Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Schizo is set in England & starts in the North East as a man named William Haskin (Jack Watson) reads a national newspaper, Haskin notices a story about ice skating champion Samantha Gray (Lynne Frederick) & her fiancé Alan Falconer (John Leyton) who are about to get married in London. Haskin takes a great interest in the story & heads off to London where he books into a hotel & starts making enquiries as to where Samantha lives, Haskin manages to discover where Samantha & Alan are holding their reception & posing as a waiter manages to leave a bloody knife next to the wedding cake which Samantha finds. Samantha then starts to get mysterious phone-calls & sees Haskin hanging around. Samantha starts to panic & confides in her friend & psychiatrist Leornard Hawthorne (John Fraser), soon after Leonard is murdered & he is just the first as other's around Samantha are also found dead but who is responsible & why?This British production was produced & directed by Pete Walker & to me felt quite similar to his next film The Comeback (1977) in which both the main character's start seeing & hearing things as those around them are killed off by a mystery killer who seems to have some sort of connection to the lead, I gave The Comeback four stars out of ten & I see no reason not to award Schizo exactly the same as it's not really any better but at the same time no worse. Schizo takes a while to get going, the first murder doesn't happen until about the hour mark so there's a lot of talk to get through which doesn't really amount to much. Sure, some may say it's necessary build-up but I'd rather describe it as padding & at an hour & fifty minutes long Schizo really didn't need any padding. The central mystery isn't that good or engaging, in fact the title of the film gives the entire twist away & I will say that I guessed the twist quite easily due to the script trying far too hard to single one character out as the killer & it's fairly obvious that they haven't killed anyone. The script takes itself very seriously & seems to think it's the cleverest thing around, while the majority of Schizo is set in the real world & tries to paint the mysterious goings-on with scientific credibility there is one totally out of place scene set at a séance which verges into the supernatural for no apparent reason. Schizo feels like a Pete Walker film, the middle class English setting & the inadequacies of authority & justice are constant themes throughout his films & they are very much evident here. I can't say I hated Schizo as it has it's moments but I found the mystery aspect weak & too predictable while there's not quite enough gore here to satisfy the exploitation crowd as Schizo falls somewhere between exploitation & psychological thriller. The ambiguous ending doesn't help end things on a positive note either, while Schizo tries to be clever & deep in it's depiction of schizophrenia it ends up looking silly so don't base any psychological studies on it.With a very middle class mid 70's British setting Schizo is one of those films that could be used in history lessons as it show's lots of fashions (I'd like to see someone wear that red bobble hat in public today that Haskins does in the opening), cars & locations as they would have been in reality back then without any fancy production design or window dressing. There's a bit of gore, someone gets a knitting needle through their head & out their eye, someones head is bashed in with a hammer & someones throat is slit although none of these scenes are that gory. The bloodiest bit is during a flashback where a naked woman is brutally stabbed several times. Schizo isn't that scary & doe shave it's daft moments like the end as a shocked panting Samantha just stands there as a demented Haskins walks up behind her pulling some very silly faces & just how did that meat cleaver get into her super market shopping trolley?Filmed entirely on locations the production values are good & it looks alright, the acting is OK with Frederick the ex-wife of Peter Sellers quite good as the lead. Stephanie Beacham has yet another minor role in a British horror film but sports a very ugly hair style.Schizo is an OK horror thriller that thinks it's smarter than it is, there's a touch of gore & a real world look & while it's not terrible I doubt I would ever want to see it again. A passable time waster that Pete Walker fans might get more out of than the average viewer.

Pete Walker's "Schizo" is a commendable take on the at the time yet to be defined stalker/slasher genre and it even has some Giallo undertones. But sadly, the film itself isn't anything too exciting. Samantha is a successful ice skater and she's getting married. After the marriage, the trouble begins as she's being followed & stalked by a strange person from her own past. Soon enough dead bodies - all friends and acquaintances of Samantha - start popping up everywhere. Walker brings his own style to the picture, presenting us a handful of gruesome killings and some female nudity along the side. But his directing efforts can't help a screenplay that's too talkative for its own good and a plot that's simply too predictable. The ending is satisfactory, so "Schizo" surely isn't a waste of time for true fans of the genre.

Despite its inclusion in the EuroShock Collection DVD series, this British number borrows more from Hitchcock than Argento, though it never builds the sustained tension of the former or the grand guignol wetwork of the latter, nor explores the dizzying and inventive camera work of either auteur.In true British style, this film is very dry, never trying to reach beyond the stilted limitations director Pete Walker seems to think the genre carries with it. It's also way too long, nearing the 2-hour mark, with nary a murder to be found until about 60 minutes into the affair. The pacing becomes a bit frustrating, especially with bits like a trip to a "psychic brotherhood" meeting, which introduces a supernatural subplot that isn't subsequently explored. This 10 minutes of run time is an excessive space-filler that merely introduces a victim and mistakenly offers a revelation that is rendered a confusing gaffe when the murderer is revealed.The pretty basic plot involves a newly-married woman being stalked by a paroled man who murdered her mother several years before. Since we see him from the start, the scenes where he lingers on the street near her house and spies on her while she shops for produce don't have much impact... old British men don't imply the same menace that masked boogeymen like Michael Myers do. When the murders begin to occur (and don't expect much here; this is one of the more conservative body counts you'll find in a slasher movie), the film picks up a bit, but the extended stalking that dominates the first half of the film is rendered moot and perplexing when the murderer is unveiled in the final act.The twist ending isn't surprising, and if you know in advance this film is supposed to have a twist ending, you'll probably guess it on the first try. The final showdown between our heroine and her stalker is limp and over before any tension is built, leaving the climax a bit stilted. However, the last moments of the film do finish things out in a nicely subdued fashion, and leave plenty room for viewer's imaginations to concoct the nastiness that seems apt to unfold after the curtain drops.There is some diverting gore to be had, and a shower scene that seems tacked on just to establish that the female lead is pretty cute (as reported before, the horror elements in this scene only become confusing after the final revelation), but largely the film relies on a cat-and-mouse approach that would be more effective if the final reel actually built to something substantial. Best scene in the film honors undoubtedly go to a particularly well-executed and edited bit of grue with a sledgehammer, and nice details like the victim's shattered and bloody glasses on the ground next to their body are what keep this film viewable despite its unnecessary length. There are also a few fun unintentional laughs, like a scene where a victim in a car looks over his shoulder directly into the back seat where the killer is... and somehow doesn't see the black-clad wraith clutching a butcher knife sitting behind him. Overall, this is an interesting piece for those who prefer suspense and acting over splatter money shots, but despite its best moments, Schizo is miles away from essential.

It seems a terrible indictment that Walker's films were treated so badly at the time of release for it is undeniable that, especially considering their low budgets, they achieve everything they set out to. Being a cinema goer of the period, I of course was also guilty in that I never went to one on it's UK release and have only caught up with them more recently. The time was probably not quite right for the large audiences but now that I have seen most of the Italian giallo, I can sit in wonder and gleefully enjoy this 'terror movie' and it's surprisingly generous amounts of bloody gore and violence. The acting is at times ponderous, John Leyton of sixties pop singing fame, struggles here and there but perhaps his part is underwritten. Lynne Frederick makes a few odd gestures but these are eventually explained, as is everything else in this exciting and clever little movie.