SPOILER ALERT!
THE PREMONITION 1976
Robert Allen Schnitzer’s The Premonition (1976) is a haunting, genre-blurring horror thriller that weaves together the anxieties of motherhood, the supernatural, and the fractured psyche of 1970s America.
I caught The Premonition during its original run in the ’70s, and the memory still lingers like a strange dream you can’t quite shake. The film washed over me with its moody, off-kilter energy. Not least of which was Richard Lynch’s quietly chilling, slow-burning simmering menace, and Ellen Barber, the woman in red’s psychic panic that felt like lightning flashes in a summer storm. It was the atmosphere that truly seeped into my already awakening horror fandom and older blossoming love for all things macabre consciousness. The whole theater seemed suspended in that uneasy, twilight mood, as if reality itself had slipped sideways and left me wandering through someone else’s fever dream. Even now, I remember how the film’s peculiar spell colored the world outside for hours after, making the ordinary feel just a little haunted.
The film opens with a veneer of domestic calm: Sheri and Miles Bennett (Sharon Farrell and Edward Bell) are raising their adopted daughter Janie (Danielle Brisebois) in a quiet Mississippi suburb. But this tranquility is quickly threatened when Andrea Fletcher (Ellen Barber), Janie’s biological mother—recently released from a psychiatric institution—descends on the family, aided by her unhinged boyfriend Jude (Richard Lynch), a carnival clown whose presence alone is enough to unsettle any scene. Jude is prone to fits of an unstoppable rage.
Schnitzer directs with a deliberate pace, allowing the film’s psychological undercurrents to simmer. The early scenes ground the story in the real-world terror of parental rights and abduction, building empathy for both mothers before the supernatural elements begin to weave their way in. When Andrea’s attempt to reclaim Janie is violently thwarted, the film pivots from drama to nightmare: Andrea’s mental unraveling leads to her violent murder at Jude’s hands, and Sheri is left shaken, plagued by visions that blur the line between intuition and psychic phenomena.
Cinematographer Victor Milt bathes the film in a dreary, dreamlike Southern light, heightening the sense of unreality as Sheri’s visions intensify. The camera lingers on empty spaces and haunted faces, echoing the film’s themes of absence and longing. Henry Mollicone’s score is equally crucial, its haunting melodies swelling into the film’s climax and functioning almost as an additional presence. The editing—at times abrupt, at times languid—mirrors the characters’ emotional turbulence and the story’s shifting realities. This all works well to disorient us.
Key moments are staged for maximum psychological impact: Andrea’s midnight intrusion, clad in a red dress, cradling Janie in her sleep; Sheri’s hallucinatory visions of Andrea’s corpse, simultaneously menacing and lamentable.
In these psychic episodes, Sheri is haunted by flashes of Andrea as a spectral figure—volatile and unhinged, draped in her striking red satin dress and black velvet cameo choker, a look that transforms her into a dark wraith. The vision captures the violence of Andrea’s death: she is stabbed by Jude in a fit of rage, and the blood from her wounds seeps into the already vivid red of her dress, creating a chilling tableau where the violence and Andrea’s torment are inseparable. The climactic sequence in which Sheri, urged by parapsychologist Dr. Jeena Kingsly (Chitra Neogy), plays the piano in the town square, hoping to reach the lost child through a psychic bond.
The film’s finale, with Janie wandering from Jude’s RV back to her mother as the music swells and the community gathers, is both eerie and cathartic, resolving the supernatural tension with a gesture toward maternal love and connection. The Premonition is notable for its refusal to offer easy answers. The supernatural elements are never fully explained—are Sheri’s visions psychic, or simply the product of trauma and intuition? Is Andrea a ghostly presence or a projection of Sheri’s own fears? The film’s ambiguity is its strength, which actually invites comparison to the other atmosphere-heavy, roaming ambiguities of Carnival of Souls and Let’s Scare Jessica to Death in its blend of psychological horror and dreamlike state of mind.
Schnitzer’s direction, supported by strong performances (especially from Barber as the feral, fragile, and desperate Andrea and Farrell as the unraveling Sheri), crafts a film that is as much about the terror of losing a child as it is about the porous boundaries between reality and nightmare. The story’s emotional core—two women bound by love for the same child, each unraveling in her own way—gives the film an eerily poignant quality filled with resonance.
Though sometimes uneven and melodramatic, The Premonition is still a fascinating artifact of 1970s horror: a film that dares to mix domestic drama, supernatural suggestion, and psychological unease, all set against the backdrop of a world where the most ordinary lives can be upended by uncanny forces both seen and unseen.
PSYCHIC KILLER 1975
Psychic Killer (1975), directed by Ray Danton (Deathmaster 1972 with horror master Robert Quarry), is a wild, distinctly 1970s blend of revenge thriller, supernatural horror, and B-movie exuberance that manages to be both ludicrous and oddly compelling. At its center is Arnold Masters, played with a twitchy, wounded intensity by Jim Hutton—a man wrongfully committed to a mental institution for the criminally insane for a murder he didn’t commit. While locked away, Arnold’s world collapses further when his beloved mother dies due to the criminal neglect of those charged with her care. Consumed by grief and rage, Arnold befriends an eccentric inmate named Emilio, who introduces him to the dark art of astral projection. With the help of a mysterious medallion, Arnold gains the ability to leave his body and exact supernatural vengeance on those he holds responsible, committing a string of bizarre and increasingly gruesome murders while leaving no physical evidence behind.
