Criminally Insane (1975)

Purely Joyful Movie!

one of my absolute favorites!

I gave this film a 9 out of 10, because it was exactly what I expected it to be.

Blistering performances.

Low-budgeted piece of junk marked a sidestep into slasher type cinema for adult filmmaker Nick Millard. It's become somewhat iconic among aficionados of bad B movies, if only for the performance of its leading lady, the imposing Priscilla Alden. Make no mistake: it's a VERY bad movie, in just about every respect. The music score in particular is egregious. Filmed in about five weeks for approximately $30,000, it just sort of plods along, but clocks in at a mere 62 minutes in length. Part of the pleasure is in watching the EXTREMELY tacky gore, which is plentiful and amusing in the way that only the brightest red paint can be.The late, great Ms. Alden plays Ethel Janowski (an alternate title for this is "Crazy Fat Ethel"), an obese young woman who's just gotten out of a mental hospital where the doctors there seemed to really love giving her electro-shock therapy. Now her sole focus in life is on stuffing her face, and woe to any stupid person that gets in the way of her feeding frenzy. Ethels' trampy sister Rosalie (Lisa Farros) adds complication to Ethels' life by coming to stay with her while continuing to turn tricks for mindlessly horny men.The superior character actor George 'Buck' Flower, here using his exploitation pseudonym of C.L. Lefleur, adds to the fun with his appearances as an investigating detective. There's also entertainment in seeing the surly Ethel being forced to deal with an escalating situation, killing one person after another to keep this killing spree a secret. As a result, that house starts stinking pretty badly. Viewers' jaws may drop when Rosalies' pimp / boyfriend John (Michael Flood) lets her know how he feels about the beating of women - which actually seems to turn her on!Millard spices things further with his priceless nightmare sequence, an unqualified highlight. And the abrupt way that he resolves his own silly story does make perfect sense, knowing what we do about Ethel.This is garbage, but it's GREAT garbage.Seven out of 10.

It is difficult to put into words how I feel about this grainy, drive-in classic. I know it is bad, yet, somehow, I cannot stop repeatedly watching it because it is just so entertaining. Here's the set up: Ethel, a 250 pound mental patient is released into the custody of her grandmother, provided that she returns for tri-weekly shock treatments, gains employment, and tries to lose weight. Unfortunately, Ethel only intends on sitting around the house, cramming as much food down her gullet as possible. When granny discovers the costs of feeding Ethel, she decides to take control and lock up the food. What does Ethel do?- stab her own grandma in the back. Next she kills a grocery delivery boy for trying to collect her past due bill, and both bodies end up locked away in granny's bedroom. The trouble begins when Ethel's prostitute sister, Rosalie shows up, moving in and soon inviting her vain, abusive boyfriend, neither of them being able to handle the smell of rotting flesh that is beginning to spread throughout the house.(Believing grandma is has gone on a trip Rosalie comments, "It smells awful. Grandma must have s*** all over her bed before she left!")Ethel must bump off all who either come between her and her food, or discover her secret, and her attempts to get rid of the bodies all fail. We last see the gluttonous lady attempting to eat her problems away, and as she gnaws on a hand the film cuts off right at the 60 minute point. Reasons to tune in? It's worth a million laughs, and I guarantee you've never seen anything else like it. When it comes to 60 minute movies, you could do a lot worse.

