'Psyclops' is fun but flawed

In light of a comment made by writer/director Brett Piper below, in response to this review, I am going to be rewatching and reevaluating this film. I will be posting some additional comments over at Cinema Steve, and I'll link to them here. My first thought was to just revise the article, but that felt like "hiding the evidence." (The review was originally posted on 2/10/11. I'll be watching the film again and have some comments up soon.)


Psyclops (2002)
Starring: Dan Merriman, Rob Monkiewicz, Irene Elizabeth Joseph, Diane DiGregorio, Liz Hurley, and Phip Barbour
Director: Brett Piper
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

A geeky film student (Merriman) fires up the 150 year-old creation of a mad scientist and creates a bridge between our dimension and another. He is transformed into a hideous creature with a video camera fused into his skull and sets out to transform a girl he has a crush on (DiGregorio) into the perfect Bride of the Monster.

"Psyclops" is a diamond in the rough. It features Rob Monkiewicz, the leading man of several other Piper films, in one of his first appearances, and it is full of the sort of comedy and classic horror movie atmosphere that Piper included in his later films "Bite Me!" and "Shock-O-Rama". But Monkiewicz' performance feels stiff and unnatural, and Piper's direction of numerous scenes is clunky and plodding. And it's not just Monkiewicz whose performance is still--the entire cast give performances that would be perfectly acceptable on a stage, but which are entirely unsuitable for a film. They all wait politely for the other cast members to finish their lines, and they all seem to be performing to make sure that the audience in the back can pick up every work and gesture.

It doesn't help matters that the dialogue feels mostly unnatural and very 1970s comic-booky as well. In fact, the whole film feels like a live action comic book in many ways... with each line of dialogue being in its own separate speech balloon and each shot being an individual panel. Perhaps this is what Piper was going for, but since that is such a far-fetched notion, I rather doubt it. It is an interesting atmosphere, but it gives the movie a stagey feel.

However, despite the stiffness of the acting and the dialogue, the film is never boring. Although Piper once again takes his time introducing us to the characters, the film is engaging from the outset. Once the mad science enters into the picture--with alien bugs that reanimate dead bodies and goopy tentacle beasts from Dimension Lovecraft--the film is practically zooms along to its fiery conclusion. (We can't have a movie with mad science-spawned monster without a building burning to the ground at the end, now can we?)

The swift pace of the film almost makes up for the fact that many of the jokes aren't all that funny. The fight against zombies animated by extra-dimensional creatures is also a great highlight of the film, and it more than makes up for a pointless scene where Merriman kills a would-be mugger. All-in-all, if you like cheesy movies, you'll find this movie a good way to pass an hour and half, and you'll agree with me that its strong points almost outweigh the weak ones.

Almost. At its best, this film reminded me of some of my favorite Full Moon pictures from the 1980s and 1990s, but at its worst it put me in mind of Full Moon efforts from the other end of the spectrum... although nothing here was ever as bad as "The Killer Eye".

While Brett Piper and Rob Monkiewicz went onto improve their craft and create better films, most of the other actors appearing in this film have virtually no other credits to their names--including "Liz Hurley" who is not who you think it is. That's a shame, because with the exception of a couple of bit players, I saw potential in every actor that appeared. (I could even swear that I've seen Diane DiGregorio in other films, but I can't find any other credits for her.)

Given the great progress Piper made as a filmmaker between "Psyclops" in 2002 and "Shock-O-Rama" in 2005, I can only imagine how entertaining "Bacterium" (a 2006 film waiting in my Stack of Stuff) and his 2009 effort "Muck Man" (which I have yet to acquire) might be.

'Bite Me!' is done in by a bad script

Bite Me! (2004)
Starring: Misty Mundae, Michael R. Thomas, Sylvianne Chebance, Julian Wells, Caitlin Ross, Rob Monkiewicz, Erika Smith, and John Paul Fedele
Director: Brett Piper
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

A failing strip club is invaded by monstrous spiders whose venom either bring out repressed sides of a victim's personality or turns them into hideous mutants.

"Bite Me" is a goofy film that spoofs the monster movies from the 1950s and the softcore porn films of the 2000s that many of the featured actresses have been in. It's not a bad little movie, but it could have been much better.

The problem is not with the actors. They're all pretty good, with Caitlin Ross (playing a doped-up stripper who manages to save the day while basically sleepwalking through the mayhem of monster spiders and crazy gunmen), Michael R. Thomas (as the brash club owner), and Misty Mundae (as a mild-mannered stripper who becomes Rambette after being bit by one of the spiders) being especially funny in their parts.

The technical aspect of this low-budget production is also very good, with decent camera work and lighting, nifty stop-motion animated monsters, and well-executed green-screen and CGI elements. The film actually looks better in many respects than movies with budgets that were probably ten times what it cost to make "Bite Me!"

What drags this movie down from, based on the concepts, the acting, and the technical execution, could have been at least a 7 rating to a very low 5 is the script.

The script is unfocused, flabby, and at times redundant. While there are some very funny bits in the beginning of the film but they are surrounded by material that sets up a subplot that never really pays off. The same is true with subplot about organized crime elements who are trying to take over the stripclub. An interesting character in the club's bartender is not given the development she should get, and the same is true to the club's owner. If the script had been taken through another couple of drafts, I'm certain writer/director Brett Piper would have noticed these flaws, saved the government conspiracy stuff for another movie and focused more on the stripclub and its denizens. That's where the heart of the movie is, and it's a shame that the time isn't there to develop it properly.

