Schizo

Starring:Lynne Frederick, John Leyton, Stephanie Beacham, John Fraser, Jack Watson, Queenie Watts, Trisha Mortimer, Paul Alexander, Robert Mill, Colin Jeavons, Victor Winding, Raymond Bowers (II), Pearl Hackney, Terry Duggan, Lindsay Campbell, Diana King, Wendy Gilmore, Primi Townsend, Victoria Allum, John McEnery
Director: Pete Walker
Studio: Image Entertainment
Product Type: DVD

Description

An uncommonly moving feature about characters in desperate circumstances, SCHIZO offers both a unique coming-of-age story and a sterling feature debut by director Guka Omarova. The film concerns Mustafa, or "Schizo," a boy not quite 15 years old, who becomes caught up in sordid adult dealings, and must struggle to maintain his sense of beauty and right as he develops the expertise and thick skin of a true player. Growing up in the destitute early '90s Kazakhstan, and nicknamed "Schizo" for his eccentric behavior in school (for which he also earns a drug regimen and the ominous prospect of other treatments), the young man lives an unrewarding home life in early-'90s Kazakhstan with his single mother and her boyfriend Sakura (a small-time hood.) The makeshift family is poor, and the adults pay little attention to Schizo's prospects, except that Sakura offers Schizo a role in his own income scheme: procuring other men who will agree to fight in an underground and illegal boxing syndicate. The men will vie for money and cars, but few will ever win, and some are horribly injured. Already toughened by life, Schizo takes to this work with zeal, happy to have a little spending money. But he is taken aback when one recruit - a young man named Ali - dies after his boxing match, entrusting a small amount of money to Schizo, to be delivered to Ali's girlfriend Zina.

Feeling a faint sympathy for the dead Ali, Schizo finds Zina, a somewhat older woman, living in a small hovel on the outskirts of his town. Also living there is someone Ali never mentioned: his young son Sanzhik, a mere toddler who finds the new, teenage stranger intriguing. Keenly aware of Zina's wrenching poverty (as well as her debilitating limp), Schizo delivers Ali's money without initially breaking the news of his tragic death. Finally observing this last formality, he becomes a regular visitor at Zina's home. Much to their mutual surprise, the three young, wounded people take on the aspect of a family more functional than Schizo's own. Schizo and Zina undertake a physical relationship (especially tender, given his relative inexperience). Schizo also develops a special bond with young Sanzhik, gradually coming to provide the stability and warmth that his own childhood has so sorely lacked. But in his growing desire to support Zina and Sanzhik, Schizo must raise more money, and he redoubles his involvement with the illegal fighting operation, even recruiting an alcoholic uncle to undergo the punishing ordeal. When the uncle's unexpected win foils the schemes of Sakura's crooked boss, Schizo faces possible disaster - and realizes that this represents calamity to his new family as well. The decisions he makes next are both noble and wrenching.

Austere direction, stark imagery and magnificent performances (especially by a remarkable Olzhas Nusuppaev in the title role) combine in a memorable portrait of a vulnerable and humane young man, blossoming in the toxic soil of a devastated country.

Customer Reviews:

Kazakhstan's geme.......2007-05-26

Surely, this movie is a tragic comedy of people left on their own in the "middle of the bush" where any making living crime is a good deed indeed.

However, this film is anyway very positively sexy, funny and entertaining to an extent mateship, black comedy, poverty, paedophilia and murdering could entertain cinema-goers.

Born and grown up in lawlessness of a post-Soviet "democratic independent transitional" era, an average Kazakh boy is used to a local grey environment of poverty and mirage of opportunities as illegal bidding and mafia rule are a very way of meeting ties. While bringing price money to a girlfriend of a killed boxer, this 15 year old established a special bond with a female acquainted, straightening upon a very short time into sexual relations.

Eventually realistically depicting a reality surrounding, the movie-makers finish this story about a Gorbatchev perestroika's child disturbed mentally for schooling and sane for serving a six year prison term on a positive tune as his much older fiancee and her grown-up son were greeting him outside a prison on his reliase, flowers in hands.

