Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema rewind.
This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick, and ooh, we are bringing you a classic. This is one of my favorite older episodes of the show. It is psychomania. Is there a genre better than supernatural biker films?
I'm not sure that there is, and this says within that subgenre, one of, if not the absolute best.
I smell exhaust, the hot breath of devils in the fog of dawn, the noise of a great cat purring underneath the earth and mound They're waking up. Can you see it through the mist? Pale sprigs of mistletoe entwined with greasy drive chains. The high Priest watches his reflection stretch to absurdity across the curve of the mirrored chrome. He is as tall as the cliffs. He is as long as the worm of dreams. The purring of the cat grows deafening. The Priest's grin is wild. With that
twist of his hand, flexing the wrist. Is he wringing a hen's neck to adorn the altar of spring? Or is this the spell that brings the iron hog to life?
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema.
This is Rob Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick and Rob. I'm so excited today. I'm so excited because you out there. You know, if you've been listening to Weird House Cinema that we love our employe genre crossover films. One of my favorite examples we've done so far is the niche subgenre represented by our back catalog entry Santo and The Treasure of Dracula. Of course that would be the supernatural
wrestling film. Well, today we're finally doing a supernatural biker film, a niche subgenre that really holds a strong, powerful revving place in my heart. It gets my motor running. I love it. I love it. I love it.
Yeah, this one, this one is a lot of fun. And it'd been on my list to watch for a while. I know you've been talking about it for years, and we occasionally talk about biker films and supernatural biker films, but I had not actually watched it till this week, and it was just a total delight, just such a wonderfully weird film and delightfully so.
Now you have seen other supernatural biker movies, right, like you've seen were Wolves on Wheels.
Oh yeah, were Wolves on Wheels a very American supernatural biker film from the the same time period. But this is a very British film we're talking about here today.
Yes, yes, were Rolls on Wheels is a grosser, sweatier, more guttural American western style supernatural biker film. This supernatural biker film is a bit more tweedy, and I don't know has the English morning fog on its back today. The movie we're talking about is the nineteen seventy three British supernatural biker movie Psychomania aka The Death Wheelers. And so whenever you have a great genre crossover movie, you want to identify, like what are the mainstreams feeding into this?
And Robie, if you disagree, let me know. But I think the main two things we're getting as inputs here are, on one hand, outlaw biker movies, which we can talk about in a little more detail in a minute, And then the other hand would be like British witchcraft horror films a lah the Hammer horror movies of the late sixties and early seventies.
Yes, I think those are probably the two primary influences. But I think it's also worth noting the Avengers DNA. In this we have some people connected to The Avengers and the Avengers. If you're not familiar with the Avengers TV show, A, it was pretty fun, but B it also would. It generally featured this sort of idea of contemporary weirdness in the world, not unlike what the X Files would do later, and I think there is a hint of that in this film.
Okay, I didn't think about that input at all because I've never actually seen The Avengers, though I know what it is. This is very different than Marvel's The Avengers. This is the British TV show.
Yeah, the one that was eventually made into one of Sean Connery's last films, if not his last film, one of the last films. They tried to do a reboot of it decades ago and it was not successful, but the original TV series was often a lot of fun.
Yeah. Another way of thinking about this movie is, Okay, if you got the precedent of where Will was on wheels in America, this is sort of like druid Lich Kings on wheels, like Undead stone hinge magic demons revving their engines and uh and and doing all the outlaw biker stuff, but from beyond the grave.
Yes, now. I often turned to Michael Weldon's psychotronic video guides for a little guidance in the films that we we we we we turned to UH. Sometimes I discover a film by looking at his work. Other times we'll we'll be thinking about one and I'll see what he had to say about it. I'm not going to read his entire mini review for this one, but it but one of He basically kicks off his review of Psychomania by saying incredible. To say the.
Least, I disagree. I think it's quite credible. I would let this co sign on a loan.
Now I want to I want to put a note about the title. So I think we already alluded to the fact that it was also released as The Death Wheelers, which in some ways is a better title for the film.
Like Death Wheelers, it's you know, death and motorcycles. We're not actually sure what Psychomania means in context of this film, but I wonder if the title situation here it might have to do with the fact that there was another film titled Psychomania that was released in nineteen sixty three, so ten years earlier, also known as Violent Midnight, who was directed by the guy who wrote Horror at Party Beach. That nineteen sixty three movie is just a murder picture.
The nineteen seventy three Psychomania is so much more. And that is definitely the film we're talking about here today, a supernatural biker film.
Okay, Well, I guess we need to dwell on the concept of a biker film for a moment, because before you had supernatural biker films, you just had the biker genre as a sort of fad movie genre in the fifties through the seventies.
Yeah, and I guess more specifically, so boy, a biguess. A big thing here is that, first of all, motorcyclecles are not inherently one thing or another, and a motorcycle enthusiast are not inherently one thing or the other. So you have motorcyclists, you have motorcycle clubs. But then you also have this area that is often referred to as the outlaw motorcycle club, and that is generally what is dwelt upon in films such.
As these, right, I mean I'd say for the same reason that there are more movies about bank robbers than there are about accountants right now.
Outlaw motorcycle clubs began to form in the late nineteen forties in the Western United States, and over time motorcycle club culture, outlaw or non outlaw, has spread around the world.
And it's quite fascinating because what we have here is an American subculture, and in the cases of outlaw motorcycle gangs and often criminal subculture, that ends up just resonating around the world, finding slightly different forms in different cultures, inspiring fiction, inspiring myth and then also in turn you have the reality of motorcycle clubs and outlaw motorcycle clubs fed by fiction and myth. So we end up with a number of different variations of the mythic outlaw motorcyclist.
