Psycho Cop (1989) Review
As you can probably guess, Psycho Cop is a blatant attempt at cashing in on the moderate success of 1988's fantastic slasher/action hybrid Maniac Cop. And while the film itself is unlike Maniac Cop besides the fact the killer is a cop, the planned marketing scheme was trying to convince people this was Maniac Cop.While the above VHS doesn't look like much, I own a screener copy of the film with the planned artwork, and the comparisons to Maniac Cop's artwork is undeniable. The slash marks through the lettering, the title is in the same font, and it even shows the streets of New York, while the actual film doesn't take place on the streets of New York! If the film had been called something else and had a different marketing scheme, I wouldn't be so quick to say this is a shameless rip-off, since the film is very different from Maniac Cop, but the title and cover makes me classify it as such.
Now on to the actual movie. Psycho Cop...well, it's a bit of a mixed bag. There are some really good elements and there are some really bad elements. For one, the acting in this movie is very, very poor. Sure, there are some good apples in the bad bunch, but some of their line delivery was so terrible, it's no wonder this was the first (and only) credit for most of the cast and crew. But all things considered, I'm surprised they did this well with the dialogue they were given! One character is running away from the killer (who he hasn't seen), sees a cop car, approaches it for help, Vickers pops out from behind a tree, axe raised, and the character says, "It can't be!", to which Vickers responds, "But it is!" Just all sorts of bad and hilarious dialogue is spewed throughout, which adds to the entertainment value.
The one thing I found excruciatingly annoying about this movie is that these characters (or at least one of them) are the most paranoid people you're apt to ever see! In one scene near the beginning, the heroine hears someone chopping wood in the woods and she begins to get worried and scared. Never mind the fact she just saw the caretaker walking around with his axe (why does this movie even need a red herring?), why would she get scared even if it was just some random guy getting firewood? I guess she somewhat had a reason to be paranoid, since all of them saw a police car following them, but come on! There's no way she can be this jumpy! One thing I found hilarious though is that characters constantly look in the worst places for lost objects. For example, one person's hairbrush is missing, so she looks in the tool shed for it when she never even went into the shed before! Then another character looks in the bushes outside the mansion for his toothbrush! But wait; the real kicker is when he actually finds it! Logic be damned!
Well, that's all I have for the negatives, so let's weigh in the positives. Probably the film's crowning achievement is the atmosphere. Most of the movie takes place at night, and there's always a bluish tint to everything when characters are outside. The woods make for a great and effective setting during the stalk-and-slash scenes, and it even manages to build up some suspense during these scenes. Bobby Ray Shafer plays the killer, and boy is he creepy! While most slasher fans go for the strong, silent killers, like Jason, I have always found the wise-cracking ones to be the scariest. There's just something about a guy laughing and grinning when he's trying to kill you that really works, and it works here. While he does spout a bad one-liner here and there, his big eyes and huge grin are enough to send shivers down my spine.
The kills in Psycho Cop are mostly either bloodless or have little blood at all, but I actually enjoyed some of them. He uses various police utensils to kill his victims, including a baton shoved down someone's throat and someone getting tazed to death! None of the other kills are as exciting, but I was entertained nonetheless and there's a decent amount of bodies. Another thing I love about this movie is the final chase. You know the drill: final couple running through the woods, killer making a halfhearted attempt to kill them, they get away, and repeat. But this chase scene is around twenty minutes long! What's even more astounding is that I was never bored during its length! The atmosphere is always heavy, the killer never stops being creepy and entertaining, there's some good suspense, and there are those moments when you think it's over, but than it starts back up again! It's all fantastic, and in the end, there's a bit of triple-identity crisis that was absurd and great fun.
Psycho Cop is not a very original slasher, seeing as it houses nearly every cliche in the book, but I still found it to be a great slice of late '80s cheesy slasher fun. The stupid characters, bad acting, and poor writing just add to the fun, and the great atmosphere and creepy killer are fantastic as well. The film has only been released on DVD in the UK, but finding a VHS online is easy and usually cheap. It's easy to understand how it hasn't gotten a DVD release, since no one really paid much attention to it and it's too similar to Maniac Cop. But hey, if The Last Shark, which got sued by Universal for too many similarities to Jaws, got a DVD release, anything's possible. Yet, oddly enough, it's far superior sequel (read my review here) has gotten a DVD release (albeit a very cut DVD release), so what gives? Is it attempting to cash-in on Maniac Cop? Yes. Is it as good as Maniac Cop? Oh, dear God no! But is it entertaining? You betcha!
The Verdict: Psycho Cop is as paint-by-the-numbers as they come, but it's still a lot of fun, even if it drags in the beginning.
Score: 7/10. Definitely worth a purchase, but don't go out of your way to track it down.
