THE KILLING KIND (1973) ***

Terry (John Savage) is an already disturbed young man when his friends force him to participate in a gang rape.  He takes the rap for his friends and winds up going to prison.  Terry gets out two years later, much to the delight of his overbearing and suffocating mother (Ann Sothern).  She thinks everything will be okay since he’s safe at home, but unbeknownst to her, Terry sneaks out at night and gets revenge on the people he blames for landing him in jail.  Meanwhile, a pretty boarder (Cindy Williams, the same year as American Graffiti) and a sexually repressed neighbor (Dementia 13’s Luana Anders) take a shine to Terry and try to seduce him, which makes him even more emotionally unstable.

Directed with admirable restraint by Curtis (Night Tide) Harrington, The Killing Kind has a unique creepy vibe and an air of sinister atmosphere that hangs over the entire movie.  Harrington is more interested in examining the relationships between his conflicted characters than he is getting bogged down with cliched plot devices and delivering scares.  The dynamic between Savage and Sothern has passing similarities to Psycho (there’s even a bathtub version of Hitchcock’s shower scene), but Harrington prefers to get under the characters’ skin and find out what makes them tick to orchestrating suspenseful set pieces.  Because of that, there are some stretches where nothing happens, but the performances are strong enough to make up for some of the lengthy, sluggish passages.

Savage is great, and his tortured performance keeps you invested even when the movie is spinning its wheels.  Sothern brings a fun energy to the film too.  You’re never quite sure what she’s going to do next.  The best performance comes from Anders, who in the movie’s most memorable scene tries to drunkenly proposition Savage.

So, if you enjoy moody atmosphere rather than cheap thrills, and prefer multi-faceted characters to standard-issue horror movie victims, then The Killing Kind will be your kind of film.