Psychomania 1973
Few films capture the offbeat spirit of early 1970s British horror quite like Psychomania, a supernatural biker movie that straddles the line between cult camp, Gothic fairytale, and psychedelic phantasmagoria. Directed by Don Sharp and shot by Ted Moore. Don Sharp was a Tasmanian-born filmmaker whose career spanned four decades and a remarkable range of genres. After starting as an actor in Australia and England, he transitioned to writing and directing in the 1950s, working on everything from children’s films and documentaries to musicals and comedies. Sharp became best known for his stylish and energetic contributions to British horror, particularly his work with Hammer Films, where he directed cult classics like Kiss of the Vampire (1963) and Rasputin, the Mad Monk (1966). He also directed the popular Fu Manchu films with Christopher Lee and brought his brisk, inventive style to thrillers, action adventures, and quirky cult favorites like Psychomania (1973).
Ted Moore was a renowned cinematographer best known for his work on seven James Bond films during the 1960s and early 1970s, including Dr. No (1962), From Russia with Love (1963), Goldfinger (1964), Thunderball (1965), Diamonds Are Forever (1971), Live and Let Die (1973), and portions of The Man with the Golden Gun (1974). He won an Academy Award and a BAFTA for his cinematography on A Man for All Seasons (1966). Moore’s career is proof that cinematic artistry, you can don everything from biker leathers and helmets to velvet doublets behind the lens. One moment, he’s conjuring undead hooligans tearing up the English countryside in this gloriously offbeat horror flick; the next, he’s bathing Tudor England in the stately glow of A Man for All Seasons.
Moore’s other notable films include: The Day of the Triffids (1962), The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969), The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973), Orca (1977), Clash of the Titans (1981), and Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977). He was also a camera operator on classics like The African Queen (1951). Moore’s career spanned four decades, and his visual style helped define the look of British adventure, fantasy, and action cinema in the mid-20th century.
Psychomania, aka later as The Death Wheelers, is a film that feels both utterly of its time and strangely timeless—a wild collision of post-hippie mysticism, suburban malaise, and the anarchic energy of youth culture gone gleefully to seed. At its core, Psychomania is the story of Tom Latham (Nicky Henson), the charismatic but unhinged leader of a biker gang called The Living Dead. Tom’s home life is as peculiar as his gang’s name suggests: he lives in a stately English manor with his enigmatic mother (Beryl Reid), who conducts séances with her sinister butler Shadwell (George Sanders, in his final film). The recurring imagery of frogs, amulets, visions, and ultimately Mrs. Latham’s transformation is all tied directly to an esoteric deity. The family’s occult leanings are more than a hobby—Tom’s mother worships a Frog God, part of an occult mythology, which is not merely a symbolic figure or her ‘familiar’ spirit, but an actual deity with the power to grant immortality and exact supernatural punishment. This God possesses the secret to immortality, a secret Tom is determined to unlock.
On his 18th birthday, Tom enters a forbidden room, has a vision of the Frog God, and promptly commits suicide (in order to attain eternal power)—only to return from the grave, now invincible and possessed of superhuman strength. His resurrection sets off a bizarre chain reaction: one by one, his biker friends follow suit, gleefully committing suicide with the hope of returning as undead hellraisers. Only Tom’s girlfriend, Abby (Mary Larkin), refuses to join the death cult, providing a rare note of conscience in a film otherwise gleeful in its disregard for life and law.
The undead bikers, now immune to harm, unleash a surreal crime wave on the English countryside, their rampage punctuated by scenes of gallows humor and deadpan absurdity. The police, led by Chief Inspector Hesseltine (Robert Hardy), are baffled, and the town is soon gripped by panic. Ultimately, it is Tom’s mother who is disgusted by the chaos her son has unleashed. In the film’s climax, after Mrs. Latham breaks her occult pact to stop her undead son and his biker gang, she ends the pact with the Frog God, turning her son and his gang to stone at the film’s climax, while she herself is transformed into a frog as a supernatural consequence. This bizarre and memorable moment is a literal transformation, not just a metaphor or hallucination.
Don Sharp’s direction is both playful and atmospheric, never shying away from the film’s inherent absurdity but also imbuing it with moments of genuine eeriness. The film opens with masked bikers weaving through a foggy stone circle—a sequence that feels like a pagan ritual filtered through the lens of a biker movie.
Ted Moore’s cinematography is key to the film’s unique mood, blending dreamy, soft-focus shots of the English countryside with the kinetic chaos of motorcycle chases and supernatural visions. The recurring imagery of standing stones, frogs, and misty landscapes creates a sense of ancient, lurking menace beneath the veneer of modern suburbia. The tone is an ever-shifting blend of camp, satire, and the uncanny.
