From here on in, everything I do is for Duke.
Considering I acquired it well over two years ago, I haven't been in much of a hurry to knock out the movies in Mill Creek's "Pure Terror" collection. However, inspired by my pal Joe Blevins's Ed Wood Wednesdays, I cracked it open to take a gander at 1961's Anatomy of a Psycho, the screenplay for which Wood is said to have contributed to sans credit. Produced and directed by Boris Petroff of The Unearthly infamy (on which he also used the pseudonym Brooke L. Peters), Anatomy's script is credited to Jane Mann (who claims responsibility for the story) and Don Devlin (who plays a key supporting role). If Wood truly did have a hand in it, there isn't much evidence of this in the final product, a fairly standard JD drama in which the lead delinquent (played by Darrell Howe) does some serious James Dean emoting.
And who can blame him, really? After all, his older brother Duke, who raised him and his sister after their parents died, has a date with the gas chamber after killing a man during a holdup. (Oh, did I neglect to mention Duke supported his family through armed robbery? Well, he did.) Furthermore, on his way home from visiting Duke in prison for the last time, Howe is hassled by some hoodlums, one of whom slashes his face with a broken bottle. (This fight scene, barely three minutes into the film, demonstrates just how low-budget the film is since the brick wall gives when one of the characters is thrown into it.) His patient sister (Pamela Lincoln) patches him up and tries to get him to stay home, but the hotheaded Howe heads over to his favorite hangout, the rundown shack of a Marine veteran (Devlin, who keeps an unloaded gun around that puts in appearance about halfway through and then doesn't come back, thus placing Anatomy of a Psycho in violation of Chekov's law), where he listens to radio coverage of his brother's execution and vows revenge on those who sent him to it.
At first, Devlin and a few of the other guys are more than happy to help Howe out by donning burlap hoods and putting a scare into the DA's son, but when Howe goes apeshit on him and his brutal beating makes the front page, they're visited by police lieutenant Michael Granger, who'd like to see the vigilante stuff nipped in the bud. Meanwhile, Lincoln's boyfriend (Ronnie Burns, adopted son of George Burns and Gracie Allen) is conflicted because his father was the eyewitness whose testimony condemned her father, and Howe's trailer-trash girlfriend (Judy Howard, who tries her damnedest to be sultry when he pays her a nighttime visit) dumps him for the son of the judge who sentenced his father. In short order, Howe burns the judge's house to the ground and frames Burns for Devlin's murder, leading to an ineptly handled trial scene that takes place in a hilariously chintzy courtroom set. Woodologists, take note. This is where you can start to build your case.