You know, we have the noble outlaw, the scoundrel, the sort of anti hippie, the rebellious youth, the rebel without a cause, etc. So, as far as outlaw biker films go, we certainly don't have time to list them all here, but I want to mention just some of the big ones, some of the precursors to Psychomania. Now, yeah, the first big one, of course, is nineteen fifty three's The Wild
Ones starring Marlon Brando. Even if you haven't seen this film, and I have to admit I've never watched The Wild One, You've seen the title, you've seen the cover, you've seen stills from this or maybe even seen a clip from it. It's generally critically well received. It was highly influential, and of course a lot of low budget exploitation films came in its wake, just for just for decades like this
was a big film. But yeah, by the time you get into the sixties, you have the counterculture, you have a lot going on. Obviously during the nineteen sixties, also have Hunter S. Thompson's book Hell's Angels coming out, which details his, you know, sort of gonzo journalism experience with the Notorious Motorcycle Club, and then a lot of stuff comes in the wake of that. You have Russ Meyer's Motorcycle in nineteen sixty five, I think that was actually
before Thompson's book. But then you get The Wild Angels in nineteen sixty six by Roger Corman. This one is I actually watch part of this one. I think it has a great cast. You've got Peter Fonda, Nancy Sinatra, Bruce Dern, Diane Ladd. Definitely a precursor to Easy Writer because it involves some of the same people. And then yeah, you get Easy Writer in nineteen sixty nine, a highly influential hippie biker film directed by Dennis Hopper. Terrific film,
Easy Writer. But you might be asking, well, these are all American films. When do the British films come in? Well, you have some notable entries in the British biker film bucket of content. You have The Leather Boys from nineteen sixty four, The Girl on a Motorcycle from sixty eight, as well as some early forays into horror hybrid biker films, such as The Black Rider in nineteen fifty four. I don't know, you might be I haven't seen this one yet, but I think maybe it does. I mean, it does
have a motorcyclist in it. I don't know how motorcycle club the elements there are. But then there's also a sixty three film called The Damned which has some sort of motorcyclist element to it as well. But then by the nineteen seventies, Basically, we've had so many biker films come out that you see this need to create new twists on the genre. You can't just put out a biker film, you know, you can't just say, oh, well, they're bad boys out there riding around on bikes. Well,
how bad are they? Could they be supernaturally bad? And that's where we get stuff like seventy ones wear Wolves on Wheels or seventy two's Blood Freak, as well as this is later and this comes after the time period we're talking about. But I bought a vampire motorcycle from nineteen ninety.
Oh, I don't know that one.
I was looking. It looks good. I believe that one's British, so I may have to investigate further. But today's picture might well be considered the supernatural biker film par excellence. Uh. This, this really takes the cake.
Without a doubt. If you want to watch supernatural biker horror movies, I think you should start with Psychomania.
Yeah, and really, I feel like with biker fiction in general, we kind of ebbs and flows. Right. A few years back, we had that fairly long running Sons of Anarchy series, which I ended up watching all of.
Uh.
Oh, it's it's it's entertaining. It's uh, it's an interesting Uh, it's an interesting show. It's it's it has a lot of cheesy elements. It has a lot of elements that or maybe in questionable taste, okay at the time and certainly by today's standards, but uh, it had a lot of things going for it, like essentially trying to do a motorcycle gang story that is shakespearean influence story at least shakespeare light in its.
Creation, so which Shakespeare was based on you.
Like, well, the basic bones of it. They tried to set up a Hamlet thing like young what's his name, Charlie, Charlie, Charlie Hanman.
You know, you know the guy Charlie Hunhum.
Yes him, Yes, okay, Yeah, he's basically Hamlet. They set that up, is like he is the Hamlet of this biker scenario. And they but they don't try and like actually hit all the story beats of Hamlet exactly, and then they throw a little bit of Macbeth in there. At times. It's amusing, Okay, but I'm ready for the needle to come back to supernatural biker films. That's where we need to go. If they want to keep the sons of anarchy thing going that make it, vampires make it?
Where bring that? Bring that back in? That's that's my two cents.
Yeah, what has there been lately that really counts? I guess there's like the what's that super hero who's like a supernatural biker? Oh Night, Nicholas Cage, Nicholas Cauche Night Night Right, ghost Rider, ghost Right Ghostrider?
Yeah, not not right. That's that's a different thing altogether.
I haven't seen any of those except that first movie with Nicholas Cage, which I recall being hilarious.
I think Peter Fonda shows up in one of those, Oh does he Yeah, yeah, that that sort.
Of rings a bell. Maybe it was in that first one.
Yeah, that's a fun inclusion. It's thoughtful to include Peter Fonda in it.
The main thing I remember about that one is that the that kid who's in American Beauty is the villain in it, and he's some kind of monster And there's a part where he's like in the middle of the desert and he just walks right up to the camera and looks into the camera and goes, Yeah, he like opens his mouth and a bunch of teeth and stuff come out.
Well, that sounds great. I'm sure that character will be back, though they'll they'll create some other what do we say his name was death not death Writer, night Writer.
Night Writer, ghostwriter, ghost rider. Yes, all right, Well, if you can't figure out the elevator pitch based on everything we've already said, I don't know how much help we're going to be other than the lich King rides. It's that undead bikers.
Let's go ahead and listen to the trailer, and I think, like last week, we might just let the trailer play in its entirety because it's wonderful. It's a same year as last week selection, so it makes sense.
They were just ordinary troublemakers as long as they lived, but they returned from beyond the grave with superhuman powers, unleashing an unholy reign of terror that holds an entire community in the grip of psychomania.
Psychomania everybody dies, stand there, some come back.
How do the dead come back?
Mother?
When you die, you've got to believe that you're going to come back.
Have you kill yourself?
That's right off a great I'm dying.
You can only die once after that nothing and nobody can harm you.
Oh man, what are you waiting for?
You must stop him?
You can't.
I must.
Psychoma what happened?
You're not dead, That's what I.
Was trying to tell you. I don't want to die good after them.
And you know what you will become, yes, and that it will be for all eternity, because.
You can only die once. After that, nothing and nobody can harm you Psychomedia.
One thing about this movie is it's just so British. It has this film of Britishness all over it. It's you know, it just smells like baked beans. Uh, it's a it's a can of Heinz baked beans driving a
motorcycle through a roundabout. And and it's also got that wonderful like the inter cutting between the the violent manic parts on the road where they're out, you know, riding around, harassing motorists and all that on the motorway, and then and then contrasting that with the indoor scenes where like they go to a pub or they go into somebody's house, and it has this amazing quaint stuffiness of early seventies Britain. Uh, it's yeah, it's it's just tremendous.
Well, it's an interesting twist if you've if you're used to seeing mostly American biker films, there are any biker film is going to have scenes where the bikers are messing with the squares. But yes, more often than not in your American biker films, these are taking place in rural situations, you know, say, like a gas station often. So it's often, you know, very rural individuals who are bedeviled by the bikers. And in this case we get
just it's not even like rural Britain person. I mean, it's not London obviously, but it's you know, it's it's it's in town or it's you know, on the street surrounding town. But it's the British way of life that is threatened by the bikers as opposed to the like American Midwest, you know, or sort of desert community kind of vibe.
Yeah. I'm not sure, but I think it's supposed to be a town in the southwest of England. I think it's supposed to be a town in like Wiltshire or something. I don't know if I'm saying that right, Wiltshire, Wiltshire,
whatever it is, But yeah, there. There is a thing that definitely that they do in this movie that a lot of outlaw biker movies have to do, even non super natural, utterly mundane outlaw biker movies, have to have a scene of the bikers riding around knocking things over in some public place, And in this movie they do it in a grocery store, and they do it in the middle of a town square, which makes me wonder was it actually a common occurrence for outlaw biker gangs
at the time and I don't know, the early seventies to just ride around in public places knocking things over, saying that shouldn't be upright and I'll make it sideways. Or is this merely symbolic, like a way of showing them causing chaos that can be accomplished on screen in a single scene.
