Day of the Nightmare (1965)

Sorry, this movie sucks

Sadly Over-hyped

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

The film I saw was neither the one described in IMDb's synopsis nor that described in the other reviews. I watched it on Netflix and assume the more lurid scenes were cut. This is a shame. Although I don't particularly enjoy watching depictions of sadism, etc, I see no reason for a movie not to be shown in its entirety, especially on a site which is generally not so squeamish. That being said, I enjoyed the movie despite its bad acting and lack of continuity (the cars driven by the characters, especially the hero/heroine's station wagon, varied in age and marque.) The subject was interesting and the central character well played. There was an inventive use of cheap sets, and the actors seemed to have been chosen from the director's friends and acquaintances, much like in an Ed Wood production. If you enjoy watching Ed Wood's movies, you won't want to miss Day of the Nightmare. It is one step up and quite a bit darker.

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.

Contrary to what the plot summary says, this is NOT about a woman returning from the dead! The story concerns Jonathan Crane, an artist with a decidedly sick way of getting his models in the mood to pose. The movie opens with Jonathan having a topless lovely lay across a couch, then binding her ankles and wrists and beating her back with a belt while wailing, "Unclean!Unclean!" Ooohkaaay. To top THAT off, Jonathan's wife is being stalked by a mysterious woman who slips into the house and chases the wife out and through some woods. The wife is baffled as to who the woman is, but she's someone closer to Mrs. Crane than she realizes . . .A weird psychosexual drama with all kinds of dysfunctional kinkiness. In between the story concerning Jonathan's kinkiness and the mystery woman are some sleazy scenes including an orgy and a flashback revealing an adolescent sex encounter between Jonathan and an older woman that indicates where he got his taste for whipping from. Grotesquely fascinating.