This one was pretty hilarious. I don't think that was at all what they were going for but with the samurai sword, leering murders, detectives in drag, and gimmick ending it was entertainingly bad.
I had a lot of fun watching this movie because it was so bad, too.
I do think this story had a lot of good ideas but they were not hitting the targets. I think the issue for this story was that it was made years before Halloween and it was working off Herschell Gordon Lewis stuff. On the other hand, Drive-in movies were on a slow death and their death accelerated when the mutliplex theaters were push, so this story had to be made before 1979! Even though Halloween was made in 1978, slasher stories was not successful until after the success of Friday the 13th (1980). But I have strong doubts that a drive-in slasher would do good past 1980.
So in a sense the movie was made in the right year (1976) it was just sad that it needed a helping hand from movies like Halloween and Friday the 13th.