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October 14, 2024 70 mins

How can the British public possibly survive the ravages of youth biker gangs, unholy rites and frog-based necromancy? In this classic episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe discuss the 1973 British supernatural biker film “Psychomania.” (originally published 8/27/2021)

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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema rewind.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
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?

Speaker 1 (00:22):
I'm not sure that there is, and this says within
that subgenre, one of, if not the absolute best.

Speaker 3 (00:37):
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

(01:00):
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

(01:23):
is this the spell that brings the iron hog to life?

Speaker 4 (01:37):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 1 (01:47):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema.

Speaker 2 (01:49):
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

(02:10):
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.

Speaker 1 (02:29):
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.

Speaker 2 (02:49):
Now you have seen other supernatural biker movies, right, like
you've seen were Wolves on Wheels.

Speaker 1 (02:54):
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.

Speaker 2 (03:05):
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

(03:28):
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,

(03:48):
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.

Speaker 1 (04:03):
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

(04:27):
Files would do later, and I think there is a
hint of that in this film.

Speaker 2 (04:31):
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.

Speaker 1 (04:40):
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.

Speaker 2 (04:55):
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.

Speaker 1 (05:17):
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

(05:38):
one of He basically kicks off his review of Psychomania
by saying incredible. To say the.

Speaker 2 (05:43):
Least, I disagree. I think it's quite credible. I would
let this co sign on a loan.

Speaker 1 (05:51):
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,

(06:11):
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

(06:34):
that is definitely the film we're talking about here today,
a supernatural biker film.

Speaker 2 (06:38):
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.

Speaker 1 (06:54):
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

(07:18):
dwelt upon in films such.

Speaker 2 (07:20):
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.

Speaker 1 (07:28):
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

(07:50):
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

(08:13):
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,

(08:35):
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

(08:57):
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

(09:19):
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,

(09:41):
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

(10:01):
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

(10:22):
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,

(10:42):
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.

Speaker 2 (11:00):
Oh, I don't know that one.

Speaker 1 (11:01):
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.

Speaker 2 (11:14):
Without a doubt. If you want to watch supernatural biker
horror movies, I think you should start with Psychomania.

Speaker 1 (11:20):
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.

Speaker 5 (11:38):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (11:40):
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

(12:01):
a motorcycle gang story that is shakespearean influence story at
least shakespeare light in its.

Speaker 2 (12:08):
Creation, so which Shakespeare was based on you.

Speaker 1 (12:13):
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.

Speaker 2 (12:23):
You know, you know the guy Charlie Hunhum.

Speaker 1 (12:25):
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

(12:46):
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.

Speaker 2 (12:54):
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?

Speaker 1 (13:07):
Yeah, not not right. That's that's a different thing altogether.

Speaker 2 (13:11):
I haven't seen any of those except that first movie
with Nicholas Cage, which I recall being hilarious.

Speaker 1 (13:17):
I think Peter Fonda shows up in one of those,
Oh does he Yeah, yeah, that that sort.

Speaker 2 (13:21):
Of rings a bell. Maybe it was in that first one.

Speaker 1 (13:23):
Yeah, that's a fun inclusion. It's thoughtful to include Peter
Fonda in it.

Speaker 2 (13:27):
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.

Speaker 1 (13:45):
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.

Speaker 2 (13:56):
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.

Speaker 1 (14:10):
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.

Speaker 6 (14:24):
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.

Speaker 5 (14:43):
Psychomania everybody dies, stand there, some come back.

Speaker 2 (14:50):
How do the dead come back?

Speaker 3 (14:51):
Mother?

Speaker 7 (14:52):
When you die, you've got to believe that you're going
to come back.

Speaker 5 (15:08):
Have you kill yourself?

Speaker 7 (15:11):
That's right off a great I'm dying.

Speaker 5 (15:22):
You can only die once after that nothing and nobody
can harm you.

Speaker 1 (15:28):
Oh man, what are you waiting for?

Speaker 7 (15:36):
You must stop him?

Speaker 4 (15:39):
You can't.

Speaker 7 (15:43):
I must.

Speaker 6 (16:13):
Psychoma what happened?

Speaker 2 (16:16):
You're not dead, That's what I.

