MONSTER KID HOME MOVIES / "The Gentle Old Madman" - 1974

I bought the MONSTER KID HOME MOVIES collection a few years back, which consisted of 30 different movies by a number of contributors, well, this is the last one in the set. It's actually a 37 minute movie with sound submitted to the Kodak Teen-Age Movie competition by Alan Upchurch, who received an honorable mention for his little horror film.  

It's called "The Gentle Old Madman" which has a nice title card, but unfortunately is not centered very well as you can see.

Alan plays Carl Kolchak (!!) who is talking with the newspaper editor about the recent murders (with an ax) of a number of young women in the city. Carl has lunch while he's there!

Kolchak goes out to find some leads, when, he comes across yet another ax murder.

Carl gets the skinny from a witness.

In the meantime, the murderer is running loose after breaking out of a mental hospital and killing a number of women. His name is Arthur Grimsdyke, played by Mark Upchurch

Arthur goes to the cemetery and places a red Poppy at his late wife's tombstone.

Kolchak befriends the guy in the basement of the library to assist him in collecting clues about the murders. They come up with a name, Arthur Grimsdyke, ax murderer, recently escaped from a mental hospital, nowhere to be found!

Then, on a high rise, Arthur sees a girl come out a door and he pulls out his ax, but gets distracted and the girl runs away.

On the ground floor, Kolchak notices the commotion above and takes the elevator to the top of the building.

Kolchak makes it to the top only to find Arthur with his ax in hand.

There's a scuffle and one of the two falls to the ground, which one?!

It's Arthur of course...

A small crowd check out the dead old man and his ax... Wha Hoppen?

Kolchak shows up for the old man's last rites, then...

He leaves the cemetery, later.

Then, a mysterious old woman places a red Poppy at his grave.

That's actually a nice little twist ending, but they really need to work on their centering!