Crazed (1978)

Suggested Title: Lobotomized
Secondary Title: Nicole
Suggested Secondary Title: Who?
Tatonka Rating: 2.0
Director: Istvan Ventilla

Writers: Istvan Ventilla & Louis Horvath

Theme Song: A collection of generic opera music in requiem style that sounds like it’s being played on set through a transistor radio.

Starring: Some of the ugliest men you’ve ever seen, plus an aging Leslie Caron in denial and Catherine Bach (Daisy Duke of the original Dukes of Hazard TV series), accompanied by her strange collection of toy ponies.


Plot Summary: Nicole (Leslie Caron, shedding her ballet shoes for the finest in polyester 70s fashion) is a beautiful (supposedly), single woman that has earned her fortune by being married to someone we never meet that either left her, died under mysterious circumstances (potentially he was the guy in that one semi-flashback scene that was drowned in the pool) or never existed. She lives in a big house with her creepy chauffer, Malcolm, who in the opening scene we learn may have killed his wife and her lover, using nothing but his rage and a rotary phone. She spends her days and nights playing opera music, watching a tiny television with really bad reception, taking pictures of herself (and of her television), obsessing over her hands and making her friends feel bad about themselves. Supposedly, this is a cautionary tale for rich bitches. As for what it is cautioning against, I’m not sure. Perhaps it’s a lesson to you that if you are bat-crap crazy and also wealthy, you should invest your money in prescription drugs like lithium instead of self-medicating with booze and sex. It is also perhaps a cautionary tale for movie makers that drink and film.




From an artistic perspective, if awkward shots and blurry fadeouts into montage after montage were dollars, Crazed, aka, Nicole, aka, Where Did the Last 1:28 of My Life Go? would be a blockbuster. This film’s DVD release (or at least its Netflix Insta-Watch release) can be blamed on the Troma Team, the proud distributors of the Toxic Avenger series.

From the beginning, we know a steady hand was not a priority for the camera operator, who likely drank in order to overcome his feelings of dread about having to go to work every day on this. The opening scene provides a little back story development about Malcolm (who will later in the film become Nicole’s live-in butler, yet despite being a murderer, not change his name), who walks in on a man that is, if possible, more acne scarred than he is but apparently is having an affair with his wife Patrice. Patrice and the unnamed adulterer are quickly eliminated by an enraged Malcolm, and opening credits run over what feels like a 30-minute, thrilling aerial shot of a cul-de-sac.

The movie really picks up speed (goes from a tortoise’s to a turtle’s pace) when we see Nicole stripping down into a saggy white bra and panties while cranking up dark opera music, presumably a requiem to help her mourn the passing of the time when she was young enough to be able to get away with prancing around on screen without appropriate levels of clothing. She proceeds to wander around her house attempting to get dressed while engaging in a variety of “bad naked” activities, such as mixing drinks, pulling random objects out of closets and the refrigerator, stooping, crouching and yelling out to butler Malcolm.

I would attempt to outline the plot of Crazed, but after Nicole starts taking photographs of herself and the television – convinced, as we learn through flashbacks, that a car salesman with a chest hair vest of simian proportions on a commercial, named “Fletcher the Dollar Stretcher” is someone that abandoned her while she was hitchhiking cross country years before – my brain started to decline into madness and to protect myself, I had to stop trying to make sense of the movie. I also started to ask questions such as “Why can’t she afford a better television?” and “Why doesn’t she just take some Xanax?”

To make a long story short (which unfortunately, writer/director Ventilla did not), she stalks Fletcher at his car dealership, starts sleeping with him, then seduces a young chickie, Sue (Daisy Duke) at her ballet class that she then spends the rest of the movie playing with like a Barbie doll, and also trying to coerce into a threesome with her and Fletcher.

The most important thing I learned from this movie (because it is clearly meant to be a very useful didactic tool for us all) is how rich people spend their days. This is how Nicole rolls (and presumably how all rich people eat up all their financially-fulfilled time). She …

1. Stalks anyone and anything that wrongs or doesn’t wrong her.
2. Listens to the many answering machine messages she receives but doesn’t return the calls or do anything about them.
3. Has thrilling conversations with strangers during which she asks 100-200 personal yet also uninteresting questions, but then doesn't listen to the answers.
4. Judges other people that do not share her stellar design sensibility, which rests entirely on making every home look like the Playboy Mansion as it appeared in 1978, but with a lot more wood paneling.
5. Takes staged photographs of herself checking out her pores, then gets them developed and talks about how great they look.
6. Orders around her butler Malcolm and tries to steal his breath while he sleeps by leaning over him and staring at him until he wakes up.
7. Fondles strange, vapid women’s breasts … or at least has fantasies that she is fondling their breasts, which are communicated through montages featuring blurred shots of disembodied boobs and equally disembodied female hands cupping them.
8. Dates awkwardly, jumping right into questions about religion, family background and money.
9. Studies ballet with women half her age.
10. Judges other people that are poorer than she is, like Sue. She asks her this series of questions about ten minutes after arriving at her house for the first time and looking through her things, which include an odd toy horse collection: “Are you a moon freak?” “Are you not over your horse phase yet, or what?” “Your father doesn’t give you any allowance?” “What’s this obsession with animals?”
11. Pays for plastic surgery for their uglier friends to fix their “nasal defects” so they can be prettier.
12. Redecorates apartments that are not up to her standards, without the permission of the owners.
13. Runs around crying and screaming frantically and aimlessly in her driveway after breaking up with her boyfriend.

The only thing Nicole doesn’t do that I always have assumed rich people do is play tennis well. In my face, Nicole. Thanks for turning a stereotype on its ear.

I would insert clips or a trailer for Crazed, but everyone associated with this film seems to want to bury it, just as Nicole buried all her former lovers … or as a dog buries its own poop in the yard.

A Bonus Tally of "Montages to Watch":

1. The “Pre-Threesome” Montage (accompanied by rollicking pop music).
2. Nicole’s “Depressing Story about my Mother” Montage.
3. Sue’s “Explaining to Fletcher why Nicole is Judgmental and Pissing Me Off” Montage.
4. The “Nicole Fondling Sue’s Breasts” montage.
5. The “Sue Getting Mauled by a Great Dane” Montage.
6. The “I Killed Someone” Montage.

Reviewed By: Julia Rogers