Psychomania is never truly scary, but its off-kilter energy and willingness to embrace the ridiculous give it a hypnotic charm. The film’s soundtrack, composed by John Cameron (The Ruling Class 1972, Night Watch 1973 with Elizabeth Taylor), is a groovy, prog-inflected mix of rock and eerie atmospherics.
Cameron fuses propulsive rock rhythms with eerie, experimental textures, giving the film its unmistakably surreal and otherworldly mood. The soundtrack leans on wah-wah guitars, upright bass run through pedals, wordless vocals by jazz singer Norma Winstone, and unconventional techniques like scratching the inside of pianos and using phase pedals—all conjured in a pre-synthesizer era, a sound that’s both driving and unsettling, perfectly straddling the line between British folk horror and American biker movie energy.
The score to Psychomania ripples through the film like a spectral echo, weaving psychedelic riffs and eerie organ flourishes into sonic washes that feel both not of this realm and unmistakably of its time. Cameron’s score possesses the ghostly pulse of ancient stone circles colliding with the wandering spirit of early ’70s counterculture—a groove-laden, hallucinatory soundtrack that turns every motorcycle race and ritual into a feverish, cinematic séance.
It’s as if the restless spirits of the swinging ’60s, the groovy ’70s, and the occult shadows of ancient Britain collided on vinyl, spinning out a soundtrack that shimmers with the mischievous pulse of a midnight ride—music that turns every motorcycle rev into a spell and every chase into a trancelike, funky, psychy trip along a windy road.
Nicky Henson, the film’s leading hunk, is all swagger and reckless abandon as Tom, making his nihilistic antihero both magnetic and unhinged. Beryl Reid brings a sly, knowing wit to Mrs. Latham, while George Sanders, as Shadwell, lends the proceedings a sense of faded aristocratic menace—a fitting swan song for the legendary actor. Mary Larkin’s Abby is a rare voice of vulnerability and conscience, providing an emotional anchor amid the film’s gleeful nihilism. The supporting cast is a who’s-who of British character actors, from Robert Hardy’s befuddled police inspector to Ann Michelle’s aggressive biker Jane Pettibone (I love the name! you can see her British television and in cult horror films like Virgin Witch 1972, House of Whipcord 1974, Haunted 1977 and Young Lady Chatterley 1977). Their performances, sometimes deadpan, sometimes arch, contribute to the film’s unique tonal blend—a mix of straight-faced horror and sly self-parody.
Beryl Reid was one of those rare British actresses who could steal a scene with just a raised eyebrow or a perfectly timed quip. She bounced from radio comedy in Educating Archie to triumphs like The Killing of Sister George, originally a stage play written by Frank Marcus in 1964, with Beryl Reid originating the role of June “George” Buckridge on stage and later reprising it in the 1968 film adaptation directed by Robert Aldrich. Reid won a Tony Award for her performance in the Broadway production of the play.
Then sauntered onto film sets for everything from The Belles of St. Trinian’s 1954, Dr. Phibes Rises Again! 1972, and this gloriously oddball – Psychomania, to another hidden horror gem, The Beast in the Cellar 1970, alongside Flora Robson. Reid even made her mark in the Doctor Who universe and delivered a moving, BAFTA-winning portrayal of Connie Sachs in Smiley’s People. She had a knack for making eccentricity look effortless—whether she was playing a dotty medium, a spy’s confidante, or just the sharpest wit in the room. No formal training, just pure, unfiltered Beryl: a national treasure who made British screens a lot more interesting and a lot less predictable.
Psychomania is, in many ways, a quintessential cult film: overlooked on release, it found new life through late-night TV airings – which is how I stumbled across this unique offering of undead biker mayhem, sent by the midnight movie gods, headlights blazing and a menacing wheelie. I recommend the film for fans of British horror’s more eccentric corners. Its blend of biker rebellion, occult weirdness, and deadpan British humor is utterly singular, as English as cucumber sandwiches, or beans on toast, a spot of tea, on a rainy, ashen grey day.
If you were to watch it today, the film would strike you as a fascinating artifact of its era, capturing the anxieties and fascinations of early 1970s Britain: the rise of youth subcultures, a renewed interest in the occult, and the sense that the old order was crumbling, to be replaced by something far stranger. Psychomania stands not just as a quirky horror oddity, but as a psychedelic snapshot of a society in transition—a film where the living and the dead, the sacred and the absurd, all share the same haunted, stony road.