Weirdhouse Cinema: Psychomania

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

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
I smell exhaust, the hot breath of devils in the
fog of dawn, the noise of a great cat purring
underneath the earthen 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 stretched to absurdity,

(00:33):
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

(00:56):
that brings the iron hog to life? Welcome to Stuff
to Blow your mind production of My Heart Radio. Hey,

(01:19):
welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamp and
I'm Joe McCormick and Robert I'm so excited today. I'm
so excited because you you out there. You know if
you've been listening to Weird House Cinema, that we love
our implausible genre crossover films. One of my favorite examples
we've done so far is the niche sub genre represented
by our back catalog entry Santo and The Treasure of Dracula.

(01:42):
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 I it'd been

(02:03):
on my list to watch for a while. I know
you've been talking about it for years, and we we
occasionally talked about biker films and supernatural biker films, but
I had not actually watched until this week and it
was just a total of the light. Just such a
wonderfully weird film, um and delightfully so. Now you have
seen other supernatural biker movies, right, Like you've seen Werewolves

(02:25):
on Wheels. Oh yeah, Werewolves on Wheels, a very American
supernatural biker film from the same time period. But this,
this is a very British film we're talking about here today. Yes, yes,
We're Rolves on Wheels is a grosser, sweatier, more guttural
American Western style, uh supernatural biker film. This supernatural biker

(02:48):
film is a bit more tweedy and uh, I don't
know has the the English morning Fog on its back today.
The movie we're talking about is the nineteen seventy three
Dish supernatural biker movie Psychomania a k a. The Death Wheelers.
And uh So, whenever you have a great genre crossover movie,

(03:10):
you want to identify, like, what are the main streams
feeding into this? And Robert, 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 allah, the hammer horror movies of

(03:32):
the late sixties and early seventies. Yes, I think those
are 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 it was pretty fun, but being it also
would it generally featured this sort of idea of contemporary

(03:55):
weirdness in the world. Uh not unlike what the X
Files would do later, And I think there's 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 what one of
Sean Connery's last films, if not his last film, um,

(04:18):
one of the last films that 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've got the precedent of werewolves on wheels in America,
this is sort of like, uh, druid lytch kings on wheels,
like undead stone hinge magic demons revving their engines and

(04:43):
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 Sometimes I discover a film by looking it is work.
Other times we'll will be thinking about one and I'll

(05:03):
see what he had to say about it. Um. 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

(05:25):
I think we already alluded to the fact that it
was also released as The Death Wheelers um, 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

(05:45):
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.
In that movie is just a murder picture. The nineteen
seventy three Psychomania is so much more, and that that

(06:06):
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 uh fad movie genre.
And the fifties through the seventies. Yeah, and I guess

(06:27):
more specifically, so, boy, I guess the big thing here
is that, first of all, motorcycles are not inherently one
thing or another, and a motorcycle enthusiasts 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

(06:47):
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

(07:09):
or or non outlaw, has spread around the world and
it's 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 and different cultures,
um inspiring fiction inspiring myth and and then also in

(07:30):
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, et cetera. So, as far as outlaw

(07:51):
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 the precursors to psychomania. Now,
the first big one, of course, is nineteen fifty threes,
The Wild One 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

(08:14):
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, 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 you also have Hunter S. Thompson's
book Hell's Angels coming out, which details his you know,

(08:37):
sort of gonzo journalism experience with the notorious UM Motorcycle Club.
And uh, 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 um
Thompson's book. But then you get The Wild Angels in
nineteen sixty six by Roger Corman. Uh, this one, this

(08:58):
one is actually watch part of this one. I think
it's a It has a great cast. You've got Peter Fonda,
Nancy Sinatra, Bruce Dern, Diane ladd Um. Definitely a precursor
to Easy Writer because it involves some of the same people.
And then yeah, you get easy Rider in nineteen sixty nine,
a highly influential hippie biker film directed by Dennis Hopper.

