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

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

Spoilers are minor... I'd read about this film a few times over the years, so when I caught it on TCM a couple years ago, my expectations were low -- most everything I've ever read about the movie's been negative. What I didn't expect is that the movie would skyrocket to near the top of my list of all-time favorite films. It's not especially original, the identity of the killer is revealed about 10 minutes in, and some of the dialogue is completely inane, but this little-known flick still oozes charm. It's like a '60s sitcom in the guise of a '70s horror movie.What makes "Wicked, Wicked" so special isn't the story or the gimmicky split-screen that's employed throughout the entire film, it's the characters. Every character, large and small (and many annoyingly uncredited) is wonderfully quirky and likable. There's hotel resident Mrs. Karadyne, who's sweet and eccentric and has a penchant for stretching the truth. There's Genevieve, the sex-starved gift shop employee. There's health-obsessed Hank, the resident lifeguard/waiter who has a secret life as a gigolo (amongst other things). There's Rick, the horny house detective with the troubled past, who was once married to defensive lounge singer Lisa. There's socially awkward and misunderstood electrician Jason, who has a whole mess of skeletons in his closet. There's senile organist Adelle Moffett, who never says a word or interacts with any other characters but still manages to be a scene-stealer. There's Mr. Simmons, the hotel manager, who's more concerned with covering up than investigating recent murders and disappearances. There's inept Police Sgt. Ramsey, who belligerently believes he's always right. There's bellboy Jerry, who's a bit lazy and self-centered and is only out to make a buck (can someone please identify the actor who plays him?!). And then there's the Hotel del Coronado, which really is a character unto itself more than merely a location. There's something lovably askew and almost Rocky Horror-ishly unique and comical about every character.The split-screen is used to good effect, frequently furthering the characters as their pasts are delved into in flashbacks. When it's not being used for flashbacks, it reveals two simultaneous occurrences or two different points of view of the same scene. Many have called the "duo vision" distracting and unnecessary, but I think it was easy to follow and added a lot to the movie. Matter of fact, the editor should've won an award -- there's a couple times when a person moves just slightly out of sync on one side of the screen, but overall the editing's flawless.If anyone with half a brain at MGM had thought to run this on the midnight circuit in the '70s, perhaps it wouldn't still be languishing in near-total obscurity. While I am, indeed, grateful to TCM for unearthing and infrequently airing this delightfully demented variation of "Phantom of the Opera," I'm still praying for the day it gets a remastered, anamorphic DVD release (TCM's print is hardly flawless and it's been slightly cropped to an improper 2.35:1 aspect ratio). I never tire of watching "Wicked, Wicked" and I think there's a big cult audience that's still waiting to discover this quirky gem.

What I find so great about the horror genre is that, even though I've seen over 2500 films of different sub genres and numerous countries already, I keep stumbling upon crazy stuff nobody ever heard about. Even more incomprehensible – especially in the case of "Wicked Wicked" - is how come these movies are still so obscure and unloved? Now this certainly isn't a masterpiece of film-making, but nevertheless I would have expected a movie with such a peculiar gimmick to have some sort of loyal fan-base or at least enjoy some recognition at horror internet forums. Well, apparently not. "Wicked Wicked" remains underrated to this date, but hopefully a proper DVD-release will change that one day sooner or later. Make no mistake, however, the plot of this film is extremely rudimentary and straightforward all in favor of putting the emphasis entirely on the "Duo-Vision" gimmick. This is just a fancy term to say that the split-screen effect lasts throughout whole film. Unlike I feared, this gimmick isn't as irritating as I thought it would be, but nevertheless it's only truly creative in a handful of situations. There are a couple of highly disturbing murders taking place in a fancy Californian seaside hotel. Beautiful blond women are brutally stabbed by a maniacal culprit and their bodies dumped around the hotel. Former policeman turned security agent is asked to investigate discretely, but the bodies keep piling up at a fast pace. The case gets more personal when his beautiful blond ex-wife arrives at the hotel to put up a singing show. I don't really know why I bother to keep the killer's identity secret and even somewhat mysterious, because the film itself certainly doesn't. The culprit takes off his mask and exposes his face after the second murder already; probably to illustrate once more that the whodunit aspect of the film really wasn't the producers' main priority. And yet, despite this premature and regrettable revelation, there are multiple tiny plot components that are interesting and worth analyzing. For example, the sub plot about the hotel owner's reluctance to inform the police and his attempts to avoid negative publicity predate the similar "Jaws" plot with nearly two whole years. There's also a bizarre but engaging and original resemblance between this film's main characters and the ones from Gaston Leroux' immortal horror tale "The Phantom of the Opera". There's a pretty imaginative, yet typically rancid 70's and massively perverted twist regarding the culprit's motives to kill blond women near the end (which I really loved) and there's a neat supportive role for Spaghetti western regular Edd Byrnes as a moonlighting lifeguard. If you ever have the opportunity to watch "Wicked, Wicked" – and apparently it's occasionally programmed on TCM – please do so! It's far from being a great film, but it's definitely unique.

This movie has several strikes against it from the outset. First off, is the split-screen ("duo-vision") gimmick, which is effective when used sparingly by filmmakers like Brian DePalma (or going WAY back silent French filmmaker Abel Gance), but is pretty annoying when used extensively (check out the ill-advised sequel "More American Graffitti"), and likely to give many viewers a splitting headache. Then there is the killer who is stalking a seaside hotel. The movie not only makes no attempt to hide his identity from the start, but the clues he leaves along the way are so incredibly obvious that you want to scream at the protagonist (a dimwitted, womanizing security guard)for not being able to figure out who he is. Finally there's the wretched theme song ("Wicked, wicked, that's the ticket. . .") that was apparently actually sung by actress Tiffany Bolling, who should have stuck to stripping off in bad movies like this (and speaking a stripping off, Bolling takes her usual gratuitous shower in this movie behind a particularly opaque shower curtain, just to add insult to injury).Despite all this though, I kind of enjoyed this movie. It has an enjoyably nasty sense of humor, and only in the 1970's could anyone possibly get away with making a wrongheaded experiment in cinematic ineptitude like this and still have it backed by a major studio (MGM). As for those who find this misogynistic or offensive, check out a couple other Tiffany Bolling vehicles/feminist treatises "The Candy Snatchers" and "Centerfold Girls" sometime!

Wicked, Wicked is unique in that it is shot entirely in DUO-VISION (a gimmick of early 1970's cimena). Brian DePalma used this technique with great success in both Carrie and Phantom of the Paradise. The problem here is that Richard Bare is no Brian DePalma and the story is completely idiotic.the one saving grace of this film is the moment at which the duo-vision becomes "uni-vision" during the climactic moment of the story. You have to see it to appreciate the greatness of that one shot. Perhaps the director came up with that idea and then made a whole story around it?