SeeQuant Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

Gurlyndrobb While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Micah Lloyd Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

Anoushka Slater While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

paul-ayres-60784 Wow, this is quite a shocker. The main character played by Arch Hall Jr. is very creepy and even in his first scene you know that he has no compassion.Three school teachers break down in their car and end up in what appears to be a deserted breakers yard. They cannot find anyone there but evidence suggests that the occupiers had been there only minutes before. Along comes Arch Hall with his girlfriend. He points a gun at the teachers and takes their money. In the process he pistol whips the eldest teacher and forces the mechanically minded teacher to fix the car so that him and his girlfriend can escape in it.It is soon evident that the two assailants are murderers on the run and that they have no qualms about murdering anyone in their path.Well acted and very disturbing.

Red-Barracuda If you have seen the bizarre cult movie Eegah (1962) before approaching The Sadist, you could be forgiven for being a little concerned. After all, both films are notable for featuring Arch Hall Jr in a starring role. Hall displayed such a remarkable lack of acting talent in the earlier film that it seemed inconceivable that he would be in the least bit threatening as a psychopath in a gritty thriller. Well, all I can say is that the Arch hall Jr of The Sadist is like a man reborn. He quite literally is excellent here.The film has a plot as simple as can be - three teachers pull up at a deserted junkyard in a remote location and are quickly held captive by a psychotic young couple. It's a lean story with no wastage whatsoever. It really is a very good example of how to make an effective low-budget movie, where the lack of resources never gets in the way. In fact, this is a quite hard-hitting thriller for its era and has some tough scenes. Some characters are killed when you don't think they will be and, generally, it surprises.As I said before Hall plays the sadist of the title but he is not the only standout performer, Marilyn Manning is very good too as his unhinged girlfriend. Her character is an interesting one, as she says nothing throughout except inaudible whispers to Hall, yet she manages to create a fascinating character and projects a quite magnetic screen presence. There are only five other actors in the entire cast, they all do solid rather than memorable work. The film benefits too from great cinematography from Vilmos Zsigmond who went on to be director of photography in such high profile later films such as Deliverance (1972), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and The Deer Hunter (1978). In this little movie he manages to utilise the clutter-filled environs of the junkyard to fantastic effect, especially in the latter suspenseful pursuit scenes where three different characters navigate their way around the junk-filled landscape where we sometimes see them all captured simultaneously on screen in different parts of the yard. The direction by James Landis is pacey and certainly makes the most of the limited set-up. Ultimately, this is well acted, photographed and directed. And this combination amounts to one of the great 60's B-movies.

dwpollar 1st watched 7/26/2014 -- 3 out of 10(Dir-James Landis): Unwielding sadistic thriller for it's time -- even though that's really all it has going for it. The story is about three teachers who have car trouble on the way to a baseball game and pull into a car parts and repair shop on a Sunday hoping to get some assistance. They soon find out there is no-one around except two crazy young kids who threaten them at gunpoint to fix their car and let them use it. The male counterpart is a slick looking weird sounding crazy person, played by Arch Hall Jr., who we find out later has some experience in murdering other folk, and the couple is on the run for those murders. The movie could have been better if they explored a little deeper the evil character's reasoning for what they were doing but this never really happens. They start tinkering a little bit with a "survival of the fittest" mentality when the first teacher is killed and the other two are given a chance to take his place but do not offer. If these ideas were explored it would have made for a twilight-zone like experience. Instead the goofy aspects of the main evil character become centerstage and the movie relentlessly keeps going longer than movies in the early 60's usually take us. It's also kind of un-nerving to view the victims plodding through their thinking process about how to escape when you'd think that their survival instincts would just kick in. This is an interesting attempt at a genre that is overused nowadays -- but this was new for it's time -- but it just doesn't quite hit the mark.

bkoganbing The best thing you can say about The Sadist is that Arch Hall, Jr. got away from Arch Hall, Sr. in this production. The senior Hall confined his activities to being the voice over a car radio. However it was Arch Hall, Jr. together with an equally untalented cast who were in the film as well. Another director got a performance out of him barely approaching, but missing adequacy.Three school teachers are driving to Los Angeles for a Dodger game and the car breaks down. Pulling into a service station they are taken by surprise by two thrill kill seeking kids, Hall, Jr. and Judy Bradshaw. The rest of the film is what happens to all five of them and the terror inflicted by Hall and Bradshaw on the three teachers.Based on the Starkweather/Fugate case from the previous decade. Hall is made up to look like a pompadoured teen wolf in training. He giggles like Richard Widmark in his performance. As for Bradshaw her role is confined to whispers, skipping, and sucking her thumb. Probably because she couldn't handle dialog.There were some techniques in cinematography that were not amateurish by any means which relegates The Sadist possibly to Arch Hall, Jr.'s career role. A dubious distinction by any means.I hope Johnny Depp who did so well with Ed Wood takes a look at the Halls because I know there's a story here.