Psycho Goreman

The wave of ’80s retro has enabled us to relive, in a nostalgically soft package, all of the fictional emotions of our adolescence, or rather the enchanting versions of those emotions suggested by pop culture. Though this trend is slowly losing steam, it is obstinately being kept on life support by the artificially extended series Stranger Things and other Netflix productions that refuse to give up the already noticeably exhausted cash cow. At its core, the inevitable crossing of the forbidden boundary between decades into the early 1990 soffers an even more twisted, though fortunately more entertaining, continuation of this retro trend. The beginning of the nineties was characterised by the malignant growth of all of the tastelessness and gaudiness of the eighties to the point of caricature. The first appropriately tacky and caustically subversive harbinger of early ’90s retro is the rambunctious pastiche Psycho Goreman from a professional-enthusiast low-budget trash factory by the name of Astron-6. The comforting and touching nature of E.T. is replaced with the coked-up derangement and delirious excess of Biker Mice from Mars and other deformed outgrowths of ’90s pop culture. Steven Kostanski is not afraid to throw open the monstrous Pandora’s box of nineties boorishness, where taste, moderation and pathos gave way to flamboyance, pretension and aggressive kitsch and monumentally irritating, prideful heroes such as in those pop-culture milestones Cool As Ice and The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. Psycho Goreman is obviously not for everyone and, conversely, it will piss off a lot of people, but that's good, because its roots draw their sap straight from the deepest darkness of modern pop culture. Imagine Buffy The Vampire Slayer in which everything good has been replaced by the worst elements of series starring the Olsen twins, seasoned with a pinch of Home Improvement and smothered in a tonne of insipid comic-bookishness and rubber Power Rangers costumes with a light coat of red paint modelled on splatstick flicks of the day and Celebrity Death Match. The result is atrocious, profane, over-the-top and basically unwatchable, and thus also beautiful. (08/22/2020)

Shame about the endlessly annoying and relentlessly obnoxiously overacting kinds, they bring an otherwise likeable stupid B-movie with an 80's Amblin inside out style down to earth. It's clear that the people of Astron-6 went nuts, because the imaginative costume design, the howling gore effects, the over-the-top amorality, and the inanity are elements from fans for fans. You can feel the enthusiastic passion for most of the running time and it completely overcomes the fact that the entire budget was spent on make up and practical effects, so it takes place in about five locations around the backyard of a house that apparently belongs to one of the crew. It can be funny (and deliberately unfunny), pretentious and black-humored, as well as admirably childishly moronic, and it balances more or less successfully on the edge of these two positions. Yes, it is undeniably a bit of guilty pleasure from the creators, but to a tolerable degree. Constantly, it also pulls up the PG rating with cynical foreboding and interactions while learning about earthly customs. Until it immediately blows up the She-Whose-Name-We-Cannot-Speak-Or-Write-lest-She-Might-Catch-Split-And-Want-To-Become-An-Actress-Full-On-Commitment, it’s easy to sympathise with Goreman's unending desire to exterminate all of humanity in a slow and cruel death. (02/13/2021)

Pretty original bullshit that is really hurt by the unlikeable characters and the utter lack of any sort of moral development – this is a film starring children that children actually shouldn’t see. And the adults, all they have is the bloodthirsty space conqueror played by Alan Grant, who’s very amusing at the beginning, when he enthusiastically speaks about total domination and the suffering of his enemies, but he must obey a little girl. The story otherwise is very stupid and only the core idea of the contrast with the “most brutal entity in the universe” can somehow hold the attention. 40% (01/26/2021)

The film put me in a good mood at first, as the 80s action sci-fi movie parody was near perfect, but as time went on it somehow lost its pace and appeal (at least from my point of view), and towards the end, I kept wondering when it would be over. Despite a promising start, I can’t bring myself to give it more than three stars. 3*- (04/19/2021)

Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers with gore and a funny wisecrack here and there, in other words, not for me. An ode to bad taste with a child hero who’s an utter twat and also unpleasantly immoral in some aspects. I hope that Steven Kostanski’s next film will honour someone who deserves it (like in The Void) instead of assholes like these. (01/22/2021)