(09:19):
Terrific film, easy Writer. But but you might be asking, well,
these are all American films. When did the British films
come in? Well, you have some notable entries in the
British biker film um bucket of content. Here you have
The Leather Boys from 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

(09:41):
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. And then by the nineteen seventies, basically we've

(10:02):
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
right and around on bikes? Well, how bad are they?
Could they be supernaturally bad? And that's where we get
stuff like seventy ones were Wolves on Wheels or seventy
two s blood freak Um as well as this is

(10:25):
later and this comes after the time period we're talking about.
But I bought a vampire motorcycle from nine. Oh, I
don't know that one. I was looking at 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

(10:47):
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 uh Sons of Anarchy
series which I ended up watching all of Uh. Oh,

(11:12):
it's it's it's entertaining. It's uh, it's 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
um or maybe in questionable taste uh at the time
and certainly by today's standards, but it had a lot
of things going for it, like essentially trying to do

(11:32):
a motorcycle gang story that is Shakespearean influence story at
least shakespeare light uh in its creation. So which Shakespeare
was it based on? You? Like, well, the basic bones
of it. They tried to set up a Hamlet thing like, um, young,
what's his name, Charlie, Charlie you know you know the

(11:55):
guy Charlie Hunt. Um, yes him, Yes, Yeah, he's basic
a Hamlet. They set that up, is like he is
the Hamlet of this biker scenario, and they they don't
try and like actually hit all the story beats of
Hamlet exactly, and then they throw a little bit of
McBeth in there at times. Uh. It's it's amusing, okay,
But I'm ready for the needle to come back to

(12:16):
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 we'll 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 superhero who's like a supernatural biker? Oh,
night right, Nicholas Cage, Nicolas Cage, night night Right, ghost Rider,

(12:38):
ghost Right ghost Rider. Yeah, not not right, that's that's
a different thing altogether. I haven't seen any of those
except that first movie with Nicolas Cage, which I recall
being hilarious. I think Peter Fonda shows up in one
of those. Oh does he Yeah, Yeah, that that's 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

(12:58):
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 he
like opens his mouth and a bunch of teeth and
stuff come out. Well that that sound. That sounds great,

(13:19):
And I'm sure that character will be back, though they'll
they'll create some other uh what do you say? His
name was Death not death Writer? Night writer, night writer, ghostwriter, ghostwriter. 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
Lynch King rides. It's it's undead bikers. Let's go ahead

(13:42):
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 it's the same year as
last week selection, so it makes sense or problem makers
as long as they live of their return from beyond
the grave with superhuman powers, unleashing an unholy reign of

(14:05):
terror that holds an entire community in the grip of psychomania.
Psychomania everybody dies, don't there? But 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. Wow?

(14:40):
Can you kill yourself? That's right off the grade. I'm
going You can only die once. After that, nothing and
nobody canna harm you. Oh no, what are you waiting for?

(15:07):
I must stop him? You can't, I must, I can.

(15:46):
What happened? You're not dead? That's what I was trying
to tell you to, I do want to die good
after them, and you know what you will become, and
that it will be for all eternity. You can only

(16:20):
die once. After that, nothing and nobody can harm you. Cycle.
One thing about this movie is it's just so British.

(16:44):
It has this film of Britishness all over it. It's
you know, it just smells like baked beans. It's a
it's a can of hinds baked beans driving a motorcycle
through a round about it And and it's also got
that wonderful like the inner cutting between the violent, uh
manic parts on the road where they're out, you know,

(17:07):
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

(17:28):
seeing mostly American biker films, there, any biker film is
gonna 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. Uh often, So it's often, you know,
very rural individuals who are bedeviled by the bikers. And

(17:50):
in this case we get just it's not even like
rural Britain person. I mean, it's not London obviously, but
it's um, 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 or or
or sort of desert community kind of vibe. Yeah. I'm

(18:10):
not sure, but I think it's supposed to be a
town in the southwest of England. Um, 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 supernatural,

(18:32):
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 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

(18:54):
just ride around in public places knocking things over, saying
that shouldn't be upright, and I'll make it sideway is
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. Uh, yeah, I don't
know if if actual bikers, actual outlaw bikers, engage in

(19:14):
this kind of thing, because certainly there are accounts of
outlaw bikers engaging in in all manner of criminal activities.
I guess you know, the kinds of things you would
see with any type of organized crime, right, yeah, but 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 in grocery stores. But this, this reminds me.

(19:37):
I was reading an interview or part of an interview
with the lead singer of Electric Wizard. Uh, like what
his name? I just just oh Born, I think yeah, Yeah.
And doom metal band, Yeah, doom metal band. Uh, stoner
band of kind of vibe and uh there was a
quote from it that I want to read here just
because I thought it was amazing. He says, Um, I

(19:59):
don't know why isn't venerated in the same way as
the wicker Man or witch Finder 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've seen 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 is kicking stuff over it was called doing a psychomania.

