Don Sharp (director)
BFI Flipside (studio)
Cert 15 (certificate)
91min (length)
26 September 2016 (released)
26 September 2016
Frogs out of hell! Move over, Hells Angels bikers… for here come the hell-raising Living Dead, a teen motorcycle gang like no other! Nicky Henson is the leader of the pack in this highly entertaining – and incredibly silly – hokum from 1972 which has since gained a cult following particularly among… bikers!
Tom Latham (N. Henson) is not your average young lad, just like Mrs. Latham (Beryl Reid) is not your average Mum. Together with her somewhat sinister butler/assistant Shadwell (George Sanders) the eccentric old lady dabbles in séances and the occult. Their little mansion is neatly stacked away in the English countryside, where Tom and his gang delight in terrorizing the locals with the motorcycle shenanigans. Tom clearly has a few issues with authority and the bourgeois middle class in particular. He also has a frog for a pet which he addresses with “Hello, little green friend.” In fact, both his mother and Shadwell both wear distinctive rings on their fingers depicting, yep you guessed it, a frog! It was something given to her when (in a flashback scene) Mrs. Latham sold her soul to the devil during a secret ceremony in a place called ‘The Seven Witches’ – a kind of Stonehenge. Baby Tom was also present and clearly this is where he inhabited his now psychopathic streak. After relentless questions as to who his father was, Mum gives him the keys to a secret chamber and – presumably hallucinating from having touched his pet frog’s poisonous skin – sees a gigantic frog appearing on the wall before the wall turns transparent and shows him the ceremony for when he was a baby. Now, Tom wishes to make a pact with the devil as well by first committing suicide and then return back to the land of the living… The members of his gang play along for the hell of it though no one believes Tom such thing could really happen, even his nice girlfriend Abby (Mary Larkin) explains the reason as to why she can’t commit suicide together with Tom: because she needs to help her mum with the shopping the next morning! Only in England!
Nonetheless, Tom is hell-bent to demonstrate that it’s perfectly possible to return as one of the living dead if only one believes strongly enough in it. And yes, he is the first to go by racing over the edge of a bridge together with his beloved bike. His friends are in shock, no one can believe he did it. The funeral is held in un-sacred ground at the area of the Seven Witches, and dead Tom sits upright on his motorbike in what appears to be his grave while Abby and the rest pick flowers and another one of their pals strums a soppy folk-pop song called ‘Living Dead’ on his guitar. ‘Don’t bogart that joint’ it ain’t!
Sure enough, a few days later the earth splits open and Tom crashes out on his motorbike to create more terror than ever before. At first his mates can’t believe their eyes but encouraged by what they see they too commit suicide to return from the dead and spread havoc with their motorbikes. Only one or two won’t make the transition to the other side and back as they didn’t believe strongly enough in it. Abby attempts suicide by taking an overdose of sleeping pills but is saved just in the nick of time, which is just as well because Chief Inspector Hesseltine (Robert Hardy) is adamant to save the lass from all evil and uses her to set a trap for Tom and his remaining pals… The climax is as silly as it gets but once again, great fun to watch!
Apparently, both Beryl Reid and George Sanders turned their noses when receiving the script – however, the fact that they accepted proves that both stalwart actors had seen better days in their careers. Ironically enough, Sanders committed suicide in a Spanish hotel room shortly after Psychomania (his last film)… surely not the best publicity for this film! Even main star Nicky Henson admitted in an interview that Psychomania is “a piece of s***” and that he mainly accepted because he got excited to drive around on Harley Davidson machines… Unfortunately, those Harley’s turned out to be completely different makes from old scrapyards though at least Henson’s cool motorcycle outfit was his own!
This newly re-mastered cult flick is available in Dual Format edition and offers an array of insightful Special Features.