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Released by: Severin Films
Released on: April 29th, 2025.
Director: Russ Meyer
Cast: Haji, Alex Rocco, Steve Oliver, Lane Carroll
Year: 1965
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Motorpsycho! – Movie Review:
Russ Meyer’s Motorpsycho, shot in gritty black and white and released in 1965, may not rank up there with the best of the director’s output but it’s still very much a cult classic. Loaded with Meyer’s trademark maniac energy, it’s a scuzzy, low budget piece of exploitation but like so many of his films, very effective and wildly successful in its main goal – to entertain its audience.
The main plot of the film revolves around a trio of psychotic bikers made up of ), a deranged Vietnam veteran named Brahmin (Stephen Oliver), the ultra-horny Dante (Joseph Cellini) and their pal Slick (Thomas Scott), the later of whom seems constantly obsessed with his transistor radio. Early in the film, we witness the trio rough up a poor fisherman and have their way with his curvaceous wife, letting us know right off the bat that these guys are bad news.
From here, we meet a man named Corey Maddox (played with no small amount of unhinged enthusiasm by Alex Rocco, credited here as Alex Petrovich). Maddox is a veterinarian by trade but when the bikers assault his wife, Gail (Holle K. Winters), he quickly changes his tune as he changes from a mild-mannered animal doctor to a man obsessed with getting revenge.
As Maddox sets out to reign down vengeance on the bikers, he meets up with a Cajun woman named Ruby Bonner (Haji) whose husband was killed by those same bikers. They decide to team up and take matters into their own hands, heading out into the California desert to pay back those villainous men in kind!
While Motorpsycho! may not feature as many buxom starlets in various states of undress as some of Meyer’s films (though it’s hardly lacking in ample bosoms!), it’s a gritty, grimy movie that benefits from some excellent black and white cinematography, with the camera frequently lingering on the harsh desert landscapes and dirty, sweaty faces to pull us into the narrative and ensure we’re always paying attention. The stark nature of the film’s visual style, combined with the director’s trademark fast editing techniques, gives the movie an appreciable energy while maintaining an almost documentary feel that ensures that when violence is used in the movie that it hits hard enough to matter. Adding to this is the twangy, guitar-heavy score from composers Paul Sawtell and Bert Shefter, a great selection of music that does a fantastic job complementing the onscreen chaos that erupts in the movie’s second half.
The performances are quite good across the board. Stephen Oliver chews just the right amount of scenery as the deranged veteran leading the biker gang, making for an interesting foil for Rocco, who shows plenty of screen presence here in his feature film debut. Throw in the perpetually alluring Haji, who delivers a fiery performance in this picture, and it’s hard to not to see why this movie would grab you the way that it does. Look for Meyer himself in a small role as a sheriff in the film.
As to the plot? The screenplay, which Meyer co-wrote with Billy Sprague, is lean and efficient, wasting no time setting up a narrative. From the moment the gang roars into town, the story ramps up the tension with an escalating series of assaults, kidnappings, and vengeance. It’s exploitative and undeniably trashy—but loaded with the kind of scuzzy charm that makes the director’s movies as engaging as they are. Meyer always knew exactly what kind of movies he was making, and Motorpsycho! remains a film that’s both as strangely entertaining as it is unrestrained and beautifully chaotic.
Motorpsycho! – Blu-ray Review:
Severin brings Motorpsycho! to UHD in an HEVC encoded 2160p transfer framed at 1.66.1 with HDR10, taken from a new 4k restoration of the original 35mm camera negative. Picture quality on this release is top notch, with the new transfer, not surprisingly, blowing the old DVD and laserdisc releases out of the water. The black and white image shows excellent contrast and very impressive detail without showing any real print damage at all. Grain is retained, as it should be, but outside of the occasional small white speck here and there, the picture quality is pretty much spotless. Black levels are nice and deep and the picture is free of any obvious noise reduction, edge enhancement or compression problems. The image always looks like a proper, film-sourced transfer and there’s loads of appreciable texture, depth and detail to take in here. The movie looks great.
The only audio option for the feature is a 24-bit DTS-HD Mono track in the film’s original English language with closed captioning provided, also in English. Sourced from the original 35mm negative track, it sounds great. Dialogue is always clean, clear and easy to understand and the track, which is free of any hiss, distortion or sibilance, is properly balanced from start to finish, giving some nice depth to the score and the sound effects used throughout the movie.
Disc One: 4K UHD
The main extra on the UHD disc is a commentary track with film, historian Elizabeth Purchell and filmmaker Zach Clark that covers why they feel that this movie is an underrated entry in the director's catalogue given that it lives in the shadow of Faster, Pussycat... Kill! Kill!, how it feels like the first proper Russ Meyer film, how they both first came to see the movie and be introduced to the director's work, thoughts on the character development in the movie, Meyer's approach to editing and how it shapes the movie, how we can see Meyer using different techniques in this movie, the original titles for this and for FPKK, the use of nudity in the director's films and the lack of nudity in this one and Faster, Pussycat... Kill! Kill!, the virility of Rocco's character in this movie, how all of Meyer's early films are shot in 1.66.1 and theorizing as to why he might have preferred that aspect ratio, the rape/revenge elements inherent in the movie and how it compares to other movies that toy with this idea, why making a movie with Russ Meyer was "like going to war," how this movie fits in alongside other biker/exploitation movies made around the same period, how Meyer's output compares to other exploitation pioneers and plenty more.
The first disc also includes an original theatrical trailer for the feature.
Disc Two: Blu-ray
The Blu-ray includes that same commentary track and the trailer that were included on the UHD as well as a featurette titled Desert Rats On Hondas, which interviews Haji and Alex Rocco about their work on the feature. Here, over the span of twenty-one minutes, we get background information on how Haji came to work with Meyer after being discovered as a dancer, what he was like to work with and how she became good friends with the director, how Rocco got into acting after deciding to move to California after flipping a coin, meeting Eve Meyer at a bar and getting into acting, connecting with Leonard Nimoy as an acting coach, having fun doing love scenes, what it was like on set for Motorpsycho! and the joys of shooting on location in the desert, Rocco's appreciation for Meyer's ability to cast good looking women, how the director ran his set like a military operation, what it was like taking direction from Meyer, memories of working together and of specific scenes, the western feel of the movie and how they feel about the movie and their experiences working on it.
This release also comes packaged with a nice matte-finish slipcover.
Motorpsycho! - The Final Word:
Motorpsycho! still packs a strong punch, it’s a lean, mean slide if mid-sixties exploitation made as only Russ Meyer could make it. Full of tough guys and beautiful gals, it’s rapid in its pacing and plenty stylish despite the fact that it was made on a modest budget. Severin has done a fantastic job bringing this underappreciated gem to UHD/Blu-ray, offering it up in a gorgeous presentation and with some nice extra features to go along with the main attraction. Highly recommended!
Click on the images below, or right click and open in a new window, for full sized Motorpsycho! Blu-ray screen caps!
