The Sadist (1963) on Netflix
Three high school teachers driving to a Dodgers game in Los Angeles have car trouble and stop at a roadside junkyard. Charlie Tibbs and his girlfriend Judy arrive, wanting the Bel Air.
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- Netflix4.2/5
- IMDb6.6/103,397 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes100%
Trailer
Plot summary
Ed, Doris, and Carl teach high school. They are driving across California's Antelope Valley, bound for a Dodgers game in Los Angeles, when their Chevrolet Bel Air develops trouble. They pull off at a roadside gas station and junkyard. Ed decides the fuel pump needs replacing. Doris and Carl look for the owner, but the place is empty. In the residence, a warm meal sits on a table set for four, and the three grow uneasy. Charlie Tibbs appears with his girlfriend Judy. He carries a Colt .45, has come from Arizona, and has killed people along the way while staying ahead of the law. He orders Ed to finish the repairs, says he and Judy will take the Bel Air, and threatens that the three will not survive if they refuse.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Sadist (1963)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- On The Sadist, the snake handler was late one day, so the crew started without him and put the wrong crate of snakes, ones whose mouths had not been sewn shut, in the pit with star Arch Hall Jr., then pulled him out before he was bitten.
- Vilmos Zsigmond shot The Sadist over two weeks for $33,000; it was his first full-length film as director of photography, and its success let him quit his day job at a photo lab. Star Arch Hall Jr. hired him after being impressed by his work on Wild Guitar.
- The Sadist is loosely based on the killing spree of Charles Starkweather and his girlfriend Caril Ann Fugate, who killed 11 people in Nebraska and Wyoming in the late 1950s, when Starkweather was 19 and Fugate was 14. Starkweather was executed and Fugate was paroled in 1976.
- Cast member Richard Alden recalled that the ammunition used in The Sadist was real, in order to save money.
- The Sadist is a favorite of director Joe Dante, who owns the 35mm print that has been the source for many of the film's DVD releases.
- The Sadist's score was not written for the film: it used library music by Paul Sawtell and Bert Shefter, neither of whom was credited in the final film.
