This thriller is often categorized as a British giallo. This is not entirely unreasonable, even if it does lack the style and gory mayhem of those Italian movies. In this one there is a murderous rapist on the prowl in the woods adjacent to a girl's school. One of the teachers half-see's him and becomes one of his targets as a consequence.
You can probably detect from the synopsis that this does operate in giallo territory and it even also features the sort of ridiculous plot developments that those films had, such as the idea of featuring an imagined painting of the culprit in the local paper - except of course the painting looks exactly like Satan! How this exactly will be helpful in catching the killer is never fully explained. The story also includes a stock list of typical characters, such as an inept police officer who almost winds up letting the heroine die when he is distracted by a dog, a paedophile school caretaker and an aggressively annoying newspaper reporter who physically harasses the heroine. Needless to say, this is not a politically correct film at all by today's standards. That does naturally give it some interest value nowadays but it is let down a bit by its routine nature, with several male suspects so obviously not the killer that they might as well have been called Rod Herring and despite all this the real villain of the piece turns out to be a pretty easy to spot culprit; even if that individual's demise was pleasingly bizarre. Plus points do have to be given for the cast though, with the likes of Frank Finlay, Freddie Jones and the always great Suzy Kendall adding a lot. Watch out too for a hilarious cameo from David Essex. Salacious but routine Brit effort.
You can probably detect from the synopsis that this does operate in giallo territory and it even also features the sort of ridiculous plot developments that those films had, such as the idea of featuring an imagined painting of the culprit in the local paper - except of course the painting looks exactly like Satan! How this exactly will be helpful in catching the killer is never fully explained. The story also includes a stock list of typical characters, such as an inept police officer who almost winds up letting the heroine die when he is distracted by a dog, a paedophile school caretaker and an aggressively annoying newspaper reporter who physically harasses the heroine. Needless to say, this is not a politically correct film at all by today's standards. That does naturally give it some interest value nowadays but it is let down a bit by its routine nature, with several male suspects so obviously not the killer that they might as well have been called Rod Herring and despite all this the real villain of the piece turns out to be a pretty easy to spot culprit; even if that individual's demise was pleasingly bizarre. Plus points do have to be given for the cast though, with the likes of Frank Finlay, Freddie Jones and the always great Suzy Kendall adding a lot. Watch out too for a hilarious cameo from David Essex. Salacious but routine Brit effort.