Review by Colleen Wanglund

Written and directed by Richard L. Bare, WICKED, WICKED (1973) is shot almost entirely in DuoVision, also known a split screen. It stars Tiffany Bolling (KINGDOM OF THE SPIDERS {1977}), David Bailey and Randolph Roberts (who played the quick-to-disappear Chuck Cunningham on HAPPY DAYS).

This is a bizarre little movie watched almost entirely in split-screen. Three single blonde women have disappeared in the sprawling Grandview Hotel and no one seems to know what happened to them. Rick Stewart (Bailey) the private investigator of the hotel, looks into the disappearances and begins to find evidence that the women may have met rather unpleasant ends. Rick’s ex-wife singer Lisa James (Bolling) shows up to perform in the hotel’s dining room and soon meets the handyman Jason (Roberts) who is enamored of Lisa (who is a brunette). Jason comes across as a little creepy but Lisa thinks nothing of it…..that is until she wears a blond wig for one of her performances. Now she has become a target of a psychopath who dons a rubber mask while going in for the kill.

WICKED, WICKED is basically your standard stalker/serial killer movie. There’s nothing special here and the story itself is a bit mediocre. That being said, this movie is pure camp and was fun to watch. It’s full of clichés and I managed to figure out pretty quickly who the stalker/murderer is....it's pretty hard not to. What had me cracking up, though, was the woman playing the organ through just about the whole movie...and seeing her on split-screen from time to time. What’s interesting to note is that the music she plays is from the original silent PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (1925). It's your typical murder mystery with some horror thrown in. It’s worth the watch if you've got nothing else to do. And did I mention that the original movie poster is killer?