Horror Review: WICKED, WICKED (1973)

"See the Hunter! See the Hunted! Both at the same time!"

This is the tagline for the 1973 film Wicked, Wicked, a schlocky slasher set in a luxurious beachside hotel. The plot is simple: a crazed killer is stalking and killing all the blonde female guests. When singer Lisa James (Tiffany Boling) is booked to perform in the hotel's lounge, she becomes the killer's newest obsession. Head of hotel security and Lisa's former lover Rick Stewart (David Bailey) is on the case to catch the killer before he strikes again.



The big gimmick for Wicked, Wicked is that the movie is presented almost entirely in "Duo-Vision" (MGM's fancy term for split-screen). There are times when this is used quite cleverly. A guest discusses her past as a dancer in a prestigious ballet company on the right side of the screen while we simultaneously see her dancing topless in a bar with men drunkenly throwing money at her on the left. There is an elderly organist character that appears solely to provide music for the movie's more climactic scenes. She has no dialogue and doesn't interact with any of the other characters. She's simply there. Playing the organ. It gave me the vibe of an accompanist playing live music in a theater for a silent film.

And it's little quirks and light touches of comedy like that that give Wicked, Wicked its charm. The movie's title song, "Wicked Wicked" is one of the most catchy, kitschy tunes ever featured in a horror flick and I love it. Where the movie fails is that it plays its hand way too early. You'll not only have the killer's identity guessed prematurely but fully revealed to you by the halfway point. A bit of a bummer but it doesn't completely spoil the rest of the film. If you can track down a copy of the uncut version, give it a watch!



Now, a small rant. After two years of waiting, Warner Bros. finally released Wicked, Wicked as part of their Archive Collection a few years ago. So, naturally, I jumped on it and dropped money on a supposedly restored copy as soon as it was released. Much to my utter disappointment, when I popped the DVD in a for a viewing, not only is the color grading terrible (parts of it might as well be sepia) but bits of certain scenes are missing. One in particular is edited in such a way that the audio is clearly spliced. I thought my DVD had skipped or something. Nope, that's how this version was released. It's a travesty. Luckily, I still have a bootleg copy that someone ripped from Turner Classic Movies. How TCM has an uncut version in their archives and Warner Bros. doesn't is baffling to me. Unfortunately, Wicked, Wicked isn't popular enough of a film for anyone to give it the proper release it deserves. End rant.