The Canadian
science fiction comedy Psycho Goreman had lots of potential—a spoof of
cheeseball '80s kids movies combined with rubber-suited monsters and absurd,
over-the-top violence—but it's all undone by lazy writing.
While playing in their yard, siblings
Mimi (Nita-Josee Hanna) and Luke (Owen Myre) accidentally unearth a glowing gem
that controls the actions of an evil demon-looking alien who hates everything
and wants to destroy the universe. The kids name the monster Psycho Goreman
(Matthew Ninaber, with the voice of Steven Vlahos), and Mimi decides to use him
to do her bidding, but he wants to kill her and everyone else if he can just
escape the power of the gem. There is also another evil alien in pursuit of
Goreman.
I guess the best way to describe Psycho
Goreman is to imagine The Monster Squad (1987) mixed with Troma's The Toxic Avenger
(1984). The premise here is amusing, but writer/director Steven Kostanski
doesn't do anything with it. He even throws out the film's logic after about
the first 30 minutes. You see, the kids keep PG hidden from the rest of the
world, but then, out of nowhere, there is a cutesy montage of them bringing the
murderous creature out in public with no one noticing a space gargoyle in their
midst. Then, a few scenes later, the police show up because of reports of a
monster.
There are some moments of outlandishly
funny gore, but not enough of them. While I'm not a fan of Peter Jackson's
early splatter flick Dead Alive, aka Braindead (1992), at least
it delivers the blood-drenched goods in scene after scene.
I appreciate a movie that uses
practical effects, but the decision in Psycho Goreman to use some
digital effects in certain scenes is detrimental to the gags. For example, one
scene has PG using his powers to cause a smart-ass kid to combust. A cheap
digital effect is used, but a practical explosion reminiscent of Scanners (1981) would have really sold
the twisted laugh.
Psycho Goreman is available to
rent or purchase on various streaming services.
