Filmed in San Francisco for what looks like the cost of a couple of cases of cheap beer and a trip to the butcher shop and clocking in at just over an hour, Nick Imllard’s Criminally Insane is the opposite of its alt title, Crazy Fat Ethel. It’s lean, mean and ready to pounce.

Meet Ethel Janowski (Priscilla Alden). She’s just been released from an asylum into the care of her long-suffering grandmother. The doctors think Ethel is cured. The doctors are wrong.

Ethel doesn’t want to reintegrate into society; she just wants to eat. Constant, non-stop, uninterrupted consumption. Soft-boiled eggs, whole loaves of bread, chocolate syrup straight from the bottle — if it fits on a plate, Ethel is shoving it down her throat.

The conflict arises when Grandma, concerned for both Ethel’s health and her own mounting grocery bills, decides to put a padlock on the refrigerator door. Big mistake. Huge. You don’t get between Ethel and her snacks. What follows is a slow-motion, butcher-knife-wielding rampage where Grandma (Jane Lambert), a local delivery boy and anyone else who dares step into the kitchen gets brutally, systematically eliminated.

Ethel isn’t just killing people; she’s hiding the bodies in the bedrooms, leading to a house full of flies, stench and the absolute peak of mid-70s drive-in atmosphere. With her heavy breathing, intense glares, and total commitment to the bit, Priscilla Alden created an unforgettable slasher icon before the slasher genre even had its official rules written. She doesn’t need a hockey mask or a dream world. She just needs a sharp object and an empty stomach.

This movie is ugly, poorly lit and has a music score that sounds like someone dropping a synthesizer down a flight of stairs. In short — I love it. Plus, you get George “Buck” Flower as a detective, blood with no wounds and the material that Millard would recycle into the sequel and the films Cemetery Sisters, Death Nurse and Death Nurse 2. 

You can watch this on Cultpix.