Of the many bullets fired during the course of The Sadist, a few of them were frighteningly genuine. Early in the film, Charlie Tibbs (played by Arch Hall, Jr.) corners his terrorized hostages by one of the junked cars, firing a warning shot over their heads into the car's window. Director James Landis had placed a wad of black wax into the barrel of an air rifle, with the idea that Hall would shoot the wax plug onto the window, producing the effect of a "hole" appearing on cue. But this never worked, never looked like anything but the cut-rate trick it was. So producer Arch Hall, Sr. offered an unusual option: he would put his skills as a trained sharpshooter to work and fire a real bullet above the heads of actors Don Russell and Helen Hovey! The actors, surprisingly, agreed to this-and their onscreen looks of fear are now real, as they watch their boss shoot a high-powered bolt-action rifle right at them!

This was not the only live ammo fired off during the film. During the climactic final chase, Hall Jr. shot real bullets at tree trunks and fences for inarguably authentic-looking effects as he pursued Richard Alden.

For the startling scene where Arch Hall, Jr. appears to fire a gun point blank into the face of Don Russell, the weapon was loaded with blanks, and cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond "cheated" the angle carefully so that the aim of the pistol only appeared to be directed at the poor man's head. Nonetheless, when it went off, Russell was burned by residual gunpowder that flew out of the muzzle sideways, and required first-aid. Landis also shot an alternate version of the scene in which a piece of animal bone coated with a wig remnant on one side and some cow brains on the other was pulled by piano wire off the actor's head at the moment of the gunshot-but this gory effect was not convincing enough to the filmmakers to even present to the censors, and was never used.

The biggest fight The Sadist had with censors came when it landed on TV later in the 1960s. Not only did some of its stronger sequences require cuts, but the networks also demanded a title change-to the less objectionable Profile of Terror.

Zsigmond had hoped that The Sadist would be a calling card into Hollywood's mainstream, but found that prospective employers could not look past the film's uncompromisingly horrific material to judge the quality of the photography alone-time and again, producers were turned off by the violence and blamed Zsigmond himself for making such a cruel movie. He would remain in the B-movie backwater for many years to come.

Even on the set during the production, the makers of The Sadist struggled with the unpleasant nature of the story. The prim and proper schoolmarm Doris ("Miss Ice Box" to even her friends, "Miss Goody Good Good" to Charlie Tibbs) faces sexually violent manhandling by her tormentor in one scene, but Arch Hall, Jr. and Helen Hovey were cousins. Realizing that Hall was too good a boy to do what the role demanded of him, Landis took the two aside and in no uncertain terms ordered Hall to treat Hovey roughly and made sure she knew what was coming, and that Landis-not Hall-was to blame. Only then could the two untrained "actors" make their way through the experience.

Recognizing that Marilyn Manning had, at best, limited acting ability, Landis wrote her role as essentially silent: she simply needed to be a physical presence on the set, with no lines to learn. However, it is not true that her character is mute: listen carefully and you can hear her one and only line of dialogue, "I'm going to get my goody bag."

Sources:
The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film
AFI
Earth vs. the Sci-Fi Filmmakers:20 Interviews by Tom Weaver
Shock Cinema: Interview with Vilmos Zsigmond by David Konow

Compiled by David Kalat