Haunted memories
A troubled Vietnam vet is senselessly murdering young women in St. Louis where two detectives are on the case (Turk Cekovsky and Terry TenBroek), working closely with the roommate of one of the victims (Debi Chaney).
“Delirium” (1979) starts out like “The Centerfold Girls” and “The Toolbox Murders,” but takes an interesting turn after the first act. The less you know, the better. Unfortunately, the back cover text of every video format gives away the plot after the opening paragraph. I’ll just say that the flick comes across as a ‘B’ version of a 70’s Harry Callahan flick, like “Magnum Force” and “The Enforcer,” just set in St. Louis rather than San Francisco. There’s even a small scene ripped straight off from “The Enforcer.”
Speaking of that scene, it involves blonde Letty Garris as the hitchhiker and it’s actually superior to the sequence in “The Enforcer” with Jocelyn Jones.
Sure, this lacks the top-notch cast and all-around pizzazz of the Dirty Harry films, but it’s not far off either, if you don’t mind ‘B’ productions. The cast members do a good job for one-shot actors and you feel like you get to know the key characters over the course of the story. Moreover, the final act doesn’t fail to pull out all the stops for a thrilling climax in the old industrial side of the city with its rundown factories and such.
The movie runs 1 hours, 28 minutes, and was shot in St. Louis, Missouri, as well as nearby Clayton, which is a 20-minutes drive due west of downtown.
GRADE: B/B-