Speaker 7 (16:18):
Was trying to tell you. I don't want to die
good after them.

Speaker 6 (16:31):
And you know what you will become, yes, and that
it will be for all eternity, because.

Speaker 5 (16:48):
You can only die once. After that, nothing and nobody
can harm you Psychomedia.

Speaker 2 (17:08):
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

(17:33):
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.

Speaker 1 (17:53):
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

(18:16):
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

(18:37):
of vibe.

Speaker 2 (18:38):
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

(18:59):
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

(19:20):
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.

Speaker 1 (19:37):
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.

Speaker 2 (19:50):
I guess the kinds of things you would see with
any type of organized crime.

Speaker 1 (19:53):
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?

Speaker 2 (20:14):
I think, yeah, yeah, and doom metal band.

Speaker 1 (20:18):
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,

(20:40):
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.

Speaker 2 (20:49):
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.

Speaker 1 (20:58):
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.

Speaker 2 (21:10):
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.

Speaker 1 (21:20):
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.

Speaker 2 (21:37):
Mind calling and traffic.

Speaker 1 (21:38):
Yeah, name calling and traffic, just minor assaults on the
British way of life. And also murder.

Speaker 2 (21:45):
Also murder, so it's murder or like pulling up beside
somebody in a truck and going yeah.

Speaker 1 (21:51):
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.

Speaker 2 (22:06):
Now, is it true that this was directed by somebody
who had done a bunch of hammer horror films?

Speaker 1 (22:11):
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

(22:33):
one that our producer set is quite fond of.

Speaker 2 (22:35):
Oh yeah, does this one actually have Christopher Lee as Resputant?

Speaker 1 (22:39):
It does?

Speaker 2 (22:39):
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

(23:02):
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.

Speaker 1 (23:17):
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

(23:37):
Avengers series, which we cited.

Speaker 2 (23:39):
Are Oh okay, some things are coming together here, Hammer,
Horror and The Avengers.

Speaker 1 (23:44):
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.

Speaker 2 (24:04):
Whoa wait, wait wait wait wait wait. Is this the
one where they extract the image of the killer from
someone's eye?

Speaker 1 (24:11):
Yes?

Speaker 2 (24:11):
Oh wow.

Speaker 1 (24:13):
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.

Speaker 6 (24:26):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (24:27):
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.

Speaker 1 (24:37):
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

(24:58):
Express and various pictures to the forties, fifties, sixties and seventies,
this being his final film credit.

Speaker 2 (25:04):
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.

Speaker 1 (25:17):
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

(25:40):
Abbey viewers, if you remember a character named Charles Griggs,
that's our NICKI.

Speaker 2 (25:45):
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.

Speaker 1 (25:53):
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.

Speaker 2 (26:03):
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

(26:25):
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.

Speaker 1 (26:33):
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.

Speaker 2 (26:42):
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.

Speaker 1 (26:55):
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

(27:16):
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.

Speaker 2 (27:26):
Because the Gandalf from the Soviet Lord of the Rings
looked like witch Finder General exactly.

Speaker 1 (27:31):
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.

Speaker 2 (27:43):
Was the premise there wasn't Dracula already old?

Speaker 1 (27:46):
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.

Speaker 2 (27:57):
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.

Speaker 1 (28:07):
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

(28:28):
thing going on. So he has this youthful vigor to
him that really works in the role.

Speaker 2 (28:33):
He has a great Nigel Toughnell mullet.

Speaker 1 (28:35):
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

(28:57):
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.

Speaker 2 (29:19):
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

(29:41):
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.

Speaker 1 (29:57):
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

(30:21):
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.

Speaker 2 (30:37):
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.

Speaker 1 (30:57):
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.

Speaker 2 (31:16):
It's such a gentle tune. You wouldn't think that that
it comes from the mind of a crazed motorcycle killer.

Speaker 1 (31:22):
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.

Speaker 2 (31:38):
The peaceful artist whose very voice is love, and then
the motorcycle nightmare who will run you down on the motorway.

Speaker 1 (31:47):
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

(32:08):
of Richard may So. Normally not really worth mentioning what actors'
spouses did, but in this case I found that interesting.

Speaker 2 (32:18):
She's also fantastic in this because much like Nicki Henson,
she has a smirk that mocks life itself.

