Albert (Zooey Hall) has been incarcerated in a sanatarium for his own good after trying to attack his wealthy mother - and that imprisonment is for her own good as well. He bears a massive grudge against her because he believes she is keeping his inheritance from him, and the only way he sees to punish her and get his hands on the cash is to kill her, something the authorities cannot allow. Thus he spends his days locked in his room watching his film reels, until today when a nurse tells him that it's not healthy for him to do so, and he attacks her, nearly strangling her to death...
It should of course be noted the title I Dismember Mama was added later, as what this was originally called was Poor Albert and Little Annie, but evidently the production company saw what a turkey they had on their hands and opted to emphasise the more lurid aspects. Even so, there wasn't much in the way of excitement, and most notably nobody got dismembered, mother or not, so if you were a gorehound hoping for a long forgotten bloodbath then you would feel just as cheated as those original patrons who were offered an airline-style sickbag when they bought their tickets just in case the depravity proved too much for their delicate stomachs.
More likely the boredom would prove too much for their attention span, for aside from two or three scenes where Albert displayed the charmlessness that got him put away there was not much here aside from a lot of moping about. This was a look at the American exploitation movie psycho before The Texas Chain Saw Massacre happened along and shook up the genre, so if watching Jason Vorhees or Michael Myers chasing after their potential victims was more your idea of entertainment, you'd be mightily let down by what director Paul Leder came up with in place of tension here. Leder was best recalled for his ludicrous King Kong rip-off A*P*E, which was just as well, for that was a far more enjoyably trashy film.
What happens here is that Albert breaks out after killing (offscreen) one of the attendants and heads home to do the same to his mother - actually the title this one's was spoofing, I Remember Mama, might have been more appropriate as to Albert's mindset, although what we see of her, a rather prim middle-aged lady, would prompt you to wonder what the big deal was as she wasn't exactly Mrs Bates. Anyway, off he goes, but she has been taken into police protection by a couple of cops who briefly represent the two sides of the argument about what to do with crazed killers, one thinking he could be rehabilitated and the other saying they should lock him up and throw away the key.
However, never mind all that because this wasn't going to change anyone's opinion one way or the other as the Little Annie (Geri Reischl, slightly well-known for replacing a Brady Bunch cast member for a few episodes of a variety show) part of the plot arises. She is a little girl who shows up to see her mother, who happens to work as Albert's mother's maid, but unfortunately for her has just been murdered by the nutter as victim to all his misogyny. On the other hand, Annie he finds quite appealing in an unspoilt and pure way, and soon they are off skipping through the streets as he asks her stuff like "Did you ever think God is in the jaws of a shark?" Weirdly, the girl doesn't see much odd about this and accepts Albert's lame excuses about her mother, and soon he has her staying with him in a hotel room and pretending to marry him. But he cannot keep his unwholesome urges in check for long, and soon has invited a prostitute back after Annie goes to sleep. The point of this was muddled and as drama it was tediously unformed, but listen to Herschel Burke Gilbert's music - did he think he was scoring a cartoon?
