The Psychotronic Man

It is so padded that if you cut all the padding out and just left the "plot"/"story," the "movie" would be about 20 minutes. And the non-filler is so incompetent in every way as to almost be offensive.

I watch a lot of bad movies and find some amusement in them, but this is next-level bad. This makes Plan 9 from Outer Space seem taut and sophisticated!

This isn't a movie. This is an endurance test! Zero stars!

P. S. The siren they love to have wail out of nowhere from time to time is one of the most annoying sounds committed to film.

Peter Spelson is Rocky Fosco, a Chicago city barber with a big quiff, sideburns and a pimp moustache. He drives around listening to crap country music and fixes his hair a lot. Spelson wrote and produced this very bad, no budget supernatural psychic killer flick with his pal Jack M. Sell (the guy responsible for the music, editing and mis-direction). Obviously made fer a coupla' bucks, our hairy barber is soon blacking out and dreaming he's in a flying car surrounded by smoke and disco lights. He tells his doctor (in a sequence that flashes back to the previous two minutes) and fixes his hair some more till the headaches go out of control and he drives around and fixes his hair. Then a farmer has a flashback and Rocky kills him by using his newly acquired Psychotronic powers (which involves him fixing his hair while staring intently). Duuuuh. It's rubbish, but absolutely brilliant rubbish and the type of loose brained ESP horror trash that won't quit getting crapper/better with each passing moment and it's just an ahead of it's time amateur Scanners (80) made by inept mental patients. It's genius I tells ya'. Solid gold white trash cheeze with wonky tunes, a little blood, disco dancing, the worlds slowest, dullest, longest car / foot chase and a title way cooler than it's content. Watch it twice!

Here's another great contender for my own personal award of "Most Demented Film I ever watched", but the least I can say is that it was very interesting. "The Pschotronic Man" begins with the longest and most unnerving opening credits ever, but they're quite sinister and atmospheric what with the really creepy music and odd color schemes and everything. This is one of them rare films that already make you feel uncomfortable before it even properly takes off. The slow-paced story introduces Rocky Foscoe; a barber with a few issues that may or may not be caused by the fact that he consumes his own hair shampoos and conditioner lotions. Rocky starts having strange visions, like himself flying around in a car and such similar tomfoolery, and he gradually becomes the world's first and only Psychotronic Man. Basically, this just means that he's an older, fatter and sleazier male version of "Carrie" who can inflict stuff only by using his overdeveloped willpower. At first, Rocky doesn't comprehend the powers that have been granted to him and even seeks professional help to make the unbearable headaches go away, but then he gradually learns how to control his skills and use it against the people he doesn't like, like his own wife who's in the way of his love affairs.

"The Psychotronic Man" is overall a pretty cool flick, but sadly director Jack M. Sell wasn't quite sure which narrative tone to maintain. Does this story require a dramatic, mysterious or exploitative tone? Or perhaps a combination of all three? This indecisive behavior leads to an illogical structure and uneven pacing, for example when a moody love-making sequence is immediately followed by an extremely violent murder vision. The film is also slow and uneventful. Especially considering the plot outline, they could have made this into a far more grotesque and trashy cult experiment; even bearing in mind the budgetary restrictions. The overlong chase sequence, for example, is the least spectacular one in the history of cinema. The cars just drive in straight lines and at snail pace, without tricky maneuvers or causing flamboyant accidents. Still, there's some greatness to find in this oddball production, like the creepy sound effects that are frequently repeated, including a church bell chiming and half the tune of Ennio Morricone's classic music for "Once upon a time in the West". I bet the composer of this film was the only person who had great fun on set.

Bizarre film, to say the least, but it did offer us the collective term for everything in cult, horror and trash cinema that is unique and indescribable. Psychotronic power!

How bizarre… It's anyone's guess what's truly going on here. Especially after watching the intro where the opening credits go on for a while. And I mean awhile. It was the title that caught my eye "Revenge of the Psychotronic Man". It screams "Hey, look at me"! Anyhow what I got myself into was something bug-eyed. Think of "The Incredible Melting Man", which was made a couple years earlier and the tone is similar, but without the graphic context. Still it wasn't as bad as I thought it might be, but you can see why it's virtually unknown. While being a penniless production, its clunky, dry and tawdry nature remains for most part rather entertaining. Why is it entertaining… because of just how unusual and surprisingly twisted it plays out? Even when it seems to concentrate on uneventful filler, there's something unnervingly atmospheric and random that makes it hypnotic. Even when some scenarios are risible (like the first death with the constant slow-motion) and long-winded (there's a lot of driving going on). Something which would hit you straight away would be the creepy score that overpowers many sequences and that of some oddball sound-effects like the ominous bell chimes that comes and goes. You get more of a rush from the music than the visual action. The direction is virtually non-existent, but the gritty location work of Chicago and the shadowy imagery gives it a bit of a moody edge. While the performances are on the stilted side, but durable enough and dialogues remain lacklustre. Bemusing low-grade horror Sci-fi.

I never expected to see a movie like this. A great "bad" film about a psychotronic barber who has looong drives in his car and kills/hurts people by touching his hair and looking all serious (this is something you do when you have THAT psychotronic disease). This has to be a movie that's better (and worse) than anything Ed Wood did, great "dumb" dialogue and wonderful bad actors. See it and you will have a whole new view on film-making..