Criminally Insane
Year: 1975
Runtime: 61 mins
Language: English
Director: Nick Millard
She’s 250 Pounds of Maniacal Fury! An obese woman recently released from an insane asylum kills anyone who attempts to get her to stop eating.
Warning: spoilers below!
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Criminally Insane (1975) – Full Plot Summary & Ending Explained
Read the complete plot breakdown of Criminally Insane (1975), including all key story events, major twists, and the ending explained in detail. Discover what really happened—and what it all means.
San Francisco serves as the grim backdrop for a disturbing descent into deprivation and murder. The morbidly obese Ethel Janowski is released from an institution into her grandmother’s care, despite the unease of physician Dr. Gerard. At the grandmother’s home, she begins to gorge on food, insisting that staff at the institution had tried to starve her.
To curb the binge, Mrs. Janowski empties the fridge and locks the cupboards, but the pressure only grows. When she threatens to call the doctor, Ethel stabs her to death, then wrenches the cabinet key from her grasp, locks the corpse in a bedroom, and places an order for more groceries.
When the delivery arrives, the delivery boy, Glen Dickie, finds that Ethel cannot pay and she stabs him with a broken bottle as he tries to leave with the groceries.
Ethel’s sister, Rosalie, arrives and announces she will stay for a few days. Ethel ignores calls from the doctor and works to cover the odor from the locked room as Rosalie complains about the stench.
At a bar, Rosalie runs into her ex-boyfriend and pimp, John, and they have sex. That night, the doctor visits again to check why Ethel has missed appointments; Ethel bludgeons him with a candlestick and places his body with the others.
Three days later, Detective McDonough visits to question Ethel, and she offers evasive statements.
That night, Rosalie and John, unable to tolerate the smell any longer, attempt to break down the locked door in the morning. Ethel murders them, using a cleaver.
The detective returns to re-interview her, and she gives contradictory information before he leaves.
Ethel dismembers her victims, stuffs the pieces into sacks, and drives them to a seaside area to dump them into the ocean. But too many witnesses are around, so she brings the bags back home and drags them inside; on the way, she forgets to close her car trunk, and a suspicious neighbor spots a severed hand and calls the police.
In the end, the detective walks in on Ethel eating one of her dead grandmother’s arms.
Last Updated: October 09, 2025 at 14:08
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Characters, Settings & Themes in Criminally Insane
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