This outré feature commences with a bow-tied Paul Bartel lookalike prowling around a topless entertainer's dressing room, continues with the confession of a young man whose first sexual encounter with a prostitute has left him an unfeeling hermit, and only gets weirder from there. The Bartel clone is Mr. Wyler, a boarding house lodger with the hots for his landlord's daughter, who considers him a 'trusted member of the family' for some unfathomable reason.Could either of these upstanding citizens be the Memorial Park Killer? The first film directed by Richard Hilliard, who would go on to helm the superior Violent Midnight (aka Psychomania), The Lonely Sex is a staggering piece of cinematic flotsam that has enough intriguing stylistic touches (an effective mirror sequence and some foreshadowing involving showroom dummies) to make it worthwhile viewing for adventurous cineastes.
5 Reviews
Before PSYCHO and PEEPING TOM...
Michael_Elliott17 March 2010
Lonely Sex, The (1959)
** (out of 4)
Bizarre film about a sex maniac stalking the streets who is apparently messed up due to his first sexual encounter being with a prostitute. He eventually kidnaps a woman and keeps her locked up in a shack in the woods as her friends try to find her. It's very important to keep in mind that this film beat PEEPING TOM and PSYCHO into theaters by a year so this film probably deserves to be better known among movie fans. Director Hilliard is best known for directing VIOLENT MIDNIGHT and writing the cult classic THE HORROR OF PARTY BEACH so it's interesting to see such an early cash-in on the sex maniac that would become more popular a decade or two later. This film has an ultra-low budget that doesn't allow for too much on the technical side but there are a few nice moments including one sequence in front of the mirror as the killer tries to "paint" over his face. The low-budget nature works in some ways as it gives the film a more documentary-like feel and this certainly helps in the scenes with the killer quietly stalking the women. What doesn't work too well are the performances, which are far from bad but none of them are good enough to really carry the movie. Another problem is the screenplay that never really gets too deep so don't expect anything psychological like the future Hitchcock film. Running a brief 58-minutes there's really not too much time to dig into any real issues with the killer so everything is pretty much just skipped in order to keep the film moving. We do get some brief nudity and a rather violent scene where the killer stones a woman to death but the blood level remains at zero. This certainly isn't a good movie but fans of the genre will probably want to check it out just to see something made before Norman Bates.
** (out of 4)
Bizarre film about a sex maniac stalking the streets who is apparently messed up due to his first sexual encounter being with a prostitute. He eventually kidnaps a woman and keeps her locked up in a shack in the woods as her friends try to find her. It's very important to keep in mind that this film beat PEEPING TOM and PSYCHO into theaters by a year so this film probably deserves to be better known among movie fans. Director Hilliard is best known for directing VIOLENT MIDNIGHT and writing the cult classic THE HORROR OF PARTY BEACH so it's interesting to see such an early cash-in on the sex maniac that would become more popular a decade or two later. This film has an ultra-low budget that doesn't allow for too much on the technical side but there are a few nice moments including one sequence in front of the mirror as the killer tries to "paint" over his face. The low-budget nature works in some ways as it gives the film a more documentary-like feel and this certainly helps in the scenes with the killer quietly stalking the women. What doesn't work too well are the performances, which are far from bad but none of them are good enough to really carry the movie. Another problem is the screenplay that never really gets too deep so don't expect anything psychological like the future Hitchcock film. Running a brief 58-minutes there's really not too much time to dig into any real issues with the killer so everything is pretty much just skipped in order to keep the film moving. We do get some brief nudity and a rather violent scene where the killer stones a woman to death but the blood level remains at zero. This certainly isn't a good movie but fans of the genre will probably want to check it out just to see something made before Norman Bates.
Noteworthy only because of the period.
daniel-mannouch6 December 2018
Warning: Spoilers
There's nudity, there's psychology, there's dramatic irony. It's The Lonely Sex and it's not that much, and i'm not just talking about the running time.
The Lonely Sex is a standard B-picture. It's short, it's simple and it's very cheap. I drifted off during the several talking head scenes. The only novelty to this film is that it is very sleazy for the time. Nudity in a B&W 50's film, shows what i know.
It makes a good case for how hypocrisy plays hand in hand with opinions regarding sexual deviancy. That was interesting. Apart from that, the film is slow and drags.
The Lonely Sex is a standard B-picture. It's short, it's simple and it's very cheap. I drifted off during the several talking head scenes. The only novelty to this film is that it is very sleazy for the time. Nudity in a B&W 50's film, shows what i know.
It makes a good case for how hypocrisy plays hand in hand with opinions regarding sexual deviancy. That was interesting. Apart from that, the film is slow and drags.
This appears to be a plea for understanding towards sexual deviants.
planktonrules1 December 2012
"The Lonely Sex" is a very strange sort of exploitation film. First, unlike most exploitation films of the 30s, 40s and 50s, this one actually has some nudity--and gratuitous nudity at that. Second, the film is about sexual deviants and appears to be a film that encourages the audience to try to empathize with these folks! However, the film is made so poorly and features so much lousy acting and dialog that you can't help but laugh at the film. It's about two guys--one a creepy guy who likes to peep in windows and make inappropriate advances towards his landlord's daughter and the other is a social misfit who kills a woman and then kidnaps the landlord's daughter! This second one is awfully pathetic and you do feel for the guy a bit...but he DOES murder a lady and I don't know how you can excuse that. Overall, the film is a confusing mess of a film that doesn't exactly seem to know what its message should be. Is this a warning to parents? Is this a plea for understanding? Is this just a badly written film? All I know is that the film was, at times, interesting but mostly it was just a forgettable cheap mess...with boobies.
Perverts are people too!
Woodyanders30 October 2013
Warning: Spoilers
A messed up hermit sex deviant (an unsettling portrayal by Karl Light) kidnaps an attractive young woman (the fetching Jean Evans) and holds her hostage in his remote shack located deep in the woods. Bluntly directed in a simple manner by Richard Hilliard (who also co-wrote the spare and straightforward script with Stephen Ripley), with stark black and white cinematography by Hilliard and Valmore Suprenant, a seriously warped morality, a moody jazzy score by Donald Martino, crude production values, acceptable acting by a no-name cast, and a tasty pair of bare boobs courtesy of a foxy gal who removes her bra at the very start of the picture, this obscure underground exploitation oddity radiates an authentically seedy vibe. Moreover, this movie's baffling attempt at presenting a depraved'n'deranged degenerate voyeur psycho stalker sicko as a pitiable (!) tormented figure gives it an additional unnerving edge. Better still, Lean Benedict makes the viewer's skin crawl as a slimy creep peeping tom who actually emerges as the hero (?!) of the piece. It's this latter element of misguided sympathy for vile and dangerous perverts that in turn makes this flick so jarring and strangely effective in an admittedly nihilistic sort of way; one almost admires the filmmakers for their audacity in this particular regard. Solid sordid fun.
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