The Killing Hour

The Clairvoyant (also known as The Killing Hour) is a 1982 American psychological horror film directed by Armand Mastroianni and starring Perry King, Norman Parker, and Elizabeth Kemp. The plot follows a New York City detective and his friend who pursue a mysterious "handcuff killer" with the aid of an artist who sees—and draws—the killer's crimes before they are committed. While not prosecuted for obscenity, the film was seized and confiscated in the UK under Section 3 of the Obscene Publications Act 1959 during the video nasty panic. Plot After the body of murdered woman Elizabeth Mercer is found, nude and handcuffed, floating down the Hudson River in New York City, two men are murdered by an assailant who handcuffs them before killing them. Paul "Mac" McCormack, an ambitious TV talk-show host, and Larry Weeks, a police detective and aspiring stand-up comedian, team up to try to locate the killer. Meanwhile, Virna Nightbourne, a student at the Art Students League of New York, has been completing portraits which coincidentally appear to depict the crimes. Her roommate, Muriel, a nurse, has noticed the phenomenon. Virna is unable to explain where her impulse to draw them comes from. Virna eventually draws a portrait of herself as one of the killer's victims, and has a nightmare about a woman being handcuffed to a bed. Frightened, she decides to go to police with her drawings. When pressed as to how she comes to make the drawings, Virna explains that it is unconscious, and that she has had precognitive and clairvoyant abilities since her childhood. She recounts a specific incident in which she helped save a missing girl, Elizabeth, from her hometown. Virna is horrified when police inform her that the woman found dead in the river was in fact the same Elizabeth from Virna's childhood, who, as an adult, worked as a bartender a BDSM leather bar.