Decent enough Universal chiller

kannibalcorpsegrinder

After saving the man's life from drowning, a vengeful sculptor uses a psychotic killer in a ploy to take down the spiteful art critics plaguing his work and forces a journalist to get the police on the trail of the killing spree.

Overall this one was a pretty decent if not entirely spectacular entry. One of the biggest marks against this one is the fact that the film continually finds itself traveling back-and-forth to the artists' laboratory despite continually being made aware of the killer's existence which really seems foolish and destined for danger. Not only is it completely at odds with the fact that she's obviously headstrong and determined not to do this repeatedly, the fact that her ignorance against the killer's identity despite plenty of evidence to the contrary in her earlier discovery of the sketch along with the note from the editing room asking for the purpose of printing the article all without protection or even advising the authorities on the matter makes her seem destined for death one way or another. Likewise, the fact that this one tries to play off the fact of his apartment encounter is really retribution for those actions which results in the mistaken identity issue has no reason to exist due to these early scenes giving him not only the look but also the general feel of this one so he shouldn't have had any problems carrying this out. Still, there's a few rather enjoyable parts here with the fact that the early stalking scenes are set-up to be quite chilling and typically enjoyable romps through the darkened alleyways famous in these kinds of efforts, the ability to pull off a kill against a suspect in police protection from the other room away is quite inventive and this manages to get a lot of mileage out of the unique and distinct appearance of the main killer. The grotesque, misshapen features and imposing appearance certainly get some great use throughout the sculpting scenes which have an uneasy air to them based on their relationship, and certainly helps in the finale with a lot of fine action that comes into play due to the killer's appearance, but otherwise this one didn't have much else for it.

Today's Rating-PG: Violence.

score 6/10

kannibalcorpsegrinder 1 May 2015

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw3230185/