Psychomania

Psychomania aka The Death Wheelers (1973) is a British occult biker film directed by Don Sharp. Psychomania defines the cult film, and it is one of my all-time favourites from watching it as a teenager on late-night television in the early 1980s.

It stars Nicky Henson (Witchfinder General) as Tom, a sociopathic mother’s boy and leader of a biker gang, The Living Dead. His mother is played by Beryl Reid as a Satan-worshipping medium, and the household is completed by the servant and possible acolyte of Satan, Shadwell, played by George Sanders. Among the bikers is the ambitious Jane, played by Ann Michelle (The Virgin Witch), who embraces the hedonistic cruelty of the gang with relish.

“I had a telephone call from the police.”

“The word, Mother, is fuzz.”

“I don’t know what your gang of delinquents have been up to. If you get into any more trouble, you and your gang are going to get arrested.”

“The word, Mother, is busted. Do you know why the fuzz called, Mother? We blew a fellow’s mind. It was beautiful, you should have been there. He went right through the windscreen.”

Tom wants to pass over to the other side and live forever. With the aid of a locked room, his father’s discarded glasses and a supernatural toad, he makes a pact to die and be reborn as one of the eternal dead, who cannot die twice.

“Everybody dies, don’t they? But some come back. Isn’t that so?”

With Tom dead, Jane declares herself leader of the gang, but Tom returns from the dead in a dramatic escape on board his motorbike. He breaks free from his grave and, with no consequences to deal with, goes on a killing spree, then shows up to assert his leadership and convince the others to follow his path.

Jane jumps at the chance to join Tom on his hedonistic rampage, and the others reluctantly follow. Only Tom’s girlfriend Abby is reticent. You know she is different from the others, as she is the only one to wear denim over the others’ choice of leather.

The Living Dead harass shoppers in the local supermarket, sending customers flying among the Golden Wonder crisps and tins of budget beans, chase young mums and their babies, and lead the police on a wild chase with cars veering in all directions to avoid the gang.

Tom’s mother is concerned that her son knows no bounds, and his plan to kill all the police, teachers and clergy is more evil than even she can get on board with. She decides to break her pact with Satan. In a ritual with Shadwell she turns into a frog, and Abby is saved from her fate when the pact is broken and the living dead turn into standing stones.

The soundtrack by John Cameron is, in his own words, “spooky and different but had a kind of rock feeling to it, it was pre-synthesiser. Having these hooligan musicians all trying to do strange things, scratch inside pianos and turn sounds inside out.”

Among the psych rock there is even a Donovan-esque folk lament, played at Tom’s funeral by the aptly named gang member Chopped Meat. He strums his guitar while the others make wildflower wreaths, and sings:

“He really got it on; he rode his sweet machine like a bomb… They tried to clip his wings like a fly. So instead of standing still, he chose to die.”

Nicky Henson has said in recent interviews, “At that time, I thought if you do a dodgy film nobody pays to see dodgy films. Of course, you’re not realising that years later they come out on DVD and become cults.”

I do not think Psychomania is anything like “a dodgy film”. It remains for me a masterpiece of British occult biker films involving a satanic frog. It has one of the best psych rock soundtracks ever. The music, credited to John Cameron and Frog, finally got a proper release in 2003 thanks to that veritable crate digger Jonny Trunk on his own label, and has enjoyed further reissue since.

Psychomania should be on everyone’s must-watch list for fans of exploitation cinema, and it will be on my regular repeat watching for many years to come.

Gallery

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Trailer

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From the score

• John Cameron – Psychomania Front Title

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• Frog – Witch Hunt

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• Frog – Living Dead

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• Harvey Andrews – Riding Free (the funeral song)

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Filed 10 November 2026 by Darren Evanson.