aka Psyclo-Maniacs

• Directed by Don Sharp
• Written by Julian Halevy and Arnaud d’Usseau
• Starring
  • Nicky Henson
  • Mary Larkin
  • Ann Michelle
  • George Sanders
  • Beryl Reid

It’s a little disconcerting how often the following comment comes up, as I never planned to make it my personal mantra:

“Oh, sure — Night of the Creeps has been out of print in any format for a decade, but THIS is out on DVD.”

Honestly, I just don’t understand British cuisine.

What we’ve got here isn’t exactly a zombie movie, but it does feature the living dead. Or, more precisely, The Living Dead, a desperately annoying British motorcycle gang. Leave it to the Brits to get even their motorcycle gangs wrong; these are not the menacing neo-barbarians or the strong-willed anarchists of American cinema, but a bunch of young punks without two gray cells between the lot of them. These are twits who spend their time doing things like riding around the standing stones in the park; occasionally they punctuate this “fun” boredom with such high-brow pursuits as running up and down the sidewalks of the shopping district, laughing maniacally when they manage to knock a package from a pedestrian’s arms.

In short, I just spent ninety minutes of my life in the company of complete idiots.

Their leader is Tom Latham (Nicky Henson), who of them all shows the only sparks of personality. Unfortunately, such sparks manifest themselves as an interest in gathering frogs from cemetaries and a pressing need to find out how his father died in a mysterious locked room that his medium mother (Beryl Reid) and her butler Shadwell (George Sanders) have kept from him. Dad had apparently been trying to “cross over” — i.e., die — which he did successfully, but was unable to come back to this side like he planned. And I guess there’s just not a good Plan B for situations like that.

No, “The Living Dead” just doesn’t fit. How about “The B.E.M.s”?

They finally let Tom into the locked room, where he sees a magic mirror that shows him things that make him cringe and press his fists to his temples. Things like a giant frog hanging in mist, and him and his mates riding around the standing stones. Oh, and a woman presenting a baby to a shrouded figure and signing a contract. Not the normal thing one catches on the telly, I know, but scarcely enough to drive him into shock.

Nonetheless, into shock he goes, to be rescued by Mum and Shadwell. Then, when he’s coming around, he overhears them discussing the secret of crossing over, which is what he went into the room to discover in the first place: you have to really believe you’ll come back.

I’d just like to stop right here and publicly state that there are times, growing in frequency of late, when I truly question the ilk of movie that I voluntarily watch and review. I mean, I could as easily do a site about Oscar Best Picture nominees, reviewing each and debating the relative merits in terms of who deserved the Oscar that year. Instead, I end up forcing myself through movies with great ideas like, “You can come back from the dead — if only you really really want to and don’t doubt that you will!”

Sigh.

Tom. Once living. Now dead. Still ugly.

Well, the quicker I push through the quicker I can consign this to its deserved obscurity. Tom thinks this is a wonderful, terrific idea (don’t forget the pixie dust, Tom), so after taking his gang on another round of tip-the-package-and-chase-the-baby-cart, he drives off the bridge and dies.

Naturally, the gang takes this hard, especially Abby (Mary Larkin), Tom’s squeeze, and the only one who exhibits any shreds of human decency (though she laughs just as loud as anyone when they go pedestrian-tipping). The other girl of the group, Jane (Ann Michelle), immediately declares her new leadership of the gang. The other five or six members kind of nod their heads and go back to their normal state of stupor, as they gain permission from Mum to bury Tom “in their own way,” which means in the midst of the standing stones, sitting upright on his bike. Meanwhile, one of these meanie bikers also shows his sensitive side, by crooning a flower-child folk song for Tom, all about how he wouldn’t surrender his freedom to those who wanted to clip his wings and decided to die instead. (I’m trying to think if there could possibly be a biker gang in the entire world that wouldn’t show these morons up as wusses. Even the kids from E.T. could probably kick their asses.)

Of course, Tom does eventually come roaring back out of the grave, much to the consternation of the flat-tired motorist who just happens to be hoofing it across the standing stones at that moment. He looks none the worse for wear (hell, he’s not even dirty), buthe’s apparently unharmable now, so he naturally goes out looking for people to annoy (above and beyond those who are watching the video, naturally). He fills up his tank without paying (and kills the attendant), and then strangles a girl who really wanted a ride on his bike. And he calls home to let Mum know he’s okay.

He then finds the old gang (who’ve discovered the empty grave) and tells them all how swell it is to be dead and everything, so a couple of them, Jane and some other dude, follow him out into oncoming traffic. Jane believed hard enough that she comes back; the other dude… well, there’s a reason I didn’t remember his name.

“Nyah! Here’s what I think of your Establishment conventions like an interesting story and engaging characters!”

So then Tom and Jane go around, doing more inane things. I mean, if you were given immortality, would you spend your time in such pursuits as endless (and I do mean endless) games of chicken? These clods can’t think of anything better to do. “Whee, I can be moronically annoying — forever!!”

While the requisite stiff-upper-lip inspector is trying to put the pieces together, Mum is starting to have second thoughts about all of this — it’s nice that Tom was able to achieve his ambition and all, but he seems bound and determined to do senseless things for eternity (all with a puerile veneer of taking potshots at “the Establishment,” naturally). And Abby, the (by default) “good” chick, is also having second thoughts, mainly because Jane is moving into Tom’s affections.

With Tom and Jane as (un)living proof, the rest of the bikers now have no doubts that they can come back from the dead. So they each do themselves in, usually in a way that involves gravity: Jumping from a building, dropping from an overpass onto the highway, choosing not to open a parachute, etc. Abby joins in, but somehow manages not to kill herself — and when she wakes up in the hospital, she realizes that she didn’t have the conviction to cross over successfully after all. So she agrees to help the police inspector, but naturally she’s too stupid to do anything but get herself in trouble with the gang, so then Mum finally gets into it with some occultic mumbo and [yawn] oh look, is the movie over already?

Yeah, she’s a real swinger.

Folks, it took a great deal of effort to extend my plot description out even as long as I did. There’s an awful lot of nothing happening her for long periods of time. We get lots of footage of bikers playing chicken, and riding around the standing stones, and such. We get scores of scenes that don’t move the plot along, they just demonstrate the juvenile quality of mind of these wanna-be rebels who can’t figure out what they’re rebelling against and thus haven’t a clue as to what to do with immortality when it’s given them by the stupidest excuse for a plot mechanism ever (just wish for it, Pinocchio, and it’ll come true!). And we get pretty much a single musical theme accompanying it all, somehow becoming more dated and laughable with every repetition.

And again, the fact that this movie, of all movies, is so readily available in all formats, while other movies of much more appeal languish in the hands of tape traders and bootleggers… Does Psychomania actually have any flagwavers? Could it possibly? If so, they’re also people I wouldn’t trust with immortality. Hell, I probably wouldn’t trust them with a free afternoon and a butterknife.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 15
• breasts: 0
• explosions: 1
• dream sequences: 1
• ominous thunderstorms: 2
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 0