I don't know. Yeah, I don't know if actual bikers, actual outlaw bikers, engage in this kind of thing, because certainly there are accounts of outlaw bikers engaging in all manner of criminal activities.
I guess the kinds of things you would see with any type of organized crime.
Right, yeah, bait, yeah, organized crime, smuggling, things like that. You don't see a lot of, say, New York Times articles about them just knocking stuff over at grocery stores. But this reminds me. I was reading an interview or part of an interview with the lead singer of Electric Wizard. What is his name, A Just Oborne?
I think, yeah, yeah, and doom metal band.
Yeah, doom metal band, stoner band, kind of vibe. And there was a quote from it that I want to read here just because I thought it was amusing. He says, I don't know why it isn't venerated in the same way as the wicker Man or Witchfinder General. There was a whole generation of us who grew up watching it on TV. In Wimborne, there used to be a safe ways that's like a grocery like we see in this film, with an entrance on one end and an exit right at the other. We used to bike right through it.
On bmx's kicking stuff over, it was called doing a psychomania.
Ah, that's perfect. Oh no, oh no, the kids getting bad idea. They're imitating an act of violence they saw on television and what they were watching is psychomania.
Well, it comes back to this idea of the motorcycle Club, the Outlad motorcycle Club in myth and in fiction and in reality, and how these things all feed into each other. You know.
Yeah, at least I guess it wasn't violence against people. I mean, I don't advocate knocking over pyramids of cans of baked beans, but yeah, yeah, but you know, I guess you got to do it sometimes.
That's one of the great things about this film though, is that, yes, the characters do engage in some heinous acts of violence, mostly off screen, but they also just do some very low level criminal Yes, you mischief in this just yeah, knocking over stuff like.
Mind calling and traffic.
Yeah, name calling and traffic, just minor assaults on the British way of life. And also murder.
Also murder, so it's murder or like pulling up beside somebody in a truck and going yeah.
Yeah, that kind of all right, So we talk about some of the people in this film, since we're talking about the people here absolutely.
Now, is it true that this was directed by somebody who had done a bunch of hammer horror films?
Yeah, at least a few. This is the director on this picture was Don Sharp, who lived nineteen twenty one through twenty eleven. Australian born British director, probably best known for his Hammer films, including sixty threes, The Kiss of the Vampire, sixty four's The Devilship Pirates and Rasputin The Mad Monk from nineteen sixty six. I believe this is one that our producer set is quite fond of.
Oh yeah, does this one actually have Christopher Lee as Resputant?
It does?
Yes, Oh, I've got to see that. I love a good portrayal of Resputant. One of my favorites, if I've never mentioned it on this show before, is he doesn't get all that much screen time, but his scenes are fabulous. So there's a movie from the seventies called Nicholas and Alexandra that's about the Romanovs and the Russian Revolution and all that. And it has Tom Baker, who played the doctor on Doctor who as rest Bututant and he is just awesome, just devastating. Will He will turn your brain
into a boiled ham. His scenes will just beat you into submission. You'll be watching without blinking. It's so good.
I looked at some screenshots of it. It looks pretty great. Yeah. Now, Sharp also directed not the first sequel to The Fly, but the second Fly sequel, The Return of the Fly, in nineteen fifty eight. He also did a film titled Bear Island in nineteen seventy nine, which I believe involves bears. And he also directed three episodes of the original The Avengers series, which we cited.
Are Oh okay, some things are coming together here, Hammer, Horror and The Avengers.
All right, let's move on to the screenwriters. Here. There's Arnaud Dessau, who lived nineteen sixteen through nineteen ninety, American screenwriter who also pinned the seventy two UK Spanish co production Horror Express, which is a wonderful little film starring Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Telly Savalas.
Whoa wait, wait wait wait wait wait. Is this the one where they extract the image of the killer from someone's eye?
Yes?
Oh wow.
And there's also some sort of like sort of a Neanderthal monster wandering around in the train. It has a couple of weird elements going around in it, but it's it's quite quite amusing. I saw it several years ago.
Wow.
Yeah, So the idea and that the e scene is that what like the last image a person saw before they died is like imprinted on their retina, and somehow they extract that from the victim.
Yeah, and there's actually an older episode of stuff to blow your mind when I did with Christian, where we get into this idea and how this idea kind of traveled around in scientific and pseudo scientific groups for a while. Now, that's just one of the screenwriters. The other is Julian Zimmett, another American, I believe. Zim It also worked on Horror Express and various pictures to the forties, fifties, sixties and seventies, this being his final film credit.
Now, the main character in this film, I guess you could argue about who the main character is. But one of the main characters is a very naughty motorcycle youth named Tom Latham. And he's played by an actor named Nicki Henson.
Yeah, Nicki Henson, who's certainly an actor I've seen before, but I really wasn't that familiar with him. He lived nineteen forty five through twenty nineteen, British actor with a long career in British film and television. And I'd say the big titles worth mentioning are two thousand and five's Syriana. This was a film with George Clooney in it. He also did three episodes of Dalton abby So your Dalton Abbey viewers, if you remember a character named Charles Griggs, that's our NICKI.
I had to go ask Rachel who if she remembered who he was in the show, and she did figure out who he was, but now I can't remember what she told me.
Yeah, my wife did not remember this character. But I looked up a scene with him, and he looks fun and I think he plays into the theater or something in it. So, oh wait.
Yes, now I remember what it is. Okay, I think if I recall correctly, she said that he is a former vaudeville performing partner with like the head butler guy at the at the house, at the at the manor, and every and he comes back and he like threatens or something. He says like he's like, if you don't pay me money, I'm gonna let everybody know that you used to be a stage performer and that you weren't always so so civilized.
All right, Well, yeah, the clip I looked at it looked fine. It looks like a fun performance worthy of an actor who certainly had a had a very dramatic voice when he wanted to.
Though in this movie, I mean, he's perfect for the role. I love him in this, but he's he does he's not He's not playing it in a serious way. This entire performance is one incredibly extended smirk.
Well, I don't know. There's one sequence where he is afraid and frightened and seems to oh that's true, yeah, yeah, but then he gets over that really quickly. Now, he was also on east Enders, which I think a lot of British actors were, But he was also in such genre pictures as sixty eight's Which Finder General, which came up a second ago, and then also that one was one that starred Vincent Price, and I think I've alluded to Vincent Price's facial hair in that before.
