Psychomania

Tom Latham, an amiable psychopath and the leader of a violent teen gang, enjoys riding his motorcycle with his girlfriend and loves his mother. His gang dabble in black magic and call themselves "The Living Dead". In a similar vein, his mother and her sinister butler get their kicks out of holding séances in their home. With her help (and following in his father's footsteps) Tom returns from the dead. One by one, he and his fellow bikers commit suicide with the goal of returning as one of the "undead". One of them fails, but the ones who do return gather together at a secret place called "The Seven Witches" (a circle of standing stones), after which they continue to terrorize the locals.

It was produced by Benmar Productions, which predominately made Spaghetti Westerns in Spain but also produced Horror Express later that same year.[5] (The film had the same writers as that movie.)[6]

The film was shot under the title The Living Dead. It was filmed at Shepperton Studios in 1971[5] with some exterior scenes filmed in the (now demolished and rebuilt) Hepworth Way shopping centre and Wellington Close housing block in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey.[7]

Nicky Henson said "I was a mad motorcyclist," he adds, “I never had a car. So this script comes through the door and I open it up and it says, ‘Eight Chopped Hog Harley Davidsons crest the brow of a hill.’ I rang my agent and said, ‘I’ll do it'."[4]

Henson said when he arrived on set he saw "eight clapped-out 350 AJS’ and Matchless BSAs. I said, 'Where’s the Harley Davidsons?’ They said, ‘You gotta be kidding?’ It’s the only show I’ve ever been on where there were eight mechanics working the whole time to keep the bikes fanning because they got ’em in some second-hand shop somewhere and they were falling to bits."[4]

Henson said he did all his stunts in the film except three. He says the stuntman who performed them were injured after each one.[4]

He says the script was written by "two expatriate Communist sympathisers" and that George Sanders' scenes were shot in ten days to save money as he was being paid more than anyone else in the cast.[8]

Henson says Sanders "was great fun on the movie. We laughed and laughed and laughed and spoiled an awful lot of takes. I mean, it must have been a nightmare for the director because we were all so young and behaving so badly and realized that we were all working on something that was kind of peripheral, that would just disappear. But of course it hasn’t. That’s the weird and wonderful thing about it. People come up to me in the street and quote lines from it now."[4]

Director Don Sharp called the film "great fun to do, especially after doing several films in a row like The Violent Enemy. It was a great change, geared for a younger audience as it was."[9]

The film's soundtrack, composed by John Cameron, was released on LP and CD in 2003 by Trunk Records.[10][11]

Cameron later said, "“I knew we needed a score that was spooky and different but had kind of a rock feeling to it and it was kind of pre-synthesizer... We had to use Shepperton’s recording studios and it hadn’t been updated since before the war. The hilarious thing is actually having these hooligan musicians all trying to do strange things, scratch inside pianos and turn sounds inside out, but the recording engineer still had a suit and tie on. It was so anachronistic."[4]

Two of Cameron's pieces from the score—"Witch Hunt (Title Theme from the Film Psychomania)" and "Living Dead (Theme from the Film Psychomania)"— were released in 1973 as a 7" single on the Jam label, using the artist name "Frog". This Frog record was reissued in 2011 by Spoke Records as a limited edition vinyl 7".[12]

The initial reception was mixed,[5] but over time, the film has come to be more highly regarded.[5] It holds a rating of 80% at Rotten Tomatoes.[13]

Henson said "“At that time, I thought if you do dodgy films, nobody pays to see dodgy films. Of course, you’re not realizing that years later they come out on DVD and become 'cults'."[4]

Shock Till You Drop called the film "a great one-shot horror movie filled with weird, something eerie atmosphere, crazy stunt work, cheeky performances, mild kink and a unique charm all its own."[14] Variety called it "a low-budget, well-done shocker with a tightly-knit plot and a believable surprise ending".[15] Nerdist called it "very effective thanks to the mixture of heavy action, moody guitar music, and dreamy visuals."[16]

Severin Films released a restored print on DVD in 2010.[17]

BFI Flipside released a dual-format Blu-ray/DVD edition in the EU on 26 September 2016.[18]

Arrow Films released a dual-format Blu-ray/DVD edition in the USA on 22 February 2017.[19]

• The Midnight Writer (December 1983). "Sharp Turns". Fangoria. No. 31. pp. 14–18.

• Psychomania on IMDb
• Psychomania at AllMovie
• Psychomania at Rotten Tomatoes
• Psychomania at Letterbox DVD
• Essay on film at Diabolique
• Essay on film at Dangerous Minds
• Essay on film at Film Inquiry
• Essay on film at Senses of Cinema