Danton’s direction is a fascinating mix of stylish flourishes and rough-edged exploitation. Some scenes are shot with surprising flair—there’s a real sense of giddy invention in the murder set pieces, from a nurse being scalded to death in her shower after a striptease, to a butcher (played by Neville Brand) meeting a memorably gruesome end in his own meat grinder. These sequences are both shocking and darkly funny, capturing the era’s appetite for inventive, almost gleeful violence.
Psycho Killer’s low budget is often apparent, but Danton compensates with energy and a willingness to lean into the absurdity of the premise, giving the film a scrappy, unpredictable charm. I remain deeply enamored with 1970s horror, drawn in by its raw creativity that so often bloomed from limited budgets. These films have a sincerity and inventiveness – a sense that they were reaching for something new and unsettling, even rough edges and oddities. It’s this combination of resourcefulness and authenticity that seduced me, making the era’s horror feel both intimate and endlessly surprising.
The supporting cast is a roll call of cult and classic faces: Paul Burke as Lieutenant Jeff Morgan and Aldo Ray play the hard-boiled detectives on Arnold’s trail. Morgan is a classic, no-nonsense 1970s cop: persistent, skeptical, and increasingly unnerved as he investigates the string of bizarre, seemingly accidental deaths that all trace back to Arnold Masters. Burke’s Morgan is likable and dogged, gradually piecing together the supernatural thread running through the case, even as the evidence defies logic. Julie Adams (forever iconic from Creature from the Black Lagoon) brings warmth and credibility as Dr. Laura Scott, the psychiatrist drawn into Arnold’s psychic web. Dr. Laura Scott is the compassionate psychiatrist who tries to help Arnold Masters during his time in the institution. Arnold is indeed attracted to her—his fixation grows after his release, and he even confesses to watching her and wishing he could be with her instead of Detective Morgan, with whom she becomes romantically involved. Arnold’s obsession manifests through his psychic abilities: while in a trance, he projects himself to spy on Dr. Scott and expresses his longing, making her a target of his unsettling attention as his powers—and his jealousy intensifies.
Nehemiah Persoff chews the scenery as a parapsychology expert, and Della Reese makes a memorable appearance as a feisty customer in the film’s most infamous butcher shop scene. The cast’s collective enthusiasm adds extra spice to the material, and there’s a sense that everyone involved is having a blast, no matter how outrageous the plot becomes.
William Kraft’s score adds to the film’s offbeat mood, veering between eerie and funky, while the cinematography, though sometimes crude, finds moments of genuine atmosphere, especially in the astral projection sequences and the film’s more surreal set pieces. The editing moves briskly, rarely lingering long enough for us to question the logic, and the film’s pacing keeps the body count rising and the twists coming.
Key moments abound: the aforementioned shower and meat grinder deaths, a construction site “accident” involving a falling concrete slab, and a series of confrontations where Arnold’s psychic abilities leave his pursuers baffled and terrified.
One of the film’s most memorably disturbing and offbeat moments comes when the butcher, Lemonowski (Brand), meets his end in a sequence that’s as darkly comic as it is grisly. Alone in his shop, he’s ambushed not by a visible assailant, but by slabs of meat that seem to move with a mind of their own—pushed by Arnold’s vengeful psychic force. In a bizarre ballet of swinging carcasses and whirring machinery, Lemonowski is forced hand-first into his own meat grinder, his screams echoing through the cold, tiled room as the line between horror and absurdity blurs. It’s a scene that’s both unsavory and strangely humorous, perfectly capturing the film’s gleefully twisted spirit.
In the film’s climax, Morgan becomes convinced that Arnold is using psychic powers to commit the murders. He orchestrates a bold plan: while Arnold is in a deep trance, astrally projecting to kill again, Morgan has his body declared medically dead and transported to the crematorium. As Arnold’s spirit is out hunting, Morgan ensures his physical body is loaded into the oven, forcing Arnold to experience his own death in both body and spirit, and bringing his rampage to a fiery, surreal end.
The film’s climax is a delirious mash-up of police procedural and supernatural showdown, with the detectives and Dr. Scott racing to stop Arnold as his powers spiral out of control. The final act, which sees Arnold’s spirit separated from his body and the authorities scrambling to comprehend the inexplicable, is both bonkers and oddly satisfying—a fitting finale to the film’s commitment to its own brand of psychic mayhem.
Just so you cat lovers can feel at ease, the cat does not die in Psychic Killer (1975). In fact, the cat survives and appears in the film’s final shot, playfully pawing at the psychic amulet after all the chaos has ended. The cat’s presence is used as a quirky, ambiguous coda!
Psychic Killer is emblematic of 1970s horror’s willingness to experiment with genre boundaries, mixing occult paranoia, revenge fantasy, and a healthy dash of black comedy. It’s not a polished film, but it’s a memorable one that I have a fierce affection for. It’s an artifact of a decade when horror was unafraid to get weird, wild, and a little bit psychedelic. In the end, Danton’s film stands as a testament to the era’s appetite for the strange and sensational, and to the enduring appeal of a good, old-fashioned supernatural revenge yarn, no matter how improbable the method of murder.