PSYCHOMANIA (1973)

DIRECTED by Don Sharp

SCREENPLAY by Arnaud D'Usseau & Julin Zimet

STARRING  - Nicky Henson as Tom Latham, Beryl Reid as Mrs Latham, George Sanders as Shadwell, Mary Larkin as Abby Holman, Anne Michelle as Jane Pettibone.

PLOT - Tom Latham is a rich, indolent young man from a rich, indolent family that have long been interested in dabbling in the occult and various other magikal, forbidden arts. His mother is a spiritualist medium and his father is dead - killed by his own hand in the quest for immortality. The only father figure Tom has had throughout his life is the family butler - Shadwell - but there is more to Shadwell than meets the eye, something evil about him...something diabolical...

Led on by Shadwell, Tom is following his father down the same dark path and he too is obsessed by the idea of dying and coming back to life as an undead immortal.

Tom also happens to be the leader of a local biker gang - The Living Dead - a bored group of middle class kids who get thier kicks by terrorising the small country town in which they live. His girlfriend Abby is also a member of the gang, along with his second in command - the sadistic Jane.

Breaking into a secret locked room in his mother's mansion, Tom discovers the long coveted secret of immortality - a toad - which gives him knowledge through a vision. The vision tells him that to achieve immortality all he has to do is kill himself and passionately believe, 100 percent, that he will return from the dead. By doing this he will die and then be resurrected. Upon his resurrection he will become immortal and unkillable.

Armed with this knowledge he goes to the gang and tries to get them to join him in his quest for immortality. Naturally they are all sceptical about this - especially  Abby. To prove his point Tom rides his bike at high speed off a bridge - killing himself instantly.

Tom is buried but soon returns from the dead, he appears before his gang and this time they do believe him. Very soon members of the gang are turning up dead, killed in a series of increasingly elaborate suicides. The police are baffled as the bodies keep piling up only to then disappear.

The Living Dead are back from the dead. Terrorising the town centre and the dark country lanes - undead...unkillable...unstoppable. Only Abby remains untainted by the evil, but what can one, frightened girl do when even the local police are powerless ?

The killings continue and it seems even hell is afraid of The Living Dead...

DIALOUGE  - Mrs Latham - " I had a telephone call from the police." Tom - "The word, Mother, is "fuzz"."

Tom - "You can only die once, after that nothing and nobody can harm you." Jane - "Oh man !!! What are we waiting for ?"

Mrs Latham - "How are you ?" Tom - "Well, I'm dead Mother, but apart from that I couldn't be better."

Song sung at Tom's funeral - "He really got it on, he rode that sweet machine just like a bomb."

PERFORMANCES - There is some top notch acting in this film - Nicky Henson is everything a bored, evil rich kid running his own biker gang should be - cocky, commanding, self-assured, massively arrogant with a huge sadistic streak hidden under a vaneer of charm -  and that's before he becomes an undead killing machine. The only issue I have with him (and indeed all the other gang members) is his age, I get the impression that Tom and his gang are all meant to be about 18 or 19 years old - out of control, reckless tearaway kids who's parents turn a blind eye to all the shenanigans they get up to - when in reality they all look about 30 years old. The 30 year old teenager is a strange phenomena that seems only to exist in the "Magical Movieland (t.m.)" and is a trope that crops up in many films, regardless of genre. It's not a deal breaker and doesn't hamper the performances in any way, it's just a weird little quirk that never fails to make me smile.

Beryl Reid was a respected British actress predominantly known for playing old ladies. I've never seen her as a young woman in anything - she always looked like she was stuck at the age of 65 for the entirety of the 1960's, 70's and 80's - that's about 30 odd years of playing old ladies. In this film she plays an old lady who happens to be an evil, undead bikers mum - and she's very, very good in it. At times despairing of her son's evil acts, at other points accepting of it and even at times frightened by him. Mrs Latham is a woman who's clearly never spent much time actually being a mother to her son, concentrating instead on her calling as a medium/sorceress, turning a blind eye and literally letting her son get away with murder, only taking notice when it's far too late. Reid portrays this perfectly - It's a character with a lot more depth than the usual dotty old aunts she was famous for playing.

