Category Archives: Psychotronic

All Movie Reviews, Horror, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words), Psychotronic

F CinemaScore Double Features: mother! (2017) and Moonchild (1972)

This is a new series centering on films which have received “F” scores from CinemaScore. CinemaScore polls theater-goers during a film’s opening weekend, gauging the average consumer’s thoughts on new releases. An F CinemaScore is potentially a PR nightmare for a film, as it indicates that, on the main, the people most excited to see a film on its opening weekend hated it.

We’ve covered F CinemaScore films on this site before, including Andrew Dominik’s Killing Them Softly (which I think is fairly great) and the subject of this article, mother! With this series, we pair an ill-fated F CinemaScore movie with a second, thematically similar film and make a double feature out of it. Today’s double feature pairs Darren Aronofsky’s mother! with Alan Gadney’s New Age, surreal spiritual journey film Moonchild.

This is Part 1 of an ongoing series. However, future installments will be published on a new Substack newsletter called Bleeding Eye Cinema. Part 2 of the CinemaScore Double Feature series is already live at that site. On Bleeding Eye Cinema, we take a look at weird, WTF, underseen, cult, psychotronic, B- and Z-grade, and all other manner of headache-inducing movies. Come join us and let the CRT electron beams melt the jelly off your eyeballs!

Moonchild (Alan Gadney, 1972)

Moonchild begins with a quote from clairvoyant Edgar Cayce, an influential figure in what would come to be known as the New Age movement: “You may not even have to come back at all if you become perfectly developed in this life…”

One of Cayce’s trance-induced contributions to culture were his proclamations to the existence of fictional locations like Atlantis. Cayce may be the most fitting place to enter into Continue reading F CinemaScore Double Features: mother! (2017) and Moonchild (1972) →

Psychotronic

Introducing: Bleeding Eye Cinema on Substack

Happy New Year, dear reader! 2025 is a special year at CineFiles Reviews, as the arbitrary markings of time that we have chosen to organize our lives around dictate that it is this site’s 10th anniversary.

To celebrate, I have ventured to begin a new outlet for film criticism: Bleeding Eye Cinema. There is a category of odd media that I would like to cover but which does not necessarily fit nicely within this site’s coverage of mainly new releases. I have dabbled in it here before, with a short series on psychotronic movies and occasional one-off analysis pieces about wacky misfires like Foodfight!. By and large, though, the style of writing here generally hews closer to the stuffy, boring film criticism voice, where I snidely look down my nose at contemporary cinema and pretend to have what they call “expertise” on the subject.

This is all to say that the writing style at Bleeding Eye Cinema is slightly different, and I think it is best to Continue reading Introducing: Bleeding Eye Cinema on Substack →

All Movie Reviews, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words), Psychotronic

Series 7: The Contenders (2001) is an Underseen Gem — Psychotronic Cinema

This is installment six in our “Psychotronic Cinema” series. (What is psychotronic cinema?).

There exists a veritable subgenre of horror-thrillers (truly, there are dozens and dozens of these things) where the premise involves some form of gamified scenario centering around torturous or otherwise deadly scenarios. The trend blew up following the massive success of the Saw franchise (a franchise also responsible for popularizing the torture porn film), but it did not begin here. It also saw a recent unlikely revival with the surprise success of Squid Game in 2021.

Series 7: The Contenders is something like a working class, non-science fiction Running Man. Or a non-science fiction The Hunger Games, years before those books were published. It is murder codified into Continue reading Series 7: The Contenders (2001) is an Underseen Gem — Psychotronic Cinema →

Action/Thriller, All Movie Reviews, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words), Psychotronic

Act of Violence upon a Young Journalist (1988) is a Cult Film You’ve Never Heard Of

This is installment five in our “Psychotronic Cinema” series. (What is psychotronic cinema?)

Act of Violence upon a Young Journalist is a cult film object from Uruguay, but it is relatively unknown in the U.S. It circulated in some film circles in South America, seemingly years after its original direct-to-video release in 1988. A documentary was made a couple years ago, called Straight to VHS (directed by Emilio Silva Torres), that documented the strange absence of the film’s director, Manuel Lamas, from public life, which has rendered details on the film’s production and its release scant.

