**SPOILERS** Surprisingly good and effective thriller about a couple on the road and on the run from the state police leaving a trail of dead bodies along the way.
Based on the 1957-58 murder spree of the infamous Charlie Starkweather and his 14 year-old girlfriend Caril Fugate "The Sadist" has a couple of murderous misfits traveling the desert roads of Arizonia and California ending up stranded in this service station, after murdering the couple who run it. The two killers then wait for a motorist to show up to take his, or her, car in order to make their getaway from the perusing state troopers.
Driving into the station are three vacationing teachers Carl Doris & Ed from Cincinnati going to L.A to attend Carl's sons graduation and take in a Dogers/Redleg baseball game. Finding the place deserted and with their car broken down the three are stuck in the middle of nowhere and with no mean to get help but for another motorist to show up and help them.
Up pops Charlie, gun in hand, and his mentally unstable or slightly retarded girlfriend Judy holding the terrified trio hostage and planing to murder them after Ed, who seems to know a lot about car engines, fixes his car for them to drive off with. Charlie is a sadistic psycho who already murdered some dozen people and his girl Judy, who never says a word in the movie,are always a step ahead of the police. The killers now seem to be close to getting captured, or killed, by the cops if they don't find a way to get back on the open road fast.
When Charlie shows up in the film you sense that he's not your ordinary movie criminal. Giggling with a maniacal sneer Charlie really enjoys torturing his victims to the point where they almost beg him to murder them just to put them out of their misery.Starting off with Carl Charlie torments the man so brutally, after having beaten his head in with a handgun, that you turn away from the screen in disgust and horror.
Turning his sights on both Ed & Doris, after cold-bloodily shooting Carl, Charlie lets the couple live only to fix their car and tells the terrified couple that after the car is fixed he'll murder them as well. It's now only a matter of time for Ed & Doris to stay alive as long as their needed to help Charlie & Judy and it's in that time that Ed devises a plan for him and Doris to escape.
A true landmark in horror/crime movies "The Sadist" pulls no punches in getting it's message across to the public, back then in 1963, about psychotic and cold-blooded killers, like Charlie, in a way that's never been seen before in motion pictures.
Charlie ,dispite his craziness, is no fool he's smart enough to have evaded the police and is smart enough to know if Ed & Doris are trying to escape and turn the tables on him by disarming and killing him. Ed's plan only half works with Charlie disabled, for a few moments, and mistakenly shooting down Judy as he's blinded by a shot of gasoline from the fuel pump.
Going after both Ed & Doris, who took off after he was momentarily blinded, Charlie corners Ed who's shot to pieces by him and then gets in Ed's now operational car driving through the desert to catch up with and murder Doris. It's there in the inhospitable desert that Doris gets some unexpected help from a number of unexpected and unwanted, up until then, friends.
Based on the 1957-58 murder spree of the infamous Charlie Starkweather and his 14 year-old girlfriend Caril Fugate "The Sadist" has a couple of murderous misfits traveling the desert roads of Arizonia and California ending up stranded in this service station, after murdering the couple who run it. The two killers then wait for a motorist to show up to take his, or her, car in order to make their getaway from the perusing state troopers.
Driving into the station are three vacationing teachers Carl Doris & Ed from Cincinnati going to L.A to attend Carl's sons graduation and take in a Dogers/Redleg baseball game. Finding the place deserted and with their car broken down the three are stuck in the middle of nowhere and with no mean to get help but for another motorist to show up and help them.
Up pops Charlie, gun in hand, and his mentally unstable or slightly retarded girlfriend Judy holding the terrified trio hostage and planing to murder them after Ed, who seems to know a lot about car engines, fixes his car for them to drive off with. Charlie is a sadistic psycho who already murdered some dozen people and his girl Judy, who never says a word in the movie,are always a step ahead of the police. The killers now seem to be close to getting captured, or killed, by the cops if they don't find a way to get back on the open road fast.
When Charlie shows up in the film you sense that he's not your ordinary movie criminal. Giggling with a maniacal sneer Charlie really enjoys torturing his victims to the point where they almost beg him to murder them just to put them out of their misery.Starting off with Carl Charlie torments the man so brutally, after having beaten his head in with a handgun, that you turn away from the screen in disgust and horror.
Turning his sights on both Ed & Doris, after cold-bloodily shooting Carl, Charlie lets the couple live only to fix their car and tells the terrified couple that after the car is fixed he'll murder them as well. It's now only a matter of time for Ed & Doris to stay alive as long as their needed to help Charlie & Judy and it's in that time that Ed devises a plan for him and Doris to escape.
A true landmark in horror/crime movies "The Sadist" pulls no punches in getting it's message across to the public, back then in 1963, about psychotic and cold-blooded killers, like Charlie, in a way that's never been seen before in motion pictures.
Charlie ,dispite his craziness, is no fool he's smart enough to have evaded the police and is smart enough to know if Ed & Doris are trying to escape and turn the tables on him by disarming and killing him. Ed's plan only half works with Charlie disabled, for a few moments, and mistakenly shooting down Judy as he's blinded by a shot of gasoline from the fuel pump.
Going after both Ed & Doris, who took off after he was momentarily blinded, Charlie corners Ed who's shot to pieces by him and then gets in Ed's now operational car driving through the desert to catch up with and murder Doris. It's there in the inhospitable desert that Doris gets some unexpected help from a number of unexpected and unwanted, up until then, friends.