This movie is the proof that the world is becoming a sick and dumb place

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

It might not be on the level of Les Diaboliques but I thought this was a surprisingly good mystery and psychological thriller. After the energetic start I thought it would be a roller-coaster. Instead I got much more of a psychological game between the numb wheelchair bound Helga and her caretaker Emily and on the other side between Miriam and her half-brother Warren. There was something not right about Warren I thought right from the start and I had a feeling he was planning something evil together with Emily. I guess I was partially right even though I didn't expect that one of the two didn't really exist (and not going to say who). It certainly had a Psycho feeling but I thought Homicidal was more clever and had better character development. I have to applaud actress Joan Marshall/Jean Arless for pulling of such a stunt!

Everybody and his or her dog keeps yelping about how this is a bargain-basement copy of "Psycho". I wrote a paper on the Hitchcock film during my Master's studies in film so I know the film reel by reel. This one, the Castle film, was INSPIRED by "Psycho"or, more to the point, inspired by that film's financial success, but the impetus and the format are vastly different. There is no heroine in peril or any old, dark house. Nobody has been embalmed and frankly, I don't remember any bathtubs at all. It doesn't feature any major stars and wasn't made at a major studio. There is gender confusion for the audience to solve but the characters are all very much alive. There is very little humor in "Homicidal" while humor is hidden all over "Psycho". Perhaps viewers take Leonard Maltin too seriously. He writes "popcorn reviews" aimed right down the middle of the viewing public and that's about it. Nothing that sways in any other direction is valid for him, alas.Curtis Stotlar

William Castle directed this great black and white film at Columbia. Glenn Corbett then a Columbia contract player stars and one wonders why Glenn Corbett never became a big movie star. After this film Glenn Corbett would go on to play supporting roles in movies starring James Stewart, Charlton Heston and several with John Wayne.This movie expertly filmed and with fine art and set decoration has a trick ending and one can figure it out midway the film but if you do it sort of ruins the wind up of this suspense film. All the attractive leads do very well and this is a most enjoyable film from the William Castle suspense factorI recommend this film

A young woman wants to pay a large sum of money to a stranger, if the stranger will marry her quickly. We follow this woman through the film as she exhibits behavior that is not entirely benevolent; yet her motives remain veiled. Plot pacing lags at times. But the film's ending is suspenseful, as a person enters a big house at night, no lights, just shadowy rooms and a strange tapping sound; and then ...The scriptwriter lays a trap for viewers in the film's first thirty minutes. Unless viewers can extricate themselves from this trap, the story's underlying premise will remain baffling until the end. Yet, even after the explanation, I still found the premise confusing. Some extra lines of pivotal dialogue scattered through the plot would have helped.The film's climax scene becomes the big payoff to viewers, many of whom never extricated themselves from that trap. But then that's it. There's nothing else to the film ... no substantive story, no thematic depth, just a gimmicky premise and that shocking climax.The visual shocks, the film's lurid title, the unsubtle acting, the cheap production design, and that hokey "fright break" near the end combine to telegraph "Homicidal" as b-grade drive-in flick. And that's not necessarily bad. The film does have some value as cheap entertainment, especially if one hasn't seen any of the prominent films of the early 1960s. Otherwise, "Homicidal" could be construed as something of a rip-off.