This reasonably tense, aberrant and absorbing low-grade early 70’s psycho picture is nowhere near as vile or awful as its unjustly lousy reputation would suggest. Yeah, it’s the unsparingly grim and twisted story of a depraved Oedipal wreck Norman Bates-style misogynistic pedophile sicko who after escaping from an experimental mental home racks up a tiny body count (three folks in total) and befriends a sweet, unsuspecting 11-year-old girl (the adorable Geri Reischl) who he considers to be the sole “pure” female he’s ever made the acquaintance of, but thankfully both director Paul Leder and screenwriter William Norton (who also co-wrote “Big Bad Mama” and “Day of the Animals”) never let the perverse premise degenerate into total gag-inducing filthy sleaze.

Instead, they show a surprising amount of taste and restraint, creating a genuinely icky and unsettling atmosphere by chiefly focusing on star lunatic Albert’s seething psychosis and severe hang-ups concerning his domineering rich bitch mommy. Zooey Hall as the outwardly calm and composed, yet internally volatile and dangerous Albert gives a believably creepy and admirably subdued performance; Hall laudably eschews the pop-eyed raving histrionics most actors tend to do in such colorfully deranged roles in favor of a more unnervingly low-key approach which in turn makes Albert’s sporadic psychotic outbursts that much more convincing and upsetting.

Future “Marty Hartman, Mary Hartman” TV show star Greg Mullavey lends solid support as the hard-nosed detective determined to arrest Albert before things get too out of hand. Moreover, the grimy no-frills two-cent production values further lend a certain grungy verisimilitude to the overall bleakly credible proceedings, thus making this flesh-crawling item one of the most disturbingly plausible of 70’s grind-house psycho features.

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