"The Killing Kind" Review

 

by Daniel White

Ann Sothern has a scene at the end of The Killing Kind (1973) that demonstrates her extraordinary gifts as a film actor. Playing an overbearing, meddlesome and possibly incestuous mother, she is forced to make a heartbreaking decision concerning her homicidal son (the excellent John Savage). An unlikable character, she ends up eliciting our sympathy. I can only imagine the self-indulgent histrionics some of her contemporaries might have engaged in playing this role. Ann goes for simplicity, which results in truth and is brilliant.

Director Curtis Harrington's film may not be brilliant, but it's very good. It certainly doesn't deserve to be forgotten (I had never heard of it until yesterday). Part of the old hag horror craze that swept Hollywood after Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, it's a well-made flick. With a solid script, superb acting and decent direction, it's better than most of the movies spewed out in that particular subgenre. In fact, I'm doing the film a disservice by labeling it as such. It's much more than that. The Killing Kind is a psychological drama about the damaging effects an emotionally voracious mother can have on her sensitive child.

The movie opens with an upsetting gang rape in which a distraught Terry (Savage) is forced to participate. Released from prison after a two-year stretch for the crime, Terry returns to his mother's boarding house. It's not initially clear what the relationship is between Terry and Thelma (Sothern). He calls her by her first name and there is a familiarity between the two that borders on the sexual.

It is soon revealed that they are mother and son. It also becomes clear that though Terry may have been innocent of the crime that sent him to prison, he is not a well-balanced young man. Permanently damaged by his smothering mother, Terry soon starts acting out. Woe to any woman who has, or will, piss him off. It's not called The Killing Kind for nothing! Terry's murder spree ends the lives of several women, but except for a few abrupt, angry outbursts, he can't confront the source of his rage, his mother.

The story is saved from being completely sordid and sensational by the two accomplished actors at the forefront. Along those lines, there is an alarming dream sequence in which an adult Savage is wearing nothing but a diaper. Lying in a crib, he's fawned over by a group of grotesque older women. Observing this macabre, startling scene, it occurred to me that most male directors would be loathe to have their leading man displayed in such a fetishized, obscene manner.

With a a disturbing cameo by Ruth Roman and featuring Luana Anders, Cindy Williams and cinematography by Mario Tosi, The Killing Kind is currently streaming on Tubi.