***American Pyscho Number 34 – With Joseph Cotton’s The Killer Is Loose In Mind

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

The Killer Is Loose, Joseph Cotton, Wendell Corey, 1956

I don’t know about you but I like my American psychos, the cinematic variety okay, strictly, well, bonkers, and with a certain flare. You know guys like Robert Walker in Strangers On A Train or Anthony Perkins in Psycho. Guys you wouldn’t want to invite dinner, or any meal, and would feel ill at ease having within sixteen towns of where you live. So your average Walter Mitty psycho, like this guy Leon Poole I am going to give you the “skinny” on, left me flat. Left me flat because maybe with about a six drug cocktail his weasely little problems could have been brought under control and maybe he could have led a civilized life like the rest of us. Instead he was last seen dressed in drag with about thirty-three (hell, that is only a guess) cop-directed slugs in him on some fellow copper’s lawn. Let me tell you how he got there and you will see why I only go for stone-cold psychos.

This Leon, like a lot of guys back in the1940s and 1950s, maybe now too but that was the time of Leon’s time so let’s stick with that, was kind of clumsy, kind of a guy who couldn’t really navigate in the world, a guy who was naturally the butt of every prank. A guy fit for nothing else but to be a fall guy. A guy, a Walter Mitty guy, who would be afraid to say boo in response. Yah, that was Leon Poole. Not a stone-cold killer bone in his body. Not like the guys who were nurtured into evil from the cradle practically. But see even Walter Mitty-type psychos have a breaking point, or rather points.

First Leon, a seemingly mild-mannered and loyal bank employee by day, was really the finger man for a heist of the bank’s goods, you know money. See Leon had a honey of a wife, who like all wives likes nice things and you know they cost dough, real dough. So Leon took the famous bank robber Willie Sutton’s advice and when where the dough was. In this case right at work. But like all Leon things, like everything he ever touched, the cops were hip to his part in the crime in about two minutes and so they so ran to his apartment house with guns at the ready. They called him out but he refused their kind offer. Cornered like a rat he fired a shot through the door nicking a copper. They returned the fire and in the process wasted Leon’s lovely wife, the only person who ever was kind to the guy. And then the madness started, started like some slow descent into hell. That turned out to be Leon’s breaking point number two.

Of course Leon drew a dime at the state pen for the bank robbery and nicking the cop he wasn’t arguing that, no at all. What started eating at him was that his wife fell at whim of the copper’s guns. That was worthy of revenge. And so in those long lonely nights watching the days turn to night and back again Leon got himself worked up enough to figure a way to get even. He would take out not the cop, some lifer copper, a guy named Joe to give him a name, who liked his shiny badge, liked being a cop, but his wife. Yah, the old eye for an eye story, literally. He became a model prisoner and as part of that act got himself transferred out to an honor farm, a farm outside the walls. That was like giving candy to a baby.

Then the spree started, the relentless spree to get to that dirty copper, no, that dirty copper’s wife back in the city. First off he murdered the guard who was supposed to use his services to unpack some product boxes from the truck at some town market. Leon cut him dead leaving him face down in some watery ditch. Leon then had wheels to make his getaway. He killed a hapless farmer for his truck, a change of clothes, and other provisions to get back to the big city and hi sweet revenge. In the big city, seeking refuge to plot his next moves, he killed an old army NCO right in front of his wife, a guy who had made fun of him when he was in the service. That was definitely not the day to be in Leon’s crosshairs when he shed his Walter Mitty garb. An old score settled but not the big old score.

That was not the finale. This was. Leon headed to that copper’s house. Joe’s house. Of course Joe had the equivalent of the 82^nd Airborne Division worth of coppers at the house. And of course too the cop’s wife, some headstrong red-head, Rhonda to give her a name, who was tired of being a cop’s wife, was not in said house but was innocently waking down the street to that house after a fight with her hubby cop when Leon made his move.You know what happened, you know too that Leon Poole was strictly an amateur, strictly from jump street. And you know too why Leon Poole never made any American Psycho hall of fame. Enough said.