(20:21):
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 outline
motorcycle club in myth and in fiction and in reality,
and how these things all feed into each other. You know. Yeah,

(20:42):
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, but you know, I guess you gotta 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
all so just do some very low level criminal mischief

(21:05):
in this just yeah, knocking over stuff, um, like mind
calling in 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 the truck and going yan. Yeah, yeah, that
kind of alright, So we talk about some of the

(21:33):
people in this film, since we're talking about 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 Sharpe, who lived nine
through two thousand and eleven, Australian born British director, probably
best known for his Hammer films, including sixty three is

(21:55):
the Kiss of The Vampire sixty four is The Devil
Ship Pirates and ra Sputin the Mad Monk from nineteen
sixty six. I believe this is This is one that
our producers, Seth is quite fond of. Oh yeah, was this?
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 rescputing. One of my favorites, if I've never mentioned

(22:17):
it on this show before is uh. He doesn't get
all that much screen time, but his scenes are fabulous.
So there's a movie, uh, from the seventies called Nicholas
and Alexandra that's about the Romanovs and the Russian Revolution
and all that. Uh. And it has Tom Baker, who
played the doctor on Doctor Who as rest Sputant. And
he is just awesome, just devastating. He will he will

(22:40):
turn your brain into a boiled ham. His scenes will
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 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 ninety.
He also did a film titled Bear Island in nineteen

(23:02):
seventy nine, um, which I believe involves bears. And he
also directed three episodes of the original The Avengers series,
which we cited here. 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 are No Diso,
who lived nineteen sixteen through nineteen nine, American screenwriter who

(23:23):
also pinned the seventy two UK Spanish co production Horror Express,
which is a is a wonderful little film starring Christopher Lee,
Peter Cushing, Telly Savalis. Wait wait, wait, wait, wait wait,
is this the one where they extract the image of
the killer from someone's eye? Yes, And there's also some

(23:45):
sort of like sort of a Neanderthal monster wandering around
the train. It has a couple of weird elements going
around in it, but it's it's it's quite quite amusing.
I saw it several years ago. Yeah. So the the
dan that the the I scene is that what like
the last image of person saw before they died is
like imprinted on their retina, and somehow they extract that

(24:07):
from the Victim. Yeah, and uh, there's actually an older
episode of stuff to blow your mind when I did
with with Christian where we we get into this idea
and how this idea kind of traveled around and scientific
and pseudo scientific uh groups for a while. Now, that's
just one of the screenwriters. The other is Julian Zimmitt,
another American. I believe. Zim had also worked on Horror

(24:29):
Express and various pictures through 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 is a very naughty motorcycle youth named Tom Latham.
And he's played by an actor named Nicki Henson. Yeah,

(24:49):
Nicky Henson, Who's Who's certainly an actor I've seen before,
but I really wasn't that familiar with him. He lived
through nineteen British actor with a long career and britis
film and television. And I'd say the big titles worth
mentioning our two thousand and fives, Uh, Syriana. This was
a film with George Clooney in it. He also did
three episodes of Dalton Abbey. So you Downton Nabby viewers,

(25:12):
if you remember a character named Charles Grigg, that's that's
our Nikki. 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 my, my wife
did not remember this character. But I looked up a
scene with him, and he looks he looks fun and
I think he plays at a veteran of the theater
or something in it. Oh wait, yes, now I remember

(25:36):
what it is, okay, um, 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 uh, 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

(25:58):
gonna let everybody know that you used to be stage
performer and that you weren't always so so civilized. All right, Well, yeah,
the clip I looked at it looked fun. It looks
like a fun performance worthy of 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

(26:19):
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, but
then he gets over that really quickly. Um. Now, he

(26:39):
was also on east Enders, which I think a lot
of British actors work. But he was also in such
genre pictures as sixty eight, 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 uh facial hair in that before um
uh he caused the Gandalf from the Soviet Lord of

(27:00):
the Rings looked like which Finder General exactly. Yeah. But
also Nicky Hinson was in seventy four's Old Dracula, starring
David Niven as Old Dracula. I have not seen it,
but it sounds sounds interesting. What's 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

(27:22):
of Dracula ideas when you're just when you bust out
a whole 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
Gremlins 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 but Nicky Hinson, Uh,

