The Sadist

In Brief: I canceled The Sadist in November to make way for a bit of post-election counter-programming, although in retrospect, this might have been almost as appropriate as what I screened instead. We're finally getting back around to this creepy thriller about a madman with his finger on the trigger and a penchant for pushing people around. Better than most B-movies have any right to be, James Landis' The Sadist is a surprisingly powerful post-noir proto-slasher that was the first to deal with the twisted true story of Charlie Starkweather, a tale that would later be addressed by Terrence Malick in Badlands and Oliver Stone in Natural Born Killers. This film benefits greatly from a bizarre, yet profoundly unnerving, performance from Arch Hall, Jr., whose brief career was entirely conceived by his father, drive-in movie producer Arch Hall, Sr. What really distinguishes The Sadist from other films of its low-budget ilk, however, is the atmosphere created by future Oscar-winning cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, making his U.S. feature debut. Pulpy, disturbing and cheap, cult-exploitation cinema doesn't get much better than The Sadist. The Thursday Horror Picture Show will screen The Sadist on Thursday, Feb. 9, at 9:15 p.m. at The Grail Moviehouse, hosted by Xpress movie critic Scott Douglas.