A serial killer stalks the clubs of London, listening to funky tunes and luring attractive young women into his sports car to drain their blood. Plodding Detective Superintendent Bellaver (Alfred Marks) is on the case but police procedure is little help against the weirder aspects of the case. Perhaps young assistant medical examiner Dr Sorel (Christopher Matthews) will be of more use.
At the same time, we regularly pop in with a man trapped in some kind of medical facility who loses one of his extremities after the other. We also spend a little time in an unnamed Eastern European country where things are rather more fascist than communist. Here, we witness how one Konratz (Marshall Jones) kills his way to the top with his evil version of the Vulcan nerve pinch.
Eventually, these plot lines…well, actually, no, they don’t really converge, and only a very polite viewer will not call Konratz’s sudden appearance in London in the final act utter, pointless and awkward bullcrap.
I understand that this Amicus production directed by Gordon Hessler has found some admirers over time, but I have no idea what’s to admire here: the slow pacing of what should be a potboiler? The decision to slow things down even further by the film’s constant changing between totally disconnected plotlines? The inability of the script (by Christopher Wicking) to actually unite any of it? The total randomness of what will go for an explanation of what’s going on in the end?
Though one might call the film’s chutzpah even calling itself a film admirable. There’s really no connective tissue to any of what we see at all, things just happen for no reason, Peter Cushing pops in for a scene, Christopher Lee and Vincent Price for three, connections are insinuated but don’t make any kind of sense. It’s all very much like a dream – not an interesting one, alas, but just a crap assortment of random nonsense that’s not even interesting to look at.
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