Looking at Kazakhstan.......2007-02-27

"The Recruiter"

Looking at Kazakhstan

Amos Lassen and Cinema Pride

When we think of Kazakhstan, I doubt that we think of beauty. I have learned that Kazakhstan is indeed a land of beautiful landscapes--there is great beauty in the starkness there. Picture This Entertainment has managed to release another movie of how children are used to do the jobs of adults in "The Recruiter", a visually stunning film. A 15 year old Kazakh youth, Mustafa, is told by his mother's boyfriend that he must procure young boxers so that they can fight illegally and men can gamble. When one of the young boxers receives a terrible blow to the head, the boyfriend sends Mustafa to deliver the prize money to his (the boxer's) girlfriend and young son. Mustafa finds them living in an almost poverty like shack somewhere in the middle of nowhere and immediately falls in love with the girl and decides to raise the young boy. But he only knows how to support people in the way he has been taught and instead of attempting to lead an honest life, he continues in his illegal activity.
This is not an easy film but as I watched I learned so much. I first learned of the country of Kazakhstan and of the nature of the people and the beauty of the country but more than that I learned of the use of youth to do an adult's job. I felt myself full of rage as I watched the young kid throw his life away by succumbing to the demands of his mother's low-life boyfriend. I do not understand how children get involved in this sort of activity; I understand even less why they continue with it.
Even with that, I must confess that everything about this movie is first class. The acting is wonderful, the characterizations are epic and believable and the photography is crystal clear. The script is literate and beautifully written and this movie will expose you to many new ideas.

Impressive Debuts All the Way Around.......2006-06-12

Schizo. This appears to be the first major picture out of Kahzikstan and what an impressive, stunning debut of a film. Schizo is the story of a 15 year old boy everyone thinks is schizophrenic. He's kicked out of school for fighting, but instantly the viewer will recognize this young man as the sanest, most responsible person in the film. He's hired by his mother's boyfriend to recruit fighters for illegal bare-knuckle fights. Shortly into his new career, a young dying fighter asks the boy to bring his winnings to his girlfriend and his son. Immediately Schizo develops a sense of responsibility for this little family and does whatever he can to ensure their well being. Things turn nasty, but a pervading sense of hope seems to light Schizo's eyes and one never questions his judgment and he stays true to some code of honor that no one else seems to have in this tale.

It's a powerful, beautiful story with a sensational film debut from Oldzhas Nusupbayev. Throughout the film I kept wondering "where did they FIND this kid?" - and I was startled to learn he had never before acted, had no family and was actually growing up in an orphanage and discovered there. His performance is the lynchpin on which the entire film is hinged.

Writer/Director Guka Omarova's location scenes are visually strong, conveying a sort of resigned hopelessness and presenting a post-Soviet Kahzikstan landscape that feels like a world that had been stripmined for all its worth and then merely abandoned. Equally as impressive as this landscape are the wildly diverse and unforgettable faces of the multi-ethnic populations of this country.

Olga Landina plays the love interest and she is like a young, vibrant, Eastern bloc Rebecca Demornay. Hot.

Schizo is a real find!

Seeking and Finding Meaning in the Midst of Bleakness.......2005-09-16

SCHIZO is a stunning cinematic achievement from Kazakhstan courtesy of Gulshat Omarova who directed and co-wrote with Sergei Bodrov this story of survival in the bleak landscape of poverty in that part of the world about which we know little.

Mustafa (nicknamed Schizo by his schoolmates who find his behavior crazy) lives with mother and her boyfriend Sakura (Eduard Tabishev), a worldly guy who arranges illegal, brutal boxing matches with unemployed desperate men who are placed in a ring with 'professionals'. Schizo's mother seeks help for Schizo from a kindly doctor (who she pays in eggs and sour cream of her own making): the doctor (Viktor Sukhorukov) prescribes pills for Schizo's behavior and headache and recommends expensive test in the nearby city.

Sakura engages Schizo to ferret out 'victims' for the illegal games, offering companionship and some money to the lonely kid. At one fight a young man Ali is beaten to death and as he dies he makes Schizo promise to give his 'winning money' to his girl Zinka (Olga Landina) and his son. Schizo keeps his word and delivers the money to Zinka who lives below the poverty level in a shack outside of the tiny town. Schizo makes friends with Zinka's young son, and ultimately is forced to tell Zinka that Ali is dead. Furious at first, Zinka gradually warms to Schizo as he repeatedly brings her little gifts he buys with the money from his work with Sakura. The three finally form a semblance of family, a life Schizo has never known.

