the audience applauded

Admirable film.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Blistering performances.

Here's another great contender for my own personal award of "Most Demented Film I ever watched", but the least I can say is that it was very interesting. "The Pschotronic Man" begins with the longest and most unnerving opening credits ever, but they're quite sinister and atmospheric what with the really creepy music and odd color schemes and everything. This is one of them rare films that already make you feel uncomfortable before it even properly takes off. The slow-paced story introduces Rocky Foscoe; a barber with a few issues that may or may not be caused by the fact that he consumes his own hair shampoos and conditioner lotions. Rocky starts having strange visions, like himself flying around in a car and such similar tomfoolery, and he gradually becomes the world's first and only Psychotronic Man. Basically, this just means that he's an older, fatter and sleazier male version of "Carrie" who can inflict stuff only by using his overdeveloped willpower. At first, Rocky doesn't comprehend the powers that have been granted to him and even seeks professional help to make the unbearable headaches go away, but then he gradually learns how to control his skills and use it against the people he doesn't like, like his own wife who's in the way of his love affairs. "The Psychotronic Man" is overall a pretty cool flick, but sadly director Jack M. Sell wasn't quite sure which narrative tone to maintain. Does this story require a dramatic, mysterious or exploitative tone? Or perhaps a combination of all three? This indecisive behavior leads to an illogical structure and uneven pacing, for example when a moody love-making sequence is immediately followed by an extremely violent murder vision. The film is also slow and uneventful. Especially considering the plot outline, they could have made this into a far more grotesque and trashy cult experiment; even bearing in mind the budgetary restrictions. The overlong chase sequence, for example, is the least spectacular one in the history of cinema. The cars just drive in straight lines and at snail pace, without tricky maneuvers or causing flamboyant accidents. Still, there's some greatness to find in this oddball production, like the creepy sound effects that are frequently repeated, including a church bell chiming and half the tune of Ennio Morricone's classic music for "Once upon a time in the West". I bet the composer of this film was the only person who had great fun on set. Bizarre film, to say the least, but it did offer us the collective term for everything in cult, horror and trash cinema that is unique and indescribable. Psychotronic power!

I saw this movie in the early 80s on-board a Navy ship--we had little choice in our movie selections. I currently watch between 10-20 movies a week. To this day I haven't seen anything, even the legendary films of Ed Wood, that is as bad as this film. In one scene near the end of the film, there were close-ups of National Guard troops preparing their weapons. These were WW II era bolt action rifles. At a close up of one of the troops pulling back on the bolt to load the rifle you do not see anything going into the breach. And those eyes of the title character. I think the makeup was purchased from the nearest dollar store. This film is only recommended for those individuals who enjoy watching the worst films ever made.

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Peter Spelson's "The Psychotronic Man" is a tour de force of naive post-intelligentsia film noire. Jack M. Sell directs seemingly endless, artlessly blocked scenes that draw the audience into a twilight mood of almost painful ennui. Truly, even before the opening title graphics crawled across the screen some seven minutes (significant?) into the first reel this reviewer craved the blissful relief of an untimely death before the next zoom-in close-up of Peter Spelson's heavily lidded psychotronic stare! Spelson turns in an idiosyncratic performance as Rocky Foscoe, the barber who prefers his hair tonic to Segrams Seven. Spelson's Rocky is a tortured soul who has trouble putting together a simple sentence, much unlike the real-life erstwhile insurance agent turned one-time film actor who frankly has never been known to shut up! "The Psychotronic Man" can be favorably compared to the seminal works of Kurisawa or a young Hitchcock only if one suspends all rational thought and gives over to a delusional view of a world where a film such as this can be considered anything more than bong water worthy.The great news is that for the first time an exclusively authorized, digitally enhanced 2 DVD set of "Psychotronic Man" is now available. This new set features production stills, the handwritten screenplay and the original music score, as well as a commentary track by the Psychotronic Man Himself: Writer/Producer/Star, Peter Spelson. Also included is a short documentary on the making of "Psychotronic Man". Caught on tape during the shooting of this documentary is the discovery of the actual original copies of the 35mm theatrical film that were used in this digital reproduction.What is finally revealed in this new production is the story of Peter Spelson, a frustrated would-be film actor producing hokey late-night commercials for his own insurance agency. Peter finally concludes that if he ever wants to star in a feature film he would have to write and produce it himself. What Spelson found was a nascent Chicago film community eager to show off it's chops in anticipation of John Landis and "The Blues Brothers" production army who came to town a year later.On the commentary track Spelson also tells how he begged, borrowed and sometimes appropriated with out proper authorization what he needed to complete his opus. Shooting of "The Psychotronic Man" went on despite the lack of any official local permits to stage car chases, fiery explosions and even late night shoot outs on Chicago's Michigan Avenue!Featuring an insurance agent-turned-actor, a guerrilla film making style, authentic retro '70's soundtrack and a back-story that just won't die, the experience of "The Psychotronic Man" is truly a total greater than the sum of it's parts.