Heat of Madness is an odd little 1966 New York sexploitation roughie that may not deliver the sexploitation goods but it is a fascinating exercise in slow-burning creepiness and madness.

John Wilright (Kevin Scott) is a photographer. He does mild nudie stuff for calendars and is obviously just getting by. Then Susan (Jennifer Llaird) turns up at the door of his seedy studio. She’s returning some sketches he left at the office where she works. Susan thinks the sketches are really good. She thinks John has real talent.

Susan is the sort of girl who falls for struggling artists, especially  struggling artists who are suffering for their art. She falls for John straight away and she falls hard.

There are so many obvious red flags with this guy that any sensible girl would run a mile. He flies off the handle for no reason. Every time they start getting amorous he gets weird and freezes up and pushes her away. It would be obvious to anyone that John has some serious issues with women but it isn’t obvious to Susan. She thinks it’s part of his artistic temperament. She thinks he’s an undiscovered genius and if he has a few problems that’s OK, her love will overcome those problems.

What John doesn’t know is that Susan is the heiress to a steel fortune. A firm of lawyers is looking after her interests. Bill (Alan Wylie) is one of the partners and his job is to protect her financial interests and to keep an eye on her personal interests as well. Bill thinks that John is obviously trouble and tries to warn Susan but she’s hopelessly in love and she won’t listen.

Things start to get weirder when John gets a new photographic assignment, doing a series of photoshoots for a book about notorious sex murders. He has a group of actors who will play out scenes of violence for his camera.

John is really excited by this assignment. A bit too excited. Even Susan is a bit disturbed, especially when John starts acting out scenes with her. At this point it should be blindingly obvious that he’s a nutter but it all just makes her more determined to save him.

Susan arranges for John to get a really good job where he could put his talents (and he apparently does have genuine talent) to use. It could launch him on a successful respectable art career but John isn’t interested. He’s more and more obsessed wth his great sex murders photoshoots.

There’s obviously a good chance that these photoshoots are going to push John over the edge into out-and-out madness but Susan is convinced that once he finishes this assignment he’ll calm down. No matter how crazy he gets she is determined to stand by her man.

There’s some mild nudity but it really is mild by roughie standards. Some of the nudity is courtesy of June Roberts who will need no introduction to serious fans of the sexploitation genre. There’s also not very much actual violence. Again it’s very tame by roughie standards.

What this movies does have to offer is some serious and effective suspense. We know that John is eventually going to snap and we fear that Susan is potentially in very serious danger. She just goes on refusing to see the warning signs and she keeps seeing John even as it becomes increasingly clear to the viewer that the danger to her is becoming more extreme.

It also offers a genuinely intriguing look at madness and art and the blurring of the line between the two. John’s photoshoots cease to be mere photoshoots. To John they start becoming real. He starts to think he’s shooting real scenes of violence rather than scenes played out by actors.

Kevin Scott’s performance is quite effective. He’s amazingly intense. Jennifer Llaird’s performance is surprisingly also quite competent.

This movie is included on a Something Weird double-header DVD release paired with The Psycho Lover which is a wonderfully strange 1970 roughie with a bit of a giallo flavour. Heat of Madness gets a very good transfer. It’s a great disc, assuming you can find a copy.

Heat of Madness is a disturbing little movie in its unassuming way and it’s recommended.