- After moving into a boardinghouse, a young woman becomes the object of her lonely neighbor's obsessions.
- A lonely, mother-dominated man becomes obsessed by a beautiful young tenant in his mother's boarding house. When the object of his desire accidentally drowns in her bathtub, he hides her body in his room, resorting to murderous measures to keep anybody from discovering his "bride."—Erich Mees
- Karen (Beverly Ross) leaves her home on a farm with her boyfriend Rodney (Tommy McFadden) in order to take a college course on creative writing. She rents a room in a big old house from an elderly woman named Mrs. Brewer (Belle Mitchell), who has only one other tenant: Grahame (Laszlo Papas), a withdrawn young man who immediately becomes fascinated with Karen. After she moves into the house, Grahame spies on her through peepholes in the walls and a two-way mirror in her bathroom, becoming more and more obsessed with her.
Grahame's life has been full of great sadness and isolation, and we see bits and pieces of his inner thought life and remembrances of being abandoned in an institution as a young boy by his adoptive parents (after being sexually abused by his adoptive father), ostracized during his military career, and rejected when he makes an attempt to reconnect with his family. His life with Mrs. Brewer is the only stability he has, and she constantly has him at her beck and call.
Things take a turn for the worst when Karen suffers a seizure while she's taking a bath and drowns. Grahame is too late to save her, but he also decides not to tell anybody she died, keeping her body in his room and sleeping with it in his bed. As Grahame loses his grip on reality, he starts to go further and further over the edge into madness, murdering anybody who threatens to uncover his secret.
The first to die is Chuck (Rigg Kennedy), a classmate of Karen's who comes looking for her. After he gets too inquisitive and threatens to go to the police, Grahame lures him into his bedroom under the pretense of seeing Karen, but Chuck finds her corpse in Grahame's bed instead. Before he can react, Grahame stabs him to death and hides the body in his bathtub. Mrs. Brewer is next; after sending Grahame all over the house looking for whatever could be causing the foul smell in the air, she manages to get upstairs while Grahame is away and discovers Karen's body, now dressed in a wedding gown. She is unable to keep the discovery a secret from Grahame, who then strangles her to death. Now totally delusional after killing Mrs. Brewer, Grahame keeps her corpse as well, propping it up in bed and having conversations with it as if she were still alive.
Grahame's secret life comes to an end later that day after one of Mrs. Brewer's friends, Mrs. Dobson, comes to the house and discovers the bodies. Grahame attempts to attack her with a hammer, but she is saved when Rodney rushes in and subdues Grahame. The last scene of the film shows Grahame in a mental institution. Still desperate for companionship and acceptance, he smuggles an insect inside the hospital, presumably to keep in his cell, but he discovers he has accidentally killed it. The final image is of Grahame reacting to this in an anguished silent scream.
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By what name was Slipping Into Darkness (1978) officially released in India in English?
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