EDITOR’S NOTE: Run,. Psycho, Run was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, March 28, 1970 at 11:30 p.m. It also appeared on June 26, 1971.

Director Brunello Rondi directed Il Demonio, a movie that didn’t do well. He was interviewed by Dario Argento and said that this movie was made with “no intention of making a mystery, or a horror film, or even a suspense yarn, Hitchcock-style. What really interests me is to grasp with a film set in 1912 the origins of today’s disease within the bourgeoisie, and to portray its degeneration with extreme violence. I read very few crime novels in my life. And I must say that I do not even like them very much. In my film there is indeed a crime, and an investigation. But it’s only a pretext, in a story full of hatred set in the last years of the “Belle Époque,” when some kind of false euphoria was decomposing, while one could glimpse the first signs of the impending war, the signs of hatred and the strengthening of class struggle.”

Rondi wrote La Dolce Vita and 8 1/2, so he was an intellectual. Then again, he directed Riot In a Woman’s Prison and Black Emanuelle, White Emanuelle. Therefore, I respect him.

It was called Più tardi, Claire… più tardi (Later, Claire…Later) in Italy but when AIP bought it to show on American TV, it was called Run, Psycho, Run. It’s never been released on home video.

Judge George Dennison (Gary Merrill),  his wife Claire (Elga Andersen) and their son Robert arrive at a Villa in Mount Argentario for the summer. Shortly after a party, Claire and Robert are both murdered.

A year later, Judge Dennison returns to the villa with his new fiancée Ann (also Andersen) and her son. Because Ann looks like Claire, Dennison hopes to use her to solve the mystery of who killed his wife and son.

It’s not a giallo but, as the director told Argento more of a class struggle on film. There’s a lot of talking instead of showing and Dennison doesn’t even show up until half an hour into the film. What a strange movie and yet another film that somehow played Chiller Theater.