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Schizo
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray B - United Kingdom - 88 Films Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (9th December 2024). |
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The Film
 No one believes newly married ice skater Samantha (Four of the Apocalypse's Lynne Frederick) when she fears that she is being stalked and terrorized by William Haskin (The Wild Geese's Jack Watson) who was institutionalized for the murder of her mother twenty years previous. Her husband Alan (The Great Escape's John Leyton) and her prank-playing best friend Beth (House of Mortal Sin's Stephanie Beacham) think she is just stressed, Beth's psychologist boyfriend Leonard (Repulsion's John Fraser) is more interested in probing her repressed traumatic memories than indulging her delusions of persecution, but people are beginning to die around her. Alan's housekeeper Mrs. Wallace (Up the Junction's Queenie Watts) suggests that Samantha consult the spirits via her daughter Joy (Frightmare's Trisha Mortimer), and the resulting séance just affirms that the killer is getting closer and closer to Samantha. The final Walker/McGillivray collaborations, Schizo is the one that feels most like a body count picture – more so than The Flesh and Blood Show or Walker's next horror film The Comeback – because the plot so flimsily supports a handful of murders spaced periodically throughout the drawn-out running time. It is otherwise one all too obvious gimmick, what with the opening narration defining schizophrenia and the U.S. poster's tagline defining the disorder as "When the left hand doesn't know who the right hand is killing." Watson does his best, but Frederick is not a very interesting woman-in-peril. Co-star Beacham might have been a more interesting lead but seems too savvy to play a naif (and a bit too top-heavy for an ice skater). The longer the film tries to push the stalking angle, the more apparent the final revelation becomes, but the killings are brutal including death by sledgehammer and knitting needle. The film seems to quite overtly borrow from Argento's Deep Red with while also anticipating his later Trauma as the psychic reveals in a trance that the killer is present in the room and is then murdered in the rain. Jessop's photography as usual is handsome and even utilizes the eye-straining décor of Alan's swanky house to prove a disorienting backdrop for scenes of Samantha being terrorized, but Myers' score is the least satisfying of his collaborations with Walker even if largely avoids overt Herrmannisms. 
Video
Distributed in European territories by Warner Bros., Schizo had both pre-cert and later 18-certificate releases on VHS from Warner. When the video rights ended up with Euro London, it was certified again without cuts for Redemption's U.K. DVD (since the film was not with Warner for video stateside it had been licensed to DVD there much earlier on along with a subsequent Redemption/Koch Lorber DVD). Warner seems to have retained television rights for the film and, as such, newer video masters have been derived from Warner's HD master which accompanies the Euro London-licensed U.S. Blu-ray and German Blu-ray. 88 Films' 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen Blu-ray is derived from the same master (Warner Bros. "As Time Goes By" logo included) with additional cleanup. More naturalistically-lit than the other Walker films, the re-grading seems more minor an improvement with once again less yellow in the skin tones and highlights, and slightly richer colors evident in the chic location décor while the overcast London exteriors do fill a touch chillier. Some diffusion seems to have been used in front of the camera during some brighter scenes like the ice skating opening and some daylight exteriors and there are a couple close-ups where grain seems momentarily clumpy but the combination of the clean-up and extras would make this the preferable option whether in the set or possibly reissued later separately. 
Audio
The film features a 24-bit LPCM 2.0 mono track although we do not know if it has undergone any additional cleanup like the picture. Dialogue is always clear and free of distortion, there are some nasty foley effects for the kills – nastier than what is actually shown most of the time – and Myers' score is heavier on the low strings than the Psycho shrieks. Optional English HoH subtitles are also included.
Extras
No commentary had been recorded for Schizo, so 88 Films' edition includes a brand new audio commentary by screenwriter David McGillivray, moderated by film critics Kim Newman and Barry Forshaw in which they characterize the film as the "break-up movie" dusting off an old script by Murray Smith for which Walker refused to believe McGillivray when he warned him that the "William Castle premise" was so obvious (this is essentially Walker's Psycho down to the sliding credits). McGillivray recalls the difficulty rewriting it, Walker's threats that he would hire other writers which he never did because no one would work as cheaply for him as McGillivray, and his discovery of just how much more Walker paid Smith and Shaughnessy compared to his fee. They also discuss the casting, how the characters differed from the earlier Walker films in being relatively middle-class – making the husband a carpet manufacturer was solely to effect the climactic impaling of a character on a piece of spiky machinery in an actual carpet factory – their preference for Beacham while noting that Frederick was a casting coup (and that she sued the production when a nude shot of her was used in the advertising. While they lament the lack of Sheila Keith – noting that the more Sheila Keith in a Pete Walker film the better – but also speak positively of Watts' turn as the housekeeper. "Ask Mr Walker" (12:50) is an interview with Walker, but here he answers questions submitted by fans and actors including School for Sex's Françoise Pascal and Cool It, Carol!'s Robin Askwith who was just eighteen when he was hired for the film and had only done television and family-oriented material before (both films can be found in 88 Films' The Pete Walker Sexploitation Collection set). 
Overall
Pete Walker's most traditional "body count" picture Schizo is an okay, occasionally nasty suspense romp that gives away its twist at the very start.
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