paul-ayres-60784 Wow, this is quite a shocker. The main character played by Arch Hall Jr. is very creepy and even in his first scene you know that he has no compassion.Three school teachers break down in their car and end up in what appears to be a deserted breakers yard. They cannot find anyone there but evidence suggests that the occupiers had been there only minutes before. Along comes Arch Hall with his girlfriend. He points a gun at the teachers and takes their money. In the process he pistol whips the eldest teacher and forces the mechanically minded teacher to fix the car so that him and his girlfriend can escape in it.It is soon evident that the two assailants are murderers on the run and that they have no qualms about murdering anyone in their path.Well acted and very disturbing.

artpf Three people driving into Los Angeles for a Dodgers game have car trouble and pull off into an old wrecking yard where they are held at bay by a bloodthirsty psycho and his crazy girlfriend.Firstly don't cha just hate when these re-releasers package black and white movies in boxes that make it appear the film is in color? Seems like it's false advertising to me.But I digress.Movie set up takes it's time to build suspense. The acting is fine. Enter the protagonist and things get tense. The acting isn't great but it doesn't matter and it's acceptable. It's well directed and the tension is kept for a time.Then a well is hit and things slow down because how long can you sustain this sort of behavior without repeating yourself. But it still works, even if uni-brow Hall Jr. can't act.

Bezenby Wow! For a film made in 1963, The Sadist is awfully harsh and full on. You'd think a film this good would be more well known, because it blows most thrillers that have been made in the last 50 years out of the water. The film takes place in real time in one place, and is surprisingly close to the bone for an old black and white film.Three teachers, having car trouble while on their way to a baseball game, pull in to a scrap yard for a spare fuel pump. However, it looks like the place is abandoned, if it weren't for the still warm apple pie sitting on a dining table. After deciding they're going to just get the part themselves, two youngsters appear, a guy and his almost mute girlfriend, and the guy's got a gun.At first the guy just seems to want to force the teachers to fix their car so they can steal it, but it become apparent that they've run afoul of a couple of spree killers (one of the teachers even knows the guy's name from a news report about killings in Arizona). From then on, the rest of the film details how the teachers are going to bear up with a gun barrel shoved in their faces. I won't go into detail and describe too much of the plot, rather than just give you an idea of how this film keeps throwing curveballs at you. One character has the length of time it takes for the killer to drink a bottle of soda to beg for his life (and gets shot in the face for his trouble), the girl gets forced to eat dirt, and things didn't pan out the way I expected it to at all regarding who was the hero. There's a high enough body count for cynics who shy away from films this old too. I'd say give it a shot. What I also liked was that the killer wasn't a wisecracking evil mastermind – he was just a dumb (but sly) kid with a victimised girlfriend he was trying to protect from the world.Another good point is the hyperactive camera-work that lends an almost sentient air to the abandoned junk yard: Very atmospheric.The Sadist gets my highest recommendation. One of the best sixties films I've watched.

Robert J. Maxwell There's not much point in going on about this story of a psychopathic young couple holding three travelers at gunpoint on a dusty back road, taunting them, sometimes shooting them.It doesn't really take a great deal of money to make a decent movie, not if you have any taste. I'll mention "The Little Fugitive" in passing, shot on a dime at Coney Island.This one is cheap and it panders to the most base of human impulses, the desire to see others quail under our power. The pleasure some of us get from having others scared to death of us comes from the same sub-cortical source that drives wolves and chickens to establish pecking orders. The musical score can be dismissed. The story is dragged out. The acting is execrable, and the worst of the performers is the young sadist with the Elvis Presley haircut who wields his pistol as if he knew what the movie was about. His young girl friend, the one who keeps chewing gum, has hardly any lines, which is all for the best.Unless your tolerance for pain is much higher than normal, I'd avoid this. You can check it, you know -- your tolerance for pain -- with an instrument called a dolorimeter that focuses a spot of hot bright light on your blackened forehead. The results are measured in units called "dols." The method doesn't work but neither does this movie.