WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS (1956)

Solely based on the lurid posters and DVD cover, you would think that WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS was a straight up pre-PSYCHO horror movie about a serial killer preying on innocent women. But, just like how Jesus says in Matthew 7:46: “And Jesus said unto Asmodeus, ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover.’”, so should you not judge WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS by it’s artwork.

After a mildly startling opener featuring a poor woman who just wants to take a bath without getting murdered, we’re introduced to media mogul Robert Warwick who’s so attached to his job that he has his literal death bed in his office! He has two regrets in his life: one, his shitty douche of a son (played brilliantly by Vincent Price) and two: not officially naming faithful TV anchorman Dana Andrew as the person to take over his empire when he croaks…which he does like 5 seconds later. His death puts Price in charge and his first order of business is pitting his main bosses into an all out war with each other. And that includes one dude who’s long-dicking Price’s own wife! Goddamn! Added to all this (don’t forget we still got a serial killer running around) there’s subplot about Andrew’s fiancé, Sally Forrest, who also works at the news network and happens to live across the hallway from Price’s wife’s fuck shack! And, if that wasn’t enough, you have writer Ida Lupino getting in the middle of everything. It’s awesome.

As always, I went into the movie totally blind and I ended up having a lot of fun. I was straight-up shocked by the star-power in the movie (both in front and behind the camera) and very impressed by the maturity of the script. Overall, I found WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS to be a great discovery (to me, at least) and recommend it to fans of older Hollywood. The only thing that really stood out as a negative was Sally Forrest's hair.

Not part of the review, but a few interesting(?) things that I discovered while reading about the movie: the original 1953 novel, named "The Bloody Spur" (no clue what the fuck that means) was written by Charles Einstein who is the half-brother of both Albert Brooks and Bob Einstein! The killer was played by John Drew Barrymore, who is the son of John Barrymore and the father of Drew Barrymore!

PSYCHOMANIA (1973)

Tom: "And another thing.  You can only die once.  After that, nothing and nobody can harm you."
Jane: "Oh, man!  What are we waiting for?!"

Tom is the leader of a motorcycle gang.  And by "gang", I mean 8 dorks with even dorkier helmets who ride around on a bunch of old rattletrap bikes that look like they're about to fall apart at any moment.  They do randomly murder some innocent people, so that's a plus.  One evening, Tom learns the secret of immortality and promptly kills himself.  Soon, he's back from the dead and riding around causing mayhem.  He convinces his fellow gang members to kill themselves as well (the suicide montage is the best part of the movie) and before you can say "I should really watch CEMETERY MAN again." they're all (minus the idiot who couldn't even kill himself properly) back from the dead, driving around wrecking shit.

For an early 70's "horror" movie, PSYCHOMANIA is entertaining in a funny sort of way.  There's definitely nothing even remotely scary about it, but the music is cool and the silly story moves along quickly enough.  Zero tits, zero gore, zero blood, very little violence, passable acting, a dead motorcyclist buried in a grave on his motorcycle somehow starts it up and explodes out of the grave 10 years before LONE WOLF MCQUADE, interesting 70's fashions, never fully explained zombie strength, fog, lackluster ending.

Not the greatest thing ever, but I don't regret watching it. In some other perfect alternative universe there is a action-packed movie where the motorcycle dorks from PSYCHOMANIA rumble with the motorcycle dorks from SATAN'S SADISTS.