Psychomania (1973)

Running Time: 95 minutes

Release Date:  January 1974 (US)

 Review by: Stacey

The 70's were a time when the occult and witchcraft were ripe in film.  Especially lower-budget films, which some soon became cult classics.  British film saw its fair share of the like, namely with 1973's The Wicker Man and many in the Hammer films collection.  Then in rolls Psychomania aka The Death Wheelers with their undead biker gang, pacts with the devil, and...frogs?  Yes, frogs.  

 

 The film follows leader, Tom (Nicky Henson), and the rest of his motorcycle gang, "The Living Dead", as they ride around terrorizing their town and causing mayhem for the fun of it.  Meanwhile, back home at Tom's, his mother and her weird ass butler love to hold seances and study frogs.  Somehow she holds the secret to eternal life (which had something to do with his father's death...and maybe a frog), and it's a simple one:  Kill yourself, but while doing so, you have to believe that you will come back...and you will.  And the damndest thing is it worked!  Oh, and you can never die again.  After the worst burial ever by his biker cronies, Tom comes back and convinces every one else to follow suit.  Everyone else but girlfriend, Abby (Mary Larkin); chick just wants to live.  Then everyone comes back to life and does the same stuff as they did before.

Directed by veteran Don Sharp, Psychomania is one of those movies that throws most logic out of the window but you still kind of really enjoy watching and maybe even just added to your Amazon cart (I totally did).  The first time I saw Psychomania was about 4 years ago during the Halloween season.  One of the cable networks was showing it and the bio sounded intriguing enough for me, and I'm a bit of a sucker for grainy, kind of shitty 60's/70's films.  Especially if they contain subject matter on the occult.  Anyway, I decided to review it today because I feel like most of you would actually get a kick out of it.

I'll just get the bad points out of the way right now because the movie isn't amazing at all.  It was actually a decent story but was executed pretty poorly and the acting wasn't the best, but that's not surprising coming from a cast who thought the movie sucked.  The movie didn't really go anywhere at the point you thought it would because after an hour you realize that all that the gang wants to do is the same thing they did when they were alive.  The film definitely seemed like it meant to focus on the character drama than the actual spook factor of the movie.  It makes sense when you look at it and realize that there's no gore and isn't really scary at all.

 To be fair, the film isn't all together terrible.  The cinematography by Ted Moore is actually good and the soundtrack is kind of killer (that wasn't also added to my cart...it was.)  The suicide scenes were creative and entertaining without involving any blood and the action scenes with the bike chases and stunts looked pretty kickass.  The film just had a cool vibe to it.  

I won't tell you not to watch Psychomania, but I also won't tell you it's something you need to drop everything for, unless you're super into British cult films.  If you see it around the internet or on tv, give it a watch.  At the very least, it's a fun film with an interesting story.

2.5/5 devil frogs