“Her world collapsed when my father died, so she built a new one out of her imagination.”

Dolls. Dead-eyed, creepy dolls. Like clowns, the unease they can inspire has been mined by film makers for decades.

And there’s a lot of dolls in Amicus films’ The Psychopath, adding an extra creep factor to a police procedural about a murderous nutcase.

A murderous nutcase who leaves a reasonable facsimile of each victim next to the corpse. Seems like a lot of trouble to go to just to make it rather obvious who you are, but hey, they’re a nutcase… it’s kind of a nutcase thing.

Of course, I say “nutcase” when what I clearly mean is “psychopath”, as that’s the name of this film. Given it is based on a story by Psycho scribe Robert Bloch, one can only assume that the makers thought “Psycho was a smash hit… imagine how successful a film with four extra letters will be?”

Sadly, they were proved wrong, and the film world decided to go with a numbering system for most sequels, denying us the possibility of a “Rosemary’s Babywalker”, “Star Warship”, or [insert your own lame joke here].

To be fair, The Psychopath is never less than entertaining, and has a few unsettling moments. It may not be the most complex of whodunnits (hmm, could the killer be connected with the old lady who has a fixation for dolls and a justified hatred for each of the victims?), but it barrels along at a fair lick. From the opening murder (“That car must have gone backwards and forwards across the body half a dozen times!”) there’s much to enjoy. Even if it is pretty stupid.

The first, remarkably over-killed, victim was the violinist in a musical quartet. Suspicion first falls on his friends in the group, who all immediately trot out alibis for eight that evening. BUT, explains the police inspector in charge of the case (Patrick Wymark)… the killing actually happened at seven! The body was found at eight!

The police then turn their attention to Louise (Judy Huxtable), the daughter of one of the group, who happens to work in a toy shop… making dolls. But that’s a bit too obvious, even for this film, so they then turn their laser-like deduction skills onto the last person who bought six dolls from that particular shop. Dolls which could very easily be adapted to look like the exact doll found by the initial victim’s crushed violin case…

…and they hit paydirt, for the trail leads to a house absolutely crammed with hideous dolls, presided over by their “mother”, Mrs Van Sturm (Margaret Johnston), who rolls around the place in her wheelchair with only her dolls and her clearly nutty son Mark (John Standing) for company. She spends her time making her own dolls (aha), and immediately recognises the doll found at the murder scene as being a likeness of her solicitor (double-aha).

Young Mark explains: “Her world collapsed when my father died, so she built a new one out of her imagination.”

It turns out that the quartet investigated war criminals after the second world war, of which Mr Von Sturm was one (aha x 3). The inspector speculates that Von Sturm’s widow might not be the “hopeless invalid” her doctor believes her to be, and while he’s figuring that out (“Why should she be pretending?” / “Why should a madman be mad?”), the murders continue.

There’s poisonings, stranglings and blow-torchings, a failed car bomb and after all that, a frankly disappointing stabbing.

Things proceed to a climactic scrap in a boat yard which gives you genuine concern for the welfare of the stuntmen involved, before a sticky end involving a length of heavy chain.

A long-overlooked foray into the serial killer genre by respected purveyor of 60s kitsch Amicus, The Psychopath looks great and certainly delivers on the creepiness stakes, right to the last line… “I have my doll now!”