Motorpsycho!

Motorpsycho!

Published on

The movie industry, like fashion, has a thing for trends. When one movie is a hit, an avalanche of similar themed movies are going to be hot on its trail, especially when they can be made cheap. Just think about all the slasher movies that were made when Halloween became a surprise hit, the torture-porn movies after Saw, the found footage movies since The Blair Witch Project and the pile of Die Hard influenced action movies in the 90s. One of the trend in the 60s was the biker movie, and after a couple of other successful biker movies, director Russ Meyer decided to cash in on the trend with his Motorpsycho!

Motorpsycho! is an exploitation movie about a couple of bikers who just ride around the desert countryside and who rape every attractive woman they get the chance to. If they happen to come across her husband they have no problem in beating him up, or even killing him. The law doesn’t do much to stop stop them so when they rape veterinarian Cory Maddox’s wife, he sets out to take justice on his own. Helping him is Ruby Bonner (Haji) who he found left for dead in the desert after the same gang assaulted her and killed her husband.

The themes explored in Motorpsycho! are the same as the similar but superior Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, but with the gender roles reversed. Instead of three girls in cars, it’s three guys on motorcycles mopeds, as the budget apparently wasn’t high enough to afford three actual motorcycles. They travel around the desert countryside and have violent encounters with everybody they come across. Unlike the girls in Pussycat, these guys have no real agenda; no scheme to pull off. They are led by a Vietnam veteran who is clearly having some P.T.S.D. episodes, making this probably the first time something like this was portrayed in a movie. It’s funny how (s)exploitation movies directed by a man obsessed with big breasts occasionally have such elements in them.

motorpsycho-screen-2

The restraint Meyer showed with Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! is followed through here. There is some nudity in the movie but never gratuitous. Like Varla in Pussycat, Haji walks around in an outfit showing her cleavage all the time, yet she never has any moments of random nudity. Even during a violent attack, Meyer’s shoots her in such a way just see glimpses, but never in the movie is there a gratuitous full frontal shot like in Lorna and Mudhoney. This worked wonders for Pussycat, but not so much for Motorpsycho! In Pussycat the girls where in control whereas the girls in Motorpsycho! are victims. By showing restraint, scenes with the gang assaulting women feel forced because Meyer goes to great lengths to keep everything as PG as possible. This results in Haji having her cloths torn off in a shot from the back, then when she’s on the ground in the next shot the dress has magically been pulled up again so it covers her boobs. It also makes the casting of buxom women unnecessary; why cast women based upon their chest size if you’re only going to tease them, save for a quick glimpse, for the majority of the movie?

motorpsycho-screen-1

This is as gratuitous as it’s gonna get

Female star Haji is a puzzling casting choice to a certain degree. While she does have a dominating screen presence, her thick accent, which is sold off as Cajun (but who are they trying to fool?), make a lot of her lines together with her tendency to overact unintentionally funny. But to be honest, there is one scene in which even she is outshone as her male co-star Alex Rocco as his Cory is bitten in his leg by a snake which apparently renders him useless immediately as he forces her first to cut X-es in the bite marks and then screams about how she must suck the poison out while pushing her head to his leg. This goes on for about a good minute or so and is pretty hilarious.

Haji and the snakebite in Motorpsycho!

He could just as easy have sucked the poison out himself

Rape is a recurring element in Russ Meyer’s movies, but it’s mostly seen as no biggie. Girls who get raped get up and about in no time as if nothing has happened. In Lorna the title character even falls for her rapist during the assault. Motorpsycho! is the exception as the women who are raped don’t act as if nothing has happened. Cory’s wife Gail (Holle K. Winters) is rushed off to the hospital after neighbors called the assault in. The only typical Meyer inclusion here is that of himself in a cameo as the sheriff who states that “She’ll be alright in a week or so, after all nothing happened to her that a woman ain’t built for”.

Ouch.

Remarks like those clearly date this film, which otherwise still holds up pretty well. It’s very inline with the other movies Meyer made during his “Gothic period”. Gritty, raw, violent, black and white and set in the outback of the U.S.
Motorpsycho! does make some strange choices especially towards the ending; Cory has been shown to be faithful to his wife even when women try to seduce him. But there is a constant sense of chemistry and sexual tension between him and Ruby, partially because of the seductive look of the latter. When he’s ailing due to the snake bite she wraps herself under the blankets with him, placing her body on top of him to keep him warm. Meyer shows a close-up of her butt moving under the blanket suggesting, but not 100% implying, sex. At the end when the final biker has been taken care of, they ride off to get her medical attention. We’re never told how it ended for his wife, other than the sheriff’s earlier remark about the “alright in a week”. But I’m not 100% convinced on the sheriff’s medical qualities, especially concerning the female body.

Motorspycho! is a decent movie, but would have benefited of a more explicit sexploitation approach as the result is rather tame especially for Meyer standards. It’s too much teasing and not enough delivering. Having a dress magically reappear after it has been removed by force seconds earlier isn’t something you would expect in a Meyer movie, quite the opposite as it would make way for minutes of gratuitous nudity. Something which is sorely missed. But it’s still an entertaining gritty grindhouse movie with at least one classic scene.


Motorpsycho! poster
Motorpsycho! poster
Motorpsycho!
  • Year:
    1965
  • Director:
    • Russ Meyer
  • Cast:
    • Haji
    • Alex Rocco
    • Steve Oliver
    • Holle K. Winters
  • Genres:
    Action, Thriller
  • Running time:
    74m

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.


You might also like: