Blind-watching a bunch of old movies and I coincidentally hit two in a row with basically the same premise: the protagonist sees a bunch of horrible supernatural stuff and can't get anybody to believe them, but actually, it's all part of a conspiracy to drive xer crazy. It doesn't spoil much to give that away and it's been done to death. Anyhow, the ones I saw were 1)
Scream of Fear (1961), a Hammer production with a minor Christopher Lee role, and 2)
Panic Beats (1983), a Paul Naschy movie that is exactly the same as every other Paul Naschy movie, and a loose sequel to Horror Rises From the Tomb, which I can't even remember anything about.
View attachment 3555156
Scream of Fear is the more clever movie and gives that first predictable twist away pretty early on, apparently realizing that the audience would surely figure it out. Then it follows up with more twists that are very surprising if a tad unlikely. It's really pretty good. Christopher Lee's character is French and he bothers doing an accent.
View attachment 3555155
Panic Beats plays the concept pretty witlessly. Paul Naschy has sex with three women, and, being one of the later movies of the Naschy golden age, a woman looks at an old photo of his and comments that he is exactly as handsome as he was ten years ago. Not exactly an unpredictable movie, but there was one thing that did surprise me. You see, it turns out that one of Naschy's girlfriends has a secret lover of her own, who we never see or learn anything about. I assumed that his identity was being concealed for a big twist, but there's no payoff to it. Then it hit me: Naschy would never allow another actor to play a character cucking him, anymore than he would permit his character to lose a fight or not have sex with every woman under 40 in the movie. The self-insert subtext of his movies is usually the most entertaining part.
tonight, it's horror/exploitation in the same sense that I Spit On Your Grave or Last House on the Left is horror/exploitation.
