The Psychopath

Produced by Studio Amicus, the film is somewhere between the Hammer films and those based on Edgar Wallace’s writings. It's a rather dark film with murder mysteries, where we are deliberately led to various characters who might be murderers. Each corpse has a doll with the victim's face lying next to it, the suspects include the widow Von Sturm, who surrounds herself with dolls, which she also makes, and who is rather childish in her old age, and Louise, who works in a toy factory. But the inspector has a much larger circle of suspects. Some scenes are not lacking in tension, and the oppressive atmosphere is enhanced by the gloomy cinematography with a sombre soundtrack. Some of the dolls are arranged in the same way as the people in question were murdered. When one of the girls is killed with a knife, the killer inserts a miniature knife into the doll... I'm raising the overall three stars by one for the ending, because it was good. (10/08/2024)