Psychopath

Like the director's prior "The Pink Angels"--an incongruous, campy gay biker movie made at the height of the conventional biker-movie trend--this is a movie with a small cult following because of its outrageous concept, but hard to actually sit through because it's so poorly executed. A children's TV puppet show host who already seems rather creepily infantile (like Peewee Herman minus the humor) becomes aware that some children in his audience and neighborhood are the subject of abuse from their variably drunken, slovenly or just sadistic parents. So he begins stalking and murdering them, as police investigate the trail of crimes.

It's not at all a bad idea, but "Psychopath" aka "An Eye for an Eye" seems oblivious to how badly its elements match up. The actor who plays "Mr. Rabbey" (the kidshow host) gives one of those bug-eyed, over-the-top performances that at first makes you think "Where's he gonna go with this?!?" Then you realize he's not going anywhere with it--that weird, artificial, simultaneously effeminate and childish affect is all he's got in his bag of tricks. It makes his character silly, rather than frightening, and underlines the absurdity of other, normal-acting figures not discerning that Mr. Rabbey is a mental case from the get-go. The other performances range from shrill caricatures (the bad parents) to routine competence (everyone else).

But given its bad-taste conceit, you'd think "Psychopath" would have some fun with it. Nuh-uh. It's dully earnest, with no flair for suspense or even violence (the latter is generally kept to an on-screen minimum), the utterly middle-of-the-road aesthetic of an early 1970s TV movie, and seemingly no awareness at all that even Mr. Rabbey's TV show comes off as grotesque. (We're told the kids just love him, but that's laughable--Anthony Perkins in "Psycho" would have more juvenile appeal.) You'd think this story could only be played as black comedy, yet the film is as simplistically sincere about saying "child abuse is bad" as a PSA. And that social ill is presented in such crude terms, you can't even accept the sincerity of the message--it's on the level as a warning of "stranger danger" painting that peril as consisting of middle-aged men in trenchcoats skulking behind suburban shrubbery.

As a curio, this might be worth looking at for five minutes, in which span you'll get as much as you're going to get from the whole feature--nothing improves, or surprises, later on. But it's pretty abysmal, and even the elements that are relatively professional (in terms of technical polish and some performances) only serve to blandly take the edge off whatever tension or shock value was intended here.

This is a gritty, low-budget oddity from the early 1970's that actually tried half-heartedly to tackle a serious social issue, child abuse, with less-than-sucessful results. While the abusive parents who are offed by the titular protagonist (the deranged host of a kiddie show) are definitely deserving, their gory deaths are so ridiculously over-the-top that it's hard to take the whole thing very seriously. There's nothing wrong with a horror movie having a serious social message,on one hand, or entertaining the audience with absurd, cartoon-style violence,on the other, but it just doesn't work to do both things in the same movie. Still this movie is worth seeing if you can find it. One of the only existing video prints has burned-in Spanish subtitles that will have you in stiches if you're at all bilingual--they're often NOT EVEN CLOSE to the actual English dialogue.

Tom Basham's over the top performance as a looney children's television show host is frighteningly realistic. When he discovers that some of his viewers are being abused by their parents he flips and takes matters into his own hands. Death by baseball bat, lawnmower, and strangulation are just a few of the things he has in store for the abusive parents. This seldom seen slasher is also highlighted by Basham's odd relationship with his puppets, as well as his blanket which he calls Mr.Rabbey. Psychopath also features weird music and endless close-ups of Basham's wild eyes. A must for fans of weird horror.

Pretty amazing movie directed by a guy who primarily directed gay porn (and produced by Jackson Bostwick...TV's Shazam (?!?))

It was released in the South under the title "An Eye for An Eye" with the gimmick that you voted whether the little girl at the end was guilty or innocent (by dropping a ballot in a box on the way out of the theater, so obviously it was a pretty lame gimmick).

My father called it "utter trash" (I begged him to take me to see it) and I credit it for nurturing (creating?) my love of exploitation movies. Someone should do a nice DVD release on this film.

This was a weird movie on obviously a low budget. It features a children's show host who takes matters into his own hands when he realizes some kids are being abused by their parents-by killing the parents. It was kind of lame, and the only "great" parts were the close-ups of the title character's wild eyes. All in all, just another slasher movie.

** out of ****