The Sadist

The Sadist

Year: 1963

IMDb Rating: 6.6/10

Genres: Thriller, Horror

Directors: James Landis

Cast: Helen Hovey, Arch Hall, Jr., Arch Hall Jr., Richard Alden

Three teachers are on their way to a Dodgers game in Los Angeles but are forced to pull off to a gas station on the side of the road after their car gives them trouble. When they don't find the owner of the gas station, the three are startled by seeing a young man Charlie, holding a gun along with his girlfriend Judy. The couple have spent the past several days evading arrest and leaving a trail of corpses behind them. The couple terrorizes the teachers in broad daylight without any mercy.

The Sadist (also known as Profile of Terror and Sweet Baby Charlie) is a 1963 American thriller film written and directed by James Landis. It stars Arch Hall, Jr. as a psychopathic spree killer, patterned after Charles Starkweather, who takes a trio of hostages at a junkyard. The low-budget, independent film is notable for being the debut of future Academy Award-winning cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond. It was distributed by Fairway International Pictures in the United States.

This is believed to be the first feature film based on real life serial killers Charles Starkweather and Caril Fugate. Mainstream Hollywood would not produce films inspired by the pair until a decade after this one. A number of films were inspired by the duo (some very loosely) and included such major examples as Terrence Malick's Badlands (1973) and Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers (1994)

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