Poor Albert & Little Annie

Original title belies what is really a bad movie. Hall plays a strange psycho who hates all women who are not virgins. Then he meets a innocent 11 year old. They take a extended trip to a amusement park. We see a long series of montages of them playing on the rides. Complete with a syrupy song titled "Poor Albert". (And you thought this was supposed to be a horror movie). The climax takes place in a abandoned warehouse full of mannequins, which the director does not take advantage of. A truly pathetic excuse for filmmaking. No scares, no suspense, no creativity; just Zooey Hall trying desperately to act. The worst film I've seen and I have seen a lot.

My review was written in March 1983 after a Greenwich Village screening.

A modest B-film lensed as "Poor Albert and Little Annie" in 1972, this ineffectual psycho-on-the-loose picture enjoys an enduring notoriety by virtue of its title change to "I Dismember Mama". Though the material is suitably distasteful and morbid, meek presentation will disappoint gorehounds lured by that title.

Quite impressive as the outwardly cool but deranged killer, Zooey Hall escapes form a sanitorium after the authorities prohibit him from watching stag movies in his room. Beginning a string of killings with a bald orderly, he's out to punish his rich mother (Joanne Mooe Jordan) whom he blames for having sent him there and cut off from the family's $30,000,000 nest egg.

Arriving at the family mansion, Hall terrorizes and kills the busty redhead housekeeper (Marlene Tracy). When her pre-teen daughter Annie (Geri Reischl) returns home from school, the film segues into a U. S. version of the French classic "Sundays and Cybele", as romantic music, lyrical montages and a generally pleasant mood accompany Hall and Reiscl's idyll together. At night, his warped sexual urges surface, but resisting the impulse, Hall sublimates by going out and picking up an adult blonde woman at an L. A. pool hall.

Besides the absence of gore, film relies upon unbelievable police procedure to keep its narrative going, and script is fatally flawed by the absence of a confrontation between Hall and his mom. (In fact, they have no footage together.) Among the more familiar cast members, Greg Mullavey (of tv's "Mary Hartman") is miscast as the incompetent detective on the case.

Low-budget filming is poorly lit (multiple shadows abound( and lacking in action until the derivative chase through a warehouse of mannikins finale. Punchy big band score by Herschel Burke Gilbert is a plus.

Director Paul Leder went on to film the 3-D opus "Ape", and more recently "I'm Going to Be Famous" with Mullavey in the latter. Scriptwriter William Norton would appear to be the same one who worked on a dozen Levy-Gardner-Laven productions such as "Sam Whiskey" and "Gator", distinct from the B. W. L. Norton (of "Cisco Pike", "More American Graffiti"), but confusing credits over the past decade still need to be sorted out (e.g., Bill Norton Senior of "Night of the Juggler" and William Norton Senior of "Dirty Tricks").

Zooey Hall, I've not seen him in any other role but, boy, was he perfect for the part of Albert. He certainly is a creepy-lookin' fellow. No wonder he's credited as playing "Joanie's Weird Boyfriend" on a Happy Days episode.

I Dismember Mama is an irksome film with laughable music throughout, even for the period. The scenes where Albert is chasing Annie has accompanying music that sounds like something from the old Adam West "Batman" TV-series. It ruins the climatic scenes. Summed up, there's not much to see, well . . . some '70s nudity.

Rich kid Albert (Zooey Hall) is in an institute. We meet him at the beginning of the film trying to rape a nurse before he is apprehended. His doctor tells his mother that he is a lost cause and must be moved to a hospital for the insane. While being taunted by one of the male nurses there, Albert tricks him into watching one of the 'films' he's made, and ends up killing him and escaping. He arrives at his mother's house to kill her - he sees her as a whore who is not 'pure' enough. He instead comes across her housekeeper, who he taunts and kills. Yet when he meets her 11 year-old daughter Annie (Geri Reischi), they form a bond and Albert takes her away. For once he has met a girl who is pure and innocent, but the only problem are his violent sexual urges.

The original name for this film was Poor Albert and Little Annie, which is a much more apt title for a film that is relatively unexploitative and character-driven. While they are scenes of violence, they are brief and contain very little blood or gore. The film concentrates more on the relationship between Albert and Annie, and the creepy fascination Albert has with her. Albert is clearly a misogynist, viewing every woman as filth who have lost their purity. Annie is sweet and innocent, and so Albert begins a strange love affair with her. He understands his urges are wrong, but he goes with it all the same.

As interesting as I'm making the film out to be, you have to remember that this is a 70's grindhouse film marketed under the name of I Dismember Mama and was usually shown in a double bill with The Blood Spattered Bride (1972). This generally means that although the idea is certainly quite interesting, the execution is bad. Whereas the low- budget works in it's favour - the film has a grime to it that creates a feeling of sleaze - the film is peppered with long sections where nothing at all happens. The 80 minute running time feels much longer than it actually is, and although Hall in the lead is generally quite effective as the rich-boy psychopath, he cannot save the film from being a meandering missed opportunity.

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Such a marvelous film. I particularly loved the title song, sung by Rocket Roden. When Roden sings, people listen. I am enthralled by this masterpiece. This is all I have to say. Now, leave me alone.