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Psychomania

Psychomania

List Price: $9.99
Your Price: $9.99
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The very best of the English biker killer death cult films
Review: A biker's search for eternal life leads him to the Frog Cult (that's right, the Frog Cult). He discovers the key to immortality is to commit suicide with the absolute belief that you will return from the dead. After successfully returning from the dead he shares this secret with the rest of his gang who take turns committing suicide and making themselves immortal. As immortals the biker gang, known as "The Living Dead", terrorize an English town killing mortals for fun. An interesting side note is that the bikers and their bikes become immortal, as the bikes can now be ridden through brick walls. I love this movie. I saw it when I was about 10 and I have been haunted by it ever since. My decision to buy an English motorcycle was undoubtedly subconsciously influenced by this movie. I have seen many biker movies and this is by far my favorite. "Easy Rider" is the "Ishtar" of biker movies compared to "Psychomania"!

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Sleep-inducing campy horror
Review: A group of frog-worshipping British bikers learn that the secret to returning from the dead is as simple as wishing you won't die really, really hard when you commit suicide. There's no gore, the zombie bikers look exactly the same as they did before they died, and there's nothing even remotely scary going on here. It's all done with a droll British manner, and is perhaps tongue-in-cheek, but it simply isn't funny enough to really care. There's a reason why movies like this were shown on late night TV - they put most people to sleep!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: VROOM! VROOM! It's a Rocker!
Review: A very cool weird film that has a lot of action. The story is different and the characters are good in their roles. The motorcycle scenes are wild. Also it's a good motorcycle enthusiast movie that is offbeat.A cross between Wild Angels/Witchcraft.Being a British movie adds to the mystic.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: psychomania-crazy english hells angels
Review: a very silly british film which is also great fun. a gang of hells angels decide that if you kill yourself while expecting to come back to life then that is just what will happen. and once they become invincible hells angels what do they do? take over the world? no-they visit the local supermarket and push over piles of baked beans etc! also featuring an amusingly bad folk song scene-and these guys are supposed to be hells angels! so it's an awful film right? put it this way-i'm buying it!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A fine addition to the zombie biker genre
Review: Ah, wait a minute....there isn't any such genre; this movie is one of a kind! How could I say no to a film with the plot premise: zombie biker gang terrorizes small town's inhabitants. To be far to the lack of quality in the movie, I didn't so much as love this film as I was fascinated by the sheer weirdness--the back acting, the occult counter-culter plot, and oh yes, the bad acting! As the Amazon review for this film pointed out, Psychomania avoids the extremes of any particular theme: it isn't particularly scary (there is no blood whatsoever), it isn't all that violent (there is lots of riding around, but that's all Tom and his gang seem to do--there is, however, a great scene where Jane (a gorgeous Ann Michelle), one of the biker members, mows over a baby carriage [that kid's going to be bitter when it grows up!]); you sure don't get much in the line of social commentary either--in fact the morality of Tom and the gang's actions isn't never directly addressed at all--so cautionary tale it is not! The believability factor is pretty extreme also. Hatchet's suicide onto the freeway should have left him a barely recognizable scrape, but lo and behold, he's in the morgue perfectly intact; ditto for the skydiver biker--eeeyouch! he wasn't even dented! As for the occult, it would've been nice to have had five minutes more of exposition devoted to the source of that frog cult or have a little more light shed onto Shadwell's identity. Still it's probably best not to look too far into these kinds of movies. Interestingly, some of the talent cast have been in many other films. As another reviewer pointed out, Nicky Henson was in many other films (I saw Conquorer Worm awhile ago, but don't remember him). I happen to be a huge Doctor Who fan, so I recognized John Levine and Beryl Reid from those shows. If you are a fan of the biker horror genre, then by all means go see Werewolves On Wheels as it has many of the same elements: the cheesy song halfway through, the surly biker gang, the nonsensical plot, and an ending even more bizarre than this movie's. But if you like your movies dark side weird, then start with Psychomania!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A fine addition to the zombie biker genre
Review: Ah, wait a minute....there isn't any such genre; this movie is one of a kind! How could I say no to a film with the plot premise: zombie biker gang terrorizes small town's inhabitants. To be far to the lack of quality in the movie, I didn't so much as love this film as I was fascinated by the sheer weirdness--the back acting, the occult counter-culter plot, and oh yes, the bad acting! As the Amazon review for this film pointed out, Psychomania avoids the extremes of any particular theme: it isn't particularly scary (there is no blood whatsoever), it isn't all that violent (there is lots of riding around, but that's all Tom and his gang seem to do--there is, however, a great scene where Jane (a gorgeous Ann Michelle), one of the biker members, mows over a baby carriage [that kid's going to be bitter when it grows up!]); you sure don't get much in the line of social commentary either--in fact the morality of Tom and the gang's actions isn't never directly addressed at all--so cautionary tale it is not! The believability factor is pretty extreme also. Hatchet's suicide onto the freeway should have left him a barely recognizable scrape, but lo and behold, he's in the morgue perfectly intact; ditto for the skydiver biker--eeeyouch! he wasn't even dented! As for the occult, it would've been nice to have had five minutes more of exposition devoted to the source of that frog cult or have a little more light shed onto Shadwell's identity. Still it's probably best not to look too far into these kinds of movies. Interestingly, some of the talent cast have been in many other films. As another reviewer pointed out, Nicky Henson was in many other films (I saw Conquorer Worm awhile ago, but don't remember him). I happen to be a huge Doctor Who fan, so I recognized John Levine and Beryl Reid from those shows. If you are a fan of the biker horror genre, then by all means go see Werewolves On Wheels as it has many of the same elements: the cheesy song halfway through, the surly biker gang, the nonsensical plot, and an ending even more bizarre than this movie's. But if you like your movies dark side weird, then start with Psychomania!