Because the Gandalf from the Soviet Lord of the Rings looked like witch Finder General exactly.
Yeah. But also Nicki Hinson was in seventy four's Old Dracula, starring David Niven as Old Dracula. I have not seen it, but it sounds sounds interesting.
Was the premise there wasn't Dracula already old?
I think? But now he's even older. I don't know, but clearly I think you're running out of Dracula ideas just when you bust out a old Dracula. I don't know. Maybe it's great, and I just I'm not giving it a chance.
It's like that Key and Peel skit with the pitch meeting for Grimlins too. They're just coming up with different ideas for Dracula. What about electricity Dracula? How about old Dracula.
Old Dracula. It's in the movie Vegetable Dracula. Yeah, But Nicki Hinson, he's good in this. Like you say, it's largely one note except for the one scene, but he's very charismatic. He's dressed in leather the whole time. He has this kind of like a big chest, narrow waste thing going on. So he has this youthful vigor to him that really works in the role.
He has a great Nigel Toughnell mullet.
Yes, yes, there's a lot of great early seventies hair in this picture. Longside burns everything all right. So he plays Tom Latham. But his character's mother is also an important character. This is Miss Latham, played by Beryl Reed, who lived nineteen nineteen through nineteen ninety six. An acclaimed British stage actor. She won a nineteen sixty seven Tony Award for Best Actress in in the play The Killing
of Sister George. She was also in the film with adaptation of that play, and other credits include the original Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy TV series or perhaps limited mini series that starred Alec Guinness, and she was also in the nineteen eighty three Gram Chapman pirate film yellow Beard.
Now, before we started recording today, we were talking about a song, a folk song that I really love, is one of my favorites, called nineteen fifty two vincent black Lightning by the British singer songwriter Richard Thompson. It's a wonderful song, but it is a song about a red headed girl who falls in love with a bad motorcycle boy and then when he dies from a shotgun blast to the chest, he gives her his motorcycle to ride,
his nineteen fifty two vincent black Lightning. And immediately I thought of this movie because this is a movie about a red headed girl who's in love with a bad motorcycle boy who dies.
Yes, the character is Abby Holme and she's played by the actor Mary Larkin. Is was an Irish actor, did a fair amount of film and TV work. Nothing that really stands out to me personally in her filmography, but I think British TV viewers may have some notes for us on this. But she has a very nice film presence in this motion picture. I'll also say, I want to point this out. Her name is Abby and you frequently get reminded of this because she has a leather jacket.
She's in the gang and she has her name on it. And I love a movie that has name tags. It was a lot easier to keep track of everybody in this film. I wish more pictures had name tags like this.
What's the scene where for most of the movie you don't hear most of the names of the characters the biker gang, But then there's one scene where undead Tom is just looking at all of them, one in a row and saying their names, and the sequence is hilarious. It's something he says something like gash Hatchet, Bertram yep.
Chopped Meat is another uh huh yep. I think chop Meat is the folk singer of the group. If I'm not mistaken. Really, Yeah, I mean I don't think the actor was actually a folk singer. But there's a scene later on where we get a folk song and I think chop meat out of his leather jacket is the one that's supposed to be playing that song. Could be wrong.
It's such a gentle tune. You wouldn't think that that it comes from the mind of a crazed motorcycle killer.
Well, that's a scene where they're mostly dressed like hippies, as if the film is trying to say all of us have within us, both the hippie and the biker, both the peace loving hippie and the necromantic, druid biker Wraith. These are both aspects of the same human soul.
The peaceful artist whose very voice is love, and then the motorcycle nightmare who will run you down on the motorway.
Yes. Now, if Abby is the good girl in this the bad girl is Jane, played by ann Anne Michelle. I believe her name was born nineteen fifty two. Other credits include House of rip Chord from seventy four, Haunted from seventy seven, and interestingly enough, this actor was once married to a professional British motorcycle racer by the name of Richard may So. Normally not really worth mentioning what actors' spouses did, but in this case I found that interesting.
She's also fantastic in this because much like Nicki Henson, she has a smirk that mocks life itself.
Yeah, she is, like I said, she's the bad girl on this. She does not really question the whole necromancy scheme that becomes central to the plot. She embraces it early on. Right now, we're not going to go through all the actors playing all the bikers, you know, like Chop Mead and Horsecrop and so forth. But Bertram was played by this actor by the name of Roy Holder
born nineteen forty six and I believe still alive. Another actor with solid British TV and film credits, including two thousand and one's Warhorse, Ridley Scott's Robin Hood from twenty eleven and various big TV series like east Enders, Coronation Street, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, etc. He played the character Krelper, a gun runner who worked for a mercenary who worked for another villain named Morgas on four episodes of Doctor Who in the nineteen eighties, and he plays
Enoch in the star studied nineteen seventy seven Jesus of Nazareth mini series. Okay, I don't think I've seen this, but I long remember seeing it on video shelves as a kid. It's the one with like the kind of a big eyed Jesus on the front.
You know, I'm not sure I know which one this is.
Well, it's worth looking up just to see who I was in it. It was again a star studied project, a huge Jesus movie. Okay, all right. We have a police inspector in this film, representing law and order.
Hate the law, you know, no respect for it.
Yeah. The chief inspector in this is played by Robert Hardy, who lived nineteen twenty five through twenty seventeen. This is Cornelius Fudge himself from the Harry Pot films.
Oh, I don't remember who that is. Who's Cornelius Fudge.
Oh he was the head of the Ministry of Magic.
I was sort of like the President of the Wizards or something.
Yeah. Like, but I mean it's like, it's basically like, this is an actor who played authority, British authority, figures. Well, yeah, and so in this he plays one, and in Harry Potter he played a different one.
Yeah. He disapproves of your behavior, whatever it is.
Yeah. He was also in Ang Lee's nineteen ninety five Cents in Sensibility. He was on All Creatures Great and Small. And he sure played Churchill a lot. I saw Churchill popping up a lot of his filmography. Yeah. He was also in a seventy two demon possession film titled Demons of the Mind.
Now, another big connection here is that this bizarre, undead biker horror movie was the last film of the legendary actor George Sanders.
Yes, George Sanders playing Shadwell the Butler. Though we suspect he is much more.
Than a butler, the warlock Butler.
Yeah. He lived nineteen oho through nineteen seventy two, so he died the same year this film rap production. Apparently. English actor known for major roles in the forties and fifties pictures like All About Eve, Rebecca, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and man Hunt. Later audiences might know him best for his voice in Walt Disney's The Jungle Book. You know, the old animated jungle Book. He is the voice of Sheer Khan the Tiger.
