"The Killing Kind" is a weird-ass film about a mother-son relationship that makes "Psycho" look like a Focus on the Family training film. John Savage is Terry Lambert, who spends a couple years in jail after being tabbed for a rape he was forced into committing. Ann Sothern is his mother, Thelma, the overprotective, overloving weirdo who seems convinced her son could and can do no wrong.

Director Curtis Harrington, a B-film hack who went on to direct a few episodes of "Baretta", "Charlie's Angels", "Dynasty" and the like, seems intellectually trapped by the circumstances in his movie. The na•ve Terry is effectively forced to rape a woman and that seems to cause his deviance. His odd relationship with Thelma doesn't really do anything to explain any of his actions, other than to suggest that his inability to love and his ideas about love are partially caused by his mother's smothering. Unfortunately, it's not clear where Terry would be had the rape not occurred. Harrington pretty much suggests that had Terry not been involved in the rape, he would have eventually raped of his own accord.

Quite frankly, it seems to me Terry is just a product of some seriously screwed up circumstances and something bad was inevitably going to happen to him sooner or later. His relationship with his mother borders on Oedipal. There must be something in the water because he's got a next door neighbor, Louise (Luana Anders), who has a pretty screwed up relationship with her father that seems to compel her to spy and covet Terry.

Terry directs some of his strange energy toward one of his mother's renters, Lori (Cindy Williams), a woman who doesn't have enough sense to break her lease after Terry nearly drowns her in the pool. Ultimately, I suppose, this is a film about Terry's relationships with and understanding of women. He seeks revenge on both the rape victim (whose portrayed as nothing more than a deserving slut), and his female lawyer.

"The Killing Kind" has long been unavailable in the home video market and with good reason.