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Movie stands out in my mind...
Review: Honestly, I haven't seen this movie in over 20 years but it sticks out as one of the creepiset things I have seen. I remember images of people in glass coffins and waving. Very scary for a youngster. I wonder what I would think about it if I saw it today

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Call me crazy, but I liked it
Review: I don't know what it is about Psychomania, but I'll be doggoned if I didn't enjoy this movie. This low-budget motorcycle gang horror movie made at the hands of one-time Hammer director Don Sharp looks rather cheesy, revolves around a rather porous storyline, and comes up empty in the special effects department, but it works for some reason. I hate biker movies, but this one is just kooky enough to capture my attention. Tom is not your typical motorcycle gang leader, and The Living Dead is not your typical motorcycle gang. These crazy kids like to hang out and motor around the local cemetery sporting their ridiculous skeleton-like helmets, taking periodic breaks to run drivers off the roads and to terrorize the local community. Tom himself lives in a grand manor house, though, with his séance-conducting medium mother and an ever-present serving man named Shadwell. Tom is somewhat obsessed with death, always asking his mother how to come back from the dead. He has now finally been given the key to the manor's mysterious locked room, the room in which his father died mysteriously eighteen years earlier. This is a scene that is never really explained, but soon Tom has learned the answer to the question he has been asking. It turns out that all you need to do to come back from the dead is to believe wholeheartedly that you will do so while you kill yourself. He actually manages to pull the whole thing off, and the new and even more dangerous Tom soon has the whole gang committing suicide in various ways in order to really live up to the gang's name.

Naturally, such goings-on do not take place without the devil's full knowledge, and ignorance of a debt does not preclude the devil from making his clients pay for their wrongs. The truly awful special effects put a real damper on an already less than exciting ending, but the devil and I seem to be fairly happy with the overall results. The man downstairs seems to have quite a penchant for frogs, by the way, but this is just another aspect of the film that is never really explained. As long as you don't take this film seriously and prepare yourself for some plot elements that go AWOL along the way, Psychomania is quite capable of providing you with an hour and a half of strangely satisfying, albeit rather lame, entertainment.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Call me crazy, but I liked it
Review: I don't know what it is about Psychomania, but I'll be doggoned if I didn't enjoy this movie. This low-budget motorcycle gang horror movie made at the hands of one-time Hammer director Don Sharp looks rather cheesy, revolves around a rather porous storyline, and comes up empty in the special effects department, but it works for some reason. I hate biker movies, but this one is just kooky enough to capture my attention. Tom is not your typical motorcycle gang leader, and The Living Dead is not your typical motorcycle gang. These crazy kids like to hang out and motor around the local cemetery sporting their ridiculous skeleton-like helmets, taking periodic breaks to run drivers off the roads and to terrorize the local community. Tom himself lives in a grand manor house, though, with his séance-conducting medium mother and an ever-present serving man named Shadwell. Tom is somewhat obsessed with death, always asking his mother how to come back from the dead. He has now finally been given the key to the manor's mysterious locked room, the room in which his father died mysteriously eighteen years earlier. This is a scene that is never really explained, but soon Tom has learned the answer to the question he has been asking. It turns out that all you need to do to come back from the dead is to believe wholeheartedly that you will do so while you kill yourself. He actually manages to pull the whole thing off, and the new and even more dangerous Tom soon has the whole gang committing suicide in various ways in order to really live up to the gang's name.

Naturally, such goings-on do not take place without the devil's full knowledge, and ignorance of a debt does not preclude the devil from making his clients pay for their wrongs. The truly awful special effects put a real damper on an already less than exciting ending, but the devil and I seem to be fairly happy with the overall results. The man downstairs seems to have quite a penchant for frogs, by the way, but this is just another aspect of the film that is never really explained. As long as you don't take this film seriously and prepare yourself for some plot elements that go AWOL along the way, Psychomania is quite capable of providing you with an hour and a half of strangely satisfying, albeit rather lame, entertainment.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: British Blood and Black Humour
Review: I had seen this movie as a child and it left quite an impression on me. Recently finding it on VHS was a joy, and it's held up over the years. Mind you, I have a LOVE of the lurid hodgepodge of genres that some of those Brit "horror" films were. This is camp and cheese and still quite enjoyable. The wah-wah-guitar soundtrack music, the bizarre images, the so-AWFUL-it's-great folk song burial sequence... The humour is sort of a low-rent version of DR. PHIBES, and well worth checking out, I think...


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