I think the talking voice, not the singing voice, is there, right.
Yeah, yeah, there's different different credits on those, but the talking voice is definitely Sanders. He also played mister Freeze in the first two appearances of that character in the old Batman series.
Perfect.
Yeah, there were a couple of other notable actors who played that same character. It's a real lightning rod for talent that show. Because Vincent Price also popped up on Batman.
Oh, I forgot about that. Who did he play? Was he the Riddler or something?
No, No, that would have been great. Now he played Egghead. This character was just a giant egghead.
I've forgotten.
Yeah, it's terrible. It's terrible.
Okay, It's like, should we do a digression here about how bad most of the Batman villains are almost all you know what. In fact, they're like the Grimlins once again in that Gremlins pitch meeting sketch, because they're all like I remember this when I was playing one of those Batman video games years ago that allows you to sort of like collect a catalog of who all the villains are, and you got the big ones, you all know,
the Joker and the Riddler and all that. I don't know if the Riddler is different enough from the Joker, but anyway, once you get into the second tier of Batman villains, it's all just like clock Man. He is obsessed with clocks and kills people with schemes that resemble clocks. You know, Mad Hatter, who is obsessed with the Mad Hatter character in Alice in Wonderland. They're all like extremely literal. They're all you know, electricity grimlin one.
Yeah, I mean it is, it's like that. It's like, you know, electricity criminal, Riddle criminal, clock criminal. Because essentially, like Batman is a detective, he solves crimes. He needs a criminal to go up against. But you have to put these at least these spins on them and uh and of course, over time, various creative minds have found
interesting ways to make those ideas more potent. Take mister Freeze for example, Like Freeze criminal is not a very interesting concept, but certainly by the time of the like the animated Batman series.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, when we were kids, you know, they ice, Yeah, they found ways to make this just a tragic and romantic figure and just a fascinating character with cool, freezing criminal powers.
Right. Oh, I want to be clear, I'm not dissing doctor Freeze especially or mister Freeze. Even though he is a doctor. He goes by mister Freeze, even though he has a PhD.
Well, you know, he takes that do no harm thing seriously, I guess, or I don't know, or a PhD, no idea, But he's when he's freezing, he's mister Freeze.
Right exactly. That's his yeah, off off the clock.
So yeah, this is this is George Sanders's last picture, and by all accounts, he was not in a good place at this point in his life, probably not performing at his peak. But he's still a great presence in the film. You know, he's still he still creates some magic on the screen.
Robi. I know you always like to talk about the music, and the music in this movie is one of the big selling points. There are some great folk songs in it. There's some great psychedelic guitar. It's all over the place.
Yeah, it's it's a little bit funky in places. There's some I guess what he got like fuzz tone rock notes in it. It's yeah, it's a wonderful score and this is definitely a score that's available and has long been available in various formats. It is the work of John Cameron born nineteen forty four, British composer, arranger, conductor and musician. He did a number of film scores for various pictures over the years. One that stuck out to me,
and this may not be his crowning achievement. I don't remember what the music was like in this, but nineteen ninety two's Frankenstein starring Randy Quaid as the Monster and Patrick Bergen as the Doctor. This one I think debuted on TNT on cable back when I was a kid, and I may have mentioned on the show before because when this came out and was like, yeah, this is this is Frankenstein.
This is not the first time you've brought this one up. In fact, you've brought it up almost to scold me for like making jokes about Randy Quaid.
No, you can joke about Randy Quaid all you want. In terms of his acting though Randy Quaid, I have found him quite good in a few different pictures and this was one of him playing playing the monster. But as for the music, yeah, this is This is really good stuff from Cameron. You know, we'll talk about the folk ballot in a bit. Originally, the tracks off of this score, witch Hunt and Living Dead were actually released as a single on vinyl, with Cameron taking on the moniker of frog.
Hmm, now there is a major frog in this movie. I honestly could not understand what the magical significance of the frog was. Maybe you can help me understand that as we talk about the plot a little bit more. Yeah, yeah, look at it as a froggy film. The Psychomania gets froggy.
Yeah. But before we move forward, though, first, let's have a let's have just another sample of that music, the score to Psychomania. Yeah, it's so good. It's so good.
I'm feeling the last vestiges of respect for law and humanity fading away. I am about to go out and do evil, do exactly as I will.
Well, let's go ahead and talk about the film. Let's get into the plot, because this one has it's against so many weird elements it's really worth dwelling on.
Well, so the very opening is just divine. I love the first few minutes of this movie. It's once again druids on wheels. It's just bikers doing slow mo stunts in the grass amidst an ancient stone circle while this acid wizard guitar music just drips in the background. I love, love, love this. Filmmakers out there, if you want to make movies today that I will just like gush about incessantly. Get this vibe, recreate it, make more of this kind
of thing. I believe that the setting here, so you know, they're riding around doing bike stunts at a stone circle. I think this is supposed to be at a place called Avebury Hinge, at least according to some not super authoritative looking articles I was reading, so I'm not certain about this. But if this is supposed to be Avebury Hinge, that is a Neolithic stone monument site much like Stone Hinge.
This one's in the southwest of England, and I'm not sure if they are actually truly gunning their hogs through the real megaliths or if this is a set made to look like it. If it is a set, I'm impressed, like it looks pretty convincing. They may actually have been ripping me through a priceless forty five hundred year old ritual site.
I can't tell, but these scenes are impressive. It sets the tone for the picture.
Oh yeah, yeah, so slow mo bike jumps, cross, sing in and out. I imagine they were probably actually going at pretty low speed, but then by playing it back in slow motion, you can create the impression that at full speed they would have been doing something incredibly dangerous. So this is the biker gang at the heart of the movie. They're known as the Living Dead. I adore their outfits. They've got these skull helmets and they all wear black leather motorcycle gear except for Jane, who wears
red leather and white gloves. And these are just some bad, bad English youths whose brains have been defiled by overdoses of black leather, carbon monoxide and moral nihilism. They do what they want and they care not for man's law.
Yeah, these outfits are incredible. If you haven't seen clips from this film, look it up because the design and the biker helmets just looks great. Again, it looks like a skull. And then they're wearing most of them again are wearing head to toe black leather and it says of course living dead on the back. And then they have their name tags on the front.
Or yeah, name tags, yeah, yeah, which is a great thing for criminals to have, right. So the first thing we see them doing is just dangerously harassing people driving on the on the on the back, you know, the country roads. And I think they actually kill a guy like that, or at least they knock him out like they they scare him until he's in an accident and is thrown from his vehicle. So they're just out just randomly murdering innocent people. And they've got their names on their clothes.
