NEVER PICK-UP A STRANGER (1979)
aka Bloodrage
Article 3380 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 10-3-2010
Posting Date: 11-15-2010
Directed by Joseph Zito
Featuring Ian Scott, Jerry McGee, Judith-Marie Bergan
Country: USA
What it is: Psycho-killer movie

After accidentally killing a hooker, a young man runs away to New York hoping to evade capture. However, he soon starts killing hookers intentionally, and a cop from his home town has come to New York to investigate…

There’s part of me that wants to hate this mean-spirited, sleazy and depressing psycho-killer movie. Yet, I do have to give the movie a bit of credit; it does have some interesting ideas, and its disjointed narrative structure and sense of incompleteness occasionally forces you to figure out certain details on your own, and there is a bit of satisfaction to be had by doing so. Still, I do think the movie doesn’t quite succeed; it’s loaded with filler scenes, and I don’t think it ends up being as disturbing as it aspires to be. Incidentally, the title above is exactly how it reads on the screen; I don’t know if it occurred to anyone that if you add a dash between “pick” and “up”, it turns from a verb to a noun. The sleazy atmosphere makes the movie mostly appealing to exploitation fans.