Speaker 1 (32:24):
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

(32:45):
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

(33:07):
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

(33:29):
a big eyed Jesus on the front.

Speaker 2 (33:31):
You know, I'm not sure I know which one this is.

Speaker 1 (33:33):
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.

Speaker 2 (33:46):
Hate the law, you know, no respect for it.

Speaker 1 (33:50):
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.

Speaker 2 (34:00):
Oh, I don't remember who that is. Who's Cornelius Fudge.

Speaker 1 (34:03):
Oh he was the head of the Ministry of Magic.

Speaker 2 (34:06):
I was sort of like the President of the Wizards
or something.

Speaker 1 (34:09):
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.

Speaker 2 (34:19):
Yeah. He disapproves of your behavior, whatever it is.

Speaker 1 (34:22):
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.

Speaker 2 (34:39):
Now, another big connection here is that this bizarre, undead
biker horror movie was the last film of the legendary
actor George Sanders.

Speaker 1 (34:49):
Yes, George Sanders playing Shadwell the Butler. Though we suspect
he is much more.

Speaker 2 (34:55):
Than a butler, the warlock Butler.

Speaker 1 (34:58):
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.

(35:22):
You know, the old animated jungle Book. He is the
voice of Sheer Khan the Tiger.

Speaker 2 (35:27):
I think the talking voice, not the singing voice, is there, right.

Speaker 1 (35:30):
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.

Speaker 2 (35:43):
Perfect.

Speaker 1 (35:44):
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.

Speaker 2 (35:55):
Oh, I forgot about that. Who did he play? Was
he the Riddler or something?

Speaker 1 (35:58):
No, No, that would have been great. Now he played Egghead.
This character was just a giant egghead.

Speaker 2 (36:03):
I've forgotten.

Speaker 1 (36:04):
Yeah, it's terrible. It's terrible.

Speaker 2 (36:06):
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

(36:28):
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.

(36:50):
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.

Speaker 1 (37:00):
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

(37:21):
Freeze for example, Like Freeze criminal is not a very
interesting concept, but certainly by the time of the like
the animated Batman series.

Speaker 2 (37:30):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (37:32):
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.

Speaker 2 (37:43):
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.

Speaker 1 (37:54):
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.

Speaker 2 (38:05):
Right exactly. That's his yeah, off off the clock.

Speaker 1 (38:09):
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.

Speaker 2 (38:26):
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.

Speaker 1 (38:38):
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

(39:01):
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,

(39:21):
and I may have mentioned on the show before because
when this came out and was like, yeah, this is
this is Frankenstein.

Speaker 2 (39:26):
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.

Speaker 1 (39:35):
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

(39:56):
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.

Speaker 2 (40:08):
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.

Speaker 1 (40:25):
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.

Speaker 2 (41:08):
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.

Speaker 1 (41:24):
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.

Speaker 2 (41:32):
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,

(41:56):
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

(42:18):
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

(42:40):
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.

Speaker 1 (42:53):
I can't tell, but these scenes are impressive. It sets
the tone for the picture.

Speaker 2 (42:56):
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

(43:18):
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

(43:39):
what they want and they care not for man's law.

Speaker 1 (43:43):
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.

Speaker 2 (44:02):
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

(44:22):
is thrown from his vehicle. So they're just out just
randomly murdering innocent people. And they've got their names on
their clothes.

Speaker 1 (44:30):
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.

Speaker 2 (44:45):
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

(45:05):
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

(45:28):
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.

Speaker 1 (45:43):
Yeah, but a lot more likable, more likable than perhaps
any Malcolm McDowell character has that sure.

Speaker 2 (45:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (45:49):
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.

Speaker 2 (46:06):
Know, yeah, wererolls on wheels? Does that yet?

Speaker 1 (46:09):
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.

Speaker 2 (46:27):
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.

Speaker 1 (46:49):
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

(47:11):
to understand frog necromancy. It is supposed to be a
mystery to us.

Speaker 2 (47:15):
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,

(47:35):
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

(47:57):
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

(48:18):
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.

Speaker 1 (48:31):
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.

Speaker 2 (48:46):
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

(49:10):
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.

Speaker 1 (49:29):
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

(49:52):
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

(50:15):
way or the other.

