Anatomy of a Psycho (1961)

Anatomy of a Psycho Film Details

Overview: The crazed brother of a condemned killer sent to the gas chamber swears vengeance on those he holds responsible for his brother’s execution.

Tagline: A Psychotic Killer prowls the night! … Will he be stopped before he kills again?

Review: (Some spoilers) Can be said to be one of bad movie director Edward D. Wood’s forgotten masterpieces in that the movie was ghost written by the Great One using the name Larry Lee and even had in its soundtrack the music from Wood’s greatest work “Plan Nine from Outer space”. One of the many “toubled youth” movies that came out of Hollywood in the 1950’s and 1960’s “Anatomy of a Psycho” has to do with young and confused Chet Marco, Darnell Howe. Chet’s really a good boy who got caught up in the emotional whirlwind that he finds himself in with his older brother Luke a convicted murderer and sentenced to death now facing a one way trip to the gas chamber when the clock strikes midnight. Chet who looked up to his brother as a father figure since Luke brought up both him and his sister Pat, Pamela Lincoln, when his parents either died or deserted him and his two siblings. Chet honestly believes what his brother told him when he visited him on death row the night before his scheduled execution. Luke swore to his baby brother Chet that he was totally innocent of murder despite the evidence, including an eye-witness, against him. There’s no doubt in Luke’s guilt but the stubborn and delusional Chet has convinced himself that Luke was railroaded and nothing, not even his and Luke’s sister Pat, can change his mind. After Luke was executed Chet went slowly insane getting together a number of his friends to get those individuals, the D.A Judge witnesses & jury, responsible for Luke’s death. This results in the brutal beating of the D.A’s, who prosecuted Luke, son and the burning down of the judges, who sentenced Luke to death, home. Slow moving at first with Darrell Howe playing the fast losing it Chet and becoming more and more unpredictable due to his deteriorating mental condition as he begins to look and act as if he were lobotomized or suffering from an OD of downers. The movie picks up when Mickey, Ronnie Burns, Pat’s boyfriend gets into the act by first asking Pat’s hand in marriage, and she accepting, and then going to talk things over with Chet at his and his friends clubhouse known as the shack. Telling a shocked and totally nuts Chet that it was his own father Frank, Russ Bender, who’s secret testimony sent his beloved brother Luke to the gas chamber Mickey’s foolishly thinks that it would make things better if that fact came out! We get to see Chet go out of his head ranting and talking to himself as well as talking to his now departed brother Luke, as if his ghost were somehow trying to contact him, as all hell breaks loose in the shack. It’s there that Chet gets belted silly by, as he tried to attack, Mickey and then his friend Moe, Don Devlin, getting into the act and ending up with a knife, that the mindless and out of control Moe landed on, through his chest. Chet now seeing his chance to get even with Mickey and his father for Luke’s death instead of calling for help to save the badly wounded Moe’s life rams the knife into his heart killing him.It’s then that Chet concocts, with the other person in the shack at the time, his best friend Bobbie (Frank Fillman) that it was Mickey who actually killed Moe. It’s when Mickey, who was convicted of the murder of Moe, is about to be sentenced that Chet starts to feel that he’s not all there up stairs. With the help, or friendly persuasion, of friend and police let. Mac, Michael Granger, and a guilt-ridden Bobbie that Chet after almost killing himself, by jumping off a telephone pole, decides to go straight and set the record right so that he could be able to sleep at night and get back to sanity.

Country: United States

Language: English

Duration: 75 min

Genre: Crime, Drama, Thriller

Also known as: Anatomy of a Psycho