Psychos in Love

source: Psychos in Love

PSYCHOS IN LOVE is a grossly unfunny indie comedy horror film of the 1980s. The plot literally has a male and female serial killer meeting up and falling in love. It's cheap and stupid throughout, with excruciating mannered tongue-in-cheek acting from beginning to end and plentiful gags which simply aren't funny. The first half of the film is one riff on the PSYCHO shower scene after another, with copious topless nudity from briefly-seen female starlets and tomato ketchup spraying all over the place. Later, cheesy gore effects are the order of the day, and they're pretty stupid. The only thing I can commend about this is the excellent high-definition presentation by Vinegar Syndrome.

"Psychos In Love" has been slowly building a cult over the years. It gets brought up and discussed in the movie newsgroups every so often, proof of its building cult. It's cheap and crude, but it is undeniably very, very funny. The two lead actors are perfect, giving dead-pan performances that just add to the humor. The title song will automatically become a favorite of yours the first time you hear it. Oh yes, it IS quite gory. But the gore is in the spirit of movies like DEAD ALIVE - we laugh at the gore instead of being disgusted. I was fortunate enough to locate and talk to the creator of this movie. He mentioned that to this day he still gets letters about this movie. He also mentioned that if we want the movie to be rereleased on video, we should write to Full Moon Entertainment, because they control the distribution. I've written my letter - have you?

This film isn't hokey or predictable, it knows exactly what it is doing: messing with the audience and having a great time. The dialogue between Joe and Kate is some of the best, quirkiest, and offbeat genius I have heard come out of a forte of slasher comedies from the 80's. The film satisfies. It placates. It delivers the bloody goods on so many levels. It's hard for me to explain the appeal; most people hate it unjustly. It seems to come from this pit of frustration the writer(s) feel, exploding in a wave of nihilistic apathy and brilliant gore. It defines the eighties. It defines the way people feel and is entertainment on an elevated level. It is classic.

Cheery serial killer comedy has Joe(Carmine Capobianco), a homicidal murder of women meeting Kate(Debi Thibeault), a psychopath who enjoys killing men, with the result being a match made in hell. Joe selects his victims through a strip joint/bar he owns, sometimes customers, other times employees. Kate is a manicurist who often slays male customers who make sexual advances. We follow their extra curricular activities and complicated life before and after marriage, dealing with the urge to kill and loss of thrills that derive from slaughtering too many victims. Also, in a minor sub-plot, this plumber butchers and eats clients who call him up to fix their clogged sink pipes. The entire film is completely tongue and cheek, but features sick humor regarding the joy of burying a knife or another weapon into chosen victims for kicks. Lots of blood and throat slashing..with knives, scissors, even a finger-nail file stabbing into the bodies of unfortunates who decided to accept what they thought was a type of probable sexual encounter. The film doesn't really follow a narrative with the filmmakers instead allowing us into the disturbing lives of this psychotic duo, and how they go about their daily activities;the selection of victims, how obnoxious those chosen can be, the time spent with them before Joe and Kate tire of their presence with bloodshed not far behind. Plenty of tits feature prominently during dances in the * joint, not to mention, those female victims who come home with Joe. Even a bevy of shower sequences with the camera shooting up close often gliding down naked bodies as women bathe. Thibeault is not bad to look at, and one can see why she has a wide selection of men to off in sadistic ways. Capobianco seems to be enjoying himself, not really even trying to act..I felt just by watching him that Capobianco acts like this all the time. Director Gorman Bechard and his film-making team were able to get a lot of women to go topless in this film, with obviously many being local gals. Shot on a shoestring, you can see how the filmmakers cut corners in an attempt to realistically present the nasty behavior of psychopaths with a pleasure for violence and dismemberment. That's why they do everything they can to ratchet up the zany comedy and endless supply of zingers with some hitting the mark, and others painfully lame. While their acts of violence, and calm reserve during and after them, are meant to shock, you never take the film seriously due to the lighthearted tone. To a certain crowd, this will be a lot of fun, but for a vast majority, I feel it will be considered repulsive and cheap. I think for such a low budget(..Capobianco doesn't shy away from the fact that he used a Casio for the film's soundtrack, it's even out during a scene at his bar while the crowd was dancing), many will turn it away. But, I consider this to be one of the better micro-budget flicks to come out of the 80's. Shot mostly in Joe's home and bar, the film can be a bit claustrophobic at times. Oh, Joe and Kate's loathing of all things grapes is constantly reminded to us..they even kill people who claim to like grapes.

