Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

John Savage is the acting force driving this film. Just getting out of prison for rape, or forced rape, when you see the film in it's opening, Terry (Savage) turns up at his favorite aunts, unannounced. Aunt Thelma takes him under his wing, not forgetting how much he likes chocolate milk, (a favorite of mine too). After a nap, she fixes him a ripper meal of a cake which he downs hungrily. Every things hunky dory. But deep down in Terry's mind is a penchant for revenge. A few of the tenants die, plus a cat, at his violent hand, including a wannabe model (Cindy Williams before her Laverne and Shirley days) who Thelma doesn't consider to be attractive or like. Williams takes the compliment politely. After all, she just wanted a room. One scene has Savage, an acting great, in a truly believable performance, practically tearing off her clothes in the pool, although she was asking for it, a little, I guess. Another has him masturbating, after making a obscene phone call to a slutty girl, shacked up with another fella, the same girl he was forced to rape, years earlier, using some funny and effectively scary dialogue on her. Budding guitarist Savage is, as Williams is a model, (though Savage's character is more the quiet achiever) in one explosive scene he goes ballistic, flying out a door and diving into a pool, to cool himself, after Thelma rabbles with old memories. The following scene at the dry cleaners with another regular, who's really a babbling type is an amusing touch. Savage's psychotic moments where he loses it are frighteningly real, like when forcing his crappy woman lawyer to drink herself dry before he burns her place down with her in it. Another scene, like the pool one just mentioned, that stays with me, is when he runs this girl (no prizes for guessing who I'm talking about here) off a cliff, in his car, plummeting to her death below. Void of any remorse, he actually cracks up, making a cooky, laugh, that's quite chilling. This is a well formulated drama, the kind that made early seventies cinema good, with strong support from it's co stars, Savage walking away with honors here. It has a sad dramatic conclusion that just goes to prove, some people in this world just don't have a fighting chance. I've seen this seventy type horror film a few times, the first on the t.v, mainly because of Savage, an actor I love.

Angry, deranged kid is paroled after serving two years in prison for taking part in a gang-rape; he returns home to his mother's boarding house in a cheaper section of Los Angeles but, with no plans (and no prodding from his gimme-a-little-kiss mommy), he goes after the women who did him wrong. Grimy, ineffectual Curtis Harrington-directed shocker, with a lame-duck screenplay credited to Tony Crechales and co-producer George Edwards. The plot cobbles together various ideas and scenes from a myriad of other thrillers (with a failed overlay of Hitchcock, besides), and the stray cruelty and general bad taste are often excruciating to wade through. Veteran actress Ann Sothern and the newcomers in the cast can possibly be forgiven, but what was Harrington's excuse? After jump-starting his career behind the camera with interesting curios, Harrington got stuck in a kind of post-"Baby Jane" rut, concentrating primarily on stories of delusional bottom-feeders operating on little money or brains; his sense of squalid atmospherics are far stronger than his talent in handling actors. A young John Savage is blobby and unformed in the leading role, while his character goes after female acquaintances without a provocative plan--he just seems restless and trapped by mama. Harrington must have known this script was a loser, injecting arty accouterments into the stew (slow-motion takes, flashback edits, and a really silly dream sequence). It doesn't work at all, and the movie failed to find the proper distribution after Universal passed. *1/2 from ****

I first saw this film by accident on cable television years ago, and it haunted me ever since. Thankfully, the 2007 DVD release is of a quality that does justice to this undeservedly obscure film. Director Curtis Harrington details in the supplementary interview the unfortunate problems this film had being distributed, and I sought a copy of it for years before (again almost by accident) learning it was to be released on DVD. The actors are uniformly fine, but the primary reason to seek this film out is the great Ann Sothern. Far from giving a perfunctory performance in what was obviously an inexpensive film even for its time, she imbues her role as a smothering but well-intentioned mother with such dignity and compassion and a lost longing for a better life, that by the time the film ends, her plight brings a lump to the throat. Sothern was an underrated actress who had success in many B-movie roles in the 30s and 40s (the Maisie series, etc., April Showers), and in a few A pictures (e.g., Joseph Mankiewicz's A Letter to Three Wives). She also enjoyed great success in 50s comedy series (Private Secretary, The Ann Sothern Show). In her last film, The Whales of August (1987) she was finally rewarded with a supporting actress Oscar nomination. Had there been any justice in the awards process (we know there is little), she would have had a best actress nod for The Killing Kind. It is a remarkable performance in a film that one expect to be exploitative, but which ends up being psychologically complex and touching and tragic. Highly recommended.

I watched this early 70's flik last night expecting a decent film. While it wasn't too bad, I was disappointed by it. After being forced to participate unwillingly in a rape by his friends one day at the beach, our unfortunate son gets sent to prison for 2 years. Upon his release at first things seem somewhat normal as he adjusts to life on the outside once again. But after calling the girl him and his friends raped 2 years before and vaguely threatening her, he starts reliving the rape in his mind and starts thinking that revenge is a good thing. A few murders later, which by the way, are basically bloodless and not at all violent despite other reviews, his mother whom he lives with, starts putting the pieces together that her son may not be a very good boy. With an ending that is meant to draw sympathy from the audience, I found it completely unbeleivable and very down played. The acting by the mother and son was strangely accurate, yet something about the film left me disappointed.