Three smalltown schoolteachers are on their way to Cincinatti for a baseball game, but as bad luck would have it their car breaks down and they manage to reach a garage in the middle of nowhere. However, when they get out to see if anyone is around to help them, the place is mysteriously deserted. Ed Stiles (Richard Alden) examines the engine and realises they need a new fuel pump if they want to go any further, but if the garage - and the house next to it - are empty, then the three of them are in something of a quandary. They share a few Cokes while they ponder their next move, unaware that they are being watched...
Seeing The Sadist today, it seems like we owe Arch Hall Jr an apology. For years his name has been synonymous among cult movie fans for the very worst of leading men, a boy who only got into acting (and music for that matter) because he was pushed into it by his dear old dad who wanted a movie star for a son. This was handy as Arch Hall Sr owned independent movie company Filmways, and The Sadist was one of its low budget productions: seriously, all the money is there on the screen which looks like very little overall.
But writer and director James Landis was onto something when he based his script around the fifties thrill killer Charles Starkweather and his teenage girlfriend Caril Fugate, and the crimes that shocked America may not be a tasteful story to base your film around, certainly not as tasteful as Terrence Malick's Badlands which arrived ten years later, but it made for surprisingly compelling suspense in this case. The people watching the three schoolteachers are an on the run pair of murderers, Charlie Tibbs (Hall) and his girlfriend Judy (Marilyn Manning, you know, from Eegah).
And this vile duo have more murder on their minds as the pistol-toting Charlie advances on the three and suddenly they are hostages of a couple who really don't like teachers. At all. The teachers are understandably wary of these obvious psychopaths, but work out a deal that Ed will fix the car so that Charlie and Judy can make good their escape. Yet as they wait in the summer heat, Charlie grows bored and tragedy is just around the corner. Her enjoys torturing them, and the oldest teacher is given the chance to beg for his life for the time it takes for Charlie to finish his bottle of cola, one of many ingeniously nasty twists to the film.
His begging none too effective, the oldest teacher is shot dead, leaving Ed and Doris (Helen Hovey) to panicky negotiating for their survival. As all the while Ed tries to fix the car, he schemes to work out a way of besting the baddies, but Charlie is wily as well as deadly. It is Hall's finest performance, which is not saying much but his weaselly villain, with his face screwed up in defiance, hunched posture and hand always clinging to his gun is a vividly despicable creation. As an examination of cruel fate, The Sadist has undeniable power; it may not be the greatest thriller ever made, but the sheer bad luck of the teachers, wandering into danger without any sense of reason, makes for a strong feeling of injustice. It's Charlie's pettiness and venom that make this stick in the mind. Arch, we salute you.
