1979’s Delirium takes place on the mean streets of St. Louis and the surrounding countryside.  Crime is out of control and something has to be done about it!  Thanks to Earl Warren and the Carter administration, the police are powerless to stop the criminals.  (“Miranda rights my ass!” you can almost hear the film’s screenwriter shouting.)  So, the wealthier citizens of St. Louis get together and hire a bald Vietnam vet named Eric Stern (Barron Winchester) to lead a paramilitary group of vigilantes.  One of Stern’s men is another vet, Charlie (Nick Panouzis).  Charlie suffers from PTSD and it turn out that being a part of a militia is not the best way to deal with war trauma.  Who would have guessed?

Charlie snaps.  He starts killing people, in both St. Louis and the surrounding farms.  One victim is a hitchhiker who is dumb enough to hitch a ride from him and then to taunt him when he refuses to go skinny dipping with her.  It turns out that Charlie’s been impotent ever since he came home from the war.  He doesn’t respond well to jokes about it.

As Charlie claims more and more victims, both the police and vigilantes search for him.  The police want to stop his rampage,  The vigilantes don’t want Charlie to accidentally reveal their existence.  The whole thing ends in violence, gun fights, and flashbacks in which Vietnam looks a lot like rural Missouri.

Delirium is a film that I first noticed on my list of Tubi recommendations a few months ago.  I finally watched it last night and I have to admit that my first reaction was, “What the Hell was that?”  Delirium is bizarre mix of slasher horror and vigilante thrills, the type of mishmash that one can only really find in a grindhouse film.  That the budget was low is obvious in every shot.  The wealthy conspiracy meets in what appears to be a hut. As I previously mentioned, the Vietnam scenes were clearly filmed in Missouri.  The acting is largely amateurish, with the exceptions of the intense Nick Panouzis and the absolutely insane performance of Barron Winchester.  The film was gory enough to have earned a spot on the infamous Videos Nastys list but, as is so often case, what was shocking in 1979 seems rather tame in 2024.  I did like the conspiracy aspects of the film.  The idea of a group of wealthy people putting together a vigilante squad without actually bothering to do any background checks on the people they recruited actually has a good deal of potential.  The film is a mess but it’s a mess in the oddly fascinating way that many low-budget 70s films were.  The mix of ambition and a low budget often led to watchable oddities like Delirium.

The main thing that really stuck with me about Delirium is just how annoyed and angry almost every single character in the film seemed to be.  Even the cop trying to stop Charlie seems like he was pissed off about having to actually do his job.  I guess St. Louis does that to people.