Day of the Nightmare (1965)

Absolutely Fantastic

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

This one is a lot like watching an episode of Dragnet or Route 66 and and combing that with Hitchcock's Psycho. John Ireland plays Detective Sgt. Dave Harmon who reminds me a little bit like Sgt. Joe Friday or even Buz Murdock with his cool demeanor and smooth talking detective style. Cliff Fields plays Jonathan Crane who will remind you all to much Norman Bates. There are a lot of differences of course from this film and Hitchcock's Psycho but you can easily draw parallels between the films and characters Jonathan Crane & Norman Bates.While this film is very similar to Psycho in it's way it is in no means a rip-off of Hitchcock's classic. This film is a story of it's own - and it's a pretty good one.One thing I did not like this film - the ending. The ending to me was hurried, a bit sloppy and could have been rewritten into something conclusive. But it is an unsuspected ending which is nice - must have been a shock to audiences in 1965.7/10

"Day of the Nightmare" is a dandy psycho picture. Now I am not saying it's a great film, but in light of the very low budget, it's awfully entertaining.The film begins with two strange events. The first is when a couple are heard arguing violently in their apartment and the police are called. The couple is gone, but their dog has been viciously kicked to death--and the police assume the woman was murdered since some neighbor saw a man hauling away a large trunk nearby. The second involves a woman stalking another lady--you think there's going to be a murder, but a friend shows up and frightens away the attacker. The problem is, that the intended victim doesn't know she was almost killed. How does all this fit together? See the film for yourself to find out.For 1965, this is a rather scandalous film and must have caught audiences by surprise. I guessed the surprise twist--but that is because now in 2013, practically anything goes on TV and in films! My only serious complaint is that this twist was revealed a bit too early and impaired the suspense just a bit. Still, worth seeing and really strange for the time in which it was made.

It could only be DAY OF THE NIGHTMARE (1965); a mix between a nudie and PSYCHO, with a pinch of HOMICIDAL thrown in for good measure. I think it's a bit better and more entertaining than the 4.1 rating on IMDb might suggest. I liked it.The unknown Cliff Fields delivers an outrageously OTT performance as deranged painter Jonathan Crane. He's impotent because his parents were swingers and as a child he walked in on mom doing one of her lovers, who then spanked the voyeuristic little weirdo. Now Johnny gets his jollies by tying up topless models and smacking their bums with a belt until he, uh, well you know. If that isn't entertaining enough, Jonathan is also a schizo who slaps on a cone bra, trench-coat, pageboy wig and sunglasses and goes on a murder spree under his secondary persona, "Doris Mays." Neighbors who spot Doris leaving her apartment think she's just your run-of-the-mill "bull d**e" but no one seems to be able to put two and two together that Cliff and Doris are actually the same person. Jonathan is married to the sweet but very naive Barbara (Barbara Bain) and she tries to be understanding that her husband is always away on "business." Little does she know, but "business" equals putting on ladies underthings, hiring lesbian prostitutes and murdering women who remind him of his impotence! Sometimes when hubby is gone, Barbara is stalked by "Doris," who hangs around outside the home spying on her and eventually sneaks inside her home, attacks her with a knife and chases her around in the woods for about five minutes. Here and there, the film throws in a gratuitous nude scene, such as when three swinger couples put on blindfolds, spin around until they're disoriented and then feel/crawl around the room looking for members of the opposite sex they can start groping (!) Oh yeah, and for some reason "Doris" slays a chihuahua because its barking is annoying her. I can't stand yippy little ankle biters either, so this didn't bother me. The movie is very funny at times and seems just as confused about what it wants to be as Jonathan. There are lots of crazy flashbacks attempting to explain Jonathan's behavior, obligatory psycho-babble, several surprisingly creepy moments and even a bit of suspense. I'm convinced Brian De Palma watched this before he made DRESSED TO KILL. Both obviously take their cue from PSYCHO, but have a lot in common otherwise, right down to the killer's disguise (the wig, trench coat and sunglasses).Top-billed John Ireland (an Oscar nominee just fifteen years earlier) "stars" as the lead detective on the case, but his performance is forgettable, and his scenes are boring. John Hart (BLACKENSTEIN) is pretty awful as Jonathan's self-centered psychiatrist father, who sleeps with his female patients. Legendary Liz Renay (of John Waters' DESPERATE LIVING fame) has an uncredited one-scene cameo as one of the dad's lascivious patients. Bette Treadville (who looks like she belongs in a Waters movie) is the 300-pound black maid. And Elena Verdugo (HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN) has just one scene as an art agent. Bain was pretty good as the female lead, but the movie is dominated by Fields, who gets to act like an arrogant, eye-rolling jerk as Jonathan, gets to scream and cry when recalling a traumatic childhood with two oversexed parents, and (with help from a female dub-over) gets to act dainty, mannered and feminine as "Doris." It's a shame he didn't get any other starring roles.The DVD is from Something Weird, who have paired it with another movie called SCREAM OF THE BUTTERFLY (1965). I started watching SCREAM last night and it seemed like it might be decent enough to merit a purchase of this disc. It's about an adulterous platinum blonde bikini-clad tramp named Marla (Nelida Lobato) who conspires with her lover to kill her wealthy tycoon husband, who married her after a week-long fling. Seems more noir/thriller than horror, but I'll try to finish it and write a review. It's well shot by Ray Dennis Steckler (R.I.P.) and seems to have pretty amusing dialogue, nude scenes from the busty leading lady, plus a hilarious rip-off of the FROM HERE TO ETERNITY beach scene.

Problem artist Jonathan Crane likes to beat barely dressed models with a belt in his L.A. studio and, apparently, carry on with his neighbor, the weird-looking Doris Mays, even though he has a pretty wife and expensive tract home in suburban San Diego. When the downstairs tenants of his L.A. complex have their orgy interrupted by sounds of violence coming from Miss Mays' apartment and later see a man putting a large trunk into his car, a police detective (John Ireland, who looks as though he'd rather be anywhere else) begins questioning, and then tailing, Jonathan. Meanwhile, in San Diego, Jonathan's wife notices a strange trunk in their garage and, unbeknownst to her, is being followed by a creepy-looking, knife-wielding woman... This Grade-C psycho-drama somehow manages to hold the interest in spite of itself. Made in the wake of PSYCHO, mommie-motivated "Doris Mays" looks about as much like a woman as Michael Caine does in DRESSED TO KILL (which the movie, as well as "Doris", also resembles) so there's very little in the way of surprises. On the plus-side, it's got a good deal of sexual swinging, spanking, stalking, a stabbing, childhood flashbacks, psychiatric mumbo-jumbo, dry-humping, and lots of topless babes in 60s hair-dos. A tad too long at 94 minutes and photographed in crisp B&W by director Ted V. Mikels (THE CORPSE GRINDERS), this "nightmare" of a movie "stars" a no-name cast (with the exception of a tired-looking John Ireland and Elena "House Of Frankenstein" Verdugo as Jonathan's boss). Gangster Mickey Cohen's girlfriend, stripper Liz "Desperate Living" Renay, appears (uncredited) as the lascivious "Mrs. Sisterman" ...get it?5/10 -but fun, nonetheless.