A well-made maniac-with-a-knife shocker, full of implausibilities but lively enough in the telling to enable us to ignore most of them. The maniac is Michael Ironside, the bad guy from 'Spacehunter' and 'Scanners', and he's remarkably good, as well as being a big man with an unsettling presence. Lee Grant is the forthright TV reporter who inadvertently sets him off on his killing spree with one of her broadcasts. As he's a hospital orderly, he's in an ideal position to try to finish her after she survives his first attempt. From this point, the focus of the film interestingly diversifies as Ironside begins to fancy adding Nurse Linda Purl (a rather more animated version of Sandra Dee) to his victims. The title indicates that the makers intend us to take none of this seriously; the much-vaunted hospital security system, for example, seems to be nowhere in sight at all critical moments. No, this is an exercise in fear, and director Jean-Claude Lord presents it with some panache. If you end up looking between your fingers at the scary bits, no chiller film director could ask for more. But, in addition to this, the characters themselves are fleshed out quite skilfully; only William 'Star Trek' Shatner has a thankless role.


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