DELIRIUM (1979)

 NOW LET'S KNOCK A PREVIOUSLY UNSEEN VIDEO NASTY OFF THE BOARD!

  Yep, here's a video nasty I hadn't managed to see until now and, like many of the movies of the Video Nasties list, one wonders why the hell DELIRIUM was on the list.

Filmed in St. Louis, Missouri by Greek-born director Peter Maris, DELIRIUM was marketed pretty much as a slasher film when the genre hadn't really established itself yet (besides the phenomenal success of John Carpenter & Debra Hill's HALLOWEEN ) but it's more like a hodgepodge of a bunch of different genres stapled together.  Things start off very slashery with a gruesome murder of a woman through a closed door with a spear by a psycho Vietnam vet named Charlie (Nick Panouzis).  The victim is discovered by her roommate Susan Norcross (Debi Chaney) and cops Paul Dollinger (Turk Cekovsky) and Larry Mead (Terry Tenbroek) are brought in to solve the case.  Charlie was discharged from serving 2 years in Vietnam on what used to be called a Section 8 and escaped from a mental institution a while ago. 

He's been murdering at random ever since.  However, there are some other murdered people who, it turns out, have something in common.  They were all arrested for crimes which they were freed on a technicality; then they turn up dead  -- apparently suicides.  Larry and Susan quickly become sweet on each other and Susan tells the cops that a guy named Charlie took her roommate home and probably killed her.  Charlie earlier had applied for a job with her boss Mr. Andrews (Bob Winters) so he probably has a application on file with all Charlie's info.  Dollinger and Mead go see Andrews who says he has no information because Charlie had no references so he didn't have him fill out an application.  The cops smell something fishy.  Turns out, Andrews and a 'council' of other men belong to a secret society which kills criminals who were set free on technicalities.  This 'council' is chaired by a shaved-head, shades-wearing Eric Stem (Barron Winchester) who must CERTAINLY get his look from the same year's APOCALYPSE NOW because he looks like a skinnier Kurtz here.  Andrews daughter was killed by one of the perps who turns up an apparent suicide.  The society uses former Vietnam vets whose cheese fell off their crackers years ago to do the killing and Charlie is one of those psycho killers that is now loose.

DELIRIUM is really only about 25% horror/slasher movie and 75% cop show from the 1970's.  There are very strong COLUMBO or THE ROCKFORD FILES vibes going on here and frankly I enjoyed the hell out of that.  After all, it's a 1970's movie and there's nothing better than the 1970's.  The 70's cars the size of boats, the wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiide neckties, the gorgeous sun dress our heroine Debi Chaney wears to trail after the bad guy, the funky Hammond organ/synth score . . . . it's all sheer perfection.  I might even like the 70's cop show scenes better than the 'horror' scenes!  How's THAT for wackiness?!?!?!!!  The acting and directing are surprisingly good for such a low-budget, Missouri-set movie and it truly held my interest all through the film.  It's all just off-centre enough to be continuously interesting with horror/slasher tropes melding with the 70's/80's trope of psycho Vietnam vets on the rampage and 1970's TV cop shows all keeping my attention. 

As always, I have a helluva lot more time for THIS kind of movie than big budget studio blockbusters and I can forgive a lot -- such as the Vietnam War flashback in which telephone poles are clearly visible behind the combatants or the continuous use of the MASTERMIND (if you're British, you know that TV show) theme music throughout the movie.  DELIRIUM was surprisingly better than I expected it to be and not in the way I expected; I was grooving on the 1970's detective TV show action and that was good enough for me.  However, there are some really good kills/gore FX going on here by Bob Shelley which I think will satisfy any horror movie fan too.  There's the aforementioned spear through the door (and through the woman's chest) scene as well as a pitchfork kill and a 'meat cleaver to the long-haired hippy' kill too which all look pretty good.  DELIRIUM has an alternate title of "PSYCHO PUPPET" which actually is really a better title since that's what Charlie is; a killer 'manchurian candidate' being controlled by this 'Kurtz'-looking guy who we find out by the end of the movie isn't wrapped any too tightly himself. All in all, I really kinda like this one.