Yeah. This film mostly has a very sanitized view of how death works because mostly things happen, people become very still and they are dead. Yeah, it's weirdly sanitized for a film that is otherwise, you know, just on paper is obsessed with death.
Yeah, it's not a bloody movie. It's actually it's it's it's very clean. Yeah. And there are a number, like pretty much all outlaw biker films. You've got to have just these scenes of the characters being lawless, dangerous and harassing other people. I would call these scenes to take a coinage from Polly Walnuts may Ham. You know, you've got to have your Mayhem sequences and so that's what we get right at the get go. They go straight from the stone Circle stunts to riding around doing mayhem.
And so the leader played by Nicki Henson is this guy named Tom Latham. I already mentioned that he is sort of like Nigel Toughnell of Spinal Tap, but I would describe him as a cross between Nigel Toughnell and Malcolm McDowell at a clockwork orange picture, those two in a venn diagram. And then you've got Tom.
Yeah, but a lot more likable, more likable than perhaps any Malcolm McDowell character has that sure.
Yeah.
Now, of course, this being a biker film, there are lots of shots of bikers biking. One thing that sets us apart from let's say, less well crafted biker films. And I've seen of these where sometimes you'll have the camera set up and you'll just watch the bikers approach for like a mile in the desert, you.
Know, yeah, wererolls on wheels? Does that yet?
Yeah, where it's just like, wow, we're really gonna watch this for a while. They set up this shot and we're gonna we're gonna see all of it. But and there's maybe like one shot in this where it felt like it went on a bit long, but otherwise they did a good job of just giving us interesting footage of our gang terrorizing the roads.
So a sin that is often committed by B movies is padding, trying to insert extra stuff to pad out the run time and get to full feature length. That is a thing I would not accuse this movie of. I don't think there's a lot of padding. I think it moves at a pretty nice pace and there's not a lot of just watching people drive around with no purpose.
Yeah. And if I think if some people were confused by the film and they might say, well, maybe we needed more of the film to explain these things, I think that I think that would be the wrong instinct, because there's a lot of stuff, like the frogs, that we don't completely understand. There's a cryptic nature to it, and I feel like that is how it should be. Given the magic that's taking place here. We're not supposed to understand frog necromancy. It is supposed to be a mystery to us.
I almost forgot about the frogs. We got to talk about the frog So they do the mayhem at the beginning, and then the next scene is we get Tom and Abby. Abby is another member of the gang, and Tom is her boyfriend, and they're hanging out in a graveyard and Tom catches a frog in the graveyard and he says, hello, little green friend and Abby. It's funny because Abby seems like she does not really belong in this gang. She just seems like an extremely nice young lady who would
not be out doing highway murders. The rest of the gang are obviously these immoral, lawless creeps, and Abby just seems like she's just a nice girl. So I'm not sure what's going on there, but it makes sense because she's she I think eventually becomes the main character. And you're only five minutes into the movie before Tom is saying to Abby, let's do it. Let's kill ourselves and become some kind of cursed undead monsters, and Abby's like, oh, Tom,
not that again. So apparently he brings this up all the time every time they get together. He's like, what do you say, let's become undead? Yeah, And it's also kind of strange how much she seems to take this in stride, like she's just like, oh, that's silly, not like it doesn't really bother her.
Yeah, yeah, but clearly, yeah, he talks about it a lot. This is his thing, like it was probably I don't know if they had yearbooks in Britain at this time, but if they had one, he would be most likely to destroy oneself and become an undead monster.
Right. So Tom goes back to his house, which is a gigantic mansion. Wouldn't you know it, This good for nothing modo Rascal is actually a posh rich kid, and so they're at the house. You find out his family, only I don't know how it was to explain the family situation. So the family is him and his mother and their butler, Shadwell, and his mother and Shadwell seem to be into evil magic. They're into the occult. They
do seances and other occult stuff in the house. And Tom's father has passed away because it's implied he tried to do some kind of dangerous evil ritual and failed and died in the process.
Right, and possibly like permanently warped a room in their house with foul magic from beyond. Again, not completely explained, and I don't want the film to explain it more. I like that it's so cryptic but yeah, this is a weird house in a weird family setting because Shadwell is not really he's the butler. He's not, he's not his father. But he also there's a there's clear from the very beginning that Shadwell is not just a butler.
There is there's a power to him, there's knowledge there, and he's he's only so involved in the actual affairs of the family. Like I noticed that a lot of times, maybe in a very sort of proper English butler way, one of them will express an emotion and he'll comment upon it, but he's not really expressing an opinion one way or the other.
Yes, the circumspect removed a jeeves ish editorial position. Yeah, I mean he's like Jeeves, but if Jeeves were an ancient druid warlock.
Yes, yeah, because ultimately we come to learn that he is either some sort of an ancient druid warlock or perhaps something worse, perhaps a demon or the devil himself or something something from beyond. I don't know. It could go either way, but there's a lot more to Shadwell than just butlering.
So Tom gets home with this frog that he caught in the graveyard and he's like, He's like, Okay, I want to know the secret of the living Dead, and I guess Shadwell is like, Okay, maybe he should know, maybe not, but the frog seems significant. Can you explain the frog to me? I've seen this movie multiple times and I don't understand the relationship between the frog and the power to come back from the dead.
Yeah. I don't really have a clear answer. But we see actual frogs. We see, of course, the wonderful frog amulet that comes up that when it first appeared on screen, I audibly gasped it was.
So oh yeah, to behold wonderful jewelry. So Tom's mother is like, should we tell him the secret of the living Dead? It could be dangerous for him, And Shadwell's like, it won't be dangerous for him if he's protected with this. And then he gets out this necklace that's got a frog on it.
And I think Shadwell has a ring with the frog on it as well. And then oh, and then there's the like the frog from Beyond. There's like a dreamlike sequence involving a mirror that casts no reflection, and within that smoking mirror of a cult weirdness, we see the form of a frog. So I don't know if like that is the form of the force from beyond? Is is it conveying information or is that or is that
the is that the form of the destroyer? And this this picture, I don't know, so many questions, but the frog is a repeating symbol and oh yeah, it's it's good. There's a lot of frog action in this and it absolutely works.
There's also a wonderful scene where when Tom and his mother first meet up, they start waltzing around the living room. They've got like a sunken living room and they're dancing and she's like, Tom, now I you know, I think the police are after you. And he says the word mother is fuzz and she says she says, if you don't be careful, you're going to end up arrested. And he says the word mother is busted.
It's weird how he's you know, he's having to educate his mom on the cool lingo. But their living room is really hip, like it's a very mod living room with like they have this cosmic like black starscape behind the occult seance table and then there's a fireplace and there's like all those weird modern furniture going on. It's a it's a strange, strange living room, and I love it.
