The Psychiatrist (1978) Online

We are in the era of the sleazy slashers and the exploitations on 42nd street. This is one example that survived his time due the combination of a little bit of horror elements and a lot of explicit sex. For the time being it is a bit of soft core, everything is shown but it really isn't hardcore. And there is a storyline in it. The performances are okay too and it is all shot in a nice way, of course there are some mistakes left in the movie, for example almost on the end the boom appears in front of the camera and an unwilling cumshot is taped too. You can notice that the girl doesn't want to go on but that it wasn't seen by the director. It is an extremely hard to find this flick, for me it isn't clear why, maybe because it's soft and doesn't has extremities in it like Candy Stripers or Waterpower also from those days. So if your in for some explicit nudity then this movie is yours.

Talking to a fellow IMDb'er about my plan for a "Adult Horror" viewing season during the IMDb's Horror board October Challenge,I got sent a very interesting link to a website that gave outlines for a number of Adult Horror titles.Taking a look at the titles,I was surprised to find a very exciting sounding title at the bottom of page,which the site called a "Psychological Chiller".Being intrigued by the details that I had read about the movie,I decided that it was time to find out how many angels the devil really has.

The plot:

After attending a lecture that he has held at a near by university,a student called Jean decides to apply for a job in the role of a nurse,at Dr.Rondeau's psychiatric hospital.Explaing to Jean that his hospital deals with patients who believe that they are being controlled by either a demon or Satan,Rondeau is deeply impressed by Jean not flinching in the slightest from the details that he shares with her,which leads to Roundeau offering Jean one of the top nursing jobs at the hospital.

Shortly after officially becoming a part of Rondeau's team,Jean begins to hear whispers from her fellow nurses about three patients who died at the hospital under strange circumstances.Questioning Rondeau about what she's been hearing,Jean is shocked to be told by Rondeau that she should just let things stay "In the past".Suspisious about why Rondeau is attempting to keep the patients deaths undercover,Jean decides to investigate the darken corridors of the increasingly abnormal hospital.

View on the film:

Whilst the film does focus a little bit too much on skin during the middle of the movie,the screenplay by actor/director/co-writer, (along with his wife,Belinda) Peter Balakoff brilliantly keeps the Horror mystery element of the plot right at the centre of the film,with the Balkoff's gradually tearing away the shine from the hospital,to reveal the dark heart which is beating away in the depths of the hospital,which also leads to the Balkoff's delivering a very nice,razor sharp twist ending.

Contrasting Peter Balakoff's terrific stern performance as Dr.Rondeau,the pretty Gena Lee, (who would work with the Balakoff's on a number of other titles) gives a great,atmospheric performance as Jean,with Lee showing Jean's smile slowly disappear from her face,as she begins to discover the "angelic demons" that control the hospital.

Not only is everyone entitled to their opinion (obviously) but the previous two postings in IMDb are so misleading, I'm compelled to chime in with a (so-far) minority point-of-view. This XXX opus by Belgian director Peter Balakoff is nothing more than a showcase for his dubious acting talents. He should have paid more attention to his script & direction, which are woefully deficient.

Cornball plot hook, most memorably used by Sam Fuller for his innovative SHOCK CORRIDOR, is our heroine Gena Lee going undercover, hired as a nurse at a psychiatric clinic to find out what happened to her tagged-as-suicide dead sister Lucy who worked there.

Balakoff's generally incoherent plotting, interrupted frequently by extraneous sex scenes and horrendously arbitrary (and contradictory) editing, revolves around his position as Dr. Maurice Rondeau, head of the Psychiatry/Neurology Clinic at the state university. The doc's claim to fame is debunking spiritualism, treating patients thought to be possessed by the Devil using strictly medical means, not the exorcism of the Church. Gena is introduced at a lecture asking him about his medical philosophy.

SPOILERS ALERT:

After a very tedious 100 minutes, about three reels too long for porn, it's revealed that Rondeau's a complete loony, hypocritically staging Black Masses at his clinic in which he believes (or has the patients & staff believe) that HE is Satan. It's all in support of his pederasty, here very tamely depicted as shtupping patients who PRETEND to be children. This plus the poorly photographed XXX scenes render THE PSYCHIATRIST extremely weak in the porn department, no doubt accounting for its lack of DVD exposure.

While Balakoff hams it up miserably in the lead role, pontificating at every opportunity and getting enough on-screen blow jobs to make any budding male film student want to become a director, Gena is completely blank as the blonde heroine. She vaguely resembles (without any character or depth) porn superstar Juliet Anderson -who no doubt would have been considered "too old" for the role.

Rest of the cast is particularly nondescript and unappealing, starting with Gena's busty, long-haired roommate Natacha and Diane Miller as head nurse Virginia, who the good doc paints as the fall guy in the nasty "evil triumphs" finale. (Gena and Miller are regulars in Balakoff's acting stable, but rarely hired by anyone else, for good reason.) William Margold inevitably picks up a pay check in a nothing cop slot. There are many Black thesps in minor roles in order to provide mixed combo action.

Balakoff's occasional THE EXORCIST riff of speaking dirty with his male voice in the mouths of the female "possessed" cast is ludicrous and destroys any credibility to the more serious moments. The nightly Black Mass ceremonies are crudely done and of no interest to horror buffs. Fatally, the twists and turns of the later reels are ruined by the amateurish editing and the characters' random behavior, particularly on the part of our heroine.

Clearly Balakoff was ego-tripping when he made this one, but mere rarity does not make it more interesting than the numerous well-crafted classics and just solid XXX films of the booming late '70s period.