The Astral Factor / The Astral Fiend / Silent Kill / The Transformer (1976/1978) -**
It’s been a while since I saw a movie so completely bumfuzzled regarding its own premise as The Astral Factor. On paper, the idea seems clear enough, and honestly rather nifty. You take a prickly, irascible cop, like a less wantonly homicidal Harry Callahan, and pit him against a serial killer possessed of formidable paranormal powers. But what gets The Astral Factor into trouble is when it attempts to define the nature and extent of the killer’s abilities. Astral projection, after all, is a quite specific domain of mystic horseshit— the ability to travel outside one’s body in a quasi-physical form capable of moving not merely through ordinary space, but potentially into other dimensions as well. It’s not at all interchangeable with telekinesis, telepathy, or extreme manifestations of mind-over-matter bodily control. Use “astral” in the title, and you can’t just make the bad guy a gender-flipped Carrie with a rap sheet. But in point of fact, astral projection is just about the one psionic talent that the movie’s villain never recognizably exhibits.
The sign on the perimeter fence identifies the setting as the California State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, but what we see once the camera takes us inside is just a garden variety penitentiary. Down one sparsely populated cell block, inmate Roger Sands (Frank Ashmore, from Monster in the Closet and Parts: The Clonus Horror) is up to a very strange form of no good, practicing to turn himself invisible. Miller (Al Tipay), the man in the cell across the corridor from Sands, issues a variety of vague threats when he realizes what Roger is doing, but a quick telekinetic slapdown teaches the blustery prisoner to recognize when shutting the fuck up is the better part of valor. The ruckus brings one of the guards, which is just what Sands was hoping for. Roger vanishes himself again before the guard gets close enough to see inside his cell, then slips past when his jailer opens the door to investigate his apparent escape. Sands locks the guard in behind him, helps himself to the cell block’s keys, and strolls right out of the asylum totally unobserved.
The next several scenes give us some idea of what makes Sands tick, psychologically speaking. His first stop after his escape is the grave of his celebrity mother, whom he himself murdered one night after he finally got sick of her refusal to acknowledge him publicly. Roger is right in the middle of an explanatory flashback when the old night watchman interrupts him; the poor bastard gets buried alive via telekinesis in a conveniently open grave for his trouble. Then Sands drops in on fashion model Darlene De Long (Sue Lyon, from End of the World and Alligator) after a photo shoot to strangle her in her own bathtub. His only words to her before wrapping his invisible hands around her throat are, “Hello, mother.”
This is where that prickly, irascible cop comes in. His name is Lieutenant Charles Barrett (Robert Foxworth, of Prophecy and The Devil’s Daughter), and it’s supposed to be his night off. He even has his flaky, irritating, and almost perpetually pantsless girlfriend, Candy (Stephanie Powers, from Die, Die, My Darling! and Sweet, Sweet Rachel), over at his apartment to celebrate that all-too-rare event. Alas for Barrett, Captain Wells (Percy Rodrigues, of Genesis II and Brainwaves) wants him in particular to lead the investigation of Darlene De Long’s murder— and worse yet, the lieutenant’s partner on the case is to be a rookie schmuck by the name of Holt (Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea’s Mark Slade), on whom Wells is hoping some of Barrett’s competence might rub off, given sufficient intensive exposure. So much for a relaxing evening at home, huh? In any case, Barrett’s first thought upon looking over the scene of the crime is that De Long’s boyfriend, a businessman twice her age called Kingsley (Lord Shango’s Bill Overton), is the prime suspect, but circumstances rule Kingsley out as quickly as they suggest him. It isn’t long, though, before another suspect arises to take his place. Back at the precinct, the fingerprint lab identifies prints taken from De Long’s front door and telephone handset as those of Roger Sands, whose escape from the asylum is confirmed in short order.
Sands’s police record and an interview with his psychiatrist, Dr. Jacobs (Eddie Firestone, of The Todd Killings and Duel), combine to muddy considerably what we thought we already knew about the killer. Although Jacobs confirms that the murders which put Roger away were all of women whom he confused in his psychosis with his slain mother, the department’s files identify Darlene De Long as one of several witnesses whose testimony was instrumental in convicting Sands. So apparently he has a rational motive layered on top of his insane one, or maybe vice-versa? Jacobs also mentions that Sands displayed a pronounced interest in psychic phenomena during his incarceration, and that he was once interviewed by a certain Dr. Ulmer (Alex Dreier, from Lady Cocoa and The Boston Strangler) of the Psychic Research Institute. Sands made one hell of an impression on that occasion, too. The psychiatrist doesn’t really know what to make of this, but it was Ulmer’s opinion that Sands “could be here in this room with us, and we would be unable to see him.”
Be that as it may, Barrett’s next move is to extend police protection to the other witnesses mentioned in the Sands case file, Roxanne Raymond (Renata Vaselle) and Chris Hartmann (Elke Sommer, from Lisa and the Devil and The Warrior Empress). That ends up being more difficult than it sounds, however, because Raymond, a professional dancer whose occupation keeps her frequently on the road, is extremely elusive, while Hartmann, a former Miss Galaxy and current trophy wife to a filthy-rich asshole, is extremely jealous of what little privacy and freedom of movement her husband allows her. Holt has his hands full just locating Roxanne, while Chris initially mistakes Barrett for a private detective hired by her husband to keep tabs on her while he’s out of the country on business. Hartmann’s relationship with the detectives will retain a strong current of mistrust, hostility, and resentment even after that misunderstanding is cleared up. Mind you, Chris never lets her negative feelings toward her unwanted watchdogs stand in the way of mounting a low-key but persistent campaign to lure Barrett into bed with her.
