EDITOR’S NOTE: The Haunted Strangler was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, June 27, 1964 at 4:00 p.m. and Sunday, September 13, 1964 at 11:15 p.m.

Jan Read wrote the story “Stranglehold” just for Boris Karloff, who made this movie at the same time as Fiend Without a Face, the movie that it played double features with.

Edward Styles (Michael Atkinson) is executed for being the Haymarket Strangler, a killer who choked women with one arm while stabbing them. As his coffin is closed, someone slips a knife in and for twenty years, no one thinks of these crimes.

James Rankin (Boris Karloff) believes that Styles was innocent and begins to look into the crime. As he killed his last victim, Martha Stuart, at the Judas Hole bar — The Judas Hole is an alternate title, as is The Grip of the Strangler — as others watched, including singer Cora Seth (Joan Kent). A man named Tenant did the autopsies of the victims and grew ill before the end of the case. This makes Rankin think that he could be the killer but without the murder weapon, it’s hard to put the evidence together. No one can find Tenant, who went insane just after the murders.

Ready for the spoiler?

As Rankin looks at the bones of Styles, he finds the knife and begins to transform, his face changing and his arm being paralyzed like the strangler. Somehow, thanks to the love of his nurse — and wife — Barbara (Elizabeth Allan) he has been able to keep the Strangler inside himself. Now, as he investigates the case, he alternates between the two different personas and begins to kill again, including his wife. This drives him further into psychosis and he begins screaming that he is the killer yet no one believes him. As he attempts to kill his daughter Lily (Diane Aubrey), he finally realize he must be stopped. As he tries to bury the knife in the grave, he is shot and killed by the police.

Director John Croydon was also shooting First Man Into Space at the same time, so British drive-in films were in great demand. He kept directing the whole way until 1991 with the TV movie Fire: Trapped on the 37th Floor. He also made She, Corridors of Blood and The Green Man.

You can watch this on Tubi.