One night at the Bergen Field Mental Health Facility, debauched Dr. Derrek Russell (Malcolm McDowell) sneaks into the room of one of his disturbed female patients and brutally rapes her. In the daytime, she jumps to her death in the presence of visitors, including a ten year-old girl.
Now the movie fast forwards ten years to the present of 1990. A new patient, physically attractive – Sandy Ramirez (Pamela Gidley) – has arrived. Supposedly a psychometric paranoid and promiscuous, Sandy is hostile to her surroundings. One evening Russell awakens her and drags her out of bed. In a darkened room he forcefully administers penicillin to Sandy, even though she is listed as allergic. His intent is rape. When assistant Michael Kahn (Geoffrey Lewis) enters the room, he seems shocked at first. But then administers another dose of penicillin to Sandy, saying that if you want to kill her ensure that she gets enough. The plan is to bury Sandy before morning and pretend that she escaped from the facility.
At breakfast time, comatose Sandy is not found in her bed. Frantic searches are fruitless. Dr. Russell does spot her, or thinks he spots her, alive on a rooftop looking at him. When he tries to approach her, she disappears. Then strange events begin to happen as the dissolute doctor's mental facilities gradually deteriorate. He even diagnoses himself suffering from a form of cryptomnesia accompanied by paranoid hysteria and hallucinations.
SPOILER: What has happened is this: Sandy was the ten year-old daughter of the woman who killed herself at the beginning of the movie. As Sandy wanted revenge, she haunted the depraved doctor with a series of unnerving events until he himself became a lunatic. Malcolm, disgusted with the Russell's general behavior, was Sandy's accomplice all along!
Directed by Charles Winkler, the film really is not a horror flick. But the tone shifts from serious to comedy to incredulous. Perhaps a better classification might be a florid thriller, as film critic Leonard Maltin put it. At the end of the movie before the credits, as nurse Sandy – with the huge needle the size of a knife – approaches Russell in his padded cell, you can clearly hear the director say "Cut it!" The eerie music by Steven Scott Smalley is effective.
Now the movie fast forwards ten years to the present of 1990. A new patient, physically attractive – Sandy Ramirez (Pamela Gidley) – has arrived. Supposedly a psychometric paranoid and promiscuous, Sandy is hostile to her surroundings. One evening Russell awakens her and drags her out of bed. In a darkened room he forcefully administers penicillin to Sandy, even though she is listed as allergic. His intent is rape. When assistant Michael Kahn (Geoffrey Lewis) enters the room, he seems shocked at first. But then administers another dose of penicillin to Sandy, saying that if you want to kill her ensure that she gets enough. The plan is to bury Sandy before morning and pretend that she escaped from the facility.
At breakfast time, comatose Sandy is not found in her bed. Frantic searches are fruitless. Dr. Russell does spot her, or thinks he spots her, alive on a rooftop looking at him. When he tries to approach her, she disappears. Then strange events begin to happen as the dissolute doctor's mental facilities gradually deteriorate. He even diagnoses himself suffering from a form of cryptomnesia accompanied by paranoid hysteria and hallucinations.
SPOILER: What has happened is this: Sandy was the ten year-old daughter of the woman who killed herself at the beginning of the movie. As Sandy wanted revenge, she haunted the depraved doctor with a series of unnerving events until he himself became a lunatic. Malcolm, disgusted with the Russell's general behavior, was Sandy's accomplice all along!
Directed by Charles Winkler, the film really is not a horror flick. But the tone shifts from serious to comedy to incredulous. Perhaps a better classification might be a florid thriller, as film critic Leonard Maltin put it. At the end of the movie before the credits, as nurse Sandy – with the huge needle the size of a knife – approaches Russell in his padded cell, you can clearly hear the director say "Cut it!" The eerie music by Steven Scott Smalley is effective.
