User Reviews

If you're like me and have a bit of a twisted sense of humor then the odds are pretty good that you will like PSYCHOS IN LOVE. Made in 1987 while the video boom was still going strong the movie was one of those straight to tape films that filled the shelves at mom and pop video stores across the country. With its cover depicting a wedding couple kissing while the groom is stabbing a woman and the bride is decapitating someone with a chainsaw pretty much summed up the movie in a single picture it was either one you sought out or were repulsed by. Back then I was at least curious.

At the time I wasn't all that impressed but then again I was watching so many releases while owning a store and trying to decide what to buy that I was a bit jaded. With the film's release by Vinegar Syndrome I can now make a better call on if it was good or not.

Joe (Carmine Capobianco) owns a bar where he meets women. Once he finds himself alone with them rather than what most would expect, a quick roll in the hay, he instead kills them. Until he meets Kate (Debi Thibeault). Kate has the same compulsion as Joe in that she goes out with a guy, takes him home and then kills him.

As any fan of TV crime shows will tell you it usually takes a trigger to provoke a serial killer. In this case it's grapes. Both Joe and Kate have an aversion to grapes in any way, shape or form as well as anyone who likes grapes. Thus when grapes or wine are mentioned they kill the person promoting them.

The couple eventually move in together and carry on with their hobby of killing people. It's not cheating as no sex ever happens and the end result is always the same, a dead body. That becomes an issue when their drain gets clogged with body parts. The good/bad news is their plumber doesn't hold that against them since he's a serial killer as well. He just asks that they give him the body parts once their deeds are done so he can eat them.

Here's where a problem comes up. Finding happiness with one another both Joe and Kate have begun to feel that they no longer need to kill anyone. Their psychopathic ways are stifled by their love life. What are they to do? The movie is a mix of good and bad parts. The good is that there are some truly funny moments in the film. It does a decent job of combining the dark humor necessary to make it work with the gore factor that will keep gore fans happy. On the downside the acting is pretty weak and perhaps that's intentionally so. The cinematography is also very low budget. In some cases that helps with the humor as boom mics pop into a scene and are grabbed by the actors. Moments of the fourth wall being broken also add some funny spots.

Vinegar Syndrome has done a bang up job with this release. Not only are they offering it in much better condition than ever before with a new 2k scan from a 16mm camera negative. The amount of extras included here is amazing for a film that's more cult favorite than box office smash. Included are a commentary track with director/writer/producer Gorman Bechard and Carmine Capobianco (who also helped write the script and the music), a commentary track with Gorman Bechard, DIRECTING PSYCHOS an interview with Bechard, PLAYING A PSYCHO an interview with Capobianco, DISCUSSING PSYCHOS a discussion with Bechard and Capobianco, MAKING PSYCHOS a making of featurette, a Q&A session shot at Cinema Wasteland in 2016 with Capobianco, the original trailer, behind the scenes photo gallery, promotional image gallery, rough edit outtakes and extended scenes, highlights from the PSYCHOS IN LOVE stage play, four short films directed by Bechard, a booklet essay by Art Ettinger and Matt Desiderio, original artwork from Derek Gabryszak and a reversible cover artwork. Whew! That's quite a load of extras! As I said this movie is not for everyone and the more mainstream your movie tastes run the odds decrease in how well you will like this one. But if you enjoy the quirky, if you like movies that are a bit off base, if you sense of humor runs toward the dark end of the spectrum then you'll want to add this one to your collection.

Cheery serial killer comedy has Joe(Carmine Capobianco), a homicidal murder of women meeting Kate(Debi Thibeault), a psychopath who enjoys killing men, with the result being a match made in hell. Joe selects his victims through a strip joint/bar he owns, sometimes customers, other times employees. Kate is a manicurist who often slays male customers who make sexual advances. We follow their extra curricular activities and complicated life before and after marriage, dealing with the urge to kill and loss of thrills that derive from slaughtering too many victims. Also, in a minor sub-plot, this plumber butchers and eats clients who call him up to fix their clogged sink pipes.

The entire film is completely tongue and cheek, but features sick humor regarding the joy of burying a knife or another weapon into chosen victims for kicks. Lots of blood and throat slashing..with knives, scissors, even a finger-nail file stabbing into the bodies of unfortunates who decided to accept what they thought was a type of probable sexual encounter. The film doesn't really follow a narrative with the filmmakers instead allowing us into the disturbing lives of this psychotic duo, and how they go about their daily activities;the selection of victims, how obnoxious those chosen can be, the time spent with them before Joe and Kate tire of their presence with bloodshed not far behind. Plenty of tits feature prominently during dances in the stripper joint, not to mention, those female victims who come home with Joe. Even a bevy of shower sequences with the camera shooting up close often gliding down naked bodies as women bathe. Thibeault is not bad to look at, and one can see why she has a wide selection of men to off in sadistic ways. Capobianco seems to be enjoying himself, not really even trying to act..I felt just by watching him that Capobianco acts like this all the time. Director Gorman Bechard and his film-making team were able to get a lot of women to go topless in this film, with obviously many being local gals. Shot on a shoestring, you can see how the filmmakers cut corners in an attempt to realistically present the nasty behavior of psychopaths with a pleasure for violence and dismemberment. That's why they do everything they can to ratchet up the zany comedy and endless supply of zingers with some hitting the mark, and others painfully lame. While their acts of violence, and calm reserve during and after them, are meant to shock, you never take the film seriously due to the lighthearted tone.

To a certain crowd, this will be a lot of fun, but for a vast majority, I feel it will be considered repulsive and cheap. I think for such a low budget(..Capobianco doesn't shy away from the fact that he used a Casio for the film's soundtrack, it's even out during a scene at his bar while the crowd was dancing), many will turn it away. But, I consider this to be one of the better micro-budget flicks to come out of the 80's. Shot mostly in Joe's home and bar, the film can be a bit claustrophobic at times. Oh, Joe and Kate's loathing of all things grapes is constantly reminded to us..they even kill people who claim to like grapes.

...and really not worth your bother, "Psychos in Love" will likely remain notable for two reasons, and two reasons only: make-up artist Jennifer "Street Trash" Aspinall's participation, and the absurdist hook of two serial killers with a mutual loathing for grapes. Beyond that, it's a regrettable mess, chock full of boring dialog, hapless actors, and all the production value of a slapdash student film. Don't be fooled; this pitiful excuse for a movie fails utterly to live up to the promise of its title. The leads evince no chemistry whatsoever, deliver their lines like they're reading from cue cards, and thankfully went nowhere significant in their careers. Small recompense to anyone who sits through this dreck.

I paid nothing to view this, but still feel ripped off.

PSYCHOS IN LOVE is a grossly unfunny indie comedy horror film of the 1980s. The plot literally has a male and female serial killer meeting up and falling in love. It's cheap and stupid throughout, with excruciating mannered tongue-in-cheek acting from beginning to end and plentiful gags which simply aren't funny. The first half of the film is one riff on the PSYCHO shower scene after another, with copious topless nudity from briefly-seen female starlets and tomato ketchup spraying all over the place. Later, cheesy gore effects are the order of the day, and they're pretty stupid. The only thing I can commend about this is the excellent high-definition presentation by Vinegar Syndrome.