MOTORPSYCHO! (Severin Films)

MotorPsycho!
Severin Films

The Stats
Video: 1080p High Definition
Audio:  English SDH
Subtitles: English CC

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by "Doc" Hunter Bush, Staff Writer and Podcast Director

The Movie: Good 

Severin Films continue their exploration of Sexploitation maestro Russ Meyer's back catalogue with MotorPsycho! (1965), the film immediately preceding what is perhaps his most legacy-codifying film, Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965). Preying on the fears of the day, Meyer, along with a cadre of collaborators, crafted a story of youth run amok.

Full Disclosure, for those unfamiliar with Meyer's work: MotorPsycho! features repeated instances of sexual assault. None of it is very graphic, but it is a focal plot point.

Three motorbike-riding beatniks led by the psychotic Brahmin (Steve Oliver) roll into town on an unmotivated pilgrimage of violence, leaving shattered lives in their wake! Now only veterinarian Cory (Alex Rocco), and the widowed Ruby (Haji) can team up to stop them! That may sound action-packed, but in fact, MotorPsycho! is a thin film, narratively. The three beatniks roll into a scene already in progress, commit at least one act of violence, and move on. Rinse and repeat. There is almost nothing by way of rhyme or reason, no outright motivation aside from some implied mental illness for Brahmin. The quest to avenge Cory's wife and Ruby's husband, respectively, which form's the film's core is likewise, very low-stakes: they give pursuit over the course of two days as the beatniks thin their own numbers until they end up in a stand-off in a quarry with Brahmin alone.

But the appeal of MotorPsycho! isn't in any narrative ingenuity. It was never made to surprise, only to shock, as was the style at the time. These kinds of films, and the cycle exploitation subgenre in a larger sense, are built for cheap titillation, maybe some salacious thrills, and ultimately an ending that lets you breathe a little easier. On that metric, MotorPsycho! is highly successful. It also holds an important place in the oeuvre of Russ Meyer--whose Severin film releases I have previously covered not once, not twice, but thrice--as the film that allegedly lit an important lightbulb in his mind: apocryphally, after completing MotorPsycho!, Meyer said "Let's do it again, but with broads." and Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! was born (and released in the same year!)

What MotorPsycho! lacks in surprises, it makes up for with perfectly calibrated genre titillation and small-scale bombast. A scene where Cory is bitten by a rattlesnake climaxes (pun intended) with him screaming at Ruby to "Suck it!" (the poison, out of his leg) and her spitting a mouthful of blood, which moves immediately on to the beatniks in the desert via a match cut of Brahmin spitting out a mouthful of canteen water. MotorPsycho! may not be Russ Meyer at his peak, but it shows him figuring out in real time how to get there.

The Packaging: Average

Severin's Russ Meyer collection might lack extras like cardboard sleeves or what-have-you, but they all utilize the same "Bosomania" design: a red frame with black and green text around the film's poster, a design Meyer came up with when he was still kicking. This has the benefit of the whole collection having a cohesive visual language and looking nice if they're all placed together on a shelf, which is something I understand the appeal of even though it isn't as make-or-break for me as it is for others.

The Video: Average

The previous Meyer films I've covered were in full color, and produced a bit further into Meyer's stylistic flow state, so there was a little more to discuss. Having said that, this restoration was overseen by The Museum of Modern Art and lacks for very little despite being in black and white and not having much flashy (for Meyer) camera tricks like Dutch angles and the like.

Sincerely, I couldn't believe the clarity, detail and depth of color present here. Though rendered entirely in black and white, you can feel the grit of the dirt in tires, and see the pale grey mountains in the distance fade in clouds of dust. Even the deepest shadows avoided the pure black of unrestored black & white film. This is the kind of finished product that reminds you that "black & white" doesn't mean "colorless".

The Audio: Average

The beatniks travel around with their own diegetic theme music, a bouncy guitar piece reminiscent of surf rock, and even in the scenes where that is playing alongside dialogue and the roar of their bikes, I never noticed any issues with the sound quality with regards to either mix or balance. Obviously something recorded on sixty year-old tech will sound like it, but there were no egregious moments for me, and the additional music, all orchestrated, sounds full and as lush as you could hope.

The Special Features: Good

These are decent special features overall. The interviews with Haji and Alex Rocco were very informative and honest, as was the commentary track. But the real treat here is the trailer. I. Love. This. Trailer. It's incredibly verbose and hyperbolic, and never lets up, even showing the film's (pun intended) explosive climax, but hidden behind the film's logo. It's genius! I've found myself growling "mmmMOTORpsychOooo!" and quoting "MotorPsychos on their murder-cycles!" in the same fashion as said in the trailer, at home, watching my roommate's cats chase each other around. It's infectious. I would upload the whole thing, all 3 minutes and 32 seconds of it, to this review just so everyone could get to experience it, but I'm pretty sure that is verboten.

• Audio commentary with film historian Elizabeth Purchell and filmmaker Zach Clark
• Desert Rats on Hondas -- Interview with actors Haji and Alex Rocco
• Trailer

In Summary: Grab it on sale

Of all the Russ Meyer films I've seen, this is the most traditional for the era, the least unique. Though it's still a solidly-built piece of a lost genre: the motorcycle film. This is the subgenre that would eventually (just four years hence) give us Easy Rider (1969), even though that film was about grander things than MotorPsycho! and many of their brethren. Think of Easy Rider as the "elevated genre film" of its day. But film history isn't a highlight reel.

It's important that so-called "lesser films" see release as often as the big, notable ones. To quote Maya Angelou. "You can't know where you are going until you know where you have been." Yes, like Easy Rider, this quote is about grander and frankly more important things, but it's no less true when applied here. Seeing the early works of an influential filmmaker is important because it shows that we all have to start somewhere. No auteurs emerge fully formed from nothing. That's an important thing to remember.