The Sadist (1963)

The great Arch Hall Jr. stars as our villain in The Sadist. Those familiar with Ray Dennis Steckler's The Thrill Killers which came out one year later would probably find a surprisingly similar tone. In fact Arch Hall Jr. played the beach-bum wanna-be sex icon in Steckler's first film The Wild Guitar.

Unlike Arch Hall's earlier films he doesn't spend all of his screen time trying to look appealing to the opposite sex. Instead he plays a mean, gun wielding, dumb hillbilly with a lust for blood. He is a true Sadist and he gets his rocks off by watching helpless victims squirm.

The whole movie is basically a hostage situation with the lives of three Innocent people in the hands (at gun point) of our Sadist and his equally sociopathic girlfriend Judy. The young couple taunt their hostages and play sick games with them. Very reminiscent of the classic "Piss your pants" scene in Last House On The Left. Our juvenile baddies prove they are more then just talk when they shoot one of the hostages in the face, execution style, for no reason at all. We eventually find out that these two killers are on the run and have a body count to their names. They shoot and kill two police officers on motorcycles and empty a whole clip of bullets into another victim.

Surprisingly enough The Sadist has some smart dialogue and even some nice camera angles. It also offers up gratuitous soda pop chugging, a blue grass dance complete with skirt hiking, a roughie esque rape scene, gasoline to the eyes, pistol whippings, nasty knife play and death by rattle snakes. The Sadist is by far Arch Hall Jr's. best film and fans won't be disappointed. Check it out for a sadistic time filled with gun violence and denim clad villains.