Angst 1983

An unnamed serial killer, the Psychopath, is released from prison with a cold, unsettling eagerness to see fear in his victims. His day begins in a diner, where he lingers near two girls at the counter, tempted to strike but unable to act openly in public. Later, in a tense taxi ride, he imagines killing the female driver, yet he must flee when the driver grows suspicious and stops the car.

As he escapes, he stumbles upon a house and encounters a mentally impaired Son in a wheelchair who mistakes the killer for his father. Soon, the Mother and Daughter arrive at the scene, and the killer hides himself away. The confrontation erupts quickly: he attacks, taping the [Daughter] to a doorknob and strangling the [Mother]. He then ties up the mother and drags the son to the upstairs bathroom, where he drowns him in the bathtub.

Returning downstairs, the killer finds the mother either dead or nearing death. The daughter pleads for medicine to save her mother, and the killer grudgingly complies, hoping to spare her death long enough to fulfill his grim plan. His attempts to revive her fail, and in a fit of rage he pushes the wheelchair-bound mother into a wall. He discovers the daughter attempting to escape and pursues her relentlessly. He stabs her to death, drinks her blood, and vomits on her—the blood acting as an emetic.

The killer wakes up the next morning on the daughter’s body, partially undressed and stained with blood. He decides to leave in the family’s car, taking the bodies with him in the trunk and planning to show them to his next victims to frighten them, even bringing the family’s dog along in the passenger seat. He rear-ends another car during the frantic escape, and several witnesses observe the chaos.

He returns to the diner—the same patrons from earlier are there again—and, as he feeds the dog, the police apprehend him after requesting his registration. He opens the trunk of the car for the officers to see the ghastly scene, reveling in the fear it provokes in the onlookers. The film closes with a voice-over medical record declaring that the killer was driven by a sadistic tendency rooted in an unstable childhood.