See, Ethel isn't actually insane. She just wants to eat, sit around the house by herself and be left alone for some seconds on dessert. Maybe thirds. Hell she'll clean off the whole sponge cake, the can of icing, maybe some ice cream too on the side. If one thing, she's not shy about her craving for food, and how she lets it consume her. She doesn't eat the food so much as the food kind of uses her as a conduit. Ethel is merely a walking process by which it gets eaten. I will always refer to this movie by it's most famous re-title: FAT CRAZY ETHEL. Try it on a double bill with FAT GUY GOES NUTZOID and remember the cheeze dip. FAT CRAZY ETHEL was one of two startling horror features made by porno/exploitation veteran Nick Millard in an ill-fated attempt to go straight in the mid 1970s: Check out SATAN'S BLACK WEDDING for something a bit more conventional, though not much more. His work might not have grabbed hold of the imagination of mainstream viewers, but fans of ultra-low budget indie regional horror will find a fascinatingly claustrophobic and morbidly obese little horror thriller here. The film mostly takes place within the creepy, tacky interior of Ethel's aunt's house, where she has returned from a couple months of helpful shock therapy to wean her from her insatiable cravings for food. It didn't work but Ethel can live with it so long as the grocery bill is paid. This in a neighborhood where groceries are delivered right to your door: Bacon, chops, cereal, eggs, plenty of ice cream & raw cookie dough.The fun in this movie is twofold: First, watching Ethel slowly and in an almost Hitchcockian manner find herself pretty much needing to murder people to keep the flow of fatty, caloric foodstuffs coming -- and to silence any harping voices in the peanut gallery urging moderation. One of the things I like about how Ethel's character is drawn has to do with how profoundly unhip, square and uninvolved in the world she is. The deaths don't mean anything to her personally other than the need to hide the remains, which does become a problem after a while. But if it wasn't for her uncontrollable gluttony she could fit right at any social circle dedicated to the bitter & withdrawn. Like a Tool concert or maybe the MPAA. The other pleasure in the film is a guilty one, which is making fun of fat people. They are one of the last socially acceptable prejudices to have, since fat people are by nature absurd, greedy and unattractive pariahs now that one legged Eskimos with AIDS are off limits too. I'm playing devil's advocate with this one: Prejudice of any kind is a bad thing, especially when you get to know the target of your hatred as a person. The catch is that this movie doesn't really let you, keeping the viewer at arm's length observing her behavior and being welcomed to criticize or even outright laugh at her for being so disgusting. Watch her plow through a box of Nilla Wafers or scrape some extra eggs onto her plate to see what I mean. Since the film regards her as a freak and regards what she is doing with clinically detached disdain (killing people is worse than overeating, at least in my book) it's OK to regard her the same way. As a walking stomach.Ridiculing someone for who they are is always more fun and safer in numbers, so ETHEL is actually quite a little crowd-pleaser and has a little cult following due to its short life as a Drive In curiosity or home rental oddity. It's hard to forget a movie like FAT CRAZY ETHEL, which once you get down to brass tacks is an exploitation film that is exploiting the obese & insane. Ethel is as sane as you or I, she just finds herself propelled down this path of antisocial behavior by her lust for food. The inevitability of it all is the payoff in a way, and while it may not be titillating to most to watch Ethel's life spiral out of control, the movie's utterly banal, humdrum and everyday look has a certain charm to it that fans of non-Hollywood "regional horror" will get a kick out of. And again the claustrophobia is hard to ignore, especially with a 350 pound woman occupying what little elbow room there is. That such a big woman is confined to such a teeny, tacky, unenjoyable house is half of what's scary about it: Imagine being stuck in there with her. Ick! So it's behavioral horror where a person is defined by their behavior -- This is how 350 pound food addicts behave in the movies, taken to surreal heights of exaggeration that plays on our own paranoias. We all know the 300 pound shut in dysfunctional idiot up the block, we all suspect that something odd is going on behind closed doors that keeps them from sweating it off just via respiration, and here is an example of what they could be doing. It's almost a perfect little urban nightmare, and over quickly enough to allow viewers to also watch the comparatively awful & unredeemable FAT CRAZY ETHEL 2. If nothing else, that will help you appreciate what a taught little exercise in urban paranoia this is. It's ultra low budget and everyday reality production values may turn off viewers who rely on pyrotechnics or flying squirrels to enjoy a horror show, but give her a try especially in the company of friends and beer and snacks. Ethel gets her own bag.6/10

The 70's is truly a great era for cult cinema. With classics like "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre", "Last House on the Left", "I Drink Your Blood", "The Crazies", etc, it is no doubt that we have a gem of a movie called "Crazy Fat Ethel" or better known as "Criminally Insane". Although, far more low-budget than some of the other horror/slasher flicks coming out at the time (not by much, though) this was a whole lot of fun and is certainly not a waste of 1 hour (that's right, the movie is 1 hour and 1 minute long).The story starts with Fat Ethel being released from an insane asylum. Her kind Grandmother picks her up and takes her to her townhouse in the city. One night Ethel decides to go downstairs for a midnight snack and discovers that all of the food has been locked away. It turns out that Granny wants to put Ethel on a diet. Well, poor Granny gets sliced up with a butcher knife thus starting Fat Ethel's murderous rampage. She kills the grocery boy when she doesn't have enough money to pay him. She kills a friend of her Grandmother's who is just checking in. She even murders her sister and her slimy boyfriend.That is most of the movie. I won't give the ending away but there is a sequel, so you can imagine how this movie ends. For the most part, this movie was a great "B" slasher from 1975. It's funny to think that the term "Slasher" isn't really recognized until "Halloween" and "The Friday the 13th" movies came along. But no doubt, this is definitely a slasher. For most of the murder scenes Fat Ethel is slicing people up with either a butcher knife or a meat cleaver. And though it isn't very gory it makes up for it with all the excessive blood use.If you are looking for a campy, no-budget, 70's slasher check this one out. I am glad I did. 8/10