By: Mark Ambrose
Media
Format:
Blu-ray/DVD
Original
Release Year: 1971
Home Video
Release:
17/02/2017
Label: Arrow Video
Directed
by:
Don Sharp
Written by: Arnaud
d’Usseau & Julien Zimet
Starring: George
Sanders, Beryl Reid, Nicky Henson, Mary Larkin
Music
by: John Cameron
Runtime: 95 minutes
The
Review
Every
few years, an aging nerd will contrive a long form essay about the sorry state
of genre/music/movie fandom. The
internet, you see, actually ruined everything, and the golden age of pop
culture (an era said writer thankfully experienced firsthand) has come and
gone. This wistful bullshit sounds more
appropriate from pastors and politicians, not metal heads and gore hounds. The internet has complicated a lot of things,
but access to undiscovered gems and genre oddities of all media abounds, and
the crossover potential from music to film to literature to comics is so
abundant that practically everyone has a Tumblr account just to keep track of
their favorite Doctor
Who slashfic authors.
Bandcamp, crowdsourcing, home recording, and social media have brought
new voices into heavy music at an astounding rate, and resurrected out of print
and obscure oddities on a weekly basis.
More
and more, to be a serious fan of music is to be a student of pop culture. With that in mind, we at THE SLUDGELORD are going to be
examining those interstices where our obsessions meet: movies, literature,
comics, artwork, and more. In short, all
the shit we think is cool, that deserves coverage, and will probably appeal to
everyone who loves the music we’ve been highlighting on here.
In
the spirit of cultural cross-contamination, it’s appropriate that our first
movie review is one of the video cornerstones for none other than Electric
Wizard’s Jus Oborn: “Psychomania
(a.k.a The Death Wheelers)”. A cult
staple on late night British TV, “Psychomania”
features all the elements you’d expect in a doom rocker’s favorite film:
longhair bikers, devil worship, occult rituals, suicide pacts, ancient stone
circles, trippy sequences, and a funky prog score that has moments of straight
up doom dread. Though this functions
more as a sequence of atmospheric set pieces and pretty impressive stunt work,
the plot, as such, is fairly simple: Tom Latham (Nicky Henson) is the leader of The
Living Dead – a morbid, occult-minded motorcycle gang. His mother (Beryl Reid) is an outrageously
wealthy medium with her own manservant, Shadwell (George Sanders in his last film
role). Tom’s father disappeared years
ago, conducting some kind of ritual to learn the secret of eternal life, and
Tom wants to succeed where his dad failed, leading to one of the best
frog-focused, psychedelic movie freak outs of all time. Tom learns the secret – kill yourself
believing you really will come back, and eternal life is yours. And after Tom’s miraculous resurrection
that’s basically what the gang does over the course of the movie!
After
the whole gang is undead, minus an unbeliever and Tom’s girlfriend Abby (Mary Larkin),
The Living Dead rampage through their little town, alternately causing silly
mishaps and straight up murdering people… including an infant (we assume). The violence is all pretty tame, but the
practical, low budget stunt work has become legendary. Tom eventually confides in his mother that he
wants to take the chaos international and destroy… the authorities? The police?
Squares? It’s all pretty vague,
but the silly, murderous fun gets a lot more sinister, especially once Tom decides
wet blanket Abby needs to die – by her own hands or the gang’s. It all builds to a remarkably atmospheric
finish that I won’t spoil here.
Arrow Video, located in
the UK but now offering many titles for US release as well, have really become The Criterion
Collection of weird and shocking films, offering a pristine print of
the movie that preserves some of that film grain we all love, plus a host of
featurettes, as well as a booklet with essays on “Psychomania’s” legacy, Sanders, and director Don Sharp. The cast is mostly unimpressed or perplexed by
the film’s longevity (which honestly gets a bit tiresome), but fondly remember Sanders,
who would kill himself at the age of 65 before the film’s release – allegedly
after seeing a rough cut of the film, but more likely from the onset of
dementia and a lifetime of depression.
The featurettes on the stuntmen of the film and the distinctive leather
style of the gang are the real highlights, especially for
those pulled in by the distinct aesthetic of early 70s outlaw culture.
In
short, “Psychomania” is the type of
movie you’d hope to stumble across in a late night screening or VHS dub in an
earlier era. In the parlance of genre
hero Michael J.
Weldon, “Psychomania” is a
classic “Psychotronic” movie – a mishmash of genre weirdness that may not be
“great” filmmaking, but is certainly a lot more fun than most movies in the
local theater. With internet streaming
and rental, online retailers, brick and mortar (where you can still find it)
and labels like Arrow
Video putting out beautiful, collectible editions of movies like “Psychomania” on a weekly basis, there’s
more weirdness to discover out there than ever before.
