Psycho Cop (1989)

Okay, let’s start with the big one here. Yes, obviously someone saw Maniac Cop and said “hey, I could make a movie with a killer cop, and did. However, that fact is so blatantly obvious that there’s really no point in comparing the two, Psycho Cop is not “discount Manic Cop,” it is simply a movie that lifted the broadest strokes of that movie, and used them to paint a completely different picture.

And that picture is one of six young people being stalked and picked off one by one by the titular psycho cop. To the movie’s credit, it does put a little bit of thought into things, the cop does stalk and come up with schemes to lure his victims away instead of just waiting for someone to wander off on their own. However, significantly less thought was put into the backstory and motivation of the killer. Essentially choking the whole thing up to “devil worship,” and “mental problems”—and maybe also being an escaped serial killer? And a satanic cop killing people for some deranged ritualistic purpose could be cool, if it were explained in any way, but what we have it is basically, “cop starts killing people for no particular reason.”

Overall, Psycho Cop is a generic straight-to-video pseudo-slasher. So generic that at times it feels more like a movie that characters would be watching in a different movie than it does one you’d actually be watching yourself. The nondescript characters, the flat line delivery, the themed killer spouting out one-liners while performing over-the-top kills that verge on slapstick, even the specific qualities of the lighting and cinematography feel like brilliant pastiche of late-80s straight-to-video horror, that just happens to be in an actual late-80s straight-to-video horror movie. That being said, if that’s what you’re into, that’s what it delivers.

4/10