One hates to speak ill of the dead, but Mind Twister contains perhaps Telly Savalas' single worst performance since he ran around bleeding from the eyes in a dining car on the Horror Express. This hardly comes as a shock since director Fred Olen Ray admittedly revels in pumping out such meretricious, grade-Z trash, like so many tainted sausage links. (You can tell how low-budget the flick is when Telly Savalas performs scenes by himself that were later inter-cut with reaction shots of other actors obviously filmed on a different day.)

Actually, the first couple of minutes generate some real atmosphere when a grungy alley mutt bears sole witness to the death of a gagged woman who takes a flying lesson through a closed high-rise window.   It's all downhill from there when cop Telly arrives on the scene (or rather cardboard set, one of many), tersely grumbling "beat it!" to his co-workers in a sad Kojak riff. Kojak — um, Savalas — and his fellow low budget-slumming buddy Richard Roundtree spend 90% of their precious cameo time sitting around the cop house like potted plants that answer phones.

If there's anything worse than a bad idea, it's a good idea gone bad. Mind Twister sets up an intriguing theme wherein two close friends of the deceased {Suzanne Slater and Maria Ford) set out to avenge the murder by posing as both patient and secretary of the alleged killer, psychologist Gary Hudson.   Yeah, another crazy shrink flick. Only in this one it's his wife — Erika Nann — who's the kinkier of the two. (You should hear their pre-coital love chatter. "I think we bring out the best in each other", she coos. "Like Hitler and Mussolini." Unfortunately, that's the only memorable stinkeroo line in the movie.) Apparently Nann really gets off by offing Hudson's female clients, right after giving them a guided tour of their her love dungeon, with a little bit of lesbian B&D action on the side. And Hudson gets to tape the soiree, lucky devil!

Slater and Ford go the Gaslight route by messing with Hudson's mind, but by virtue of him being a manly shrink and them being just girly girls, mindpower collides with boob power and the resultant scenario suddenly becomes a textbook case of "helpless females making stupid mistakes and putting themselves in needless jeopardy".

At least the script gets them out of their clothes a few times; the exposure is graciously explicit from the waist up. Cute Suzanne Slater can't act her way out of a soap bubble, but she has a damn fine set of jugs and isn't afraid to expose them. Too bad the music accompanying her lovemaking sounds like The Carpenters on prozac. Nann, who can can act — bitchy, and little else, but really good bitchy — plays rubber duckie in a candlelit bathtub sequence, as well as a lesbo number with Slater. Whether or not you care to sit through 90 minutes of a rehashed cop show just to get to three decent sex scenes probably depends on how interesting the backup video tape you got from the rental store may be. You did get a backup, didn't you?