(27:46):
he's good in this uh like you say, it's it's
it's largely one note except for the one scene. But
he's very charismatic. Um, 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, uh, this
youthful vigor to him that really works in the role.
He has a great Nigel Toughnell mullet. Yes, yes, there's

(28:08):
a lot of great early seventies hair in this picture.
Longside burns everything, alright. So he plays Tom Latham. But
his character's mother is also an important character. This is
Miss Latham, played by Beryl Reid, who lived nineteen nineteen
through nineteen. An acclaimed British stage actor, she won a
nineteen sixty seven Tony Award for Best Actress in uh

(28:32):
in the play The Killing of Sister George. She was
also in the film 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 Graham Chapman
pirate film Yellow Beard. Now, before we started recording today,

(28:52):
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 by the British
singer songwriter Richard Thompson. Um it's a wonderful song, but
it is a song about a a redheaded girl who
falls in love with a bad motorcycle boy and then

(29:13):
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 redheaded girl
who's in love with a bad motorcycle boy who dies. Yes,
the character is Abby Holman and she's played by the
actor Mary Larkin. This was is was an Irish actor.

(29:38):
H 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, uh 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

(30:00):
her name on it. And I love a movie that
has name tags. It's it was. It was a lot
easier to keep track of everybody in this film. I
wish more pictures had name tax like this. What's that
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

(30:20):
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 the folk singer of the group that 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

(30:40):
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 it 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

(31:01):
the both the peace loving hippie and the necromantic, uh
druid biker Wraith. These are both aspects of the same
human soul, the peaceful artist whose very voice is love,
and then the the motorcycle nightmare who will who will
run you down on the motorway? Yes, Now, if Abbie
is the good girl in this the bad girl is

(31:23):
Jane played by Anne Um and Michelle I believe her
name was born n Other credits include House of Ripped
Accord from seventy four, Haunted from seventy seven, and interestingly enough, uh,
this actor was once married to a professional British motorcycle
racer by the name of Richard may So uh just
uh Normally not really worth mentioning what actors spouses did,

(31:47):
but in this case I found that interesting. She's also
fantastic in this because much like Nicki Hinson, she has
a smirk that mocks life itself. Yeah, she is, like said,
she's the bad girl on this. She does not really
questioned the whole um uh necromancy scheme that becomes central
to the plot. She embraces it early on. Now we're

(32:09):
not going to go through all the actors playing all
the bikers, you know, um they're like chop meat and
horse Cross and so forth. But Bertram was played by
this actor by the name of Roy holder Born and
I believe still still alive. Another actor with solid British
TV and film credits, including two thousand ones, War Horse,
Ridley Scott's Robin Hood from eleven and various big TV

(32:32):
series like east Enders, Coronation Street, Pride and Prejudice, sens Insensibility, etcetera.
He played the character Kreelper, a gun runner who worked
for a mercenary who worked for another villain named Morgus
on four episodes of Doctor Who in the nineteen eighties,
and he plays Enoch in the star studded nineteen seventy
seven Jesus of Nazareth mini series. I don't think I've

(32:55):
seen this, but I long remember seeing it on video
shelves as a kid. It's the one like the kind
of a big eyed Jesus on the front. You know,
I'm not sure I know which one this is, right,
It's it's worth looking up just to see who all
was in it. It was again a star studied a project,
a huge Jesus movie. Okay, all right, Uh we have
a we have a police inspector in this film, representing

(33:17):
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 through seventeen. This is Cornelius
Fudge himself from the Harry Potter films. Oh, I don't
remember who that is. Who's Cornelius Fudge. He was the
head of the Ministry of Magic, like the President of

(33:40):
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 figure as well, and so in this he
plays one, and in Harry Potter he played a different one. Yeah.
He he disapproves of your behavior, whatever it is. Yeah.
He was also in Angles and Sensibility. He was on
All Creatures great and small, and he sure played Churchill

(34:02):
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. Uh, though we suspect

(34:26):
he's much more than a butler, the warlock butler. Yeah.
He lived nineteen o six through nineteen seventy two, so he,
uh you know, 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

(34:48):
best for his voice in Walt Disney's The Jungle Book,
the you know, the old animated Jungle Book. He is
the voice of shier Khan, the tiger. I think the
hawking voice, not the singing voice, is there. Yeah, yeah,
there's there's a there's different different credits on those, but
the talking voice is definitely Sanders. Uh. He also played

(35:09):
Mr Freeze in the first two appearances of that character
in the old Batman series. Perfect. Yeah, there are a
couple of other notable actors who played that same character. Uh.
It's a real lightning rod for talent that show. Um.
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, no, that would have been great.

