Plot
When a group of teenagers decide to
spend their vacation in a rural summer house, it seems like it's going to be
the perfect time for some drinking, sex and general all round partying.
However they didn't plan on having their party crashed by Officer Joe
Vickers, a Satanist and murderous cop intent on killing anyone in his way..
Review
1988 is the year when filmmakers
seemingly decided to turn law enforcing patrons into psychopathic killers,
intent on wiping criminals and everyone else off the map. Psycho Cop
and the vastly superior Maniac Cop were both released in the same
year (not sure which was first - I was only 7 then!) and both deal with the
same sort of story: a cop goes on a murderous rampage. Only whilst Maniac
Cop opted for the serious route with a quality cast and strong script,
Psycho Cop seems to have been given what was leftover when everyone
else had their fill of ideas. Turning the character of a psycho cop into
another Freddy Kruger and setting the whole thing up in the hills are just
two of many mistakes that this wretched film makes.
The film doesn't actually get to any plot until the final five minutes and
even then the whole film can be summed up by "Satanic cop kills people." The
film opens with the cop killing a few people and then we meet the teenagers
for a bit. After a load of build up, the cop finally starts killing people
but again we don't know who he is or what he is doing. The chronic lack of
characters doesn't help matters, nor does the remote location. Since they
have no contact with anyone else, we have to wait until someone shows up
late in the film before any explanation is given. By that time, it seems
like an afterthought. To be fair, the idea of a psycho cop doesn't need much
explanation. The guy is a total loon and fires off as many clichéd
cop-themed one-liners as you can think of. "You have the right to
remain...DEAD" and "you're obstructing justice" are just some of the many
groan-inducing quotes said with cheesy relish by Robert R. Shafer. His
overacting is as embarrassing as the rest of the cast's lack of acting
ability. The characters they play are so damned paranoid too. They are
forever losing things and looking for them straight away (a chick loses her
hair brush outside and then proceeds to look in every single place she
didn't go near during the day like the tool shed). As soon as another
character leaves the scene, the others are like "where is...? what has
happened to...?" The worst example is that of the caretaker. He introduces
himself early on and then disappears, an early victim of the cop. But then
characters spend most of the film looking for this guy they just met and
worrying about where he may have gone, fearing the worst. He does have a
life of his own you know! They are always thinking that they're being
watched too (which they are come to think of it). I can clearly see that the
writers tried to make the characters a bit more believable - usually the
dumb teens in these films don't miss their friends. But this is going
totally the other way.
Being
a slasher film, what's the crack with the staples of the genre - the gore,
kills and nudity? Well there's little gore, the kills are lame and there's
no nudity! The cop kills his victims with whatever he can find - taser guns,
his own bare hands, his baton, etc. He's hardly going to win any Jason
awards for his creativity with a sharp instrument. Given some of the hot
female cast, it's a crime that there wasn't a taste of nudity - hell they
even have a bath at one point. Come on Wallace Potts, get your cast to stand
out of the tub! Potts does try and build up a little suspense it has to be
said. But his constant shots of the killer's boots or the killer walking in
front of the camera to watch someone get a little tiresome given we know
that it's the cop! The musical score isn't too bad - one of those simple 80s
synth scores found so often in slasher films.
Verdict
Psycho Cop
deserves a swift kicking from it's superior officer - Maniac Cop.
Dull, annoying and on for 86 minutes way too long, this is one stinker you
wish would have been locked up with the key thrown away for good measure.
