Crew
Director/Photography – Jack M. Sell, Screenplay – Jack M. Sell & Peter Spelson, Story/Producer – Peter Spelson, Music – Tommy Irons, Animation – Thomas Kwilosz. Production Company – Spelson Productions, Inc/Jack M. Sell Associates.
Cast
Peter Spelson (Rocky Fosco), Christopher Carbis (Lieutenant Walter O’Brien), Paul Marvel (Dr Steinberg), Curt Colbert (Sergeant Chuck Jackson), Robin Newton (Kathy), Lindsey Novak (Mrs Fosco), Bob McDonald (Old Man), Irwin Lewin (Professor)
Plot
Rocky Fosco runs a barbershop in Chicago and has a wife and two children. One day, while driving home, he has a hallucination of his car being suspended in mid-air. In trying to understand what happened, Rocky starts to manifest powerful psychic urges – what are called psychotronic powers. Police investigate after Rocky leaves an old man part-embedded inside a wall. Detective Walter O’Brien follows the trail of Rocky and the other bodies he leaves behind.
The most famous distinction that The Psychotronic Man bequeathed the world is that is gave its name to the ‘psychotronic’ film cult. The title was appropriated by Michael Weldon – all apparently without having seen the film – when he created Psychotronic Video (1980-2006), a magazine devoted to films that fall outside the mainstream and received releases at so-called grindhouse and drive-in theatres. Weldon had a hit when he released the book The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film (1983) and its follow-up The Psychotronic Video Guide (1996), which became a bible of sorts in the pre-internet era of all weird, non-mainstream film material. (The author has a copy of both in his library).
Weldon is vague about what a psychotronic film is – in the introduction to the first edition of The Psychotronic Film Guide he states “‘Psycho’ stands for the horror movies, and ‘tronic’ stands for the science fiction movies. I very quickly expanded the meaning of the word to include any kind of exploitation or b-movie” and “… psychotronic films cover everything from social commentary to degrading trash. They concern teenagers, rock‘n’roll, juvenile delinquents, monsters, aliens, killers, spies, detectives, bikers, communists, drugs, natural catastrophes, atomic bombs, the prehistoric past and the projected future. They star ex-models, ex-sports stars, would-be Marilyns, future Presidents (and First Ladies), dead rock stars and has beens of all types.” Weldon’s definitions of what constitute a psychotronic film are extremely broad – the Guide includes everything from all the usual suspects to Elvis films, Gidget movies and E.T. – The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) – not normally works that you would associate with the psychotronic cult.
While Weldon is very broad about his definitions of what a psychotronic film is, it is questionable whether The Psychotronic Man would ever have been accepted as one of the weird, culty, psychedelic, trippy films that the psychotronic cult has come to symbolise. In fact, you suspect that the subsequent promotion of the psychotronic cult has given the film a prominence it would never otherwise have had. Most who do see it subsequently come away disappointed.
The Psychotronic Man is filmed in dreary and ordinary ways. The film stock appears to be 16mm. The film has a psychic powers premise but most of it is dull stuff – shots that consist of Peter Spelson spending long minutes driving through the countryside and the like. The main plot ends up sidelining the powers for the most part and plays out as an incredibly routine police procedural as detectives try to track Peter Spelson’s killer. The most exciting things ever get is a very long car chase that climaxes the film.
What we want The Psychotronic Man to be is another Psychic Powers film like Carrie (1976) or perhaps even The Fury (1978), but instead we get this dogged police procedural. Even the depiction of the psychic powers is incredible dull – apart from one scene where doctor Paul Marvel is thrown through the window of his office and lands on the pavement below with his head splattering. There is the scene where Peter Spelson unleashes his powers on the old man (Bob McDonald) but the effect of the old man impaled in the wall is only shown afterwards when the police arrive at the scene. Aside from that there are dull sequence where Spelson’s car is levitated in mid-air and where his main attack during his flight seems to be … pushing people away from him at a distance.
Director Jack M. Sell only went on to make two other films – the comedy Outtakes (1987) and the spy film Deadly Spygames (1989).
Full film available here