Two Twisted DVDs With Your Pumpkin Pie!

Two twisted DVD treats to have alongside your pumpkin pie are out this week from Dark Sky Films: Madhouse and Psychic Killer.

Madhouse is a deranged 1981 slasher film about crazy, disfigured Mary (Allison Biggers) who escapes from an asylum with her killer rottweiler and heads to her twin sister Julia’s (Trish Everly) house to give her sibling a gory surprise birthday party. This “video nasty” , originally titled There Was a Little Girl, was banned in the UK and was directed by Ovidio G. Assonitis (Beyond The Door), with a score by Riz Ortolani (Cannibal Holocaust). The Grand Guignol finale is helped immeasurably by an unhinged performance from Dennis Robertson as the Catholic priest from hell, Father James.

Another weird rarity, blessedly unearthed on DVD just in time for Thanksgiving, is Psychic Killer. This bizarrely amusing '70s shocker is about a poor momma’s boy named Arnold Masters (Jim Hutton). When he’s unjustly arrested for the murder of his mother’s doctor, he's thrown into a maximum security asylum where he meets a cell mate who wills him an amulet that allows him to kill others psychically. When he's released from prison, he's able to get revenge on those who wronged him with his mind -- he causes a cop to drive off a cliff; a butcher to carve himself up; a slutty nurse to be scalded to death in a shower. It's directed by actor Ray Danton (The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond) and is jammed with a gaggle of oddball costars: Julie Adams (The Creature From the Black Lagoon), Whit Bissell (I Was a Teenage Werewolf), Neville Brand (Eaten Alive), Paul Burke (Valley of the Dolls), Della Reese (Touched by an Angel) and Aldo Ray (Riot on Sunset Strip). It looks sensational now on DVD in an anamorphic widescreen edition, with the trailer and TV ads as extras.