George Sanders is also excellent as the faithful butler/demonic lapdog of Satan - Shadwell. One the one hand smooth, suave and gentlemanly with a laconic, cold edge of pure evil at his core. Shadwell constantly flips between these two states, always letting the other characters - and the audience - know that whilst he outwardly appears to be a servile butler, deepdown he's the one really calling the shots. What his long term aims are is never made clear - I get the impression he's just a bored, minor demon playing games with a bunch of puny humans with ideas above thier station. It's a great performance. Sadly it was to be George Sanders last. Not long after this film was completed, Sanders took his own life. The reason he gave for this was in his suicide note -  "Dear World, I am leaving because I am bored. I feel I have lived long enough. I am leaving you with your worries in this sweet cesspool. Good luck".

It was - in truth - more than mere boredom that caused Sanders to end it all - he was suffering from depression after being diagnosed with dementia and massively feared losing his faculties - but I do feel that the sense of ennui that plagued him in his final weeks and months fuels his performance as Shadwell somewhat. It adds a grim, listless feeling to his final role when viewed with this foreknowledge.

SFX - Very little to speak of. There is a nice scene at the end, with the gang being turned to stone (Sorry, I'm not going to issue spoiler warnings for a 50 year old movie). I think it was achieved with some sort of stop motion photography but I'm not sure. 

SEX & VIOLENCE - No sex and very little actual violence - apart from one noteable exception where a baby's pram gets hit at high speed by a motorbike. Most of the violence happens offscreen. There's a great example of this in one scene where there are a group of policemen standing guard in a morgue. The camera slowly moves away from the group of vigilant lawmen, pans very slowly round the room in a 180 degree circle and ends up back at its starting point - only now the policemen are all dead - slain by the bikers and thier bodies mockingly arranged in a funereal pose on the mortuary slabs. It's a brilliant little scene, cleverly done - sometimes less is more.

There are also some extremely well done chase and crash sequences usually ending in the deaths of several hapless motorists.

RATING - Psychomania is fantastic film - easily deserving of it's cult classic status. It's beautifully shot - from the atmospheric opening scenes that capture the gang's bikes weaving through the mist enshrouded, eerie standing stones, through to the high speed chases through the otherwise tranquil country roads of middle England.

There is also lots of jet black comedy in this film. The best examples of this come in the scenes where the various gang members off themselves to achieve thier immortality - they just get increasingly more bizzare - one member drowns himself by wrapping a chain link around himself and jumping into a lake - said chain is so over the top HUGE that even Jacob Marleys ghost would balk at it. Another gang member skydives out of a plane without a parachute - surely this would be a terrible way to kill yourself with a view to self resurrection, you'd just go splat and there wouldn't be enough of you left to come back - but come back he does with nary a mark upon him. Perhaps my favourite death is the gang member who leaps out his tower block flat's window - his bike is illegally parked outside and has drawn the attention of a police officer. Seeing the bikes owner looking out the window, the copper asks if this is his bike - "Yes" he repies, the policeman tells him to come down at once, "OK" responds the biker and casually opens his window and leaps out to his death - we hear the bone crunching thud of his body hitting the concrete below.

There are other nice little macabre touches too, Tom is buried sitting on his motorbike upright - ready for his resurrection. Quite how the gang members got permission to dispose of a human corpse at a prominent local beauty spot where families go to eat thier picnics is never explained. It leads to an amazing resurrection sequence where Tom bursts out the grave at high speed on his bike and mows down a terrified bystander. It's not so much a resurrection than a statement of intent.

All in all this is a great film and one I strongly suggest you check out if you haven't already.  5 undead bikers out of 5.

Check out this terrible poster - why is Tom carrying a gun ? NOBODY in this film has guns, not even the POLICE !!!! 

Plus he looks bugger all like Nicky Henson, and what's with the hot pink motorbike and American police car ? Thats not something you see everyday in the Home Counties.