(35:31):
Now he played Egghead, this character with just a giant Egghead.
I've forgotten. It's terrible. It's like, it's should we 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 Gremlins once again in that Gremlins pitch
meeting sketch. Um, because they're all like I remember this

(35:56):
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've
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

(36:17):
and kills people with schemes that resemble clocks. Um, you
know mad Hatter, who is obsessed with the Mad Hatter
character in Alice in Wonderland. They're they're all like extremely literal.
They're all you know, electricity gremlin. Yeah, I mean it is.
It's like that. It's like electricity criminal, Riddle criminal, clock criminal.

(36:37):
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 Mr Freeze for example, Like Freeze criminal is not
a very interesting concept, but certainly by the time of

(37:00):
like the animated Batman series. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, when
we were kids. You know, they advice. Yeah, they found
ways to to make this just a tragic and romantic figure,
you know, just a fascinating character with cool, freezing criminal powers. Oh,
I want to be clear, I'm not dissing Dr Freeze
especially or Mr Freeze. Even though he is a doctor.

(37:22):
He goes by Mr Freeze, even though he has a PhD. Well,
you know he takes that do no harm thing seriously.
I guess I don't know PhD. I have no idea,
but he's when he's freezing, he's Mr Freeze right exactly,
that's his Yeah, off off the clock. So yeah, this
is this is George saunders last picture, and by all accounts,

(37:45):
he was not in a good place at this point
in his life. Uh, probably not performing at his peak.
But he's still a great presence in the film. I
you know, he's still he still creates some magic on
the screen. Robbie, I know you always like to talk
about the mu usic and the music in this movie
is one of the big selling points. There are some
great uh folk songs in it. There's some great psychedelic guitar.

(38:08):
It's all over the place. Yeah, it's a it's a
it's a little bit funky in places. There's some I
guess what you got like fuzztone rock notes in it. Um,
it's yeah, it's 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 British composer, arranger, conductor and musician. He did a

(38:31):
number of film scores for 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 Frankenstein starring Randy Quait as
the Monster and Patrick Bergen as the doctor. Uh. This
one I think debuted on TNT on cable back when

(38:52):
I as 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. Now you can joke about Randy Quaid
all you want. In terms of his acting, though Randy

(39:14):
Quaid I have found him quite good in a few
different pictures. Um, but and this was one of him
playing playing the monster. But as as for the music, yeah,
this is this is really good stuff from Cameron. Um uh,
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

(39:36):
Cameron taking on the moniker a frog. 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 talked about
the plot a little bit more, ye will get it
as a froggy film. The Psychomania gets froggy. Yeah, but

(39:58):
before we move forward the first let's have let's have
just another sample of that music, the score to Psychomania. Yeah,

(40:38):
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 let's go ahead and uh
and talk about the film. Let's get into the plot,

(40:59):
because this one has it's against so many weird elements.
It's it's really worth dwelling on. Well, so the very
opening is just divine it. I love the first few
minutes of this movie. It's once again druids on wheels.
It's just bikers doing slow most stunts in the grass
amidst an ancient stone circle while this acid wizard guitar

(41:23):
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 to get
this vibe, recreate it, make more of this kind of thing. Um.
I believe that the setting here so they're you know,
they're riding around doing bike stunts at a stone circle.

(41:47):
I think it's 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 a very hinge
that is a Neolithic stone monument site much like Stoneheinge,
this one's in the southwest of England, and I'm not

(42:08):
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 year old ritual site. I can't tell,
but these scenes are impressed. It sets the tone for
the picture. Oh yeah, yeah, so slow mobike jumps crossing

(42:31):
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. Um. So,
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

(42:54):
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,

(43:15):
these outfits are incredible. If you if you haven't seen
clips from this film, look it out because the design
and the baker 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. Uh. And
then they have their name tags on the front or yeah,

(43:35):
which which is a great thing for criminals to have, right.
So the first thing we see them doing is just uh,
dangerously harassing people driving on the on the on the back,
you know, the country roads. And uh, I think they
actually kill a guy like that, or at least they
knock him out, like they scare him until he's in
an accident and is thrown from his vehicle. So they're

(43:56):
just out just randomly murdering innocent people. And they've got
their name aimes on their clothes. Yet, this film mostly
has a very sanitized view of how death works because
mostly things happen, people become very still and they're dead.
It's weirdly sanitized for a film that is otherwise uh,
you know just on paper is obsessed with death. Yeah.

