Moto Psycho (2012)

I've said it before and I'll say it again - I sit through some absolute shite at times.  Sometimes I find myself enduring some God awful film and I have no idea why I'm inflicting such torture upon myself - why don't I just switch it off, why do I feel this urge to see it through to the bitter end?  Well, it's the curse we lovers of low-rent cinema suffer from - the desire to see if it can get any worse, or whether any redeeming features might turn up.  Besides, there's a certain sense of achievement when you make it to the end of some barely comprehensible jumble of scenes masquerading as a movie - which is what I felt yesterday when, at the second attempt, I made it all the way through Moto Psycho (2012).  I suppose, if one was feeling generous, it could be described as a 'semi-professional' direct-to-video production.  But, in truth, it is effectively somebody's home movie which has somehow escaped, rather than being released.  Judging by the credits, it is a family production, headed up by one Mark Gudsnuk, who is credited as writer and director and plays the title role, with various members of his family filling out the other roles, joined by what I guess are his friends and neighbours.  Looking as if it was filmed on a mobile phone, Moto Psycho involves as fright mask wearing farmhand in Connecticut, who goes around murdering locals and stealing parts of their bodies, with which he is stitching together some kind of Frankenstein monster as part of a scheme to resurrect his dead sister.  He is instructed and guided by a mysterious doctor who apparently communicates with him via TV screens.

As the bodies stack up, the local cops, (who are played by a pair of grey haired dudes who look like they've stepped out of a country and western music video), are hot on his trail.  Well, they drive along rural back roads and have meandering conversations with elderly residents a lot, that is.  There are lots of confusing flashbacks, shaky and blurred camera work, stilted dialogue and what appear to be improvised performances from the non-professional cast, but eventually the crazy farm hand reanimates his patchwork creation, which does come to life and rips his head off.  She then rides off on his motorcycle, wearing his mask and sporting his severed head in place of a headlamp.  Presumably to carry on the killings for some unspecified reason.  Then, mercifully, the titles roll.  But wait!  It isn't over yet! We are then treated to what seems an unending series of pseudo-documentary sequences chronicling the misdeeds and mysterious disappearance of that crazy doctor on the TV, ending with the threat of a sequel.  It truly is crap, attempting to stitch together several sub-genres into a single narrative, but failing to generate any suspense, tension or scares along the way.  Much of it shot, unsteadily, in close up with light levels too high,  while the editing is rudimentary and the performances, not surprisingly, flat and unconvincing.  The director claimed that the film 'is a throw back to the horror films of the 1960's and 70's'. To be fair, I can see what he is getting at - I've seen plenty of ultra-low budget movies of not dissimilar ilk, with bargain basement production values, fuzzy photography and tangled narratives, often directed by the likes of David L Hewitt.  But they all were all made by professional filmmakers who brought a certain bottom-of-barrel professional sheen to them.  Moto Psycho does have some of the sense of sheer delirium the best schlock movies of that era possess.  But it is difficult to discern whether that is intentional or merely the result of bad film making

And yet - I can't completely dismiss Moto Psycho as irredeemable shite.  As is often the case with schlock, there is the kernel of a good idea in there.  The whole business of the TV doctor and his experiments at direct mental communication - manifested in the recipients mind as seeing him on the TV screen - has possibilities.  These are hinted at in those post-credits sequences, which give further glimpses into experiments with children and belief in the existence of dual universes.  You can't help but feel that this should have been the film and Moto Psycho relegated to a series of post-credits snippets.  An interesting foot note contained in the credits tells us that the film was shot between 2005 and 2011, meaning that several of the older cast members had died before its completion.