Psychos in Love is one of the most twisted comedies you will ever see. Way ahead of it's time, it's been ripped off by Hollywood (SCREAM!) and Madison Avenue Ad Agencies (the insurance industry's grape commercial...c'mon!), and I'm sure it's still being quote today by fans who first saw it two decades ago. The new DVD is ridiculously cool! Extras abound. The two commentaries offer completely different takes on the film. Gorman's solo is like a great film class. The one with him and Carmine is funny and sweet. The making off made me laugh out loud. And the photo gallery is really amazing. I love this movie. Along side The Evil Dead and Reanimator, probably my favorite in the horror genre of all time. Glad to finally see it get the DVD release it deserves. A must have for any good DVD collection!

...and really not worth your bother, "Psychos in Love" will likely remain notable for two reasons, and two reasons only: make-up artist Jennifer "Street Trash" Aspinall's participation, and the absurdist hook of two serial killers with a mutual loathing for grapes. Beyond that, it's a regrettable mess, chock full of boring dialog, hapless actors, and all the production value of a slapdash student film. Don't be fooled; this pitiful excuse for a movie fails utterly to live up to the promise of its title. The leads evince no chemistry whatsoever, deliver their lines like they're reading from cue cards, and thankfully went nowhere significant in their careers. Small recompense to anyone who sits through this dreck. I paid nothing to view this, but still feel ripped off.

By reading the box at the video store this movie looks rather amusingly disturbing. You know the type....funny but supposed to frighten you.... this was not funny or horrific. the writing was lame...the jokes failed to make me laugh even at their extreme mundaneness....they were so expected. the actors didn't even do much with such a not so good script...at least I hope that wasn't their best..watch this movie at your own risk......I give it negative 3 stars outta 10

Back in the 1980's - when pretty much everyone thought they could make their own independent horror movie - there was an overload of amateurish, insipid and often downright awful films. Basically "Psychos in Love" is such a film, but at least it remains endurable at all times thanks to the general absurdity of the plot and the spirited enthusiasm of cast and crew. Joe is a strip club owner who tells bad jokes and brutally kills young girls as a hobby. Kate works as an independent manicure and she enjoys killing all the pathetic men that try to get in her pants. It's love at first sight for the two psychopathic killers, especially upon realizing they share an extreme detestation for grapes. Let it be clear, they hate grapes! They hate blue grapes as well as green grapes. They hate them with seeds or without, peeled or not peeled. They hate them in bunches, separately or in pairs! Well I'm sorry to rant on about the grapes, but this monologue gets repeated at least half a dozen times in the movie, so the least I could do was to include it here as well. Joe and Kate decide to have an open relationship, where they can each slash and mutilate as much as they want, but they quickly grow tired of killing. They attempt to revive their mutual hobby by killing together and there's also a bizarre encounter with a cannibalistic plumber. As you can tell, "Psychos in Love" should definitely NOT be taken seriously, and that's exactly the reason why it's still somewhat amusing. It's okay that the acting performances are abominable and the dialogs appear to be written by kindergarten pupils. The bad make-up effects are quite charming and the overload of gratuitous female nudity is actually also an obligatory thing in a tasteless 80's horror movie. Main problems here are that the ingenious gimmick of murdering lovers gets dull rather quickly (especially since they even exist to sing a song about their love) and personally I really hated all those stupid "we're in a movie" jokes. Microphones deliberately hanging in the picture, characters talking straight into the camera and referring to previous scenes, etc. Why insist on assuring the audience that this is just a movie through lousy humor? I mainly agree with the general statement claiming that "Psychos in Love" is what B-movies are all about, but they should have dropped that.

It's awful, horrid, terrible. I would recommend it to anyone I know. It is just so perfectly awful. The soundtrack was obviously done on a $19.95 Casio by a one armed musician. This film's appeal can be compared to that of "Toxic Avenger", another New Jersey homespun tale. Its caring details make it a caricature of itself and of horror films in general. It's funny. It's awful. It's awfully funny. And if you groaned even a little at that last joke, see this film.... if you can find it.