(44:17):
It's not a bloody movie. It's actually it's it's it's
very clean. Yeah. Uh. 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 and dangerous
and and and harassing other people. I would call these
scenes to take a coinage from Polly Walnuts Mayhem. You know,

(44:40):
you've got to have your Mayhem sequences. And so so
that's what we get right at the get go. They
go straight from the stone Circle stunts to to riding
around doing mayhem and uh. And so the leader played
by Nicky Henson is this guy named Tom Latham. I
already mentioned that he is sort of like Nigel tough

(45:01):
Knell of Spinal Tap, but I would describe him as
a cross between Nigel tough Knell and Malcolm McDowell and
a clockwork orange picture. Those two in a in a
ven diagram, and then you've got Tom. Yeah. But La
la la a lot more likable, more likable than perhaps
any Malcolm McDowell character has ever Sure. Yeah, Now, of
course it's being a biker film. There are lots of

(45:23):
shots of bikers biking. Um, one thing that sets us
apart from let's say, less well crafted biker films. And
I've seen a few of these where sometimes you'll have
a camera set up and you'll just watch the bikers
approach for like a mile in the desert, you know, Um,
werewolves on wheels does that, Yeah, where it's just like, wow,
we're really gonna watch this for a while. They set

(45:44):
up this shot and we're gonna we're gonna see all
of it. But and there 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
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

(46:07):
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

(46:29):
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 we do the mayhem

(46:50):
at the beginning, and then the next scene is we
get Tom and Abby. Abby is another member of the gang.
Uh and and Tom is her boyfriend, and they're hanging
out in a graveyard and uh and Tom catches a
frog in the graveyard and he says hello, little green friend,
and uh and Abby. It's funny because Abby seems like

(47:12):
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
or obviously these immoral, lawless creeps. And and Abby just
seems like like she's 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 of it. Chilli becomes

(47:33):
the main character. Um, 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 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. Uh. It's also kind of strange how much

(47:57):
she seems to take this in stride, like she's just
like that's silly, not like it doesn't really bother her. Yeah,
but clearly yea, he talks about it a lot. This
is his thing, like it was probably I don't know
if they had yearbooks in uh in Britain at this time,
but if they had one, he would be most likely
to to destroy oneself and become an undead monster. Right.

(48:19):
So Tom goes back to his house, which is a
gigantic mansion. Wouldn't you know it? This good for nothing
moto Rascal is actually a posh rich kid, and so
they're at the house. You find out his family. I
don't know how much to explain the family situation. So
the family is him and his mother and their butler, Shadwell,

(48:40):
and his mother and Shadwell seemed to be into evil
magic there. They're into the occult. They do seances and
other occult stuff in the house. And Uh, 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 room

(49:04):
in their house with foul magic from beyond. Um. Again,
not completely explained, and I don't want the film to
explain it more. I like that it's so cryptic. Um.
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

(49:25):
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 that maybe in a very sort
of proper uh you know, English butler way, Uh, one
of them will express an emotion and he'll comment upon it,
but he's not really expressing an opinion one way or

(49:47):
the other. Yes, the circumspect removed jeeves Ish editorial position. Yeah,
I mean he's like Jeeves. But if Jeeves were an
ancient rud warlock. Yes, yeah, because ultimately we we come
to to learn that he is either some sort of
an ancient druid warlock or perhaps something worse, perhaps a

(50:10):
demon or the devil himself, or or something something from beyond.
I don't know. It could go either way. But 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 and
I guess Shadwell is like, okay, maybe he should know.

(50:32):
Maybe not, Um, 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. Um. Yeah,
I don't really have a clear answer. But we see
actual frogs. We see, of course, the wonderful frog ammulet

(50:56):
that comes up that when he first appeared on screen,
I I audibly ga it was so to behold wonderful jewelry.
So Tom's mother is like, kids, should we tell him
the secret of the living dead? It could be dangerous
for him, And Chad wells 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,

(51:17):
and I think Chad Well has a ring with the
frog on it as well. Uh uh. And then oh,
and then there's the like the Frog from Beyond. There's
like a dreamlike sequence involving a mirror that cast no reflection,
and within that smoking mirror of a cult uh weirdness,
we see the form of a frog. So I don't
know if like that is the form of the force

(51:38):
from beyond? Is it is it conveying information? Or is
that there? Or is that the is that the form
of the destroyer? And this h this picture, I don't know,
so many questions, but the frog is a repeating symbol
and uh oh yeah, it's uh it's goods. 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.

