A SCHIZOID takes to "murder by mail" in this early eighties Cannon slasher on Blu-ray from 88 Films.

A scissor-wielding killer is stalking the female members of a therapy group run by Dr. Pieter Fales (Klaus Kinski, CRAWLSPACE). When advice columnist and group member Julie (Marianna Hill, MESSIAH OF EVIL) recognizes a Jane Doe as one of her fellow group members, she and the police – TRANCER’s Richard Herd and Joe Regalbuto of TV’s MURPHY BROWN – wonder if the killing is related to a series of threatening letters. Suspects include Julie’s ex-husband and current boss Doug (Craig Wasson, GHOST STORY), Dr. Fales, his daughter Allison (Donna Wilkes, ANGEL) – who resents Julie (and other members of the group) for sleeping with her father – as well as creepy but “red herring”seeming janitor Gilbert (Christopher Lloyd, CLUE) who is also in the group and gets assigned to do work at both Julie’s apartment building and her office.

SCHIZOID was one of a trio of slashers from Cannon's 1980 slate when Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus took charge of the troubled British company and turned it into the schlock-churner of the eighties. Like Cannon’s NEW YEAR’S EVIL, SCHIZOID is less of a slasher than a stalker thriller peppered with a couple none-too-suspenseful stalk-n-slash scenes. As with their other slasher X-RAY, the weird behaviors – including the common reason for their lack of alibis – of various characters is emphasized to such a degree (although Kinski is pretty much being himself) that it becomes quite easy to narrow down the identity of the killer. It also helps that we get just enough of a view of the killer’s face in a car’s rearview mirror to be sure that it’s definitely not who the director wants us to think it is. More intriguing is that the writer of the letters seems to possess seemingly multiple copies of the ad mat for THE KILLER BEHIND THE MASK – director David Paulsen’s earlier (and more brutal) slasher pic released by pre-Golan-Globus Cannon as SAVAGE WEEKEND – from which to extract the word “murder!”. Hill, Kinski, Wasson, and Wilkes are at least watchable even if the script itself is going through the motions, but the whole “it’s the one you least expect” doesn’t really work here. Apart from the stalking scenes, composer Craig Huxley (ALLIGATOR) takes the lyrical “psychological thriller” bent in his score while cinematographer Norman Leigh (THE BRINKS JOB) exploits the environs of Kinski’s character’s picturesque villa for all its worth.

First released by MCA in the early 1980s and then reissued in 1988 by the short-lived Cannon Video, SCHIZOID made its Blu-ray bow stateside by Scream Factory in a double-feature with X-RAY. 88 Films appears to use the same HD master but matted here to 1.85:1 while the former was opened up to 1.78:1. The 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC-encoded 1.85:1 transfer comes from a film element that is clean but does not seem to have had any additional digital cleanup going by the single instance of vertical scratching that appears late in the film. No complaints about the DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono track. Optional English HoH subtitles are also included.

Exclusive to the 88 Films edition is a new audio commentary by Mondo Digital’s Nathaniel Thompson and film historian Troy Howarth in which Howarth, who penned a book on Kinski recently, at first seems to be reaching when he comments on the film's many giallo references onscreen – including likening the seemingly accidental reveal of the killer's face to the deliberate blink-and-you'll-miss-it shot of the killer in Dario Argento's DEEP RED – but subsequently makes a more likely argument of Paulsen and some other slasher filmmakers copying other filmmakers making giallo references in shaping the slasher genre (John Carpenter has acknowledged the influence of Argento on HALLOWEEN, for instance). He and Thompson couch the film not only in the formative years of the slasher film in which films like this with middle-aged characters were playing alongside the more familiar ones with nubile youths. Howarth notes that Kinksi was imposed on the film but downplays the rumors about some of his more skeevy behavior on set while acknowledging Kinski's latter day reputation as difficult in contrast to his earlier pre-art film days in which he was making the rounds in krimis, gialli, and Jess Franco films where he was reportedly very professional.

Scream Factory included an interview with actress Wilkes but no input from Paulsen who subsequently contributed a video interview to Mark Hartley's Cannon documentary ELECTRIC BOOGALOO: THE WILD, UNTOLD STORY OF CANNON FILMS and a text one as part of a book of essays on Kinski titled KLAUS KINSKI: BEAST OF CINEMA. Paulsen appears here on 88 Film's edition in an extended interview from which Hartley extracted comments for his documentary (33:51) in which he recalls his first meeting with Golan in 1973 and being invited to Tel Aviv to rewrite the screenplay and script the English dialogue for Golan's directorial effort KAZABLAN in which he first got a sense of how Golan and Globus would shoot no matter the issue that cropped up, making him rewrite to suit a situation. A couple years later, he would be dragged around the world again for the film that eventually became DIAMONDS starring Robert Shaw and initially to co-star David Hemmings (BLOW-UP) who would be replaced at the last moment by Richard Roundtree (SHAFT), and the setting changed from South Africa to Sweden to Rome. Of SCHIZOID, he reveals that Golan contacted him about directing one of the three films he wanted to get off the ground in 1980, with Paulsen having a month of prep to write a script and do pre-production, with the only requirement being Kinski's casting. The film was where he and Golan fell out since the production did not cut together and Paulsen offered to rework it without pay only for Golan to turn down his request for two days of pickup shoots and bring in Boaz Davidson who was helming X-RAY to finish the film.