Long-suppressed in the United States, PSYCHO GIRLS deserves some recognition as one of the more brutal films I've seen. In 1966, a young girl poisons her parents after giving them a greeting card covered with happy valentine's hearts. Years later, Victoria (Agi Gallus), works as a housekeeper and cook for the Fosters, (John Haslett Cutt and Rose Graham), a wealthy city couple. Her sister, Sarah (Darlene Mignacco), phones to tell her she has been released from the Lakeview mental hospital. Even though Victoria was the one who killed the parents, Sarah was incarcerated.
Victoria agrees to meet Sarah at the long-shuttered sanitarium. However, Sarah, now completely insane and vengeful, kills her sister and journeys to the Fosters home, where she assumes the role of cook. The Fosters are thrilled -- to them, Victoria deserted them on the eve of a big dinner party. Sarah cooks and serves her sister as the main course, drugs the Fosters and their bourgeois guests (which includes a pompous psychologist), ties them up and takes them to Lakeview hospital, where she plans to murder them. Sarah joins with two henchmen, who crack jokes as they stab, impale, electrocute, slice, and pull out the toenails of their victims.
PSYCHO GIRLS is leaden at first, with campy scenes that tease the viewer about where the story is going. For example, there's a slapstick sex scene that turns incredibly violent, and the opening murder scene provides a bit of "arsenic and old lace"-style humor. The black humor extends into the concluding massacre sequence, but the film works better as an attack on Reagan-era affluence and questions the usefulness of psychology to cure maniacs.
A systematic put-down of the latter subject forms the movie's main theme -- in the opening sequence (Victoria convinces Sarah's doctor to keep her in the hospital indefinitely); the Foster's dinner scene, which features an extended philosophical debate on science versus the soul; and the massacre sequence, in which Sarah sarcastically interviews and then murders the psychologist. In Ciccoritti's vision, it doesn't pay to be a mental health professional (two of them are killed here).
Despite some disturbing violence, PSYCHO GIRLS pulls some punches. As we learn of the injustices heaped upon Sarah, we are expected to side with her because the Fosters are pompous and vain. Yet, when Sarah kicks off her gory retribution, she becomes a wide-eyed monstrosity. Ciccoritti apparently doesn't want us to identify with any of the characters, and puts us off by having them recite lengthy diatribes that inexorably lead back to Freud, the nature of the human brain, or mental health.
Ciccoritti employs numerous Brechtian devices to keep us emotionally distant. For instance, every so often a narrator intrudes on the action; and the actors playing Sarah's henchmen are instructed to act giggly-mad, their wacky behavior adding a cartoonish spin on the death scenes. The Grand Guignol finale, presided over by Sarah in a fright wig and carried out in front of a shrine containing a large photo of Freud, documents the characters' protracted death throes through further Brechtian applications, such as a distorted lens, whirling camera angles, and staging that approximates a theatrical play. Although these scenes are pushed at us as The Ultimate Horror, we aren't allowed to identify with the characters enough so as to care.
The Multivision release of PSYCHO GIRLS reviewed here, an Italian-language video, is probably the most complete version around. The MGM video release is missing almost all of the violent scenes and seriously hurting the film's impact.
Victoria agrees to meet Sarah at the long-shuttered sanitarium. However, Sarah, now completely insane and vengeful, kills her sister and journeys to the Fosters home, where she assumes the role of cook. The Fosters are thrilled -- to them, Victoria deserted them on the eve of a big dinner party. Sarah cooks and serves her sister as the main course, drugs the Fosters and their bourgeois guests (which includes a pompous psychologist), ties them up and takes them to Lakeview hospital, where she plans to murder them. Sarah joins with two henchmen, who crack jokes as they stab, impale, electrocute, slice, and pull out the toenails of their victims.
PSYCHO GIRLS is leaden at first, with campy scenes that tease the viewer about where the story is going. For example, there's a slapstick sex scene that turns incredibly violent, and the opening murder scene provides a bit of "arsenic and old lace"-style humor. The black humor extends into the concluding massacre sequence, but the film works better as an attack on Reagan-era affluence and questions the usefulness of psychology to cure maniacs.
A systematic put-down of the latter subject forms the movie's main theme -- in the opening sequence (Victoria convinces Sarah's doctor to keep her in the hospital indefinitely); the Foster's dinner scene, which features an extended philosophical debate on science versus the soul; and the massacre sequence, in which Sarah sarcastically interviews and then murders the psychologist. In Ciccoritti's vision, it doesn't pay to be a mental health professional (two of them are killed here).
Despite some disturbing violence, PSYCHO GIRLS pulls some punches. As we learn of the injustices heaped upon Sarah, we are expected to side with her because the Fosters are pompous and vain. Yet, when Sarah kicks off her gory retribution, she becomes a wide-eyed monstrosity. Ciccoritti apparently doesn't want us to identify with any of the characters, and puts us off by having them recite lengthy diatribes that inexorably lead back to Freud, the nature of the human brain, or mental health.
Ciccoritti employs numerous Brechtian devices to keep us emotionally distant. For instance, every so often a narrator intrudes on the action; and the actors playing Sarah's henchmen are instructed to act giggly-mad, their wacky behavior adding a cartoonish spin on the death scenes. The Grand Guignol finale, presided over by Sarah in a fright wig and carried out in front of a shrine containing a large photo of Freud, documents the characters' protracted death throes through further Brechtian applications, such as a distorted lens, whirling camera angles, and staging that approximates a theatrical play. Although these scenes are pushed at us as The Ultimate Horror, we aren't allowed to identify with the characters enough so as to care.
The Multivision release of PSYCHO GIRLS reviewed here, an Italian-language video, is probably the most complete version around. The MGM video release is missing almost all of the violent scenes and seriously hurting the film's impact.