Sakura's dealings with the illegal boxing come to disaster when Schizo's alcoholic uncle, bribed to fight, actually wins, destroying the crime ring. Sakura convinces Schizo to rob a little store so that he can pay back the irate crime leaders, but as soon as the robbery is successful, Sakura denies Schizo his rightful 50%, tries to flee, but Schizo shoots the escaping Sakura, leaving Schizo now a killer but with all the stolen money as his own. How Schizo deals with this mixture of misfortune and luck and the consequences of his behavior forms the ending to this little story.

The acting is extraordinary, especially on the part of novice Oldzhas Nusupbayev as Schizo, a young actor given little dialogue but who is able to tell legions of information with his eyes. The camera work and musical scoring are as sensitively minimal and effective as is the story: the images of poverty and deserted structures left behind by the fall of the Soviet Union are mesmerizing. Highly Recommended. In Russian with English subtitles. Grady Harp, September 05

Like "Over The Top" but about boxing instead of arm wrestling........2005-08-30

Like many of my all-time-favorite moments in narrative cinema (Love Streams, Nobody Knows, Alice In The Cities, A Man Escaped), Guka Omarova's Schizo is not a mere "list" of characters, places, and events --- as all too many movies unfortunately are --- but rather a work of art that feels like an actual experience. Which of course is no small feat. But even in the hands of a less talented director, more prone to needless convention, the people and places that comprise the bulk of this film are so inherently intriguing they would just as likely resist such narrow categorization. Indeed, good casting is an important part of directing, and there are enough striking faces in this movie to rival Werner Herzog in his prime. Thankfully though, Schizo isn't a mere exploitation of the desolate melting pot that is Kazakhstan; rather it's a visually rich, impeccably paced, even at times "entertaining" "coming-of-age" story that undoubtedly ranks among the most impressive debut features of recent years. Though some critics have written Schizo off as a brutal boxing movie, it's worth noting that these are likely the same kitsch-obsessed, soft-boiled jounalists who'd rather sit through Pearl Harbor again than watch Elim Kilmov's Come and See for the first time. Do the math. Don't believe everything you read. See this film, and then judge for yourself.

Average customer rating:

Atmospheric chiller from Pete Walker!
Giallo-style shocker rewards patience

Schizo
Starring: Lynne Frederick , John Leyton , Stephanie Beacham , John Fraser , and Jack Watson
Director: Pete Walker
Manufacturer: Image Entertainment
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B00005OCLL
Release Date: 2001-10-02

Description

A little girl watches helplessly as she is the sole witness to her mother's murder. Years later, that little girl has grown into the beautiful skating star Samantha Gray (Lynne Frederick). But after her wedding announcement is published in the local newspaper, a man who becomes more and more obsessed with her begins turning up everywhere she goes. Samantha's fear mounts as one by one her friends are murdered, and she becomes convinced that the stalker is no stranger! Directed by British goremaster Pete Walker (Frightmare, The Flesh and Blood Show), this suspenseful horror thriller was one of the early slasher films, rich with gore, an intriguing story, scenes reminiscent of Psycho and a twist ending considered so frightening that squeamish theater patrons were promised free smelling salts if they fainted!

Customer Reviews:

Atmospheric chiller from Pete Walker!.......2001-12-06

If you have never seen one of Pete Walker's films, you are really missing out on something.

Although not Pete Walker's best film, SCHIZO (1976) bears the winning trademarks of this unusual director/producer: highly atmospheric settings (especially the seedy and depressed aspect of England of the 70's), characters disturbed by confused memories of childhood trauma, and a slow-paced plot line that accelerates near the end of the film to a strange and twisted endpoint.

The acting is SCHIZO is (for a horror chiller) very good. The screenplay (by David McGillivray) is quite excellent, as is the photography .

Unfortunately, the print offered by IMAGE is produced from a well-worn original -the picture quality is marred by noticable fading in colour and "pitted" images, especially in the first several "reels".