Speaker 2 (50:17):
Yes, the circumspect removed a jeeves ish editorial position. Yeah,
I mean he's like Jeeves, but if Jeeves were an
ancient druid warlock.

Speaker 1 (50:29):
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.

Speaker 2 (50:47):
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

(51:08):
and I don't understand the relationship between the frog and
the power to come back from the dead.

Speaker 1 (51:16):
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.

Speaker 2 (51:28):
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.

Speaker 1 (51:45):
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

(52:07):
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.

Speaker 2 (52:24):
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

(52:46):
he says the word mother is busted.

Speaker 1 (52:50):
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

(53:11):
a it's a strange, strange living room, and I love it.

Speaker 2 (53:14):
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

(53:36):
truly believe you'll come back from the dead.

Speaker 1 (53:39):
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.

(54:01):
Death and immortality bring.

Speaker 2 (54:02):
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

(54:23):
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.

Speaker 1 (54:34):
Right. He watches up on the bank and they're like
two children there and they're.

Speaker 2 (54:37):
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

(54:57):
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.

Speaker 1 (55:13):
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

(55:35):
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.

Speaker 2 (55:57):
It's right in the middle of the hinge.

Speaker 1 (55:59):
Yeah, which seems this seems like this would not be
legal the authorities.

Speaker 2 (56:03):
I do not think they would let you bury somebody there.

Speaker 1 (56:06):
And on a motorcycle. I mean, it's going to.

Speaker 2 (56:08):
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,

(56:28):
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.

Speaker 1 (56:39):
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.

Speaker 2 (57:01):
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?

Speaker 1 (57:17):
Maybe so, I mean the time the timeframe would work,
or maybe it's British biker lingo that we're just this.

Speaker 2 (57:32):
But so, of course Tom comes back from the grave
as an evil undead version of himself. I guess he
was already evil.

Speaker 1 (57:38):
Oh please, don't just say he comes back from the grave.

Speaker 2 (57:43):
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,

(58:05):
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.

Speaker 1 (58:26):
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

(58:47):
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.

Speaker 2 (59:01):
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

(59:22):
freed from pathetic human morality than he was before, because
now he's just doing murders everywhere.

Speaker 1 (59:27):
He goes like, yeah, like five at a time.

Speaker 2 (59:29):
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.

Speaker 1 (59:37):
Yeah, he's offscreen killing everybody.

Speaker 2 (59:40):
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.

Speaker 1 (59:56):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:00:12):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:00:31):
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.

(01:00:52):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:01:13):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:01:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:01:24):
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

(01:01:45):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:01:54):
So she does almost overdose and has like a dream sequence.
That's that's uh, that's kind of good.

Speaker 2 (01:02:00):
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,

(01:02:20):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:02:27):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:02:43):
I wonder what grocery store they shut this in. Was
it a safe way?

Speaker 1 (01:02:46):
Maybe?

Speaker 6 (01:02:47):
So?

Speaker 1 (01:02:47):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:03:03):
Tho yeh, I didn't either, because just.

Speaker 1 (01:03:05):
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,

(01:03:26):
and so I guess they've been off screen killed as well.

Speaker 2 (01:03:29):
Yeah, I think that is the implication that Tom just
just dispatched them, as he does with nearly everyone he
meets now.

Speaker 1 (01:03:37):
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

(01:03:58):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:04:07):
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?

Speaker 1 (01:04:17):
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,

(01:04:39):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:04:48):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:05:02):
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.

(01:05:23):
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

(01:05:45):
it and begins walking towards her. And I believe this
is supposed to be Shadwell.

Speaker 2 (01:05:49):
Maybe in his like fully realized devil form or warlock
form or something.

Speaker 1 (01:05:54):
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

(01:06:15):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:06:25):
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

(01:06:47):
acting up. And I love it.

Speaker 1 (01:06:49):
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

(01:07:09):
modern credits on films.

Speaker 2 (01:07:11):
Oh yeah, yeah, I like that too. I like the
fonts too. I always write comment on good fonts.

Speaker 1 (01:07:18):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:07:36):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:07:53):
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.

(01:08:15):
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

(01:08:35):
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

(01:08:58):
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

(01:09:19):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:09:29):
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.

Speaker 4 (01:09:51):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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