THE PSYCHO LOVER (1970)
(a.k.a. THE LOVING TOUCH)
Article #1257 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-23-2004
Posting Date: 1-20-2005
Directed by Robert Vincent O’Neill
Featuring Lawrence Montaigne, Jo Anne Meredith, Frank Cuva

A psychiatrist with marital problems takes on a psychotic who commits murder against women, but thinks he’s only dreaming the murders.

Here’s the set-up. The psycho has a hatred of women (brought on, of course, by his relationship with his mother), and must kill them when the voice inside his head tells him to. The psychiatrist is in love with his mistress, but his bitter hard-drinking wife (now there’s an original character) refuses to give him a divorce. Now, given that the psychiatrist wants to get rid of his wife, and has a woman-killing psycho for a patient, what kind of plan do you think he’s going to concoct? And given what you know about cinematic irony, what do you think is actually going to happen? Answer these two questions correctly (I figured out the first one twenty minutes into the movie and the second one at the halfway point), and you have your movie. Whether you would wish to see the movie once you’ve figured these things out largely depends on your taste for sleazy rape scenes and interminable romantic interlude scenes (the latter to romantic soft-rock songs). It also depends on whether you consider the brainwashing sequence to be clever or stupid; sadly, I lean towards the latter. As for the story itself, it moves at snail speed. This one is for fans of sleazy exploitation.