In the 1971 film Point of Terror, Peter Carpenter plays Tony Trelos. Tony is a hip, cool, swinging hep cat. He’s got a job singing at the Lobster House in Santa Monica, California. Everyone wants a piece of Tony because he has got the swagger of Sinatra and the voice of Tom Jones. When he meets Andrea (Dyanne Thorne), it’s lust at first sight. Andrea is married to Martin (Joel Hilliard), a wealthy and bitter record producer who is confined to a wheelchair. When Andrea murders Martin, it brings Martin’s daughter, Helayne (Lori Hansen), back to Santa Monica, and soon Tony is sleeping with her too. However, Tony has reason to be concerned because it appears that there might be another murderer stalking all of them. Or maybe there isn’t. The plot of this Crown International production is not always easy to follow.

Who was Peter Carpenter? I am honestly not sure, but this film appears to have been some sort of vanity production for him. He gets to sing several songs, and everyone he meets either wants to sleep with him or hang out with him. He gets a lot of big dramatic scenes, the majority of which he really didn’t have the acting ability to pull off. Tony is meant to be charismatic, mysterious, and a little bit dangerous, but as played by Peter Carpenter, he comes across as a second-rate lounge act who got lucky. Carpenter both co-produced the film and came up with the story. To be honest, you almost have to respect the amount of confidence in his own abilities that Carpenter apparently possessed. One can just imagine Carpenter turning to someone like Wayne Newton and telling him to scream, because there was only one actor/singer who was good enough to star in Point of Terror. Carpenter apparently died shortly after this film was released, and that is indeed a shame. Who knows how many ego-driven projects he could have given us?

Point of Terror is definitely a film of its time, which is to say that there’s a lot of polyester and a lot of nudity that was probably considered daring in 1971 but which is just kind of tame in 2026. The film does attempt to play around with the audience’s sense of perception and encourage them to wonder whether Tony is truly seeing what’s happening or if he’s just imagining things. For that reason, it sneaks across the line dividing psychological horror and neo-noir. It’s one of those films that’s probably more entertaining than it should be, just because it is such a film of its time. Someone could probably retitle this film 1971 and re-release it as a Paul Thomas Anderson-style satire.

Point of Terror was distributed by Crown International Pictures. Whenever I see the Crown International logo on an old movie, I know I’m in for a good time. Dyanne Thorne, it should be said, does a pretty good job as the femme fatale. That said, the true star of this film is definitely 1971.