Who is killing the women in Julie's (Marianna Hill) therapy group? Is it the creepy psychiatrist Pieter (Klaus Kinski)? His troubled daughter Alison (Donna Wilkes)? Julie's grinning ex-husband Doug (Craig Wasson)? What about Gilbert (a young Christopher Lloyd), the bitter handyman? Or even the even younger-looking detective Jake (Joe Regalbuto)?
Hill plays an advice columnist who is having more problems than a week's worth of Ann Landers letters. She is receiving death threats, and someone is killing the women in her group with a large pair of scissors. The killer, whom I figured out right away, wears a fedora and coat, a striking silhouette in the un-scary killing scenes. Julie is also messing around with the chain-smoking Pieter, resulting in a sex scene I could have gone all my life without seeing. Pieter is sleeping with a stripper/patient, and he, uh, "analyzes her feelings" against a hot water heater, resulting in another sex scene I could have gone my whole life without seeing. The finale takes place in Julie's newspaper office, as the film makers drag the proceedings out by assembling all of the suspects together, like an Agatha Christie novel, except with shootings and stabbings instead of a parlor full of upper class Brits and a brilliant detective.
Filmed and released in 1980, this has all the makings of a slasher film. The few killings here are not all that gory, but violent. The name cast try their best. Paulsen's direction is void of suspense as he hopes his mediocre script will carry the film. Instead, it becomes gimmicky and silly, but trudges along like this is Shakespeare. Between the awful synth score, the scissors have their own theme when they appear, and Kinski's overbaked performance, a viewer must take this with a grain of salt. I cannot recommend this.
