Homicidal is, in some ways, a turning point for William Castle. The previous films covered in The Castle Report (Macabre, House on Haunted Hill, The Tingler, and 13 Ghosts) form roughly the part of Castle's career that's the most... him. Anyone who's seen a few of his films is probably going to think of one of those four (especially the latter three) when thinking of what a Castle film “feels” like.

With Homicidal and beyond we enter an era of more stylistic differences, of Castle's films not necessarily fitting the mold that the first four did. Robb White is still writing the script for this one, but it's the last of his collaborations with Castle. Von Dexter is no longer doing the music, with Hugo Friedhofer taking his place. Appropriately, the music feels very different, bigger and more bombastic, different from Von Dexter’s more subtle approach. You might feel that I'm getting ahead of myself, describing details before getting to the main idea that they support, but what I'm trying to do is lay the groundwork for why Homicidal is the way it is.

Homicidal is, blatantly and obviously, Castle aping the film Psycho. Alfred Hitchcock's seminal horror film had been released the previous year and changed the popular style of horror from then on. Out of style were monsters and ghosts treated somewhat as a laugh, in were killers and genuine attempts at fright for adults. This cultural change, in response specifically to Psycho, explains why Homicidal is such a change from the previous year's 13 Ghosts. In line with this, Homicidal is a much harder film to explain. 13 Ghosts is summed up with “a family moves into a creepy house and there are 13 ghosts there,” Pretty self-explanatory, right?

Homicidal begins with a woman paying a bellhop to marry her and then immediately get an annulment, but then when they go to get married in the middle of the night she stabs the Justice of the Peace who's presiding over the ceremony, but not before giving a false name, Miriam Webster (yes, like the dictionary and no, nobody ever acknowledges that,) that of a woman who's the half sister of Warren, her companion and maybe romantic partner, who hired her to take care of Helga, the former caretaker of Warren, who is confined to a wheelchair and can't speak due to an illness.

With me so far? Yeah, me either. Later the film adds in a will with a big inheritance, a sort of love triangle, and after all that it just kind of becomes mystery soup. Homicidal is a complicated mystery, the exact opposite of the likes of Castle's previous films. Are there clues to what's going on? Kind of, but honestly not really. Like with House on Haunted Hill, the twists of the mystery really are basically impossible to predict or figure out ahead of time. Once they happen they don't exactly not make sense, but they also don't feel particularly satisfying.

Normally in these articles I try to cover a wide range of elements of the particular Castle film being discussed; the cast, the cinematography, the music, all the various elements that make it up. Homicidal, though, is just Psycho but not as good. That's not to fully invalidate it, but it does make it a lot less interesting to examine. The look of the film? Well, imagine Psycho, but with less interesting locations and lighting. The music? Kind of like Psycho's, but sparser and much less unique. The only part that feels different is the cast, but to talk about that I have to spoil something pretty major about the movie, something I try not to do in this series. So, here's your point to jump off if you'd like to watch Homicidal. The article will still be here afterwards if you'd like to (barring some disaster.)

Jean Arless plays Emily, the lady who does the murdering in the beginning, and also plays Warren, her “husband.” The inspiration from Psycho is pretty apparent here in the gender-queerness of the villain, the morality of which is something long debated in regards to Psycho (many people much smarter, and especially people who are actually genderqueer, have written about gender in Psycho before, so I'm not going to get into it here.)

Homicidal is an odd one in that it uses the double identity of Emily and Warren as a twist, but also really seems non-disgusted and shockingly matter of fact about it. It's hard to even figure out if they're misgendering Emily/Warren at the end of the movie when wrapping up the mystery, as it's never really discussed who Emily/Warren really identifies with. They are born female, forced to live as male by their guardians their whole childhood, eventually begin presenting as female while living abroad as an adult, then trade back and forth for a bit while committing their murder plot, then at the end seem to be prepared to let their female identity flee as part of their alibi, meaning they would have to live as their male identity for a long time to keep up the ruse, possibly the rest of their life. I'm not saying there aren't people out there who wouldn't do that for a lot of money, but all in all it does make it really, really hard to tell what Emily/Warren's whole angle on gender is.

All of this contributes to the feeling that Homicidal is Psycho as seen through a dirty glass. The element of Jean Arless playing both Emily and Warren and making them look and behave differently is legitimately impressive, but is also in service to a character that's a lot more complicated than and a lot less compelling than Anthony Perkins' Norman Bates, their clear inspiration. The mystery feels sort of like Psycho, but... messier. It's not bad, it is after all aping something of a high enough quality that it gets some things right just in trying to copy it, but overall Homicidal is somewhat frustrating as an entry in Castle’s filmography.

I use the word frustrating because, like I’ve said previously in this series, it’s valuable to look at William Castle’s filmography like this because the man made legitimately quality, interesting movies, but is known primarily as a showman rather than a storyteller. Homicidal is hard to view favorably in this light though, as it makes Castle come across less as a dedicated, singular artist, and more as someone who would rip off a popular movie for money, something I personally would say he, at his heart, wasn’t. Many of his films are creative, heartfelt, and deeply personal, even amongst their genre trappings, so to watch him ape something so openly leads to a feeling of… well, like I said, frustration.

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