A cloaked figure slips into an exclusive psychiatric clinic and murders one of the female patients. Meanwhile, various sexuals liaisons are revealed. The mystery killer continues with his massacre he beheads a nurse with a scythe, pushes a chauffeur into a spiked “Iron Maiden”, strangles an older female patient, kills a nymphomaniac with an axe, and shoots a lesbian through the neck with a crossbow. Doctor Clay and the police set a trap for the killer using one of the attractive female patients as bait. However, they are not prepared for the onslaugth that follows…
Harry Moseby (Gene Hackman), a worn-out private detective, is hired to look for a 16-year-old girl who has run away from the luxury home of her mother, formerly a small-time actress in Los Angeles. The more the weary cynic tries to get under the surface of the seemingly simple case, the harder it is for him to find his bearings among the lies and deceptions that surround him. Eight years after the key New Hollywood film Bonnie and Clyde, Arthur Penn and Gene Hackman reunited to collaborate on what was to become one of the most undervalued films of the decade. Like Polanski in Chinatown or Altman in The Long Goodbye, in his revisionist film noir, Penn also allows the 1940s classic genre to pervade the complex reality of the 1970s. The feelings of bitterness and emptiness in the modern Chandleresque protagonist originate not only in the “public” sphere of the strange, increasingly convoluted case, but in his private life as well (boyhood trauma, a broken marriage). As Moseby remarks of a sporting event, “nobody’s winning … one side is just losing slower than the other.”