A brilliant film that helped define a genre

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

This one is a lot like watching an episode of Dragnet or Route 66 and and combing that with Hitchcock's Psycho. John Ireland plays Detective Sgt. Dave Harmon who reminds me a little bit like Sgt. Joe Friday or even Buz Murdock with his cool demeanor and smooth talking detective style. Cliff Fields plays Jonathan Crane who will remind you all to much Norman Bates. There are a lot of differences of course from this film and Hitchcock's Psycho but you can easily draw parallels between the films and characters Jonathan Crane & Norman Bates.While this film is very similar to Psycho in it's way it is in no means a rip-off of Hitchcock's classic. This film is a story of it's own - and it's a pretty good one.One thing I did not like this film - the ending. The ending to me was hurried, a bit sloppy and could have been rewritten into something conclusive. But it is an unsuspected ending which is nice - must have been a shock to audiences in 1965.7/10

"Day of the Nightmare" is a dandy psycho picture. Now I am not saying it's a great film, but in light of the very low budget, it's awfully entertaining.The film begins with two strange events. The first is when a couple are heard arguing violently in their apartment and the police are called. The couple is gone, but their dog has been viciously kicked to death--and the police assume the woman was murdered since some neighbor saw a man hauling away a large trunk nearby. The second involves a woman stalking another lady--you think there's going to be a murder, but a friend shows up and frightens away the attacker. The problem is, that the intended victim doesn't know she was almost killed. How does all this fit together? See the film for yourself to find out.For 1965, this is a rather scandalous film and must have caught audiences by surprise. I guessed the surprise twist--but that is because now in 2013, practically anything goes on TV and in films! My only serious complaint is that this twist was revealed a bit too early and impaired the suspense just a bit. Still, worth seeing and really strange for the time in which it was made.

Problem artist Jonathan Crane likes to beat barely dressed models with a belt in his L.A. studio and, apparently, carry on with his neighbor, the weird-looking Doris Mays, even though he has a pretty wife and expensive tract home in suburban San Diego. When the downstairs tenants of his L.A. complex have their orgy interrupted by sounds of violence coming from Miss Mays' apartment and later see a man putting a large trunk into his car, a police detective (John Ireland, who looks as though he'd rather be anywhere else) begins questioning, and then tailing, Jonathan. Meanwhile, in San Diego, Jonathan's wife notices a strange trunk in their garage and, unbeknownst to her, is being followed by a creepy-looking, knife-wielding woman... This Grade-C psycho-drama somehow manages to hold the interest in spite of itself. Made in the wake of PSYCHO, mommie-motivated "Doris Mays" looks about as much like a woman as Michael Caine does in DRESSED TO KILL (which the movie, as well as "Doris", also resembles) so there's very little in the way of surprises. On the plus-side, it's got a good deal of sexual swinging, spanking, stalking, a stabbing, childhood flashbacks, psychiatric mumbo-jumbo, dry-humping, and lots of topless babes in 60s hair-dos. A tad too long at 94 minutes and photographed in crisp B&W by director Ted V. Mikels (THE CORPSE GRINDERS), this "nightmare" of a movie "stars" a no-name cast (with the exception of a tired-looking John Ireland and Elena "House Of Frankenstein" Verdugo as Jonathan's boss). Gangster Mickey Cohen's girlfriend, stripper Liz "Desperate Living" Renay, appears (uncredited) as the lascivious "Mrs. Sisterman" ...get it?5/10 -but fun, nonetheless.

Contrary to what the plot summary says, this is NOT about a woman returning from the dead! The story concerns Jonathan Crane, an artist with a decidedly sick way of getting his models in the mood to pose. The movie opens with Jonathan having a topless lovely lay across a couch, then binding her ankles and wrists and beating her back with a belt while wailing, "Unclean!Unclean!" Ooohkaaay. To top THAT off, Jonathan's wife is being stalked by a mysterious woman who slips into the house and chases the wife out and through some woods. The wife is baffled as to who the woman is, but she's someone closer to Mrs. Crane than she realizes . . .A weird psychosexual drama with all kinds of dysfunctional kinkiness. In between the story concerning Jonathan's kinkiness and the mystery woman are some sleazy scenes including an orgy and a flashback revealing an adolescent sex encounter between Jonathan and an older woman that indicates where he got his taste for whipping from. Grotesquely fascinating.