The Fred Killings (1971)

You've gotta see this one to believe it. The Todd Killings (1971) has Robert F. Lyons playing Skippy Todd, a 20-something Svengali living in some small California town who murders several local girls in an effort to avoid dealing with his latent homosexuality. The whole film is a time-capsule of 1970-era youth culture wrapped up in a grindhouse psycho-killer original. The best part (and there are many) is the whole thing almost perfectly mirrors an evil live-action Scooby-Doo episode, right down to a groovy green dune buggy (but without the Great Dane). Shaggy is played by Richard Thomas (of John-Boy Walton fame and looking scarily like Leonardo DiCaprio in his younger days) and it seems that Fred (or Skippy as they call him here), has become, like, smitten with the Shagster, man! “Like, hey dude! He wants to shag Shaggy!” Obviously this spells doom for Velma and Daphne and tragedy ensues.

If you can get through the opening 10 minutes, it becomes almost impossible to stop watching. I kept having to shake myself loose from it's creepy grip every few minutes. The only other comparison that comes to mind is the Archies. Imagine Reggie falling hard for Jughead and feeling the uncontrollable urge to thrill-kill Betty and Veronica and bury them in shallow graves in the desert as a result. I shit you not. That is that plot in a nutshell.

The other thing that must be said about The Todd Killings is just how on earth they got real actors like Ed Asner, Barbara Bel Geddes, Michael Conrad and Gloria Grahame(!) to appear in this whacked-out teen revolt picture. It's like crazy, man!

A must see and possible candidate for Coleslaw's increasingly-inaccurate top ten film list which at last count stood at 407 movies. Ignore the fact that TV Times gave it one measley star and it's IMBd rating is 4.3. None of these people know what they're talking about. This is a unqualified masterpiece.

Sporgy