The doc is good, although I don’t think it answers as many questions as it asks. What makes the doc and its distribution important is that Continue reading Act of Violence upon a Young Journalist (1988) is a Cult Film You’ve Never Heard Of →

All Movie Reviews, Documentary, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words), Psychotronic

Koyaanisqatsi (1982) is a Psychotronic Film — Review

This is the fourth installment in our “Psychotronic Cinema” series. (What is psychotronic cinema?)

More than anything else, I am reviewing Koyaanisqatsi because it delights me that it (and the second in the trilogy, Powaqqatsi) are in The Psychotronic Video Guide. It is such an odd addition, and it makes me wonder what about it is, in fact, “psychotronic.” The film is not generically of a piece with other psychotronic film (although, as I’ve mentioned before this term encompasses quite a breadth of genres), and its non-narrative documentary style hews it closer to the arthouse than to the late-night cable time slot.

Perhaps its music and rhythmic sense of movement lends itself to a certain, let’s say, chilled out demographic.

Michael Weldon (originator of the term “psychotronic”) writes that the style and score of Koyaanisqatsi was influential culturally, especially in television commercials. This could point us to a tension that presents as psychotronic. If psychotronia’s guiding principle is Continue reading Koyaanisqatsi (1982) is a Psychotronic Film — Review →

All Movie Reviews, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words), Psychotronic

After Last Season (2009) Is (Maybe) the Most Ambitious Bad Movie Ever Made

This is the third installment of the “Psychotronic Cinema” series. (What is psychotronic cinema?)

After Last Season is both notorious in certain online circles and a relatively unknown entity. Certain YouTubers have amplified its visibility over the last few years (and last few weeks, incidentally), but it still certainly hasn’t risen to the badfilm echelons occupied by the likes of Tommy Wiseau and Neil Breen.

But it deserves to be in that lowly pantheon.

The film opens in a “hospital” where a man is getting an MRI. The “MRI scanner” appears to be constructed of paper (sheets of paper also line the walls). The actor playing the technician stumbles over her line and has to Continue reading After Last Season (2009) Is (Maybe) the Most Ambitious Bad Movie Ever Made →

All Movie Reviews, Horror, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words), Psychotronic

The Collingswood Story (2002) is the First Screenlife Movie

This is the second installment in our “Psychotronic Cinema” series. (What is psychotronic cinema?)

The Collingswood Story has received something of a new lease on life with the continuing trend of “Screenlife” movies. Films which take place entirely on digital screen spaces find their origin point in 2002 with Collingswood. Though not Screenlife in the “pure” sense of taking place entirely on a screen (it’s maybe at 95%), Collingswood makes use of emergent technology in a relatively novel way – blocky early-2000s desktop aesthetic and all. A pandemic-era film like Host owes a great deal to this film, whose video chat technology amplifies a mood of isolation and loneliness.

Separate the film from its novelty, though, and Collingswood does not Continue reading The Collingswood Story (2002) is the First Screenlife Movie →

All Movie Reviews, Comedy, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words), Psychotronic, Western

Greaser’s Palace (1972) is an (Unfulfilling) Weirdo’s Paradise

This is installment one in our “Psychotronic Cinema“ series.

The films in this series are “psychotronic,” a term borrowed from Michael J. Weldon’s magazine and encyclopedia. Psychotronic covers the wide swath of cinema that is either slightly out there or entirely bonkers – horror, science fiction, fantasy, exploitation, blockbusters, flops, low budgets, no budgets, thought-provoking, brain dead, beautiful, grotesque, bloody, breezy, sleazy, and so on. At the end of the day, what is considered “psychotronic” might come down to the eye test – you know one when it crosses your path.

After watching last year’s Sr., a Robert Downey Jr.-led documentary about his father, filmmaker Robert Downey (Sr.), I was enticed into catching up on some of the director’s offbeat filmography. It wasn’t the documentary itself that invited me to see Greaser’s Palace — neither the clips from the film nor the doc’s father-son bonding moments did it for me. Frankly, the doc felt a few ticks overdone, with its black and white cinematography and Robert Downey Jr. puppeteering some of the would-be heartwarming scenes.

What works about Sr. is the same thing that works (for me, at least) about Sr.’s films, and that’s Continue reading Greaser’s Palace (1972) is an (Unfulfilling) Weirdo’s Paradise →