Rent Psychomania (1973)
3.2 of 5 from 71 ratings
1h 31min
- General info
- Available formats
- Synopsis:
- Upon discovering a dark family secret Tom Latam (Nick Henson), the leader of hell-raising teen motorcycle gang The Living Dead, decides to take drastic measures to ensure his gang's superiority. Through his devil-worshipping mother (Beryl Reid), Tom makes a pact with Satan to ascertain the secret of immortality. Using this information he encourages his fellow riders to end their lives, safe in the knowledge that they'll soon return from the dead to invulnerably terrorise the locals.
- Actors:
- George Sanders, Beryl Reid, Nicky Henson, Mary Larkin, Roy Holder, Robert Hardy, Patrick Holt, Denis Gilmore, Ann Michelle, Miles Greenwood, Peter Whitting, June Brown, Lane Meddick, Rocky Taylor, Alan Bennion, John Levene, Jacki Webb, David Millett, Linda Gray, Andrew Laurence
- Directors:
- Don Sharp
- Producers:
- Andrew Donally
- Writers:
- Julian Zimet, Arnaud d'Usseau
- Aka:
- The Death Wheelers
- Studio:
- BFI Video
- Genres:
- Classics, Horror
- BBFC:
- Release Date:
- 19/09/2016
- Run Time:
- 91 minutes
- Languages:
- English LPCM Mono
- Subtitles:
- English Hard of Hearing
- Formats:
- Pal
- Aspect Ratio:
- Widescreen 1.66:1
- Colour:
- Colour
- BLU-RAY Regions:
- B
- Bonus:
- An interview with Nicky Henson (2016, 14 mins): the star of Psychomania recalls his time on the film
- Return of the Living Dead (2010, 25 mins): featuring interviews with stars Nicky Henson, Mary Larkin, Denis Gilmore, Roy Holder and Rocky Taylor
- Sound of Psychomania (2010, 9 mins): interview with soundtrack composer John Cameron
- Riding Free (2010, 7 mins): interview with 'Riding Free' singer Harvey Andrews
- Hell for Leather (2016, 8 mins): documentary about the company who supplied the film's costumes
- Remastering Psychomania (2016, 2 mins)
- Discovering Britain with John Betjeman: Avebury, Wiltshire (1955, 3 mins): the celebrated British poet narrates this travelogue about the Avebury stone circle and nearby burial grounds
- Roger Wonders Why (1965, 19 mins): a church-made amateur film which sees two Christian biker youths visit the legendary 59 Club, where they meet its founder, Reverend Bill Shergold
- Original Theatrical Trailer
- Wilson Bros Trivia Track (2016, on-screen text): a newly produced subtitle trivia-track by the horror aficionado siblings
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Reviews (2) of Psychomania
Zombie Bikers From Hell - Psychomania review by Count Otto Black
This is a bad film. Thematically it's all over the place, because it doesn't know whether it's supposed to be horror or comedy, therefore there's almost zero actual horror, and not that many jokes either. Its rather low budget shows in every department, and as biker movies go, a gang of eight people, including two girls, zooming rather slowly around the sleepy English countryside pursued by one police car aren't the most formidable of menaces to society. Yet it's an unappreciated classic of so-bad-it's-good cinema. Look at that cast! Nicky Henson, best known for "Confessions of a Window Cleaner" and other soft-core seventies sleaze, teamed up with veteran Hollywood character actor George Sanders (who committed suicide shortly after completing work on this film, presumably for unrelated reasons, because no film's THAT bad!), and Beryl Reid, who was in two horror movies including this one, and shouldn't really have been in any.
This is one of a handful (I wish there were many more) movies made by an obscure Anglo-Spanish studio called Scotia, which also gave us "Horror Express", undoubtedly the best film ever made in which Christopher Lee meets a telepathic undead space gorilla on a train, and the sublimely-titled "A Town Called Bastard", an ultra-violent and very confusing spaghetti western notable for a scene where Telly Savalas is crucified in mid-air. As you might expect from script-writers of this calibre, the utterly bizarre subject-matter makes up for some lousy acting and the excruciating seventiesness of it all - there's even a biker called Gash who looks alarmingly like a teenage Alan Partridge.
The sequence in which several bikers cheerfully commit suicide in various increasingly excessive ways in order to rise again as immortal superpowered agents of Satan is genuinely hilarious, but most of the humour is at least borderline unintentional, especially as George Sanders and Beryl Reid appear to be playing their parts absolutely straight (possibly Nicky Henson was too, but in his case it's impossible to tell). And what's with the toad obsession? But in its own way, it's tremendous fun. And there are an extraordinary number of direct visual references to the first "Mad Max" film, even though it was made six years later. Coincidence? I wonder...
As I said, it's not actually good in any conventional sense, but if you're willing to switch off your critical faculties and enjoy the sheer silliness of it, it's a gleefully daft hour and a half.
3 out of 3 members found this review helpful.
Motorcycle Oddity. - Psychomania review by Steve
Ultra-low budget cult survivor which is a hybrid of the biker and occult genres. The plot is so ludicrous that it might easily have been shelved or shunned, and yet after half a century, it still lives. Nicky Henson plays the longhair leader of a motorcycle gang of antisocial thugs. He discovers through his mother (Beryl Reid), a necromancer, how to die and live forever undead.
Soon all his posse follow, killing themselves through ever more extravagant methods. They become literally delinquents from hell. Or Hell's Angels. Sadly, they use their special powers to commit witless acts of hooliganism, like riding their bikes through a supermarket. But that's part of the fun. At times it achieves so-bad-it's-good status.
Some details are gloriously kitsch, like the acoustic ballad Riding Free, which sounds like John Denver. Parts are ridiculous, including the premise of the satanic order of the frogs... But as can happen with B films, quality happens as if by chance. Don Sharp was a competent director, and obviously did some proper work on this. The frequent stunts are professional.
There's an Oscar winning cinematographer and a twice nominated set designer. But it's the experimental prog/psychedelic soundtrack which does the most to bring it all together. There is a feel of the period; of social disintegration and moral nihilism. This is a long way from art, but far better than most teenage exploitation films.
0 out of 0 members found this review helpful.