo tradition by having police officers that are so ineffectual that they depend on the heroine to do her own investigation with no protection and only a special phone line to help her.Alison and Dr. Pieter argue repeatedly, especially after he grows closer to Julie, bringing her home to dinner. She begins to dress in her mother's clothes or as a little girl and even steals her father's gun.The police put in the phone line, but every single call seems to be cranky readers who are angry about Julie's column. Then, Alison calls her from a payphone, gun in hand. Julie gets Alison to come visit her at her house, where her husband (she doesn't call him ex-husband) is doing some repair work. Alison throws out a whole bunch of the letters and brandishes her gun, but it's unloaded. Then, the phone rings.It's Dr Pieter, who demands to know where this number reaches Julie. He comes to visit, but someone takes a shot at him. We don't see who, but he assumes that it is Alison. The lights go out and we have no idea who is in the room with him. The phone rings again, but it's not Alison or Julie on the line. They're both tied up and a man is on the other line - but who!Should I reveal it here? I won't. But I will say that this movie is truly a giallo because it's the person that is the least likely suspect and the police come running at the last moment. And by that, I mean just in times for the credits.Director David Paulsen also brought Savage Weekend to the screen, but is more well known for his primetime soap opera work on shows like Knots Landing, Dallas and Dynasty.

MisterWhiplash Schizoid is fairly up front with you in the first 5 minutes or so: if you like seeing very sleazy movies where a guy in black gloves and a pair of scissors is going after women in not-terribly-clever-but-direct ways, then this is for you. But in place of having a director with some actual visual appeal or attempts at creating a distinct style like some of the Giallo directors (i.e. Argento or Fulci), you get here instead the 'different' side of things with casting: Klaus Kinski. For me, I thought this was the filmmakers going about it somewhat obviously - like, of course he's the killer, right? I mean, look at him! Or it might be Christopher Lloyd, who is the sort of maintenance man who shares an elevator with the main female character after fixing the boiler (so he says) and showing what a handy-man he is by moving the elevator by pressing a button with a screwdriver. Or could it be... someone else?? This is fairly standard stuff - the main woman, Julie of "Dear Julie", is part of some sort of weekly couples (or singles?) therapy group that also includes Lloyd's character, and we see how these murders unfold and how Julie wants to try to entrap the killer, who seems to be sending those word-cut-up type of letters - and yet it's hard not to want to keep watching with Kinski there. This is basic stuff for him, but he takes it seriously enough, and even created some ambiguity with his character. He also gets to play MELODRAMA (in bold type) with his daughter character, who lost a mother years before and blames him for it some reason or another. They have father-daughter squabbles, and those are some of the more entertaining scenes of the movie. For what it's worth, he makes it sort of compelling.The rest of it is not very remarkable, neither in the kills (again there's little tension since we've seen these before, or at least you have if you've ever seen a horror movie, let along a slasher) nor in what seem to be red herrings going left and right (i.e. Lloyd's character, who gets kind of short-shrifted in the grand scheme of the story). The filmmaker, David Paulsen, didn't do that much else other than this movie and one other, and it's clear he's in it to create the requisite drama necessary to keep the story going, without putting in the work to make the dialog more than groan-indusing. And Craig Wasson, who one would later see in Body Double, is relegated to a role that any actor could play... almost, anyway.Even the title is kind of disappointing; there's not too much of any kind of 'schizo' side to things, and we're just waiting for the other shoe to drop as far as when the killer may strike next or go after Julie, or when the cops might do *something* with this case. And yet because of people like Kinski and Marianna Hill (who is alright as Julie, just enough to get by), I can't say it's a total failure or mess. It's just... there, with some sleazy 80's horror-synth and a "twist" ending that reeks of hackery.

BA_Harrison A vicious killer is bumping off members of the therapy group run by creepy Dr. Fales (Klaus Kinski). Can reporter Julie (Marianna Hill) discover who is responsible before she becomes the lunatic's next victim?Armed with a long pair of very sharp scissors, dressed in long black coat and hat, and with his (or her) identity always hidden in the shadows, Schizoid's mysterious murderer could have come straight out of a giallo movie, as could the film's umpteen shifty suspects and numerous red herrings; creepy Euro-horror regular Klaus Kinski also adds a hint of European flavour.Sadly, despite these similarities to the giallo, Schizoid lacks the verve and unpredictability of that genre's typical logic-free narrative, becoming mired in dreary familial strife and unnecessary police procedure, ultimately floundering in its own predictability; furthermore, the film's cinematography is devoid of the glorious visual excess often found in Italian horror.Kinski is dreadfully miscast as a womanising therapist (not exactly the kind of role he was born to play), Wasson's performance is simply terrible, and Christopher Lloyd hardly stretches himself as an oddball handy-man. Far better than all three is Donna Wilkes, who convincingly plays Kinski's emotionally disturbed jail-bait daughter Alison, and who even gives fans (and her pervy on-screen father) an eyeful during a brief shower scene.For the hilarious ending, when all the suspects converge on one location for a very daft finale, and for the lovely Wilkes, I give Schizoid 4.5/10 (rounded up to 5 for IMDb), but this is far from essential 80s horror.

cOOtje-3 While watching this one, I kept thinking about that anecdote Claudia Cardinale recalls in Herzog's documentary about Kinski. They were doing a love-scene together (she claims he was nice, humble and respectful towards her) and all of the sudden, Herzog brought in an ocelot. Kinski freaked out, as good as slaughtered the poor animal (endangered species!!!), and refused to work again for the whole day. "He was such a nice man", she then goes on. And I'm sure his daughter has similar tales of warmth and paternal joy to tell. What's the point I'm getting to, It's clear what Kinski is doing in this film: his character is allowed to gratuitously bonk every single women in the film, even ogle his own naked daughter and beat up a few others. It must have been a relief for such an intense person to not have to act. And still he is able to sleepwalk through this lame excuse for a slasher movie.It isn't even funny (except for that bathtub-scene, where the director must have suddenly realized he was going to miss out on a screaming face unless he came up with something -you'll never believe that one-). I watched it in fast-forward, and those were a long fifteen minutes. Avoid if you can, sleep through it if you must.