Spoilers are minor... I'd read about this film a few times over the years, so when I caught it on TCM a couple years ago, my expectations were low -- most everything I've ever read about the movie's been negative. What I didn't expect is that the movie would skyrocket to near the top of my list of all-time favorite films. It's not especially original, the identity of the killer is revealed about 10 minutes in, and some of the dialogue is completely inane, but this little-known flick still oozes charm. It's like a '60s sitcom in the guise of a '70s horror movie.What makes "Wicked, Wicked" so special isn't the story or the gimmicky split-screen that's employed throughout the entire film, it's the characters. Every character, large and small (and many annoyingly uncredited) is wonderfully quirky and likable. There's hotel resident Mrs. Karadyne, who's sweet and eccentric and has a penchant for stretching the truth. There's Genevieve, the sex-starved gift shop employee. There's health-obsessed Hank, the resident lifeguard/waiter who has a secret life as a gigolo (amongst other things). There's Rick, the horny house detective with the troubled past, who was once married to defensive lounge singer Lisa. There's socially awkward and misunderstood electrician Jason, who has a whole mess of skeletons in his closet. There's senile organist Adelle Moffett, who never says a word or interacts with any other characters but still manages to be a scene-stealer. There's Mr. Simmons, the hotel manager, who's more concerned with covering up than investigating recent murders and disappearances. There's inept Police Sgt. Ramsey, who belligerently believes he's always right. There's bellboy Jerry, who's a bit lazy and self-centered and is only out to make a buck (can someone please identify the actor who plays him?!). And then there's the Hotel del Coronado, which really is a character unto itself more than merely a location. There's something lovably askew and almost Rocky Horror-ishly unique and comical about every character.The split-screen is used to good effect, frequently furthering the characters as their pasts are delved into in flashbacks. When it's not being used for flashbacks, it reveals two simultaneous occurrences or two different points of view of the same scene. Many have called the "duo vision" distracting and unnecessary, but I think it was easy to follow and added a lot to the movie. Matter of fact, the editor should've won an award -- there's a couple times when a person moves just slightly out of sync on one side of the screen, but overall the editing's flawless.If anyone with half a brain at MGM had thought to run this on the midnight circuit in the '70s, perhaps it wouldn't still be languishing in near-total obscurity. While I am, indeed, grateful to TCM for unearthing and infrequently airing this delightfully demented variation of "Phantom of the Opera," I'm still praying for the day it gets a remastered, anamorphic DVD release (TCM's print is hardly flawless and it's been slightly cropped to an improper 2.35:1 aspect ratio). I never tire of watching "Wicked, Wicked" and I think there's a big cult audience that's still waiting to discover this quirky gem.

TCM is showing the weirdest 1974 psycho killer film, Wicked Wicked. It takes place at the historic (and reportedly haunted) Hotel Del Coronado in San Diego, set up to be a residential hotel.Almost the whole movie is done in split-screen. Not like the TV show 24 where they show different things happening at the same time - instead, the second screen illustrates backstory and foreshadowing with flashbacks, internal thoughts, and just weird little bits of the story - like, on one screen the creepy kid is telling a pretty girl he studied chemistry, and the other screen shows him young and reading a book on embalming. The music is all soap opera organ (we even see the guy playing it on occasion?!) and the script seems to spoof slasher movies, but it's very well played. It's just so offbeat, I really enjoyed it - I had to stop what I was doing so I could watch closely and absorb the two different POVs running side by side. Never heard of it before - just saw the Hotel Del in the opening shots, and stayed on this channel ------Aside from some interesting storytelling, it's a love letter to the Hotel Del - a bunch of exterior shots, from different angles, plus the Crown Room, the west bell lobby, the beachfront and fountain pools, and a lot of hall and interior shots that sher look like the Hotel itself. The "Wicked Wicked" theme song is still stuck in my head - it's performed on stage I think 2 1/2 times, plus it runs over the credits, a schmaltzy James Bond lounge affair...the girl singer kind of gargles the lyrics, but in a creepy cool way that I THINK may have been intentional parody (she may have been doing Sammy Davis Jr) --Just an odd, interesting little film -

"Wicked, Wicked" was a film that I waited with such anticipation to see at the age of 12 - after seeing the promo trailer on television and the poster in the theater my curiosity was aroused.I loved films as a child - any film. As long as it seemed like an event. I was not big on classics at the time so my catalog was being developed. I don't think that at the time it was supposed to be a great film.It was fun however. And later in 1976 - when my parents owned a theater I persuaded my father to get "Wicked, Wicked" as a second feature for "Demon Seed" - it is a fun film and only for the excitement as "Earthquake" has Sensurround as a gimmick - "DUO-VISION" was the gimmick.See it for the excitement - not for the logging into your classic diary. It does make you laugh and wonder about the time period. Not much different from today - I have walked out on several of todays movie, while sitting through all of "Wicked, Wicked" as a child.It is fun!!!

