My review was written in June 1987 after watching the movie on MGM/UA video cassette.
"Psycho Girls" is a Toronto-made horror thriller that self-destructs. Shot at the end of 1984, it was released marginally last summer by Cannon and is now a home video title.
Pic begins quite promisingly with pulp detective story writer Richard Fotr (John Haslett Cuff) pounding away at his typewriter and narrating a tale with colorful quips like "What is money anyway, but paper with germs on it?". Unfortunately, the tall tale he relates soon switches from suspense to sadistic Grand Guignol horror of little interest.
Tale begins in 1966 when young parents are murdered by their daughter Sarah with a poisoned meal on their anniversary. Fifteen years later Sarah's an inmate of Lakeview Asylum who escapes to revenge herself on older sister Victoria, who predictably was the real murderer though Sarah took the rap.
Victoria is working as Foster's cook, and Sarah shows up as her replacement after offing her sister. She drugs the food at an anniversary dinner party thrown by Foster and his wife Diana, and then, aided by two crazy henchmen, proceeds to torture and murder them one by one. Punchline of how the humble narrator/writer is mixed up in this mayhem is lifted from Billy Wilder's "Sunset Blvd.".
With the promised gore mainly occurring off-screen, the resulting film is neither fish nor fowl, with little to recommend it to that target gross-out audience. Pity that filmmaker Gerard Ciccoritti (who shows up on screen in a cameo looking a lot like Judd Nelson as a pizza delivery boy) couldn't have stuck to hard-boiled fiction with dialog to match.
Cast is weak, hampered by very artificial post-synched dialog (with other folks' voices in some cases, per the end credits).
