Psycho Cop

My review was written in January 1990 after watching the film on South Gate Entertainment video cassette.

A catchy title fronts for a very boring video feature film, offering nothing in the way of diversion for horror fans.

Bobby Ray Shafer is a bland choice for the title role, a policeman who's a satanist into the antisocial activity of stabbing folks for a blood ritual. Later on we find out he's the product of a broken home and is just posing as a cop.

He terrorizes a bunch of stupid teens, off on a weekend outing at a remote house (as per conry horror genre format). Not much happens except for the clockwork killings, climaxing with the heroine surrounded by her friends who've been literally crucified.

Weakest aspect of Wallace Potts' picture, a presentation from British producer Cassian Elwes, is the set of unfunny witticisms penned for Shafr to say while killing people. Tech credit are unimpressive; gore is the films' sole rasion d'etre.

Well sure, we ALL loved "Maniac Cop", the 1988 horror semi-classic from William Lustig and Larry Cohen. "I want to do that too" is what writer/director Wallace Potts must have thought, and not even a year later "Psycho Cop" magically appeared. There's only one little problem, though. Wallace Potts is (was...) a talentless hack! He was only capable of imitating the obvious and superficial aspects, like the idea of a police officer as a horror villain, the title sequences and even blatantly the tagline (from "you have the right to remain silent ...forever" in "Maniac Cop" to "you have the right to remain dead" in "Psycho Cop"). But apart from all that, "Psycho Cop" is nothing but a mundane and terribly by-the-numbers late 80s slasher.

I'm not going to lie, I had tremendous fun watching "Psycho Cop". But mainly because it's such an unbelievably inept and dumb slasher, full of embarrassing clichés and hopelessly empty-headed characters. Even when half of the six-headed group is already killed off, the remaining ones keep assuming the others are off buying beer or playing pranks. The killer, Officer Joe Vickers, is one giant joke as well. He supposedly is a devil-worshiper, but he totally doesn't have the profile of a Satanist. Apart from drawing one stupid pentagram in the sand, he does nothing what devil worshipers would do. He simply slaughters teens whilst hysterically laughing and saying moronic things.

All this I can tolerate, but why-oh-why doesn't "Psycho Cop" feature more barbaric gore and gratuitous nudity? We have three beautiful girls (especially Palmer Lee Todd is very hot... and that even rhymes) laying by a pool half of the running time, but none of them takes the bikini top off. Lame! And now I must get my dirty little hands on the sequel.

A devil worshipping police officer follows a group of college students to a vacation home, where he proceeds to murder them.

Yet another teen slasher flick from the 80's, lesser known than most, with all of the typical elements of the genre in place, except for nudity and sexual situations. It is worse acted than most though, and features one of the most inept performances in film history by Bobby Ray Shafer. My rating: 4 out of 10. Rent at your own risk.

A low budget Maniac Cop rip off that is barely passable, made by people who obviously had no idea how to make a horror movie. Contains crappy kills, paranoid teens, and a killer who spits out one liners all while acting as wooden as a post. But hey it also has jokes... What has eighteen legs and two tits... the supreme court! 😂😄😀😐😒

I barely ever get to say this when it comes to horror movies, but the sequel is a lot better. Don't get me wrong, "Psycho Cop" has its moments, but obviously it sinks like a brick after the caretaker meets his demise. He was the glue that held everything together, without him the movie's plot almost seemed incoherent and moronic. And talk about screen presence, no definition is high enough to do the character justice. Oh caretaker, you were truly a God amongst men, nobody could hold an axe for vague reasons like you could. Sadly when you take this ingenious character out of the equation, you're stuck with the kind of average slasher movie people were already sick of back in 1989. Cars never start, phones never work, people keep wandering of into the woods for stupid reasons, dead killers are never as dead as they look, every teen is 35 years old, it's that kind of movie and very little more. Officer Joe Vickers is a pretty amusing psychopath, but I think he's much better in "Psycho Cop Returns". He just doesn't have material in this movie. "Psycho Cop" is not quite funny and not quite scary either, sort of a failed slasher pastiche.