The Sniper (1952)

Produced by Stanley Kramer and directed by Edward Dmytryk, The Sniper is the socially progressive brainchild of writers Edna and Edward Anhalt, whose story makes a plea for wider mental health services. For the first time in film history we see a realistically-portrayed serial killer at work, shooting women with a high-powered rifle. When not delivering laundry, the mentally disturbed Eddie Miller (Arthur Franz) is building a grudge against a world of hostile females and making weak efforts to return to the state hospital. He burns his hands in the hope that the emergency personnel will pick up on the "funny kind of injury". The paramedics realize that it's probably self-inflicted but are too busy to help. Like the psychotic sea captain in Val Lewton's The Ghost Ship, Eddie knows he's out of control but can't seem to do anything about it.
Eddie instead starts blasting women down, starting with Marie Windsor's almost hallucinatory beauty, bar pianist Jean Darr. When Jean casually flirts with Eddie to get some laundry done in a hurry, he channels his rage into his rifle. Adolph Menjou and Gerald Mohr are the detectives assigned to the case. We hear plenty of psychiatric debate and humanist appeals, much it from apologist Dr. Kent (Richard Kiley), who chides the detectives for wasting their time rounding up ordinary criminals.