As is standard with the EUROSHOCK COLLECTION, there are no extras. However, given the visceral substance of the film itself, the DVD is highly recommended to anyone seriously interested in the horror genre.

Giallo-style shocker rewards patience.......2001-12-05

"Schizo" (1976) is a giallo-style shocker from British director Pete Walker ("House of Whipcord", "Frightmare"), which offers an appropriately convoluted plot allied to a series of brutal killings by person or persons unknown. The marriage of ice-skating star Samantha Gray (Lynne Frederick, from "Vampire Circus") to Alan Falconer (former pop singer John Leyton) attracts the unwelcome attentions of a shadowy figure from Frederick's past, a convicted murderer (Jack Watson) recently paroled from prison. When his apparent stalking of Frederick prompts a series of vicious murders, old secrets begin tumbling into the light of day, culminating in all manner of bloodshed and mayhem...

Though "Schizo" is a little more conventional than Walker's previous outings ("It was less Gothique...I wanted less incident and outrage," he explained), it still manages to deliver the goods, even if it takes rather too long to work up a decent head of steam. Most of the shocks and scares are confined to the second half of the film, and while the steady accumulation of narrative details pays dividends in the end, individual scenes are somewhat labored, not helped by Frederick's lack of presence in the leading role. By contrast, Stephanie Beacham ("Dracula A.D. 1972", "Inseminoid") is effortlessly charming as a family friend who turns detective when Frederick identifies Watson as her stalker - had the roles been reversed, this could have been a small masterpiece of psychological horror. Other stand-outs include veteran character actor Watson (recognizable from brief appearances in countless British movies, here given a much weightier role than usual), and a bearded John Fraser ("Tunes of Glory", "The Trials of Oscar Wilde") as a psychiatrist who pays the price for digging too deeply into the circumstances surrounding the death of Frederick's mother.

Walker was always aware of his limitations as a director, allowing clever scriptwork to dictate his method, but he was no hack, as "Schizo" ably demonstrates. Here, his point-and-shoot style is frequently punctuated by moments of genuine visual dexterity, such as the circling of a pen on a newspaper article which gives way via dissolve to a spinning ice-skater, or the truly unsettling seance towards the end of the film in which psychic Trisha Mortimer manifests physical signs of possession by one of the killer's former victims. The subsequent murders are blunt and bloody, with no pretence to subtlety. Peter Jessop's artful cinematography and Chris Burke's sensitive art direction makes a virtue of the film's slightly seedy locations, and while a good fifteen minutes could have been cut from the overlong narrative (the DVD runs 109m 1s), Alan Brett's keen editing skills manages to streamline an increasingly complicated scenario. Sadly, this was Walker's last collaboration with writer David McGillivray, who had originally been assigned to overhaul an old unused script by Murray Smith (author of Walker's earlier films), but McGillivray felt that the killer's identity was too obvious from the outset. Maybe so, but viewers may still be taken off-guard by some of the climactic revelations. Bottom line: If you're a fan of Walker's output or British exploitation in general, you'll overlook the film's slow-burning tempo and enjoy its outlandish plot developments. Worth a look.

The packaging for Image's region-free DVD retains the controversial tag-line that was dropped from the film's UK theatrical campaign following complaints from mental health organizations ("Schizophrenia...when the left hand doesn't know who the right hand is killing!" - yeah, it IS pretty tasteless), but otherwise, the disc is a bit of a mixed bag. The film itself has been letterboxed to its original widescreen dimensions (1.85:1), anamorphically enhanced, but while the print is generally OK, there are noticeable blemishes and missed frames, which indicates that the film hasn't been terribly well preserved over the years. That said, however, the presentation is more than acceptable, so don't let this (very) minor drawback put you off. Sound format is one-channel mono. Sadly, there are no captions and no extras of any kind, not even a trailer, which has become increasingly common on Image's EuroShock collection. The movie itself is reason enough to buy the disc, I suppose, but the complete absence of extras is more than a little disappointing. By way of compensation, Image appears to have dropped the old 'snapper' packaging in favor of Amaray casing, which is indeed cause for celebration.

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