But ultimately in this whole sequence has Tom has this weird thing where he goes into the cursed room and faces the magic mirror, and ultimately he finds out the secret of the living dead by overhearing his mother. And it doesn't seem like much of a secret. The secret just seems to be that you have to to become an evil, undead immortal, you have to kill yourself and truly believe you'll come back from the dead.
And Tom is, I guess he's convinced of this. I don't know, I'm trying to remember what specifically convinced him. Maybe it was the experience in the room, like encountering other worldly, weird magical things. Yeah, but when he he's terrified in the room, like there's there's a lot of terrified acting going on while he's in there. But it's not long afterwards, so he gets out of there. He wakes up and he's like, all right, let's do it. Death and immortality bring.
It on, right, And so the next day he's ready, He's ready, He's ready to become the lich King. So, like we said earlier, every outlaw biker movie has to have scenes of bikers riding around knocking things over. You know, they see stuff that's vertical and just their eyes go red and they're like, you're not gonna be vertical for long.
And so they ride around in the town square knocking stuff over in a scene of chaos and mayhem that will culminate in Tom driving his motorcycle off a bridge to become the evil Dead.
Right. He watches up on the bank and they're like two children there and they're.
Like look, yeah. And so then after this we get a scene that is one of the best scenes in the movie. It's the funeral for Tom, which they have at this stone circle that you saw on the opening of the film, which they called the Seven Witches. I don't know which elements to focus on first, but this scene is so great. Maybe the folk song. So there's one of the bikers who again these they kill people.
He's also like a sweet singer songwriter and he plays this song that goes and the world never knew his name, but the chosen few know of his fame.
Yeah, it's really good, and you can find clips of this whole song on YouTube if you look around for it. But yeah, there's the folk song that's going on. That's wonderful. Just also the whole premise, because basically what's happened is after after Tom died, Abby came to his mom and said, hey, it's sad that Tom died. We would love to bury him in our way, according to our custom according to our customs. So you might wonder what is a traditional
English biker funeral. Well, it apparently involves, I guess, being taxidermied atop of your motorcycle and then buried on your motorcycle in a grave, like an enormous grave. And in this case that isn't the grave like adjacent to the hinge.
It's right in the middle of the hinge.
Yeah, which seems this seems like this would not be legal the authorities.
I do not think they would let you bury somebody there.
And on a motorcycle. I mean, it's going to.
Motorcycle just on it. It reminds me of the actual practice of horse burial, where, for example, you might see an ancient Scythian warrior buried with his horse. I think this practice is common among people more in sort of like the Indo European and Central Asian regions throughout history, where you know, the strong, strong horse based cultures, people would sometimes be buried with their horse in some way, and here it's like that, but it's the motorcycle instead of the horse.
Yeah, yeah, it's But it's great though, because he's just sitting on the body. He's just being real still, you know, on the on the motorcycle in the grave while they're playing this song and then oh and then of course you get to you see the hinge the stones behind them, and then also there's a smoke stack in the background. Yes, and I just love that shot like that, that shot just feels so seventy He's Britain. I love it.
And the song going on the lyrics at one point the singer goes and he really got it on. He rode that sweet machine just like a bomb. It's like, I can't think of instances of people riding bombs except in Doctor Strangelove. Is that what he meant?
Maybe so, I mean the time the timeframe would work, or maybe it's British biker lingo that we're just this.
But so, of course Tom comes back from the grave as an evil undead version of himself. I guess he was already evil.
Oh please, don't just say he comes back from the grave.
He busts up out of the grave. So there's a scene where like a car pulls over on the highway and the man gets out of the car and his wife there is like, he's like, oh, we're having car trouble. I've got to go to the garage. And his wife says, you could get there faster if you cut through the seven witches. You're not afraid, are you, And he's like, uh no, obviously he is. So he's walking through the
seven witches. But then what's that he hears? Is that a little bit of a Is that a revving the revving of a motorcycle, as if coming up from out of the earth, and then boom, spray of dirt. Tom busts up out of his grave on the motorcycle and runs this guy over.
Yeah, so Tom is back from the grave. And one of the great things about this is you might expect, given all this, that Tom would be this like grizzly undead biker now, But no, Tom looks exactly like he did in life, acts exactly like he did in life. With the added caveat that he is now seemingly immortal and indestructible. Yeah, and you might wonder, well, what's why
does he exploit this? Well, the first thing he does is he basically he tanks up his hog, and then he also goes in as a beer and he doesn't pay for any of these things because now he is invincible.
Well, he kills the service station attendant because he asked him for money, and then he also at the he goes to the pub to use the telephone because he wants to call Shadwell. He calls Shadwell on the phone and Shadwell's like, oh, how does it feel to be back? And he says splendid. And he seems maybe even more freed from pathetic human morality than he was before, because now he's just doing murders everywhere.
He goes like, yeah, like five at a time.
Yeah, there's like a lady at the pub who wants to ride on his motorcycle. She's like, take me for a ride, and he's like no, and he just kills her.
Yeah, he's offscreen killing everybody.
Yes, but yeah, so he's he's immortal and invulnerable, and he appears back to the rest of his gang, and he says, hey, you know, here's the deal. If you kill yourself and become an undead lych king like me, you will be indestructible and then we can really party.
Yeah, and they buy into it instantly because the proof is in the pudding. Like here he is, he's back. You don't need to go into the weird mirror room because Tom stands before you. And also one of them tries to stab him, and he's like, it doesn't work on me anymore. See, I'm immortal. You guys should join the club too.
He's not bothered by it. Yeah, the guy tries to stab him, and he's just like, isn't it cool? But so there is a I guess a very darkly comic sequence where all the rest of the bikers are like, you know, I'm next, and they take their turns doing bizarre suicides to become the evil dead.
Yeah. It's a sequence that is just shockingly hilarious, this strong gallows humor. But it's like each one chooses a different method. The one that got me though, is the is the bike. I forget which one this is. He's he's wearing a swimsuit and he's laid in with chains, like a ridiculous amount of chains, like like Bob Marley's ghost. He's Jacob Marley. I'm sorry, Jacob Marley's gust not Bob, Sorry,
Jacob Marley's ghost from from a Carrol. He's laden in all these you know, fake chains, and he's he's he's shambling towards the riverside, clearly to drown himself. But it's like, really, that's the method you choose, and then he does it.
One of them off screen, of course, yes, yeah, one of them goes skydiving without a parachute. Yeah, but yes, the goal is they're all going to become undead bikers, just like Tom.
Yeah.