(52:01):
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

(52:23):
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 m like
they had this cosmic like black star skate behind the
occult seance table, and then there's a fireplace and there's
like a this weird modern furniture going on. It's a
it's a strange, strange living room and I love it.

(52:46):
But ultimately, in this whole sequence, Tom 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 does it seems 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

(53:07):
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 that. I'm trying to remember what specifically convinced him.
Maybe it was the experience in the room, like encountering
other worldly, weird, magical things. 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

(53:28):
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
Litch 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, uh, you're

(53:51):
you're not gonna be vertical for long. And so they
ride around in the town square knocking stuff over in
a in a scene of chaos and mayhem that will
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. And so then after this we get

(54:12):
a scene 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 they they kill people. He's also like a

(54:35):
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. Um
and and uh, you can find clips of this whole
song on YouTube if you look around for it. But uh, yeah,
there's the folk song that's going on. That's wonderful. Just

(54:55):
also the whole premise because basically what's happened is after
he after Tom died, Abby came to his mom and said, hey, um,
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 the traditional
English biker funeral. Well, apparently involves I guess being taxidermide

(55:18):
atop 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
really right, in the middle of the hinge, 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 gonna motorcycle

(55:41):
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
this practice is common among um people more in sort
of like the Indo European and Central Asian regions throughout
his street where you know, the strong, strong horse based cultures,

(56:03):
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 because
he's just sitting on the boy. He's just being real still,
you know, on the on the motorcycle in the grave
while they're playing the song. And then oh and then
of course you get to you see the hinge the

(56:24):
stones behind them, and then also there's a smoke stack
in the background. And I just love that shot like that,
that shot just feels so seventies 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. And it's like,
I can't think of instances of people riding bombs except

(56:46):
in doctors strange love. Is that what he meant? Maybe
so I mean the time the time frame would work,
or maybe it's British biker lingo that we're just this.
But so, of course Tom comes back from the grave

(57:06):
as as an evil, undead version of himself. I guess
he was already evil. Please don't just say he camp
comes back from the grave. He busts up out of
the grave. So there's a scene where um the like
a car pulls over on the highway and the man
gets out of the car and his wife there is

(57:27):
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, 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,

(57:49):
and then boom, spray of dirt. Tom busts up out
of his grave on the motorcycle and runs the s
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 that Tom would be
this like grizzly undead biker now. But no, Tom looks
exactly like he did in life, acts exactly like he

(58:11):
did in life, with the added caveat that he is
now seemingly immortal and indestructible. And you might wonder, well,
what's his how does he exploit this? Well, the first
things he does is he basically he takes up his
his hog, and then he he also goes in as
a beer and he doesn't pay for any of these
things because he is invincible. Well, he kills the service

(58:34):
station attendant because he asked him for money, and then
he also at he goes to the pub to use
the telephone um because he wants to call Shadwell. He
calls Shadwell on the phone and Shadwell is like, Oh,
how does it feel to be back? And he says
splendid and uh, he seems maybe even more freed from

(58:54):
pathetic human morality than he was before, because now he's
just doing murders. Everywhere he goes is like like five
at a time. Yeah. There's like a lady at the
pub who wants to 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 off screen killing everybody. Yes,
but yeah, so he's he's immortal and invulnerable, and he

(59:16):
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 lich 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.

(59:37):
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. He's not bothered by it. Yeah,
the guy tries to stab him and he's just like,
isn't it cool? Um? But so there is a guess
a very darkly comic sequence where all the rest of
the bikers are like, you know, I'm next, and they

(59:58):
take their turns doing are suicides to become the evil dead. Yeah,
it's a sequence that is was just shockingly hilarious, uh
strong gallows humor. But it's like each one chooses a
different method. The one that got me though, is the
is the bike graphic get which one this is? He's
he's wearing a swimsuit and he's laid in with chains,

(01:00:19):
like a ridiculous amount of chains, like like Bob Marley's ghost.
He's towards Jacob Marley. I'm sorry, Jacob Marley's Ghost's not Bob. Sorry,
Jacob Marley's ghost from from a Christmas Carol. He's laden
in all these you know, fake chains, and he's he's
he's shambling towards the river side. It's clearly to drown himself.

