The most wonderfully deranged film in the history of British cinema is Psychomania. When it went into production in Shepperton Studios in late 1971, this was to be the first-ever quality zombie-biker-in-Middlesex horror film.
Tom Latham (Nicky Henson) is the leader of a motorcycle gang called ‘The Living Dead’. He’s an upper-class delinquent who still lives with his mummy.
With the aid of a frog-worshipping cult, his satanic mother (Beryl Reid) and her shifty butler Shadwell (George Sanders in the twilight of his career), Tom makes a pact with the devil and willingly commits suicide in the belief that he’ll return from the dead.
Soon after his death and subsequent upright burial still straddling his motorbike, Tom wheelies straight back from the grave as an immortal biker with a bad attitude problem. Being a good son, he calls his mother from a pub to let her know that he’s fine. “Well, apart from being dead, that is,” he explains.
As a result of Tom’s successful reincarnation, the rest of the gang begins committing suicide in various colourful ways.
One jumps out of a plane without a parachute, another leaps into a river weighted down with chains.
One biker climbs to the top of a building, getting the attention of a policeman down below.
The policeman orders him to come down, to which the biker replies cheerily, “I’ll be right down!” and leaps to his (temporary) death.
They all return from the dead as the now zombie Living Dead gang – virtually all of whom sport the brand of stage-cockney accent last heard in Here Come the Double Deckers.
Only Tom’s girlfriend Abby (Mary Larkin) refuses to follow his example, incurring the anger of her undead friends. With the gang wreaking havoc throughout the countryside, it’s left to Tom’s mother to stop the mayhem.
Naturally, it all ends badly, with Beryl being turned into a toad “for all eternity”. But despite its faults and a restricted budget, Psychomania admirably fulfils its brief of entertaining the viewing public.
Shadwell
George Sanders Mrs Latham
Beryl Reid
Tom Latham
Nicky Henson
Abby
Mary Larkin
Bertram
Roy Holder
Inspector Hesseltine
Robert Hardy
Sergeant
Patrick Holt
Hatchet
Denis Gilmore
Jane
Ann Michele
Chopped Meat
Miles Greenwood
Gash
Peter Whiting
Director
Don Sharp
Video
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One jumps out of a plane without a parachute, another leaps into a river weighted down with chains.
Mrs Latham
