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Released by: VHShitfest
Released on: November 28th, 2023.
Director: Paul Van Dan Elzen
Cast: Paul Van Dan Elzen, Mary Van Dan Elzen, William Van Dan Elzen
Year: 1990
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Psycho Paul’s Film Festival – Movie Review:
When Paul Van Dan Elzen got his hands on a camcorder somewhere around 1990, he decided to write, direct and co-star, alongside his brother William and his mother Mary, in what was intended to be a parody of sorts titled Psycho Paul’s Film Festival. In the extras, Paul notes that his idea here was to make a movie that was essentially ‘all the good parts,’ meaning that when you watch a horror film there’s too much filler – and he isn’t wrong in a lot of cases. The end result is… this thing.
We open with a warning that this movie is not meant for those under seventeen due to its extreme content, but we witness Death Must Die, the first of the various shorts that make up this anthology movie, wherein a woman (every woman in this movie is played by Mary) gets her hands on cold fusion weapon and uses it to kill death (played by Paul in a skeleton mask). The next bit, Evil Ex-Wife Must Die, is the goriest of the batch. A husband and wife (Paul and his mom – weird!) bicker, they’re going through a divorce because she thinks he cheated on her – but he didn’t! She wants the movie and the kids, he just wants the kids but she isn’t budging and has a new lawyer boyfriend on her side. The husband snaps and in a weirdly edited scene, chops her up. Alien She-Beast Wants Kids sees Mary play an alien she-beast by wearing some odd makeup and prowling around the kitchen. It turns out she wants to mate and create some kids, but it doesn’t go well. Vomit Master is a strange Exorcist style thing with a guy who pukes into a toilet and drools vomit, with William playing a priest and reciting the rite of exorcism in the wonkiest way possible. The last story is about a guy who is really into drugs who has a strange encounter when high.
In between each segment, Psycho Paul provides an introduction to provide some sort of context for this, ranting in an amusingly pompous style about the greatness of his work while sucking on a fake cigarette and clad in one of the ugliest shirts you’ve ever seen. Keep in mind that the stories described above are not full stories, but rather ‘the good parts.’ Essentially, there’s an extremely basic set up and then some gore and then we move on to the next bit.
Paul Van Dan Elzen, who had previously worked on a few movies for fellow Kansas City, Missouri native Todd Sheets (including Violent New Breed and Zombie Bloodbath), gets points for creativity even if the final product is a complete and total mess. At the same time, as unwatchable as this is in many ways, it’s hypnotizing. It's the shot on video equivalent of a car wreck, in that you don’t really want to look but you can’t turn away. At an hour and forty minutes, it’s way too long and most of the jokes were probably only funny to Paul (though possibly to his mother and brother as well) but the DIY spirit and the fact that Paul did everything pretty much entirely in camera here (including the credits and title screens) is notable.
No one is going to call this a good movie (the production company is literally called ‘Worst Cult Video’), including Paul himself, but there’s really nothing else out there like this and those with an affinity for the weirdest of the weird owe it to themselves to give this genuine cinematic oddity a look… but you have been warned.
Psycho Paul’s Film Festival – Blu-ray Review:
VHShitfest brings Psycho Paul’s Film Festival to Region Free Blu-ray famed at 1.33.1 fullframe and presented in AVC encoded 1080i high definition and the presentation is preceded by this disclaimer:
"The only existing copies of Psycho Paul's Film Festival were covered in mold. To preserve the video and create the highest quality version possible, we at VHSHITFEST painstakingly cleaned the last six copies, a master tape and three tapes of raw footage in order to reassemble the movie. We're happy to present this movie for the very first time and hope you are forever changed by the slice of pure insanity you are about to witness."
Up-resed from a tape and using up 14.8GBs of space on a 50GB disc, this hour and forty minute feature looks as good as it probably can and it offers a more than watchable presentation given the film’s analog origins, despite the fact that the opening minutes of the movie are pretty wobbldy. Colors look a bit faded and though shadow detail can get lost in some of the movie’s darker moments but the fact that this movie survived at all is a bit of a minor miracle. Compression is pretty solid and the image is clean enough. No problems here, for an SOV movie sourced from a mold-riddle tape, this looks okay.
The only audio option for Psycho Paul’s Film Festival is a 16-bit DTS-HD 2.0 Mono tracks in English. Optional English subtitles are provided. Audio quality mirrors the video quality, in that it isn’t reference quality but it is perfectly fine given the elements available to work with and the film’s origins. Dialogue is generally clean and clear and properly balanced, though things can be a little flat in spots and there are a few lines that are a bit muffled. The score sounds pretty good though, despite some mild background hiss present throughout stretches of the movie.
Extras start off with an amusing minute long introduction by Psycho Paul that mirrors his host segments from the feature. From there, we get an audio commentary with the filmmakers – director and star Paul Van Dan Elzen and his brother, actor William Van Dan Elzen - that offers up some insight into where some of the ideas came from, working with their mom on the project, getting their mom on board to help on these projects, creating some of the props and effects work and more. A lot of the track is comprised of the two of them laughing at all of this, but it’s sort of infectious.
A Psycho’s Story: The Making Of Psycho Paul’s Film Festival runs thirty minutes and interviews Paul and William in the same house where the movie was made (where they still live today) about how the advent of consumer grade camcorders led to the making of this no-budget movie, where some of the ideas came from, wanting to parody pretentious films and horror films alike, attempting to self-distribute the movie and how much fun they all had making the damn thing.
The Cleansing of Psycho Paul featurette spends sixteen minutes with Dan Kinem, a VHS mold specialist, where he explains and demonstrates what went into cleaning up the different tape elements that were used to create the Blu-ray transfer and preserve the film for all eternity!
The disc also includes a five minute archival Todd Sheets and Paul Van Dan Elzen interview taken from a cable access show in which they gripe about the lack of real horror on the market today, as well as a new interview Todd Sheets running just under eight minutes where he talks about how he and Van Dan Elzen worked together on a few Extreme Entertainment projects, how great he was to work with and how his camera got stolen on a set once.
If that isn’t enough for you, VHShitfest has also included all three tapes that contain the original raw footage shot for the feature. Combined, there’s almost six hours of material included here, and obviously a lot of it didn’t make its way into the finished version.
Menus and chapter selection options are provided, and there’s an Easter Egg that can be found off of the main menu screen. This release also comes packaged with some cool reversible cover sleeve art.
Psycho Paul’s Film Festival - The Final Word:
Psycho Paul’s Film Festival is less a movie than it is a strange missive from another planet. It’s simultaneously unwatchable and hypnotic, a surreal piece of outsider art and a document of one man’s singular vision of what a movie can be, even if maybe it isn’t what a movie should be. It’s fascinatingly strange stuff and VHShitfest is to be commended for rescuing this one from obscurity and releasing it on a disc loaded up with extras.