I admire any movie that tries to change the language of film, even though such efforts nearly always fail. 3-D was a fad that was almost never used properly ('Inferno' being a rare exception). Smell-O-Vision and Odorama were never more than stunts. 'The Door in the Wall', with its fascinating use of Dynamic Frame, proved too unwieldy for exhibition on a large scale.'Wicked, Wicked' was filmed in something cried Duo-Vision ... which means that, except for the opening credits, the entire film is shown in split-screen. Now, split-screen is a valid story-telling device when it's used intelligently and sparingly. A great example is in 'The Silence of the Lambs', during the exciting sequence in which Clarice Starling and a team of FBI agents are going to two separate houses simultaneously. But 'Wicked, Wicked' has two things happening at the same go for the *entire* movie. Sadly, one of them is (mostly) irrelevant, and the other one is painfully trite.SPOILERS COMING THICK AND FAST. At the beginning of the movie, we see a woman seat herself at an organ and begin playing some Phantom of the Opera music, which she continues to play throughout the film. She's dressed in an elaborate formal outfit that would be appropriate for a concert-hall recital, yet she's all alone. Also, the actress cast in this role is so spectacularly ugly that I couldn't believe her looks were coincidental. I was positive she was going to turn out to be a supernatural witch, or something similar. No; her looks *are* irrelevant. In fact, this woman and her organ music are completely irrelevant. She sits there fingering her organ through the entire film, yet she never interacts with any of the other characters, nor do any of them seem to hear her organ music. The scriptwriter just wants to have *two* events occurring simultaneously (for the sake of the split-screen gimmick), so we get this irrelevant organ recital.The main plot concerns a resort hotel in a remote location. The very pretty Tiffany Bolling arrives as a black-haired nightclub singer who's been booked by the hotel. Her black hair doesn't match her fair complexion. Um, but some nutter is killing brunettes, so the local cop decides she ought to turn blonde as a matter of self-preservation. Bolling spends most of the flick as a blonde, and looks much prettier with long golden locks than with long raven tresses ... but she looks a natural blonde who was pretending to be brunette, not the other way round.The identity and whereabouts of the psycho are no mystery, as we watch him (on one-half of the split-screen) through most of the film. Randolph Roberts plays a disaffected youth whose mother was mean to him, so now he's just gotta go slicing pretty girls. Guess who he's picked out as his next victim.Tiffany Bolling is no actress, but she's so damned pretty that I kept watching. Still, it's painful to hear her singing this movie's awful title song 'Wicked, Wicked ... that's the ticket...' on one side of the screen while Roberts flicks his knife on the other side of the screen. I kept expecting the old Warner Brothers cartoon gag where the character on one side of a split screen reaches across the partition to the other side.Character actress Madeleine Sherwood, whom I've always liked, is stuck here in a pathetic role as a sub-Tennessee Williams dowager who has fallen on bad times, and is desperately trying to avoid eviction from the hotel after her money has run out. If you're waiting for this subplot to link up with the psycho killer or his blonde prey, keep waiting. Soon after this, Sherwood's acting career declined to the point where she ended up doing low-budget commercials for Hansel & Gretel cold cuts. I used to confuse Madeleine Sherwood with silent-film actress Madeline Hurlock, who married playwright Robert Sherwood.'Wicked, Wicked' is written and directed by Richard L Bare. Despite this film, I've a lot of respect for Bare's career. He had extensive film and television credits -- including the entire run of 'Green Acres' after the pilot episode, plus some classic 'Twilight Zone' episodes -- and he also wrote an excellent textbook on film directing. He was probably hoping that 'Wicked, Wicked' would be his prestige hit ... but it's just boring and pretentious. I'll rate this movie 2 points out of 10: one point out of kindness to Bare, and one point because Tiffany Bolling is so sexy.