In addition to tracking down Roxanne Raymond, Holt has been digging into the original Sands case, and he’s discovered that the estate of Carlotta Sands is still tied up in probate despite the years that have gone by since she was killed by her son. The detectives go to check the place out, fortuitously arriving just minutes after their quarry finishes settling into his old room in Mom’s attic. That leads to the first direct confrontation between cops and killer, during which Barrett and Holt never consciously realize that the man lobbing housewares at them from the top of the stairs is invisible, but surely do notice how weird it is that they never get a look at him even while he’s making an escape that ought to require coming within arm’s reach of them. Tossing Sands’s lair in the aftermath, Barrett finds a handwritten list bearing not only the names of Darlene De Long, Roxanne Raymond, and Chris Hartmann, but also those of two more women whom the police didn’t previously know about: Colleen Hudson (Leslie Parrish, of Missile to the Moon and The Giant Spider Invasion) and Bambi Greer (Mariana Hill, from Schizoid and The Baby). Obviously it would be difficult enough for the police to safeguard all four prospective targets, even if Sands were just an ordinary maniac, and their initial performance in the task is not encouraging. But it is precisely the nature of Barrett and Holt’s second failure that puts the lead detective on the right track, for the way Sands kills Raymond— right onstage, in full view of a packed auditorium, yet somehow going unnoticed by anyone— gives Barrett the unsettling idea that maybe Dr. Ulmer’s statement about the murderer’s ability to go unseen should be taken altogether literally. Clearly a visit to the Psychic Research Institute is in order before Sands gets a chance to strike yet again.
I don’t know about you, but I’m genuinely intrigued by the notion of a police procedural about the hunt for a serial killer who commits his crimes via astral projection— especially one that would start the way The Astral Factor actually does, with the villain already imprisoned. Think of it as the next step up from The College Girl Murders, with an even more baffling means whereby a criminal whom everyone knows to be behind bars can nevertheless launch a fresh rampage of slaughter. And if the film really delved into the lore of astral projection, with planetary levels and silver cords and all that other whacked-out crap, then you could definitely count me in. I love a 1970’s horror, sci-fi, or fantasy flick that plays like a episode of “In Search Of” gone berserk, and astral projection never really got its due amid all the obsessive milking of more accessible concepts like UFOs, cryptozoology, telekinesis, and ancient astronauts.
Alas, The Astral Factor simply isn’t that movie, title notwithstanding. Bizarrely, the only time astral projection is even mentioned as such is during Barrett’s visit to the Psychic Research Institute, when Dr. Ulmer concludes his and the detective’s chat with a confused and confusing ramble on the subject, on terms suggesting that even he doesn’t see what it could possibly have to do with a serial strangler who can turn himself invisible. And the one time when Sands does anything even faintly suggestive of that particular paranormal discipline comes at the very end of the film, when his final fate could conceivably be interpreted as the result of severing the link between his physical body and his astral one… had it ever been implied at any point up to then that Sands had an astral body in the first place. Consequently, I’m only a little surprised that this movie spent most of the VHS era circulating under the title Invisible Strangler instead, in a form so drastically altered as to warrant being treated as a film unto itself.
All that said, there’s still a little bit of witless fun to be had from The Astral Factor, thanks primarily to its creators’ propensity for bewildering bad decisions. Between this movie and Prophecy, Robert Foxworth establishes himself an underappreciated master of the Jerk Protagonist role, and it’s amusing to watch Elke Sommer, of all people, work herself into a series of tizzies as Chris fails and fails and fails to get into Barrett’s pants. Frank Ashmore overacts as bombastically as he can during his limited periods of visibility, even when Sands is just meditating in his cell at the asylum. Naturally he goes furthest over the top in those scenes revealing the depth of the killer’s sadism, the most entertaining examples being the interment of the cemetery night watchman and the murder of the beat cop who catches him casing the theater where Roxanne Raymond is scheduled to perform. The bad decision we have to live with longest is the one to give Barrett two comic-relief foils, in the forms of Candy and Holt. The makers of The Astral Factor were plainly quite taken with Candy, whether because of the character herself, Stephanie Powers’s performance in the part, or both, and they repeatedly allow her to bring the film to a screeching halt with her antics. Holt is less disruptive, insofar as his participation in the actual plot enables him to deliver his “jokes” without requiring set-pieces of his very own, but he’s fully competitive with Candy in terms of sheer aggravation. Holt’s most obnoxious shtick is his nervous habit of clicking the nib-extender button on his pen in and out incessantly— a tic made doubly insufferable by an audio mix sufficiently inept that it becomes difficult to follow the dialogue over the constant low-level racket. The most purely perplexing thing The Astral Factor does, though, has to be Sands’s attack on the yacht belonging to Bambi Greer’s movie-producer sugar daddy (Cesare Danova, from Valley of the Dragons and Tentacles). Given the killer’s overall modus operandi, it’s disorienting in the extreme to see him, just this once, merely donning scuba gear and sneaking over the transom like some goon in an episode of “Charlie’s Angels.” I still have to score The Astral Factor as a disappointment on all fronts, but it does have something to offer the dyed-in-the-wool cinemasochist.
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