The Couch

"Someone is going to be murdered at exactly 7:00," an unidentified caller informs the police. His voice is calm, measured, pleasant even. "I'm the murderer." It's 6:55. Five minutes later, a fatally stabbed man keels over on a city sidewalk.

Grant Williams, who helped define '50s sci-fi as the luckless protagonist of The Incredible Shrinking Man, ventures into the thriller genre as an ice pick-wielding glamour boy with a sordid past, a blood-splattered present and a psychiatrist who really bugs him. Based on a story co-written by Blake Edwards, The Couch probes a deeply disturbed mind - and plunges the audience into a nerve-jolting odyssey that ends with the killer, masked and gowned, ready to operate in a hospital surgical theater.

A serial killer (Grant Williams) and his therapy sessions with a psychologist are juxtaposed with his gruesome, successive murders in this standard thriller by director Owen Crump. The killer, Charles Campbell, is fixated on calling in his next murder to the Los Angeles police, confident that he will always elude capture. Dr. Janz (Onslow Stevens) might have his own views on that if Charles were to let him know how he really gets out his rage. In fact, the doctor himself is no more than a father figure to Charles -- not a good analogy considering that the killer hated his domineering dad. The question remains, will the LAPD stop the killer before the world is minus one psychologist'