Still, "Bite Me!" is a fun little movie. It's worth seeing it you like cheesy monster films or if you're a fan of Misty Mundae or any of the other actresses appearing in it; they actually get to act in it, and they're good! (They mostly keep their clothes on, though, so if you're looking for the usual lesbian nookie, this is not the film for you.)

'Screaming Dead': When Misty Mundae started keeping her clothes on

Screaming Dead (2003)
Starring: Rob Monkiewicz, Rachael Robbins, Joseph Farrell, Misty Mundae, and Heidi Kristoffer
Director: Brett Piper
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

A sadistic photographer (Farrell) isolates a trio of young models in a house and proceeds to subject them to abuse and psychological torture. His evil manages to awaken the ghost of the madman who built the house, who then picks up where he left off and sets about torturing the women to death slowly.

Although that summary may make "Screaming Dead" sound like yet another piece of offal floating in the stream of torture porn movies--and with Misty Mundae starring, one might think the film to be literal torture porn--but it's more of a " sexy girls in a haunted house" movie in the mode of the cheap and sleazy European horror films from the 1960s and 1970s. Unfortunately, like the worst of those, it spends too long on the wind-up, not getting interesting until the movie is half over, and not getting to the reason most of us would be watching this film: the haunted house stuff. (The rest are going to be even more disappointed; the nudity quotient in the film is very, very low for a Misty Mundae movie and the lesbian nookie is even lower. One of the films better moments even makes playful fun of the lesbian softcore scenes that are a staple of the horror-themed sex comedies that Mundae and the producers behind "Screaming Dead" initially made their reputation on.)

The greatest flaw of the film is the unbelievable nature of its lead villain, the abusive photographer played by Joseph Farrell. A misogynistic, sexual sadist like this character might have been believable in a film made and/or set 40-50 years ago, but no matter how supposedly famous and well-respected he is as an artist, he would have been sued into the poor house or sent to prison long ago. Unless he paid his regular employees many hundreds of thousands of dollars in hush money--and with the repeated insistence that his models were working for free that seems unlikely--and his models even more, someone would have put a stop to his real-life "torture porn" long before the film started. No one could get away with abusing a model in this day and age of scandal-hungry, ever-present tabloid media the way he does in the film's opening scene, where a busty young lady is strapped to a table as a spike descends to impale her. Roman Polanski's celebrity and time lets him obscure the fact that he's a pedophile rapist, but if he had behaved that way in 2003, especially if he had beaten the girl instead of "just" drugging her, he'd be as reviled as Michael Jackson. (Of course, if he disposes of the models in a permanent way when he's done, the problem is lessened, but there is no indication that he is an out-and-out murderer, just a sadistic sociopath.)

The film's hero, the real estate company employee played by Rob Monkiewicz, also comes with his own unbelievable qualities to make the plot work. A rough-around-the-edges tough-guy with a chivalrous attitude, he is present at the photo-shoot by order of his employer to make sure the location the photographer has rented isn't damaged, and that the photographer isn't doing things that will expose the real estate company to liability. Within fairly short order, he witnesses several acts on the part of the photographer that his failure to report the photographer to the authorities exposes no only himself but his employers to lawsuits of mind-boggling size, especially when he points out to anyone who will listen how dangerous and illegal locking people in their rooms or chaining them to beds is to anyone within ear-shot. It is not believable on any level that a character drawn as a man of action like this one wouldn't do something to stop the abuses he sees long before he does, even if it means calling the police. While he is set up as a shady character, I also have the impression that he wouldn't be above using either the law or some of his unsavory contacts to shut down someone he finds as disgusting as the photographer. But for the character to try this, the film would either have needed a bigger budget--as it would require more cast and possibly additional locations--or a script that had been better thought out and which got to the point faster.

These problems with the hero and main villain of the film arise from a combination of a desire on co-screenwriter and director Brett Piper is giving us characters with a little depth to them, and the fact that he spends too much time dithering why trying to draw that depth. It takes entirely too long for the real ghosts to arrive on the scene and for the characters to be trapped inside the house. If Piper had move more quickly with introducing his torture-obsessed ghost, none of the problems with the reality of the film would have been an issue, because reality would have been suspended much sooner. And the fact that the film is really clever in the way in mixes the supernatural and hi-tech once, not to mention that it gets pretty scary in its final 15-20 minutes, shows that Piper is capable of delivering the goods... when he finally puts his mind to it. I really wish the first 3/4ths, because the horror that eventually comes deserved a better lead-in.

As for the cast, cinematography, and special effects, everything here is about what you might expect from a Shock-O-Rama/Seduction Cinema film. No one is going to win any awards for their work on the film, but no one needs to hang their shame over their efforts, either.

Farrell and Monkiewicz, as the evil photographer and heroic rental agency rep respectively. Both are as excellent in their roles as can be expected given the dialogue they are called on to deliver and the flabbiness and badly structured script they are performing. Farrell in particular shines in the one truly horrific scene in the movie where Misty Mudae's character is slashed to ribbons by an invisible force as he takes pictures. That same scene is where Mundae has one of several opportunities to show that she actually has a great deal of talent for acting.

But, in the end, "Screaming Dead" neither has enough screaming, nor enough dead, to make it worth checking out. It's of interest to big fans of Misty Mundae as it marks the beginning of her ascension from softcore porn and ultra-low budget movies to more serious-minded horror flicks, as well as the dawn of Pop Cinema as a multi-faceted, modern-day exploitation film production company, but most will be underwhelmed this film. As well done and horrific as the scene of Mundae's character being violated and mutilated is, what leads up to is simply too weak to be worth bothering with.