(01:00:41):
But it's like, really, that's the method you choose, and
and he does it one of them Obscaren of course, yes, yeah,
one of them goes skydiving without a parachute. Um, 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 there's just death everywhere. Now, um, the

(01:01:02):
police get involved. So the third act, that's, uh, 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, um,
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

(01:01:24):
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, they're the bikers are riding around and
there's yet another grocery store punishment scene where they're they're
just plowing through the aisles. This carnation evaporated milk must suffer,
you know, the marmote will pay, and they're smashing all

(01:01:47):
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 Kareen's into
the like the meat counter the back and of course

(01:02:09):
these are all real motorcycle stunts. So it's like they're
just wiping out in a in a grocery store. It's
under grocery store they shot this in. Was it a
safe way, maybe so, 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

(01:02:31):
trap them, which I didn't completely understand how this played out,
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

(01:02:54):
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

(01:03:16):
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 gonna kill
all of them. That's what we're gonna do. Uh, it's
gonna completely tear down society from the bottom up. So

(01:03:39):
then I think even Mom, even though she's been involved
in a lot of evil magic, she 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 had
mentioned had dropped that those stones that we saw earlier well,
those are what's left of ancient warlocks who forgot their

(01:04:00):
bargain or turned their back on the powers that they served.
And 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

(01:04:21):
in the end. Even though the the evil Dead Bikers
cannot be defeated by conventional arms or weapons, they can
be undone by ritual magic and so ultimately they've got
to call in somebody's mom to fix things. Yes, so yeah,
the final scene is Abby's standing up to the Abbe's
pretended to be undead, you know, sort of going along
with it, but Tom suspects something's up. When he drives

(01:04:45):
through a brick wall. It's total ann pas by it
and she goes around it and 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 game kind
of turns on her. He's reaching out to strangle her,
but Mom has turned off the magic and uh, perhaps
the sun is involved as well, because suddenly they start
turning to stone. All the bikers turned to stone right

(01:05:08):
there in the hinge, and Abby is the only one
left alive. And then this dark vehicle, uh, 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

(01:05:29):
whether it's the future. Is Shadwell showing up now to
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 off, 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

(01:05:51):
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 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

(01:06:12):
figures around you. And at the end of this movie,
what you've got to do is call somebody's mom to
to like make him stop acting up. And I love it. Yeah,
And then we roll credits, and uh, it's also fun.
This is a credit credit sequence that uh 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 bikers, you get the uh the law,

(01:06:34):
you also get the survivors. So I really, I really
appreciate that. I wish I saw it, we saw that
more certainly in modern um modern uh credits on films.
Oh yeah, yeah, I like that too. I like the
fonts to I always get a fontent on good fonts.
Even the fonts on their their jackets are really nice.
Tom I believe has like a pink and green like

(01:06:55):
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 has remade this or revisited it. Yeah, ultimate,
I mean this is a I think a nearly perfect
trash movie. Uh. I could not ask for a better

(01:07:20):
seventies supernatural biker movie. That this is sort of the
peak for me. Yeah, I agree this. I think this
is the supernatural biker film par excellence. Um. So you
might be wondering out there, well, where can I watch Psychomania? Well,
Psychomania fortunately is widely available, uh in digital formats. Aero
Video put out an absolutely beautiful looking two disc blue

(01:07:42):
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
platform slash channels including shutter fandor and a m C
and all of those free trial periods. So if you
just want to dip in and get yourself some Psychomania

(01:08:04):
and then and then check out both, then that that's
certainly an option. Alright, We're gonna go and close this
out real quick though, you know, since there were some
suicidal elements in this picture and we discuss them a
little bit. If you're troubled by suicidal thoughts, you're not
alone in a sympathetic ears only a phone call away.
In the United States, consider calling the National Suicide Prevention

(01:08:24):
Hotline eight to five five. You can visit Suicide Prevention
Lifeline dot org for additional resources 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
gonna be it for this episode of Weird House Cinema,
but we will be back. Uh. You can check out

(01:08:44):
Weird House Cinema every Friday. In the Stuff to Blow
Your Mind podcast feed were primarily a science podcast, with
our core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We have what
a Listener Mail on Monday's, 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.

(01:09:05):
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 say hello, you
can email us at contact at Stuff to Blow your
Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow your Mind is production
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(01:09:27):
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
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