Census Bloodbath: A Girl's Best Friend Is Her Sister

Note: The American VHS release of Psycho Girls was heavily edited (the mid-1980s were extremely unfriendly to gore, if you recall). The version I was able to get my hands on had the gore footage spliced back in from an Italian dub, leading to certain death scenes becoming intensely saturated halfway through, at which point the characters all started speaking Italian until the sequence was over with. If anything, this enhanced the experience, but be aware I was not capable of fully understanding the dialogue in those scenes. 

Year:
1986
Director:
Jerry Ciccoritti
Cast:
John Haslett Cuff, Darlene Mignacco, Rose Graham
Run Time:
1 hour 37 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

Plot: As told via the framing device of pulp novelist Richard Foster (John Haslett Cuff) at a typewriter explaining the story of That Terrible Day, Sarah Tusk (Darlene Mignacco) escapes from an asylum and murders her sister Victoria (Agi Gallus) - who poisoned their parents via breakfast in bed and blamed Sarah for it. She replaces Victoria as the cook for Foster and his wife Diane (Rose Graham), who are holding a dinner party for their anniversary.

In attendance are the obnoxious psychologist Dr. Dekker Wilson (Dan Rose), his Marxist wife Femme (Doren Ferber), failed screenwriter but professional womanizer Anthony Zippo (Frank Procopio), and his wannabe actress girlfriend Wendy Fields (Kim Cayer, who played an uncredited porn actress in Blue Murder). They are all drugged by Sarah and spirited away to the abandoned asylum where she spent 15 years, where she and her fellow escapees Kazma (Silvio Oliviero) and Waldo (who does not seem to be credited, unless he is the Pier Giorgio DiCicco who is mysteriously credited as the mononymous character "Tony") torture and kill the majority of them.

Analysis: Fun fact. This movie was made by the same guy who directed Netflix's Hot Frosty. This kind of thing is actually not uncommon these days, because Canadian tax shelter cinema changes with the times. What was once lucrative during the slasher boom is no longer en vogue, so plenty of former slasher filmmakers have transferred their attention to Hallmark and Hallmark-adjacent projects. Perhaps most notably, Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II screenwriter Ron Oliver has gone on to direct Christmas at the Plaza, A Timeless Christmas, Christmas Everlasting, and approximately 800 other movies with a straight white couple on the poster delivering Stepford smiles while wrapped in tinsel.

But let us not get bogged down in that strange corner of cinema history. If you've been paying attention to Census Bloodbath for any amount of time, I hope my mention of Canada had you pricking up your ears. That's right, the Great Blood-Red North, home to some of the best-ever examples of the 1980s slasher, is at it again. And by "it," I don't just mean saying "abote"an average of two dozen times per scene, though that does also happen here.

True to its lineage, Psycho Girls is considerably better than it really has any right to be. It's certainly not the cream of the crop like My Bloody Valentine, Visiting Hours, or the aforementioned Prom Night II, but for a grindhouse cheapie like this, it's downright extraordinary how many things go right. 

Those things do not include the acting or the cinematography, which are never abysmal but infrequently rise above "flat." However, the screenplay is absolutely tops. The dialogue writing here counts among the best of the entire genre, and it can thank its frequent homages to pulp fiction for the fact that it had like a dozen runners-up for my Champion Dialogue selection ("My head feels like it's got menstrual cramps," anyone?). The story isn't always great, because it loses any sense of forward momentum once the torture starts and the third act mainly involves lots of running around echoey hallways, but it's got a strong sense of character, a cheeky surprise ending, and an unrelenting approach to brutality.

And let me tell you, these kills are a lot. Even before the movie gets torturey and toenails are being pulled out and whatnot, it's a lot to swallow. The movie is chock full of intense, bloody, disturbing moments that really land, though thankfully they are delivered with a certain amount of Herschell Gordon Lewis glee rather than the grimdark drudgery of the latter Saw sequels. This brutal sensibility spills out into its general atmosphere, as well.

In fact, there might not be anything more intense than the opening scene where little Victoria poisons her parents, and that doesn't even feature any gore. What it does have is an appropriately off-kilter child performer giving a dead-eyed stare and asking her parents to come back and tell her what God looks like. I mean... holy shit. 

All in all, there is a lot going on here that really works, sometimes in spite of itself. Really, the only flaw I can find with this movie that it doesn't share with other low-budget horror movies of its ilk is the fact that we spend way too much time witnessing the Fosters' incredibly boring dinner party. But having sat through plenty of boring dinner parties in real life, I knew I had to just grin and bear it and pray for something interesting to happen. And you know what, it sure did happen.

Killer: Sarah Tusk (Darlene Mignacco) feat. Waldo (?) & Kazma (Silvio Oliviero)

Final Girl: Diane Foster (Rose Graham)

Best Kill: Dr. Hippocampus (don't ask) has this bizarre telescoping pair of shears attached around his neck that are slowly squeezed, messily decapitating him, which is then followed by a disgusting moment where Sarah is washing off his skull and seems to be whittling the remaining flesh off of the bone with a knife.

Sign of the Times: I'm not saying Chappell Roan didn't base her whole makeup look off the floor show drag that Sarah puts on for torturing her victims.

Scariest Moment: That murder via breakfast in bed is eerie as fuck.

Weirdest Moment: Diane and Richard rapidly lift weights while staring at one another and then have sweaty, writhey, single-artwork-for-Olivia-Newton-John's-Physical sex.

Champion Dialogue: “What's money, anyway, except paper with germs on it?"

Body Count: 13

1. Pearl and
2. Victor eat poisoned pancakes.
3. Head Matron has her throat ripped out by Sarah's teeth offscreen, as described later.
4. Dr. Hippocampus has his head severed with telescoping shears.
5. Victoria is stabbed with her own knife.
6. Anthony has his throat slashed with a straight razor.
7. Wendy is electrocuted in a tub.
8. Dekker is shot in the head.
9. Femme has her throat slit.
10. Sarah is stabbed with her own knife.
11. Waldo is garroted with a fire hose.
12. Kazma has his head smashed with a rock.
13. Roger is repeatedly struck with a meat cleaver.

TL;DR: Psycho Girls is astonishingly brutal and surprisingly sharp, which allows it to overcome what it lacks in filmmaking craft.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 1140