Cycle Psycho

Before I get into the review, here are my ratings for the movie.

The story gets a 0.25 out of 2: The Direction a 0.50: The Pacing receives a 0.25: While the Acting gets 1.00: And my Enjoyment level earns a 0.25 out of 2: Bringing the total to 2.25 out of 10.

Oh, deary me. What a snoozefest this turned out to be. The only saving grace to this movie is the acting, and that's average. Regretfully, the story and the direction are woefully lacking. It may stem from the writer and director being the same person; John Lawrence.

As I'm finding out by doing these reviews, there are a lot of stories that sound great when you read the synopsis. However, due to one reason or another - most commonly it the writers lack of imagination or weakness in story structure - the story never meets the viewers' expectations. Savage Abduction is one of these stories.

Lawyer Dick Ridelander wants to be rid of his wife and so makes a deal with a rich businessman. The man is to kill the wife, giving Ridelander an alibi. The killing of the woman is the man's stress point. He starts to remember his troubled past and realises he likes tormenting, torturing, and killing women. He then proceeds to use the crime to blackmail Ridelander into procuring him a couple of girls for his new perverted pleasure. Ridelander, in turn, enlists the help of a biker gang to kidnap the girls and to hold them until the man is ready to play.

Now, you can see the numerous possibilities in this outline. But Lawrence evidently couldn't. Instead, what he gives the audience is a step-by-step telling of the outline. He doesn't add any characterisations. Everybody is interchangeable. The psychopath isn't psycho. The biker gang aren't so rough and tumble as they keep telling the viewers they are. There are two wonderfully awful scenes where this is shown. The leader of the gang is telling his woman they'll make so much on this job that they'll be able to move and form a bigger and stronger biker gang. Which wouldn't be too hard since there are only two other bikers in this gang! I'm not sure you can even call it a gang. They're more like biker pals... who don't have many friends. The other scene is when the biker boss spouts off that it's not his fault the cops have made him public enemy number one. Yeah, public enemy number one? This guy lives in a ramshackle house in the middle of nowhere. The man never commits any crimes. He gets his two pals to kidnap the girls. And, their abduction isn't even savage. The girls are all too willing to hop on the bikers back seats.

The story is so basic it becomes boring very quickly after the girls are kidnapped, and it wasn't too great before.

What doesn't help is Lawrence being as skilled a director as he is a writer. Set the scene, shoot the scene, print the scene - repeat until end. He could have avoided some tediousness if he'd employed a smidgen of imagination.

The real shame is because of the story and direction the cast are wasted. They try to do their best, but by the end of this travesty, they appear as bored as the rest of us. Lawrence even had a decent cast for this picture. Tom Drake, who was a veteran of many TV and Film roles, plays Dick Ridelander. Joe Turkel, who is best known for his role as the bartender in The Shining, plays the businessman, Harry. As well as a couple of actors you may have seen in old telly programmes. Hell, even Stafford Repp makes an appearance.

Savage Abduction could have been such a different movie. However, as it stands, I couldn't recommend this to anyone.

Stay Away from this drivel. It's not worth wasting any time on.

That said, now hop on your hogs and blaze across to my The Game Is Afoot and Killer Thriller Chillers to see where this Z-Movie fell asleep in my ratings... and to find something way better to watch.

Take Care & Stay Well.

Attorney Richard Ridelander (Tom Drake) gets rich sicko Harry (Joe Turkel) to murder his unfaithful wife. Excited by the thrill of the kill, Harry blackmails Richard into procuring new victims for his perverted pleasure. Dick turns to a gang of renegade motor-cyclists for help, who agree to abduct two girls in exchange for $10,000, a sum that Harry is only too happy to pay.

As wonderfully sleazy as it sounds, Savage Abduction is far less exploitative than many a '70s drive-in movie, the film offering up only a modicum of those core ingredients, sex and violence. The not-so-savage abduction of 17-year-old hitch-hikers Jenny and Faye (Tanis Gallik and Kitty Vallacher) involves the girls being locked in a closet, forced to smoke pot, and made to strip to their underwear, before being bound and gagged and handed over to Harry.

Harry clearly has bad things in store for the poor girls, judging by the bag of sharp implements he has brought with him, but he is unable to carry out his evil deeds thanks to the timely intervention of biker Romeo (Sean Kenney), who has been struggling with his conscience. All of this 'mild peril' is bound to disappoint fans of gritty low budget trash, who quite rightly expect more from a psycho killer/biker movie with such a lurid title.

A mama-obsessed psycho (Joseph Turkel) kills the wife of a respected lawyer, and then blackmails the lawyer into kidnapping two teenage girls for more unsound fun. Most of the story, though, is devoted to the poverty-row motorcycles gang, led by Stephen Oliver, who captures the teenagers. Oliver, his girlfriend, and two feeble sidekicks bicker and fight constantly. Turkel gets his hands on the girls, but a sympathetic biker overpowers him and puts him out of his sick misery.

Lawrence's slow-moving B-movie promises teenager torture, but never delivers. The highlight is Turkel, who seduces a mannikin and plays the middle-aged lunatic in bug-eyed lunatic fashion, although his wardrobe -- consisting of early-70s styled flowered shirts -- is pretty obnoxious, too. Stafford Repp (the Irish cop from TV's "Batman") has a cameo role.

Not really so much a harrowing experience and glimpse into the dark depravity of humanity as the movie promotes itself but certainly a laughable cheapie drive in schlocker from 1972. A gang of bikers kidnapp two girls and hold them hostage in exchange for $10,000 from a sex crazed psycho who wants to kill the girls for his own private pleasures. The extremities are very limited , the worst thing the biker gang does to the girls is force them to disrobe only to their underwear and force them to smoke pot. Not really a shocking movie , and actually a pretty funny historical relic of the days of cheap drive-in fare , but worth a look at for some early sleaze

8/10

I would have thought the title would be more towards the main character but I guess "Cycle Wuss" doesn't have much selling potential. There's more than one biker and none of them are exactly "psycho", they resemble hell's angels rejects. This makes me wonder why our hero decided to hire bikers to do his dirty work? Anyway, the abduction of the two hippie girls isn't all that "savage", its just the girls gagged and left on a couch where they cry and moan. I don't know were they came up with a title like "Numbered Days". As for the film itself in a whole, you can really decide for yourself but probably won't feel any better or worse for doing so.