And so in the end, because of course, uh, there's just death everywhere. Now, the the police get involved. So the third act, that's I guess pretty standard for movies like this. The police come in and they're like, well, we've got to we've got to set a trap for Tom and the bikers, and they decide they want to use Abby as bait because Abby is the only one of them who doesn't buy into this, and she decides
she actually doesn't want to become undead. She likes living thanks very much, and she backs out of it.
So she does almost overdose and has like a dream sequence. That's that's uh, that's kind of good.
Oh yeah, yeah, that is very good. In the meantime, the bikers are riding around. There's yet another grocery store punishment scene. Or they're just plowing through the aisles. This carnation evaporated milk must suffer, you know, the marmite will pay. And they're smashing all of the products, and you see and you see Jane being especially evil. She's like, I, I, you know, I want to I want to hit baby carriages with my motorcycle. I just want to do the most evil things I can think of.
Yeah, yeah, she run. She's on her motorcycle driving through the aisle, aiming at the baby carriage, hits the baby carriage, and then of course Kareem's into the like the meat counter in the back. And of course these are all real motorcycle stunts. So it's like they're just wiping out in a in a grocery store.
I wonder what grocery store they shut this in. Was it a safe way?
Maybe?
So?
Yeah, But Abby's along. Abby's getting cold feet at this point, for sure, like she was really I mean, no, she's more than that, Like she she had already decided she doesn't want any part of this, but now she's part of this, this police scheme to trap them, which I didn't completely understand how this played out.
Tho yeh, I didn't either, because just.
Suddenly, like they lay her out in the morgue and they let Tom know that she's dead, I guess, so that he'll come and get her. And then there we get some groovy music playing and then there's a suddenly we see all the police and the police inspector, including Fudge. They're just they're in the like the coroners when like the little cubby holes for the corpses, for the cadavers, and so I guess they've been off screen killed as well.
Yeah, I think that is the implication that Tom just just dispatched them, as he does with nearly everyone he meets now.
Because again he has super strength and cannot be hurt. Right, They're just they're running wild. Granted they're not trying to do much. But then we get a scene where Shadwell and Mom are talking to Tom and they're like, well, what are your plans what's next. And he's like, oh, well, you know, there are a lot of police officers and teachers, and he just runs through a list of like various generally like small level local authority figures, and he's like,
we're just going to kill all of them. That's what we're going to do. We're's going to completely tear down society from the bottom up.
So then I think even Mom, even though she's been involved in a lot of evil magic, she sort of has a change of heart. She's like, what have I done? What kind of monster have I created?
And of course Shadwell is there, and the Shadwell early on had mentioned had dropped that those stones that we saw earlier, well, those are what's left of ancient warlocks who forgot their bargain or turned their back on the powers that they served. And so when she starts saying, well they must, I want to back out. I don't want to be part of whatever deal I've made with whoever, with the beings beyond the mirror, the thing that takes
the form of the frog or what have you. And he's like, well, you know, there's a price to pay, and she's like, well, I will do.
It, And so that's what we get in the end. Even though the evil dead Bikers cannot be defeated by conventional arms or weapons, they can be undone by ritual magic, and so ultimately they I had to call in somebody's mom to fix things.
Yes, so yeah. The final scene is Abby's standing up to them. Abby's pretended to be undead, you know, sort of going along with it, but Tom suspects something's up when he drives through a brick walls totally it, and she goes around it. He's like, what's up. You're not dead, are you? And she's like, no, I wanted to tell you, And then the whole gang kind of turns on her. He's reaching out to strangle her, but Mom has turned off the magic, and perhaps the sun is involved as well,
because suddenly they start turning to stone. All the bikers turn to stone right there in the hinge, and Abby is the only one left alive. And then this dark vehicle pulls up and a lone figure gets out of it and begins walking towards her. And I believe this is supposed to be Shadwell.
Maybe in his like fully realized devil form or warlock form or something.
Yeah, So I love the ending because it was one of these what's happening, what's what is the future? Is Shadwell showing up now offer Abby the deal, the deal that the mom has backed out on, the deal that we really don't know any of the details of, which, again I kind of like because again, part of the
film is it's about the youth. It's about the youth in the world that the grown ups have created, and they certainly don't understand all the ramifications and the rules of that world, either the real world or certainly the supernatural world that Shadwell and Mom are involved in.
Yeah, And you know, one thing I love about the ending is that, so all these biker movies are about young people rebelling against authority structures. Something about the motorcycle signals a kind of freedom, a kind of removal of the constraints established by the authority figures around you. And at the end of this movie, what you've got to do is call somebody's mom to like make him stop acting up. And I love it.
Yeah, And then we roll credits, and it's also fun. This is a credit sequence that the divides the cast up by the factions they were involved in, which I thought was nice. So you get a full list of the bikes, you get the the law, you also get the survivors. So I really I really appreciate that. I wish I saw we saw that more, certainly in modern modern credits on films.
Oh yeah, yeah, I like that too. I like the fonts too. I always write comment on good fonts.
Even the fonts on their their jackets are really nice. Tom I believe has like a pink and green like kind of a it's kind of like a like it feels very eighties the coloration on his name tag portion of his his jacket. But I really like it. I'm just surprised nobody's remade this or revisited it.
I'm so glad nobody has ultimately better. I mean, this is a I think, a nearly perfect trash movie that I could not ask for, a better seventies supernatural biker movie. This is sort of the peak for me.
Yeah, I agree this. I think this is the supernatural biker film par excellence. So you might be wondering out there, well, where can I watch Psychomania? Well, Psychomania, fortunately is widely available in digital formats. Aero Video put out an absolutely beautiful looking two disc blu ray of this film a few years back, and you can still pick that up.
The soundtrack is also widely available in all formats. But if you're looking to stream this picture, I believe it is hosted on numerous streaming platforms slash channels including shutter fandor and AMC, and all of those have free trial periods. So if you just want to dip in and get yourself some psychomania and then and then check out, well
then that's certainly an option. Yeah, rev it up, all right, We're going to go ahead and close this out real quick though, you know, since there were some suicidal elements in this picture and we discussed them a little bit. If you're troubled by suicidal thoughts, you are not alone. In a sympathetic ear is only a phone call away. In the United States, consider calling the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at one eight hundred and two seven three eight
two five five. You can visit Suicide Prevention Lifeline dot org for additional reas sources tailored towards general and specific needs and communities. You'll also find a list of local and international suicide hotlines at suicide dot org. That's going to be it for this episode of Weird House Cinema, but we will be back. You can check out Weird House Cinema every Friday in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed We're primarily a science podcast, with our
core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We have what a Listener Mail on Mondays, Artifact on Wednesday, Vault episode on Friday, and a little rerun on the weekend.
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
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